Yes, we believe there is very good reason to conduct e-commerce.

There is a vast pool of people using the Internet who make purchases on-line.

According to the Office of National Statistics website :   (www.statistics.gov.uk)

"The value of orders received over the Internet by UK non-financial sector businesses increased by 39 per cent between 2001 and 2002, from £16.8 billion pounds to £23.3 billion pounds." (see this page)

Would you like your slice of that pie ?

  But what about Credit Card Fraud ?

This needs to be brought into perspective.

APACS (the Association for Payment Clearing Services) is the industry body for the UK's major banks and building societies and their website (www.cardwatch.org.uk) carries some very useful information to help both consumers and retailers combat fraudulent use of credit cards. One of their pamphlets "Card Fraud the Facts 2004" (click here) has the following to say :

"... losses against total turnover – at 0.13 per cent – are significantly less than the 1991 peak level of 0.33 per cent. This fraud-to-turnover ratio fell from 0.164 per cent in 2002 fraud."

Note that the fraudulent losses compared to the amount spent using credit cards is just 0.13%, that's little more than one tenth of a penny in the pound or put another way 13p in every £100 !

Now, bear in mind that the figures quoted cover ALL types of credit card fraud including counterfeit cards, lost & stolen cards, cards lost in the post or en-route, identity theft, cash machine fraud, skimming, fraudulent use of UK cards abroad, etc. etc.

Feel better about an on-line business now ?

There is little point reinventing the wheel and thereby increasing the costs to our clients so we use Actinic which has become the industry leading package for on-line shopping. After all, if you wanted a word processor, would you ask somebody to write one or buy it ready written ?

A major advantage is that Actinic's 128 bit encryption is already recognised by major banks and the encryption is end to end. This means that the data is encrypted before it leaves your customers PC and remains that way until after it reaches your PC in your office.   That's another worry lifted from your shoulders.

It is difficult to give a price for the creation of an on-line shop because there are so
many variables, please telephone us for an informal chat about your requirements.

Actinic is a very powerful application with many features, one point worth consideration is that many visitors are already familiar with it.

It can handle digital downloads, integrates with Sage Line 50, is easy to maintain etc. etc.

Please visit the Actinic website for more info.

www.actinic.co.uk

• Tamperproof shopping cart with bank-approved security
• Built-in order-processing module is a complete application in its own right
• Deals with orders by phone, fax and post as well as from the web.
• Accurately calculates shipping, handling and taxation costs.
• Monitors stock levels during order processing.
• Over 20 built in reports including printing of invoices and packing lists.
• Anti-fraud and anti-spam options
• Product import and export functions
• Prompted backup and restore feature