Introducing…Boutique Website Templates
As part of all of the changes going on around here, we would like to introduce our new sister site Boutique Website Templates! This new site is where we now offer all of our pre-made website templates and E-store packages, AlohaShop hosting plans, and many matching add-ons. Check it out! We will be adding new pre-made templates in the next few days. We have a new one available now, see Fun Hip Chic website template here.

All of the custom design services are staying at the Boutique Web Design site, which has only a few products that are orderable from the site at any time (Search Engine Optimization packages and Internet Marketing services). The site is mostly informational now, for our current and potential custom design clients. For custom design projects, you can contact us for availability and to schedule yours.

Red Peach Solutions…where did it go?
With all these changes, Red Peach Solutions didn’t go away, it’s now the “parent company” for all of our websites and now has a viewable page at www.redpeachsolutions.org. Also, the help desk has moved to www.redpeachsolutions.org/support, however all old links will still take you there.

New E-Store Packages
I mentioned E-store packages - these are new! By ordering a packages, you receive a nice discount and they include the most popular and necessary products/services for running or opening your online store. You can turn any of our pre-made templates into a full e-store by adding both the template and the e-store package of your choice to your cart and checking out.

Also, if you purchase a template somewhere else or have created your own template, you can just purchase an e-store package. We will install the template you provide us into AlohaShop and you’ll have your complete e-store!

Custom Web Design Project Additions
Coming soon we will be making some changes to our custom web design packages, adding monthly website maintenance to the each package as well as some changes to the shopping cart offered (see below for details on that). The website maintenance is an important addition - with the use of the AlohaCart, it’s not quite as easy for people to make changes to website pages, add pages, etc. and also, we want our custom web design clients’ sites to always look as great as they did when we first completed them. While many clients may be ok with making some of these changes on their own, we want to provide the services so we can keep the sites looking as professional as possible always.

AlohaCart Changes
We have changed the way we offer AlohaCart. AlohaCart is better for more advanced users and requires more support, server resources, and customizations on our end so we are currently only going to offer it to our custom web design clients via our E-commerce Web Design packages, where we will include full customization of the cart in the packages, or through our upcoming premium hosted cart plans which will start at $39.95 per month. Stay tuned…
For those that already use version 4 of AlohaCart, you can continue to do so. We will be updating your version 4 stores to the newest version sometime this week or coming weekend. For those that are using version 3 we will need to upgrade you to the new version very soon. The upgrade itself is free, however your template design and any pages you may have added will need to be re-created in the new cart…they don’t transfer over automatically to the new version. So if you are able to do that yourself, that is great, however if you don’t have HTML experience then you can have us do it for you which can range from $45 to about $135 depending on how many pages you have. More details on this later, or feel free to contact us if you would like to upgrade now.

I realize that was a lot of info and if you’ve made it this far, thank you! If you have any questions about anything, please feel free to contact us!

Thanks!
Danielle

We are glad to finally say that our help desk and website are back up and running, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused over the last couple of days! You should not notice, but our help desk is now at redpeachsolutions.org/support (instead of redpeachsolutions.com/support), however the old links will just redirect to the new location so you don’t need to change anything on your end…it’s just an fyi.

Also, we had a little bit of server downtime a couple of nights ago during some scheduled maintenance. It lasted longer than anticipated, and had I known I would have sent out an email beforehand. It was supposed to be a quick thing that only lasted a few minutes, however in the future I will send out a notification anyway. For anyone who is interested, we upgraded from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5. This should not affect your sites with us as we have already made the changes necessary.

As we finally feel better around here, we are continuing on with our planned changes for our website and business, one of which was our new web design which we rolled out a couple of weeks ago. Secondly, our site is now Boutique Web Design as you can now see on our homepage! Along with the name comes the domain www.boutiquewebdesign.com, however our old domains will still work as well. Red Peach Solutions is now the “parent company” and we will do business under the name of Boutique Web Design from now on.

I mentioned we are finally feeling better - I want to add a little more about that…these last two weeks have been pretty terrible with a nasty virus circulating through our three kids and then to ourselves, hopefully to never return again! My poor husband had the worst case our doctor has ever seen in her life. So today my first day back to work almost full time and so things should return to normal soon. Thanks for all your well wishes during this time! I try to keep my site updated with current info, but I wasn’t always able to do so this time and I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Stay tuned for more news and changes coming soon!

The tenth annual Shop.org report, The State of Retailing Online 2007, conducted by Forrester Research states that e-commerce has come of age and its profitability throughout the channel has stabilized. Eighty-three percent of respondents to the survey reported making more money and 78 percent said they were more profitable than just two years ago. The report found that apparel, accessories and footwear reached $18.3 billion in 2006 for online purchases and is expected to hit $22.1 billion by the end of 2007.

e-onlinedata (EOD) is the nation’s fastest-growing, most trusted provider of online payment solutions. Thousands of Internet, mail order, auction sellers and retail businesses — from start-ups to billion-dollar companies — are choosing EOD every month for affordable, reliable, and easy-to-use credit card processing and Authorize.Net payment gateway solutions. For more information on e-onlinedata or to apply for a merchant account, please visit http://www.e-onlinedata.com/redpeachdesigns

I get a lot of questions about accepting credit cards, how it works, and why it’s important so here is some information that I hope is helpful for you.

Years ago, an exchange of cash was all it took for a customer to make a purchase from a merchant. How things have changed! Today, most businesses offer their products or services on the Internet — clearly, they can’t be restricted to cash-on-delivery practices anymore. E-commerce has emerged as a lucrative channel for merchants to boost sales and grow their bottom lines. Many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home, and browsing an online catalog can be faster than browsing the aisles of a physical store — and customers get the added convenience of shopping 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Merchants should understand the value of operating in multiple channels. For those who haven’t yet incorporated e-commerce into their business but want to, there is much to learn. They must educate themselves on how payment processing works in order to best accommodate their online shoppers and serve the needs of their business. Though paying for an online purchase takes just a few seconds, it involves a complex chain reaction of behind-the-scenes processes.

Merchants can increase revenues and reach more customers by offering an efficient, successful e-commerce solution. This article examines what must be in place in order to complete a transaction that is both secure and offers superior customer service.

What Makes an E-Commerce Solution Possible?
In addition to the range of software and hardware that companies use to support the sale of products and services online, there are three vital components that make online shopping possible: the shopping cart, payment gateway and payment processor. Each is critical to ensuring successful implementation of e-commerce functionality.

Shopping cart. The shopping cart acts quite literally as a virtual shopping basket. It holds the items customers select from a Web site until they are ready to proceed to the checkout stage, where their credit card information will be processed. The shopping cart:

• Keeps track of items until they are purchased
• Automatically totals the amount of a customer’s order, including shipping and tax
• Allows shoppers to securely enter address and credit card information

Red Peach Solutions offers two shopping cart systems that are easy to use and provide the means to accept credit card (and other) payments online. Click here to read more about our shopping cart solutions.

Payment gateway. In order to accept credit cards through the Internet, a payment gateway is critical to transport the credit card information from the shopping cart to the payment processor once the consumer clicks the “Buy” button. In most cases, this transaction happens almost instantaneously. The payment gateway receives encrypted transactions from the merchant’s shopping cart. An encrypted transaction simply means that credit card numbers can’t be read by people who are not supposed to read those numbers. Authentication is then provided and the decrypted payment information is transmitted for authorization. The payment gateway:

• Fulfills the same function as a point-of-sale (card swipe) terminal at a physical retail location
• Takes information provided through a shopping cart and transmits it electronically and securely to a payment processor to be routed for authorization of payment

Payment processor. The payment processor transmits a customer’s credit card information via the Internet to the merchant bank for authorization. It also sends data back to the merchant’s bank to approve payment or the transfer of funds. Specifically, a payment processor:

• Acts as a link from the merchant to the acquiring bank or merchant bank
• Receives information from the merchant through the payment gateway and packages the information for delivery to the acquirer, ensuring that all necessary transactional data is present and valid
• Later transmits information back from the acquirer for delivery to the merchant to settle the transaction

With the shopping cart, payment gateway and payment processor in place, merchants have all they need to offer convenient e-commerce solutions that deliver superior security and service. With a little research and education, merchants can find the best providers to accommodate their business needs and those of their consumers. It just makes sense — with online shopping projected to account for $116 billion, or five percent of all retail sales this year — e-commerce provides merchants an opportunity to make more money and succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Want to get started accepting credit cards on your site? Visit e-onlinedata — it’s quick and easy!

Merchant Processing 101 is a production of e-onlinedata, reprinted with permission from e-onlinedata. Content is intended to provide merchants and small business owners with practical information and insight into the world of payment processing.

Hello all,

I need to take it easy and rest for a couple of days. I came down with a nasty case of mastitis and basically feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, in addition to the other wonderful symptoms associated with this. I’m on antibiotic and will hopefully start feeling better by tomorrow but it’s been hard to work much as my body aches on top of my already hurting wrists make it hard for me to do computer work.

Thanks…
Danielle

I have had so many people over the last few years inquire about if I do search engine optimization (SEO) and have always had to say no or refer them elsewhere. I am now proud to announce that we have teamed up with Jay of iClickSolutions who is Google and Yahoo certified to provide our clients with these very valuable services at a huge discount!

I work with so many clients who are starting new stores and so many don’t know about SEO or internet marketing and it’s such a key part of an online business’ success. Starting a website is just the beginning…how will people find your site once you have it online? They won’t unless you make an effort in these areas. If you’re serious about your business succeeding, then you must know about SEO and online advertising and marketing.

We have several services and packages now available on our site here: Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Services

And if your business needs don’t fit in one of the packages, please contact me and we’ll work out a custom package.

We re-vamped the Pre-made Website Template options and instead of offering just a few packages to choose from, you can now customize the pre-made template to include anything you need and nothing you don’t need. You can add a shopping cart, hosting, banners, business cards, favicon, product data entry, as many pages as you need and more in one easy place.

We also updated our Custom OOAK Template product - you can choose your own package as described above and we have considerably LOWERED the price. So if you have your own graphics or design OR you want to choose from the graphics providers listed on that page, you can create your own package and have a custom website design for less money and less time than our e-commerce packages!

We weren’t around much this weekend due to Mother’s Day and a party we threw for our now 1 and 3 year old daughters! It was very fun and tiring at the same time but now we’re back to work on projects. Things are moving along…Andrea is doing more work and helping out greatly and I have started on the next couple of projects from the waiting list so things are moving along.

I’ve had some of my emails not make it to recipients last week, I think they are getting marked as spam again so if you are waiting on something from me, feel free to email again. I’m also working on finishing up a project management system where you can log in and see the status of projects at any time. I’m hoping this helps out with the amount of emails we receive as we would be able to communicate and check progress through this new system. Stay tuned…

I would like to announce that we have a new person on board helping with projects, website maintenance, support and anything else she wants to take on.

Andrea has been helping out a little here and there for a while but will now be helping out in a much larger capacity. She is a member of the support forum here (I believe her username is “Andrea”) and has already helped with several shopping cart questions. So far she is scheduled to be doing website maintenance, product data entry and shopping cart support!

You can read a little bit about her on the “About Our Team” page here: http://www.redpeachsolutions.com/pages/about-us.htm