TargetTalk

Luker wrote:

TargetShootingShop.com wrote:Thanks for all the tips re: the browsers guys and the HTML stuff, really appreciated!!

I see you (or your web staff) have decided to use Actinic. Just out of curiosity, would you describe how and with whom (no names, just a general description) you started your first efforts and how and why you moved over to Actinic?

Hi Luker, The move to Actinic has been very successful, if somewhat expensive. The big plus points were that as someone not great on computers, Actinic handles the whole website, plus all the orders that come in through it.

It sends out all the relevant emails to customers keeps all the orders on file plus the details and as you can see from the site it works great, looks fairly professional and is a dream to use.

Now the site is up I am able myself to add new products with no need for expensive help for web designers, I can more or less run it myself, until something goes wrong!!

Also it integrated with paypal easily, I use paypal for my online payments as their rates are about the cheapest in UK and I had a business account with them anyway.

All in all I would recommend Actinic to anyone, it has great features, the catlog version seems to be enough for most websites, I went for Business version to allow me to have customer accounts and it has other better features too such as discount codes etc etc.

Fred Mannis wrote:Anonymous - give it a rest already. Ryan's comment was that the TT moderator was free to change his username if it was giving offence. At least he is using his name.

And his site now gives a full postal address, the lack of which was my original concern.

Luker wrote:

TargetShootingShop.com wrote:Thanks for all the tips re: the browsers guys and the HTML stuff, really appreciated!!

I see you (or your web staff) have decided to use Actinic. Just out of curiosity, would you describe how and with whom (no names, just a general description) you started your first efforts and how and why you moved over to Actinic?

Hi Luker, The move to Actinic has been very successful, if somewhat expensive. The big plus points were that as someone not great on computers, Actinic handles the whole website, plus all the orders that come in through it.

It sends out all the relevant emails to customers keeps all the orders on file plus the details and as you can see from the site it works great, looks fairly professional and is a dream to use.

Now the site is up I am able myself to add new products with no need for expensive help for web designers, I can more or less run it myself, until something goes wrong!!

Also it integrated with paypal easily, I use paypal for my online payments as their rates are about the cheapest in UK and I had a business account with them anyway.

All in all I would recommend Actinic to anyone, it has great features, the catlog version seems to be enough for most websites, I went for Business version to allow me to have customer accounts and it has other better features too such as discount codes etc etc.

David Levene wrote:

Fred Mannis wrote:Anonymous - give it a rest already. Ryan's comment was that the TT moderator was free to change his username if it was giving offence. At least he is using his name.

And his site now gives a full postal address, the lack of which was my original concern.

And 24 hour dedicated phone line / answer phone (when British Telecom get their rear ends into gear!)

I was hoping for more information about how your initial, pre-Actinic efforts got started, with a general description of who you went to and why, followed by a few details of the transition.

An example would be: I started off with the son of a friend who said he knew all about web stuff and could get me set up in no time. After all the problems people here pointed out, I decided he was totally unqualified and had lied about passing his O Levels. I sought better advice from _ _ _ _ _ and am glad I did. I demanded the return of the 40 quid I had already paid the spotty kid, but he had already given it to some girl from Yorkshire who used it to get her boyfriend out of gaol so the two of them could run off to Scotland.

Lurker wrote:I was hoping for more information about how your initial, pre-Actinic efforts got started, with a general description of who you went to and why, followed by a few details of the transition.

An example would be: I started off with the son of a friend who said he knew all about web stuff and could get me set up in no time. After all the problems people here pointed out, I decided he was totally unqualified and had lied about passing his O Levels. I sought better advice from _ _ _ _ _ and am glad I did. I demanded the return of the 40 quid I had already paid the spotty kid, but he had already given it to some girl from Yorkshire who used it to get her boyfriend out of gaol so the two of them could run off to Scotland.

Thats not far from the truth actually, the first site was by a friend of a friend, cost me virtually nothing and to be honest, if you were on Explorer (as I am) it worked OK, obviously all the orders had to be filed by hand and seperate records kept but I could have coped with that, had the site been OK in other browsers.

The advantage about Actinic automatting all the ordes is a big plus, but my main reason for getting a professional to look at the whole thing was to ensure compatability with all web users.

It was actually still a friend, a guy I used to work with, who built the new one and as a favour he started it and did it right away, I was afraid of loosing orders.

Of course it has cost 10x the money but the end result is superb, a dream to work with at my end, and excellent for shoppers I think

There was small update tonight, I wanted some logos on the front page, which are now on, otherwise the only changes will be adding new products and of course updating prices etc.

The actinic software wasn't cheap but its easy to use and I think I get free upgrades for a while too.

All in all I'm very pleased with the result, www.targetshootingshop.co.uk

Topic is already 3 pages long, but I feel 2 important points were missed:

Firstly, as someone not resident in the US (as I'm sure many other forum members) I appreciate the original poster pointing out this online retailer, because there aren't that many in this field. Also most of the products don't overlap too much with the forum sponsor apart from the fact that they serve different geographical markets. They could perhaps have started the original post with "for foreign/UK readers check out blah blah..."

Secondly, Firefox compatibility (no longer a problem on the site under discussion) it is a very real problem, so much so that there is a special extension for Firefox called IE Tab that allows users to open links in a tab that displays it as if it was done by IE: http://ietab.mozdev.org/
I often find sites like this and personally I just fire up IE -much as I hate to and with great care- to view them, because I'm just too lazy to install the IEtab extension, but for the hardcore Firefox users this extension is your solution... that is, until you succeed in your noble crusade (where do I make donations?) to make the entire internet Firefox compatible :-)

As a footnote to this thread, after looking at the web stats for the website it seems Firefox whilst popular has a way to go to catch IE!

Requests from IE - 1141265
Requests from Firefox - 72569