Actinic Business is perhaps the best UK-based application for creating an online store with minimal time and effort. Designed for smaller companies that don't have the skills to create an online storefront and back-end order management system to manage stock levels, order processing and payment processes, Actinic Business lets you setup online in a matter of days and not weeks. Version 7 of the software features some pretty significant upgrades too, particularly in areas that enable better and more efficient service and communication with customers. Overall, Actinic Business is pretty much the market leader in terms of features and value for money, and should be at the top of your list if you're either a small UK-based company with high order volumes or one that requires relatively sophisticated e-commerce features. Companies with low volumes may be better suited with the entry-level version of the software, Actinic Catalog (£379).

Pros: Powerful; highly customisable; includes 30-day trial hosting
Cons: No Undo action; no search engine optimisation or direct mail tools


Actinic has recently updated its entire range of e-commerce software. The series, which consists of three products, are all designed for smaller companies looking to build a complete Web site for selling products online. We've reviewed the mid-range version, Business 7, which is the same as the entry-level version, Actinic Catalogue (£379), but allows you to offer a range of discounts and surcharges to any group of products and/or customers (two for the price of one, for example) and offer discounts triggered by entering a coupon code or clicking a hyperlink. Actinic Business also offers built-in support for the download of electronic goods, allows you to create customer accounts with usernames and passwords, and links dynamically with third-party databases. Actinic Developer (£1,249) further offers multi-site licensing and Dreamweaver integration.

Creating a Web site can be a time-consuming and relatively stressful process (trust us!). Furthermore, creating a back-end process that manages stock levels, payment processes and security is a further complexity that requires additional skills. Quite often, smaller companies don't have these skills in-house and can't afford to employ a full-time developer to create and manage an e-commerce Web site. This is where Actinic Business comes in.

Actinic Business provides a relatively quick and easy way to develop and manage an advanced, high-volume e-commerce Web site out-of-the-box. It also provides customer account management tools, customised pricing schedules for individual customers, customer-specific store content and impressive discounting features. For added value, the software now comes as standard with two modules that were previously available at a further cost of £500 - Sage Line 50 and QuickBooks accounting plug-ins, and a Digital Download module that enables delivery of electronic products such as digital images, MP3 tracks and other software via download.

Those familiar with Actinic Business will notice that version 7 sports a new interface - a feature long time coming. For instance, the opening screen now includes a preview panel showing changes to your store pages as they are made, and there's a panel that displays the properties of the currently selected object. In addition, from the main menu bar you can now easily customise toolbars and other features that were previously hidden in custom variables.

When Actinic Business first starts, a 'Quick Start Tutorial' appears, offering a walkthrough of the main features of the application. This is a useful feature because it helps you to become familiar with the main features of the software. Once you've sat through this, you can then start to create your shop using a WYSIWYG interface that will be familiar to all Windows users.

On the left-hand side of Actinic Business's main menu is a 'Content Tree' window that shows you the structure of your store. Within this section are a selection of products organised into sections and subsections, allowing you to pick and choose content to add or remove. When you select an item in the content tree, the details of it are then visible in the panel to the right, which should result in fewer clicks required to carry out tasks. A helpful feature is that you can now duplicate a product in more than one section, should you want to promote the same product in different areas of your store. Also, you can now view your store in a Web browser window at any time in the development process to see how things are progressing.

Information items can be created within section pages, allowing you to provide key information at the point of purchase, or simply supply additional marketing/promotional information and additional images. You can also include links to other products, sections or URLs as part of the product's full description for cross-selling and promotion.

Large quantities of product information can be imported using Actinic's import feature. The information is imported as either a comma-delimited or tab-delimited text file, and you can also export the current hierarchy of sections and products. Additionally, the software can link directly to a spreadsheet or an external database via ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity). The main benefit of this is that you can manage a catalogue of products in another application and then use Actinic to publish it to the Internet. Impressively, updates to your external file can be made from within Actinic.

We were equally impressed by some of Actinic's other customisable features, including the ability to set minimum order levels at a store, the way you can make it mandatory for customers to agree to your terms and conditions before they proceed with their order, and the way you can edit the content of existing orders once they are received.

We also really liked the way that orders can be colour coded for improved order management, discounts can now be made to expire after a certain time period, and you can create surcharges that are restricted to certain payment methods, should you want compensation for any extra charges applied by third-party card-processing companies. Orders received can be listed within a certain time frame too, which should appeal particularly to stores that receive high-volume orders.

Links:
Actinic Business v7 Web site
Actinic Business v7 30-day trial (36.3MB)

BIOS, Jun 14, 04 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Internet