Additional Functions & Services
In order to ensure that our websites ensure that they help our clients to really make the internet work for them, we provide the following range of additional functions and services. Please remember that an ORCA website is a flexible business tool that will grow with your business, therefore should you ever wish to add more functions at a later date, you can do so quickly and affordably.
Domain Name Registration & Management
The right domain name is essential if your website is to be effective online. If you already have a domain name, we will transfer it to our secure servers. Should you require a suitable domain name, we will register one on your behalf. We can even provide you with a list of appropriate and available options.
Email
If you already have email accounts, you can continue to use them through your existing supplier, or we can set up new accounts on your behalf. All email accounts are fully virus and spam protected and can be accessed via any email software such as Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird.
Logo / Branding
Only those businesses with strong brand identities really make the Internet work for them. The Internet is a virtual world where perception is reality and it is therefore vitally important that a business makes the right impression. We help to strengthen our clients' brands by developing new logos, or simply updating their current ones. We have developed a new logo for your business to ensure that you present the right impression to your customers every time.
Stationery
Your new brand image must be reflected throughout every part of your business. This is most relevant where customer communication or correspondence is concerned. We have created a stationery set for you including a letterhead, a compliment slip and a business card.
Newsletters
Email marketing is now the most cost effective way to promote and advertise products and services and can be highly targeted, ensuring a message gets to the right person. The system collects customer email addresses and stores them in your database. You are then able to manage your customer data, recording purchases, tastes, interests and any other information that can be used to enhance your relationship with them. Customers with similar tastes, or interests, can be grouped in lists and you can then send emails (a newsletter) to either the full database, specific lists, or even to individuals.
The newsletter tool will track who opened the email, those who visited the website by clicking a link, and those who didn't respond. This is vital information for assessing the value of a particular visitor or customer. The newsletter tool also manages the subscription and un-subscription of visitors using simple email communication and confirmation. This ensures that your list of visitors willing to receive your newsletter is kept clean and up to date.
Product Catalogue
Our product catalogue enables you to upload and manage a wide range of products on your site whether you wish to sell via ecommerce or simply demonstrate your full product range to visitors. This function ensures that your product range is easy to navigate and that you never miss an opportunity to promote your entire inventory successfully.
Related Items
This function enables you to link products on your website to other related products that may be of interest to the visitor. This is commonly seen on ecommerce websites such as Amazon ("customers who bought this, also bought....") and is an amazingly powerful tool for promoting other products to encourage customers to spend more.
Ecommerce PayPal
Providing website visitors with the ability to purchase products and services is a great way to generate additional revenue. Our PayPal option utilises PayPal's shopping cart and order processing facilities, enabling you to take payments from customers. However, customers leave your site and ‘jump' to PayPal once they click ‘add to basket'. It's a more affordable option, but also a less professional and credible ecommerce proposition.
Ecommerce Integrated & 3rd Party Services
Our online shopping function incorporates the same highly secure, state of the art technology that is used by many big brand ecommerce websites. Your site will be powered by an integrated payment system, meaning that the transaction process remains within the site, rather than jumping to an external payment provider, such as PayPal. This presents a far more professional impression to your visitors, helping you compete on an even footing with much larger ecommerce brands. Ultimately, it encourages more visitors to shop with you.
Our easy to use ecommerce function allows you to take payments by credit and debit cards and all orders are processed using the latest security encryption technology, known as SSL 3 Certificates. These allow visitors to submit their personal details and payment information in a completely secure way. Visitors will see a small 'padlock' icon displayed in their web browser that signifies that their transaction is encrypted and secure. As an extra security measure, we do not hold any credit card numbers in our data centre; they are all held by DataCash. Additionally, signature strip verifications are also carried out on all orders, and we employ the latest Visa and MasterCard tools, known as 3D Secure Services, which are designed to protect you from charge backs resulting from fraudulent transactions. We even make it extremely easy for you to set up your ecommerce banking facilities by providing the relevant correspondence you will need to send to your bank.
In order to provide the most professional and secure online shopping services, we work with DataCash, an industry leading online payment gateway. The DataCash service allows you to use your existing bank relationship to accept online payments from your customers. In essence, DataCash simply acts as an electronic link between the customer, the customer's credit card issuer, and your bank. Card details are collected by DataCash and securely forwarded to your bank. Your bank then contacts the card issuer to authorise the transaction. Your bank forwards the authorisation results from the card issuer to DataCash, who send this information to your website and the customer to confirm the transaction. This happens instantaneously and at the end of each day, DataCash sends the settlement file to your bank so that funds can be collected from the card issuer on your behalf. In the event that you move banks, your website will continue to take ecommerce transactions - they will simply be diverted to your new bank account.
Your site will also be equipped with a 'membership' function. This removes the need for the customer to re-enter their details every time they make a purchase. These little considerations and customer conveniences go a long way to enhancing the visitor experience and encourages them to return, or tell their friends.
Special Offers
Offering website visitors incentives and special offers is key to it's success. Providing incentives to your customers is a great way to encourage them to visit your site more frequently and to persuade them to spend more money with you. This tool makes it extremely easy to add offers to your website and also enables you to send offers to your customer database by email. Special offers can be as simple as "buy one get one free", "10% off" discounts, or can even be based on a volume discount based on a visitors basket contents.
Promotional Panel
This function enables you to promote key products and services on the Home page of your website, to immediately draw them to your visitors attention. The promotional panel is an interactive tool that allows your visitors to scroll through any number of items you wish to promote much faster than by finding them via the main website menu and the product catalogue.
Competitions
Competitions are a simple, yet effective way of attracting traffic to your website and enable you to build a database of visitors that you may wish to target in the future. Our competition function provides the tools needed to develop and run competitions and track the visitors entering them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Offering visitors access to a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) about your products and services enhances their experience on your site. Ideally, your site should contain all the information a customer, or visitor, will need to enable them to decide whether or not to do business with you. The more information you provide, the least likely they are to have to visit a competitor's site - and the more likely you are to win their business.
Jobs Section
Many companies now use their websites as an aid to staff recruitment, which helps reduce recruitment costs. This jobs section feature allows potential employees to search through available vacancies, apply online, and submit their CV.
News Archive
Adding a news section to your site enables you to display recent company and related news. Our news function includes a standard news section and also features a news archive to allow visitors to search through the entire news database. Besides providing your website visitors with useful information, keeping your website updated in this way also ensures that it will list higher up the search engines.
Store / Branch / Office Locator
If you operate from a variety of locations, this feature will allow visitors to find your physical premises by selecting from a drop down list of geographical locations, or by entering a search keyword or place name.
News Ticker
Many websites carry ‘news tickers' on their home pages either to communicate breaking news, the latest product announcements, or current share prices. There are many other uses for news tickers and our system supports fully content managed news tickers which can feature the most up to date information from any section of your website.
Gift Wrapping
If visitors to your site are buying gifts for friends and family, you can offer them a gift- wrapping service. This service includes standard features such as per item wrapping, messages, support for multiple gift-wrap styles and automatic pricing based on the options selected.
Personalised Products
This function enables customers to provide specific information required to personalise a purchase, such as the wording for engraving a name onto a product or gift card, or the prescription details required for a contact lens order.
Image Gallery
Many websites offer visitors the tools to view galleries of pictures that are relevant to that website. Our Image Gallery tool enables you to quickly and easily add any images you have taken yourself, or that have been provided by suppliers. This is a very effective way of bringing your site to life to really engage your visitors.
Downloads
This function enables you to upload documents to your website, such as price lists, brochures, order forms, terms and conditions and regulations, so your customers can download and print them, or keep them filed for future use. You can also upload any video and audio clips to your site quickly and simply for visitors to download.
Password Protected Areas
Providing clients with their own secure section of your website is an extremely professional, and impressive feature. It enables you to upload information specific to them and is a very simple way for you to provide them with exceptional customer service. They can log-in to their area at any time, reducing their reliance upon you and your staff. Likewise, you can upload information for them at any time of day or night - especially useful when you're catching up with work after office hours.