The easiest way to open an online store!

All-in-one ecommerce solution

Setting up an ecommerce website has never been easier!

Spiffy Stores is popular with Australian small businesses for its easy-to-use interface, reliable 256 bit SSL security and low entry cost - you can start your own online store for less than a dollar a day.

Spiffy Stores includes essential ecommerce software features such as...

• Full integration with Australia Post, FedEx and NZ Post
• Compatible with 60+ payment gateways including PayPal
• Customisable design
• Use of your own domain name
• Email accounts on your own domain
• 24/7 ecommerce hosting on high performance secure servers
• Product feeds to shopping portals and pricing sites

It's also built with Ruby on Rails, today's most flexible and powerful web development framework... so it's also much faster to run and more efficient than most other e-commerce solutions.

Continue the tour to find out more about our store features and design.

Next - Store design »

Contemporary designs at your fingertips

Don't settle for boring old template designs! Spiffy Stores lets you build an online store using one of our fully customisable modern templates, or you can get really creative and design your own theme. The choice is yours.

Most of our themes have been designed with a range of different features such as;

• Customisable colour schemes
• The ability to upload your own logo
• Slide shows
• Wishlists
• Social media integration with Facebook & Twitter
• Related products
• Newsletter subscribes using MailChimp or Campaign Monitor

Check out our theme design gallery »

You can also design and build your own store theme using HTML & CSS, and upload your changes using WebDav.

Next - Running your store »

All the features you need in an easy to use interface.

It's business as usual with our easy to use store management interface.

Spiffy Stores combines everything you need to run your online store in a beautiful & easy to use web-based interface which lets you...

• Add, edit and import your products
• Process and manage orders, providing tracking numbers with shipment notification emails
• Check orders to be fulfilled and paid orders
• Edit and re-arrange your menus easily
• Calculate your postage automatically using Australia Post, FedEx and now New Zealand Post.

...all simply and with the minimum of effort!

Next - Marketing and SEO »

Getting your store the attention it deserves

Most of your customers will look for you and your products using search engines so it's really important that your store is search engine optimised (SEO). Spiffy Stores has been created by SEO experts so each individual theme has been built with features to help you get found online such as...

• URLs containing your product and collection name
• Automatically generated header and meta tags for your product and collection pages

Once visitors have found your site, you want to encourage them to buy and offering discounts can be a good way of doing this. Spiffy Stores provides simple tools so you can easily...

• Create coupon & discount codes
• Create automatic shopping cart discounts that don't require a coupon code
• Offer discount wholesale prices

Once you're up and running, you need to know how visitors use your site so you can learn what works and keep improving it. In addition to the built-in statistics, Spiffy Stores also fully integrates with Google Analytics. This gives you access to detailed data including e-commerce reporting.

In addition, all our themes include Facebook like buttons, Twitter follow buttons and Google +1 buttons. Some include Facebook comments or Disqus comments, and others also include wish list functionality.

Next - Accepting payments »

Accept PayPal or payments from over 60 payment providers

Spiffy Stores easily integrates with many different payment processing services including PayPal, and more are being added all the time. Once you've set up an account with a payment provider you just add the details in your store, and you're ready to sell!

If you already have your own card payment facilities such as an eftpos machine, you can also accept payments seamlessly and process the payment manually.

In addition, you can accept payments by direct deposit, money order, cheque, or any other manual method you prefer.

Click here for a full list of the payment gateways we support »

Next - Hosting & security »

Fast, high performance hosting with 256 bit SSL security

Your security is important to us! Spiffy Stores owns and operates multiple high performance servers supported by skilled technical personnel 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Each of our all-in-one ecommerce plans includes

• Fast, high performance hosting with automatic backups
• The highest 256 bit SSL security in your checkout
• Automatic software updates
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Email accounts with spam & virus protection and
• Phone support from a real person

Our state-of-the-art data centre combines multiple levels of security, uninterruptible power, redundant systems and fire suppression with around-the-clock monitoring and management.

You are also assured of the years of skills and experience of the technical team behind each and every Spiffy Stores site. With all this supporting your Spiffy Store you know you can sign up with confidence!

Next - Check out our blog below »

Getting started

• What is Spiffy Stores?

Spiffy Stores is an all-in-one fully hosted e-commerce application that allows you to easily set up an online store to sell your stuff.

Using Spiffy Stores lets you add and organise products, accept payments, track orders and customise the design of your store... all for a fraction of the cost of having an online store designed and built for you.

• Do I need to install any special software?

No you don't. Spiffy Stores is a hosted solution, so there's no software to install. This makes it really easy to create your online store or add a shopping cart to your existing site.

There are no SSL certificates or API's to install either. All you need is a modern web browser like Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari and you're ready to go!

• Do I need any technical or programming skills?

If you don't want to learn the code... you don't have to!

All of our themes can be customised in a simple "point and click" editor. You can also add and edit products, pages, blog articles, menus etc. and manage your orders without seeing any code.

Menus can be also customised using our drag and drop interface, which is super-easy to use!

• What do I need in order to start selling?

You will need the following…

• Something to sell
• One of our supported payment gateways to accept payments from your customers
• A modern web browser like Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer (8 or above) or Safari to use your online store's administration interface
• What do I need to set up a store?

To set up a store, you just need to choose plan below, and complete the signup form. You will then be asked to verify your email address before your store is set up.

It takes just a few minutes to get going, and then your store is set up and you can start customising the look of your store by adding your logo, adding your products, creating collections (or categories) for your products, and then adding them to your menus.

• What do I need to accept credit card payments?

There are several ways to accept credit card payments from customers when they order from your online store.

Spiffy Stores is fully integrated with PayPal, which is the easiest way to accept payments. We also integrate with over 60 different payment gateways. A full list of all of the payment gateways we support is available in our knowledge base.

If you already have your own merchant account, you can also accept all major credit cards directly, by processing payments using your own facilities.

• Can I use my own domain name with my store?

You sure can! To add your own domain name, you just log in to our toolbox, and add your domain name there. There are a few other things you may need to do. These are all detailed in our knowledge base.

• How long does it take to set up my store?

Spiffy Stores are created instantly - as soon as you complete the signup form. You can then start customising the look of your store by adding your logo, adding your products, creating collections (or categories) for your products, and then adding them to your menus.

Depending on how much preparation you've done (such as taking photos of your products and writing product descriptions), you can set up your store and start receiving orders within a day or two.

• Can I use Spiffy Stores if I live outside Australia or New Zealand?

Yes! Spiffy Stores is now available to anyone anywhere in world.

• Are there any limitations on the trial plan?

There are a few limitations on our trial plans. This is so that we can avoid abuse of our systems by unscrupulous people that have no intention of starting an online store.

Our trial plans currently restrict the amount of orders that you can receive to 10 orders, so you can test your store's checkout. You also can't set up email addresses or use your own domain name until you've activated your store.

• What happens at the end of the trial period?

At the end of the trial period, your store is suspended, and we send you an email asking you if you want to activate it. If you don't respond after 7 days, or don't activate your store, it is then closed down.

We don't keep your contact details either... and don't harass you. Our free trial is totally obligation free!

Plans and pricing

• How much does Spiffy Stores cost?

Our plans start at $25 per month plus a 3% transaction fee per order. More information about our plans can be found below.

There are no hidden fees, and we don't charge for extra bandwidth fees like some other providers.

• How do I decide which plan to choose?

All of our plans charge a flat monthly fee plus a transaction fee per order. These fees vary according to the plan that you choose. Higher plans have smaller transaction fees, so work out more economical for stores that sell larger ticket items.

More information about our plans can be found on our pricing page
• What's an SKU?

SKU is an acronym for Stock Keeping Unit, a unique identifier for each distinct product and service that can be purchased in a business. Our plans allow a certain amount of products per plan.

• How do I get billed?

We send you an invoice by email on the monthly anniversary of your signup. You then have 7 days to dispute any charges on the invoice. Your credit card is then charged the invoice amount.

• Can I cancel anytime?

Yes, you can cancel at any time! You do this by logging into your store, going to the "Store account" page, and clicking the "Please close my store button".

• Do I receive email accounts with my store?

All plans include email accounts. Details of how many email accounts in each plan can be found below in our pricing section. If your store is on a free trial, you cannot use the built in email until your store is activated.

• How do I upgrade / downgrade my plan?

You can upgrade or downgrade your plan in your Store Toolbox by clicking on the "Change my plan" button in the "Store account" section of your Toolbox.

• How do I update my account information?

Your store address, store name and contact details can be updated in the General settings section of your Store Toolbox.

Your billing information can be updated in the "Store account" section of your Toolbox.

• Does ecommerce hosting come as part of the plan?

Yes! Spiffy Stores is a hosted solution... so everything is included. You don't need to worry about your hosting or email or SSL certificates or software updates or bandwidth... or just about anything really other than running your business!

• What level of security does Spiffy Stores have?

Brian - our security guru here - makes sure that every store is as secure as possible. He has a background in providing system security services for major banks, and even the Australian Stock Exchange!

All of our plans include 256 bit SSL encryption in your checkout, and in your store admin area. All passwords and sensitive data is also encrypted using rock-solid encryption measures. All of our servers are also regularly updated with security fixes as soon as is practical.

• What technical support does Spiffy Stores offer?

We're here to help you with all aspects of setting up your store. Our support hours are 9am to 5pm Sydney time, so we're here during busness hours when you really need us.

You can email us, submit a support ticket, ask a queston in our forums, or call us and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

We don't outsource to call centres overseas either! When you phone us you'll speak with someone who knows about the ins-and-outs of selling online, and knows the software intimately. That's because you'll be speaking with the people that work on improving the software every day!

Designing your store

• Do I need to be a designer/programmer to change my store design?

Not at all! Spiffy Stores come with a range of pre-designed themes that come in a range of different colours. We also add new themes periodically so you can change the look of your shop whenever you get bored with it.

Our new improved theme editor also allows you to add your own logo to all of our themes, as well as change your theme colour scheme.

Each theme also has it's own site or section in our knowledge base, which has instructions on how to add your logo etc. so if that's the type of thing you want to do, head on over to the theme demo site for the theme that you're currently using…

• Fresh
• Dream Theme
• Minimal
• Antiqua
• Georgia
• Seattle

If you want to make major alterations, a working knowledge of HTML & CSS is pretty handy though, so sometimes it's good to have a designer or programmer handy to make these changes for you.

If you would prefer to get us to modify your theme for you, we can do simple things like create images for your slideshows, and add custom functionality for as little as $70 AUD.

Contact us to find out more about our store design service.

• Does Spiffy Stores offer a design service?

Yes we do! Small modifications like creating images for your slideshow, or adding custom functionality can be done for as little as $70 AUD.

Complete store designs usually range from $300 (for modifications to an existing theme design) to $3000 for a new theme (an average of $1500 - depending on the complexity. Contact us to find out more about our store design service.

• Can I integrate Spiffy Stores into my existing site?

Yes you can! There are several options to do so. First, if you would like to use Spiffy Stores only for your storefront, you can do so by creating a subdomain (e.g. www.store.yourdomain.com). Or, you can simply link pages from your current website over to your product pages in your Spiffy Store.

• Can I change my store design after I have started selling?

Yes you can! You just choose a theme from the Theme gallery in your store, and apply it. You don't lose any product info, collections, menus etc. The only thing that changes is the look of your store.

• What templates does Spiffy Stores have?

Spiffy Stores has a great selection of templates to suit a lot of different stores. They all come in a range of colour schemes, and you can change a lot of things like fonts, slideshows, social media integration.

In some themes you can move things around like menus as well.

You can also get us (or any web designer) to modify a theme for you, so you've got your own completely unique design!

To see all of our themes, check out our theme gallery »

• What is Liquid?

Liquid is a template language used by many different hosted solutions that run on Rails. It is a little similar to the Django template language.

Liquid tags are inserted in the HTML of your store's templates to display dynamic data from your store's back-end.

It sounds a little scarey we know, but if you decide to build your own theme, there's truckloads of information on how to use Liquid tags over in our knowledge base.

Marketing and SEO

• What SEO features does Spiffy Stores have?

Spiffy Stores is built from the ground up with SEO priniciples in mind. We start with the URL's (the address you type into a browser's address bar). All product page URL's have the name of the collection and product in them, blog articles, pages and collection pages have the name of your article, page, or collection name in them.

In addition, every theme is hand-crafted by us to ensure that we make the most of every bit of text you enter.

We use product tags extensively on product and collection pages, so when you're adding a product, make sure you add your tags! They are used in your store's keyword meta tags, and your text is added to description meta tags throughout. All images also have alt tags generated from your product titles as well.

At the end of the day though, it's all down to you. You will need to research your keywords and use your keywords liberally in your pages, blog articles, collection pages, product descriptions, and product tags to rank well on them. We're great but we can't work miracles with one sentence product descriptions.

• How do I collect email addreses to send out newsletters?

Spiffy Stores integrates easily with MailChimp and Campaign Monitor... allowing you to collect email adresses using embedded subscribe forms, as well as using web hooks to send subscriber information when a customer buys a product on your site.

More information about setting up subscribe forms and using web hooks can be found in our knowledge base.

• How do I provide product feeds to pricing sites and shopping portals such as Google Merchant Centre?

We currently work with a number of different shopping portals. Setting up a feed for them is very easy. You just create the feed in the marketing section of your Toolbox, and then submit it to the shopping portal.

A list of the shopping portals that we support can be found in our knowledge base, as well asfull instructions on how to create a data feed for them.

If you've found one that we don't support... let us know and we'll be happy to look into adding them for you.

• What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free analytics program provided by Google. it allows you to see statistics on how many people have vistied your site, as well as the ability to drill down to see reports on your most popular pages and products. it goes a lot further than that... but they have their own site tour that tells you a lot more!

Spiffy stores integrates with Google Analytics easily. You just enter your tracking code that Google provides you with in your store... and it's up and running for you.

Step-by-step instructions on enabling Google Analytics are also in our knowledge base.

• What social media functions does Spiffy Stores provide?

Every theme has it's own set of social media functions, such as Twitter "Tweet" buttons, Facebook "Like" buttons. Facebook comments, Disqus comments and loads more.

Most themes also include the ability to post products on Del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, Blogger.com and StumbleUpon.

There's loads more that we're working on though so stay tuned!

• Can I create coupon or discount codes?

Yes! Our business plan allows you to easily create your own coupon codes, so you can run special promotions. You can even set preferences so codes only apply to specific products or collections or countries.

You can set discounts with a variety of parameters such as start and end dates, quantity or amount limits, specific products inclusion or exclusion, number of uses and either a percentage or flat rate discount.

Want more? ...well you can also provide a bunch of discounts where your customer doesn't even need to enter a coupon code... such as "Spend over $100 and get free shipping" type discounts. These are called "Shopping cart discounts", and more information about them can be found in our knowledge base.

Accepting payments

• How can I accept payment from my customers?

There are several ways to collect payments from customers when they order from your store.

There are several ways to accept credit card payments from customers when they order from your online store. Spiffy Stores is fully integrated with PayPal, which is the easiest way to accept payments.

We also integrate with over 60 different payment gateways. A full list of all of the payment gateways we support is available in our knowledge base.

If you already have your own merchant account, you can also accept all major credit cards directly, by processing payments using your own facilities.

And finally... you can accept payments by direct deposit or any other manual way you like.

• What is a merchant account?

A merchant account is an account that you hold directly with a bank. If you want to accept credit card payments through your Spiffy Store, you will need either a merchant account of your own or a third-party payment processor like PayPal (see below).

• What is a payment gateway?

A payment gateway allows you to connect your merchant account to your Spiffy Store to automatically process payments made in your store.

If you're just starting out, you probably won't need to use a payment gateway until you have so many orders that processing payments manually bercomes a huge chore.

Spiffy Stores supports many different payment gateways. A list of supported gateways can be found here.

• What is a third-party payment processor?

A third-party processor such as PayPal allows you to accept credit card payments without the expense of a merchant account of your own. Generally they have their own transaction fees and in some cases have a monthly fee.

Third-party processors are very simple to set up in your Spiffy Store. A list of supported third-party processors can be found here.

• Can I accept funds manually?

Yes! You can accept manual payments by direct deposit, money order, cheque, or process credit card payments manually using your own eftpos facilities.

• Which payment gateways do you integrate with?

We integrate with over 60 different payment gateways. A full list of all of the payment gateways we support is available in our knowledge base.

• Can I use my existing merchant account with Spiffy Stores?

Yes! You can process credit card payments manually using your own eftpos facilities, or you can link your merchant account to one of our supported payment gateways to process credit card payments automatically.

• Can I use my existing merchant account with Spiffy Stores?

Yes! You can process credit card payments manually using your own eftpos facilities, or you can link your merchant account to one of our supported payment gateways to process credit card payments automatically.

Orders and shipments

• What shipping providers does Spiffy Stores support?

We currently support automatic shipping calculations from Australia Post, NZ Post and FedEx.

You can also set your shipping prices to be static based on weight or price... it's up to you! We've made our shipping preferences as flexible as we can to support a wide range of needs. If you need help finding the best settings to suit your requirements, contact us and we'll help you out as much as we can.

If you have an account with another shipping provider and want us to support them as well, please let us know and we'll be more than happy to work on integrating with them.

• How is shipping calculated?

You can calculate your shipping using automated shipping calculators from Australia Post, NZ Post and FedEx.

You can also set your shipping prices to be static based on weight or price... it's up to you! We've made our shipping preferences as flexible as we can to support a wide range of needs. If you need help finding the best settings to suit your requirements, contact us and we'll help you out as much as we can.

If you have an account with another shipping provider and want us to support them as well, please let us know and we'll be more than happy to work on integrating with them.

• Can I create my own shipping rates?

Yes! If you would prefer to use your own courier, you can set up custom shipping rates for any weight (or price) ranges that you specify. More information can be found in our knowledge base.

• Can I print shipping labels?

Yes! You can print out shipping labels & packing slips to send to your customers with their order. This saves you time writing or printing out your own labels and creating packing slips of your own.

• Ho do I calculate shipping prices for shipping overseas?

All of our automated shipping calculators support international shipping.

If you would prefer to use your own courier, you can set up custom shipping rates for any weight (or price) ranges that you specify. More information can be found in our knowledge base.

• What if my shipping needs are more complex?

If you need help finding the best settings to suit your requirements, contact us and we'll help you out as much as we can.

• What do I do when I get an order?

After you get a new order notification by email, you log in to your Store Toolbox and check out the details of the order.

If you need to get more information from your customer, you can send them an email right from the order view page.

You then just pack up the order ready to be posted, send it to the shipping address provided, and then mark the order as shipped in your Store Toolbox.