Frequently asked questions

From Spiffy Stores Knowledge Base

Getting started

You may want to check out our getting started guide at https://www.spiffystores.com.au/getting-started-guide

What does Spiffy Stores do?

Spiffy Stores is hosted e-commerce software that allows you to easily set up an online store to sell your stuff. Using Spiffy Stores lets you add and organise products, accept payments, track orders and customise the design of your store. All for a fraction of the cost of having an online store designed and built for you.

What doesn’t Spiffy Stores do?

We don't process credit card payments for you, but we provide the option for you to use your own credit card facilities, either manually using your EFTPOS machine, or through one of the third-party payment gateways that are support by Spiffy Stores.

In addition, we've also made it easy for you to set up your store in seconds to accept payment by PayPal and other manual methods such as direct Bank Deposit, Cheques and Money Orders.

How do I install the software?

Spiffy Stores is a hosted solution, so there's no software to install. This makes it really easy to create your online store or add a shopping cart to your existing website.

There are no SSL certificates or APIs to install either. All you need is a modern web browser like Firefox, Internet Explorer 8 or Safari and you're ready to go!

What do I need in order to start selling?

You will need the following...

  • Something to sell
  • One of our supported payment gateways to accept payments from your customers or a PayPal account
  • A modern web browser (with JavaScript and Microsoft Silverlight enabled) to use your online store's administration interface
  • A valid credit card to pay for your online store

Can I use my own domain name with my store?

You sure can! To add your own domain name, you just log in to your store's admin, and add your domain name there. There are a few other things you may need to do. These are all detailed in our knowledge base.

Which countries and currencies are usable with Spiffy Stores?

Spiffy Stores is available to sellers worldwide in all currencies.

Which languages are supported?

We currently only support English for the store's administration interface, but we are planning on extending our language support in the future.

Your actual store-front can be in any language you choose.

Can I use Spiffy Stores if I live outside Australia?

Yes you can! Spiffy Stores is available worldwide.

Are there any limitations on the trial plan?

Trial plans exist so that you can try Spiffy Stores and see if it's the right fit for you.

Our trial plans currently restrict the amount of orders that you can receive to 10 orders. Trial plans are not supposed to be used as stores to sell products. We provide you with 10 orders only so that you can test the checkout capabilities of your store.

You also can't set up email addresses or use your own domain name. This is so that we can avoid abuse of our systems by people that have no intention of using our software to start an online store.

I'm ready to set up my store. What do I do?

To sign up, go https://www.spiffystores.com.au/ and complete the signup form. Your store will be set up for you instantly. More information about signing up can be found here.

How long does it take to set up my store?

Spiffy Stores are created instantly - as soon as you complete the signup form . You can then start adding your products to your store.

Depending on how much preparation you've done (such as taking photos of your products and writing product descriptions), you can set up your store and start receiving orders within a few hours.

Plans & pricing

How much does Spiffy Stores cost?

Our plans start at $19 per month. More information about our plans can be found on our home page.
There are no hidden fees, and we don't charge for extra bandwidth fees like some other providers.

How does Spiffy Stores' pricing work?

We charge a flat monthly fee plus a transaction fee per order. These fees vary according to the plan that you are on. Higher plans have smaller transaction fees, so work out more economical for stores that sell larger ticket items.

More information about our plans can be found on our pricing page

What is the transaction fee?

The transaction fee is generally a percentage of every order. For example; if you are on the Plus plan, and receive an order for $100, the transaction fee would be $1.50 . Higher plans have smaller transaction fees, so work out more economical for stores that sell larger ticket items.

There are no other fees - such as fees for extra apps, fees for shipping calculators, fees for theme designs, or fees for extra bandwidth etc. There are also no extra hosting fees, or fees for SSL certificates, IP addresses, or or getting a programmer to do security updates which are generally associated with running an online store. The transaction fee greatly reduces the cost of setting up your store and getting it running, as it reduces your startup costs significantly.

More information about our plans can be found on our home page

How can I pay?

Spiffy Stores only accepts payment by credit card. Your credit card is charged any fees owing on the monthly anniversary of your signup.

How do I get billed?

We send you an invoice by email on the monthly anniversary of your signup. You then have 7 days to dispute any charges on the invoice. Your credit card is then charged the invoice amount.

Can I cancel at any time?

Yes, you can cancel at any time by logging into your store, going to the "Store account" page, and clicking the "Please close my store" button.

Do I receive email accounts with my store?

Some plans include email accounts. Details of how many email accounts in each plan can be found on our home page. If your store is on a free trial, you cannot use any email accounts until your store is activated using your credit card.

How do I upgrade or downgrade my plan?

You can upgrade or downgrade your plan in your store's admin by clicking on the "Change my plan" button in the "Store account" section of your Toolbox.

How do I update my account information?

Your store address, store name and contact details can be updated in the "General settings" section of your store's admin.

Your billing information can be updated in the "Store account" section of your Toolbox.

Designing your store

Do I need to be a designer/programmer to change my store design?
Not at all! Spiffy Stores come with a range of pre-designed themes that come in a range of different colours.

We also add new themes periodically so you can change the look of your shop whenever you get bored with it. Our new improved theme editor also allows you to add your own logo to all of our themes, as well as change your theme colour scheme.

Each theme also has it's own site, which has instructions on how to add your logo etc. so if that's the type of thing you want to do, head on over to the theme demo site for the theme that you're currently using...

A working knowledge of HTML and CSS is pretty handy if you want to make major alterations however, so sometimes it's good to have a designer or programmer handy to make these changes for you.

If you would prefer to get us to modify your theme for you, we can do simple things like add your logo or change your colour scheme for as little as $70 AUD.

Does Spiffy Stores offer a design service?
Yes we do! Small modifications like adding your logo or changing your colour scheme can be done for as little as $70 AUD.

Complete store designs usually range from $300 (for modifications to an existing theme design) to $3000 for a new theme (an average of $1500 - depending on the complexity). Contact us to find out more about our store design service.

Can I integrate Spiffy Stores into my existing site?
Yes you can! There are several options to do so. First, if you would like to use Spiffy Stores only for your store-front, you can do so by creating a subdomain (e.g. www.store.yourdomain.com). Or, you can simply link pages from your current website over to your product pages in your Spiffy Store.

What is Liquid?
Liquid is a template language used by many different hosted solutions that run on Ruby on Rails, the platform we've used to build Spiffy Stores.

Liquid tags are inserted in the HTML of your store's templates to display dynamic data from your store's back-end.

It sounds a little scary we know, but if you decide to build your own theme, there's truckloads of information on how to use Liquid tags over in our knowledge base.

Accepting payments

How can I accept payment from my customers?
There are several ways to collect payments from customers when they order from your e-commerce store.

Spiffy Stores is fully integrated with PayPal and a large number of other payment gateways and credit card payment systems. You can also accept all major credit cards directly from your online store, as long as you have your own merchant account.

You can also accept manual payments by direct deposit, money order or cheque, or set up any other manual payment method that you would prefer to use.

What is a merchant account?
A merchant account is an account that you hold directly with a bank. If you want to accept credit card payments through your Spiffy Store, you will need either a merchant account of your own or a third-party payment processor like PayPal (see below).

What is a payment gateway?
A payment gateway allows you to connect your merchant account to your Spiffy Store to automatically process payments made in your store.

If you're just starting out, you probably won't need to use a payment gateway until you have so many orders that processing payments manually bercomes a huge chore.

Spiffy Stores supports many different payment gateways. A list of supported gateways can be found here.

What is a "third-party payment processor"?
A third-party processor such as PayPal allows you to accept credit card payments without the expense of a merchant account of your own. Generally they have their own transaction fees and in some cases have a monthly fee.

Third party processors are very simple to set up in your Spiffy Store. A list of supported third-party processors can be found here.

Can I accept funds manually?
Yes! You can accept manual payments by direct deposit, money order, cheque, or process credit card payments manually using your own eftpos facilities.

Can I use my existing merchant account with Spiffy Stores?
Yes! You can process credit card payments manually using your own EFTPOS facilities, or you can link your merchant account to one of our supported payment gateways to process credit card payments automatically.

Orders and shipments

What do I do when I get an order?
After you get a new order notification by email, you log in to your store Toolbox and check out the details of the order. If you need to get more information from your customer, you can send them an email right from the order view page.

You then just pack up the order ready to be posted, send it to the shipping address provided, and then mark the order as shipped in your store Toolbox.

Can I sell my products overseas?
You sure can! You can sell and ship your products anywhere in the world. You can also choose to sell your products to a selected range of countries.

Head on over to the "Regions & taxes" section of your store preferences to choose which countries you want to set up your store to sell to. More information on regions and taxes can also be found in our knowledge base .

Can I use custom shipping rates?
Yes! If you would prefer to use your own courier, you can set up custom shipping rates for any weight ranges that you specify. More information can be found in our knowledge base .

Can I print packing slips?
Yes! You can print out packing slips to send to your customers with their order. This saves you time writing or printing out your own packing slips.

Still looking?

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