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Actinic Business is a product we've looked at before in PCW and it's one of the most mature ecommerce packages available. The latest release, v7, sees it available in a range of different versions. The basic Catalog software itself provides fairly advanced shopping facilities, including order management. Actinic Business, reviewed here, adds a range of extra features, while Actinic Developer adds support for multiple sites.
Actinic's interface has changed a little from the previous versions. By default, the main interface is now a three-pane view. At the left there's a collapsible tree, showing the layout of your site; to the right are the details of the object you're working with at the moment, and below is a preview of the website.
The latter view is new to this version and means you have a much clearer idea of what the finished result will be. It's also easier now to create a whole website in Actinic's software, albeit without the degree of design flexibility you'll find in a dedicated website design package.
Although the interface change is the most noticeable thing, there are some powerful new shopping options, but not all are available in the basic Catalog version.
These include the ability to add optional extras, such as a memory card when you buy a digital camera or create products out of a range of components, such as the way PCs can be purchased with different amounts of memory. Some of these options are quite straightforward and we found it very easy to add an optional extra memory card to a digital camera product that we created.
Others do take a bit of work to get your head around and, though the manual does explain how to set it up, a clear overview of the technique would have helped make it easier, we felt. That's particularly true in the case of a product such as a PC, where it's necessary to create some products representing options such as monitors, but then hide them from the site, while using them to help construct pricing of the main product.
However, the results are well worth it, for the sheer flexibility the new version brings. There are options to provide vouchers for discounts or special pricing and, if you create customer login IDs, then you can also offer preferential pricing to certain customers as well. Stock tracking is included and the software can link to Quickbooks and Sage software.
Also new and useful, especially for small businesses that might not already have an order management system, is the ability to enter orders directly into Actinic, so you no longer need to keep track of web sales and other channels, such as post or telephone, separately.
For those who've not used Actinic before, one of the other great selling points is the sheer ease of configuration. For many, setting up an online shop seems a daunting prospect, with potential nightmares of server configuration or expensive fees at a consultancy.
Point Actinic's software at a web server and it'll sniff around, work out where to upload files, how to configure scripts and do the whole job for you. It was neat the first time we looked at the software and it's still amazing to watch.
A wide range of payment processing services is available including Paypal, Nochex and services like Worldpay and Secpay. All in all, it's a worthy upgrade and, at £799 (the Catalog version, lacking some of the more complex product pricing options comes in at £379) for an online shop configured on your server, it compares pretty favourably with paying someone to do manual configuration. To make the most of the options, it's worth studying the sample shop carefully and we felt the documentation could be better, but overall, this is still one of the best ways for small businesses to sell online.
Contact: Actinic 0845 129 4800
www.actinic.co.uk
System requirements:
- Windows 98 or above
- 64MB memory (128MB preferred)
- 100MB disk space
- IE5 or higher
See also:
If you are thinking of starting up your own business you may find this program useful. 22 Apr 2004
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