Custom Theme: We will work with you to give your e-commerce storefront your own identity. Each e-Commerce Professional Plan includes a certain number of hours for professional development, which also covers creative design for the theme of your new eStore. Things like colors, navigational menu styles, content placeholders, fonts, hyperlinks, graphical elements and more are customizable.

Professional Shopping Cart features. Main features include: Multiple product categories, Customer accounts and address books, Order history, Temporary (not logged on) and permanent (logged on) shopping carts, Search catalog for products or manufacturers, Product reviews by customers, Multiple languages, Multiple currencies, Multiple payment methods, Real-time integration with Canada Post, Integration with other shipping methods, WYSIWYG product descriptions, Define products on “special offer”. Bestseller lists, User-friendly administrator’s Control Panel, Add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews, Statistics for products and customers, Dynamic product attributes, for example colors, sizes, etc., Tax zones, classes, and rates. Also, Gift Vouchers / Discount Coupons Add-on, Affiliates Add-on, Wholesale Add-on. See Shopping Cart software detailed list of features.

Canadian Payment Processing Gateway: Beanstream, a Canadian leader in Credit Card Electronic Payment Processing, is our selected Payment Processing Gateway for e-commerce merchants who want to offer credit card payments using their own Canadian merchant accounts. A Beanstream Gateway account is compatible with credit card merchant accounts issued by TD Bank, Moneris, Global Payments and others. All our e-Commerce Professional Plans include free integration with a Beanstream Payment Processing Account. For more information and for assistance on opening your own merchant account please visit our Payment Processing Gateway add-on section.

Webmaster Services: Over and above traditional technical support. Have a professional “eye” looking over your website. Technical management of all website assets. Apply patches to all components, modules and plug-ins and provide modifications to suite your day-to-day operations. Site structure changes (i.e. adding new functions in sidebars or navigational bars), re-training and consultation on usage of any of the included functional components, core systems, modules, add-ons and plugins, extra backups for databases, etc. Assistance during addition of new products (i.e. enhancing product photographs and uploading to your eStore) is also covered. We also assist during your day-to-day eStore Management operations (i.e. researching certain orders and fine-tuning shipping calculations or payment details), as well as providing assistance with all facets of the payment gateway interface, if available (i.e. issuing credit card voids or returns, researching suspected fraudulent transactions, etc.) and more.

Business Hosting: All our eCommerce Professional Plans come with business web hosting and Premium Business Email off our dedicated servers. (Your website will NOT be hosted on our shared hosting plans.) The level of server resources allocated (RAM, server processes, CPU priority) varies with each plan. For example, the “e-Pro Silver” plan comes with twice server resources allocated compared to the “e-Pro Bronze” Plan. This translates to faster response times and the ability to adequately service more visitors-shoppers simultaneously. The bottom line: Rest assured that your website eStore will have enough resources to back it adequately. And when you traffic increases or your business needs change, upgrades are always possible! Please note that 3rd-party hosting is not allowed with any of our Professional Plans.

Domain Services We will register and administer/renew your domain name for free, on your behalf. You will always be the legal registrant of your domain name, we simply administer it for you to guard you from technicalities such as DNS, zone files, sub-domains and server IP addresses, etc. You can of course choose to administer your own domain name if you want to. Find your domain name using our free Domain Name Availability system.

Professional Creative Development and Design: You will work with one of our professional creative designers who will capture the unique nature of your business in a custom website theme. Higher plans include more involvement so that our designer can spend more time you on color choices, design structures, assistance during stock photography selection and editing, web site object styling, custom sidebars, custom graphics and more. During the initial analysis, and if we feel that your requirements will involve more hours than what your plan includes, we will advise you accordingly. We can upgrade your project with extra billable hours if you require additional creative design or content editing.

Automatic Site Backups: Backups are performed both nightly and weekly – so an archived version of your site is readily available.

No long-term commitment required! Month-to-month billing. If you choose an annual payment plan you save one month’s fees for the first year.

For a fully-custom-designed e-commerce website please see our Custom Website Design section.

Why is my monthly fee higher when I add more add-ons? This is because you account is using more resources off our business infrastructure. If you are interested in a low-cost, fixed monthly fee e-commerce plan, with no extra cost for add-ons and other functionality, please see our e-Commerce DIY Beginner Plan instead.

I already have a merchant account. Can I use it with your e-Commerce packages? If your merchant account is Internet-enabled, then most probably “yes”. Beanstream, a Canadian leader in Credit Card Electronic Payment Processing, is our selected Payment Processing Gateway for e-commerce merchants who want to offer credit card payments using their own Canadian merchant accounts. A Beanstream Gateway account is compatible with credit card merchant accounts (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, etc.) issued by TD Bank, Moneris, Global Payments and others. All our e-Commerce Professional Plans include free integration with a Beanstream Payment Processing Account. For fees related to a Payment Processing Account as well as for assistance on opening your own merchant account please visit our Payment Processing Gateway add-on section. Please note that payment processing accounts other than Beanstream are not supported on our Professional eCommerce Plans.

Can I design my site with COMMbits but host elsewhere? We consider web design and web hosting part of the same system. By removing one of these components (web hosting), our business packages are simply not possible any more. We cannot service and support your website while it is hosted somewhere else for a variety of very important reasons, which seriously jeopardize our ability to offer you a complete business solution. Please see the post on 3rd-party web hosting for details.

What will be my involvement and responsibilities during the design phase and after launch? We take our work very seriously – on our team we all feel we “own” the project, until we deliver it to you. However, your input during the creative development phase is of paramount importance. We are trying to portray YOUR on-line culture, and the unique characteristics of YOUR business. Therefore, your close co-operation during the creative design phase is critical. You will be able to follow-through the various steps of development using the Internet, from the comfort of your office.

Content editing, including eStore product seeding, is ultimately your responsibility. Please think of the carpenter/bookshelf-owner analogy for a moment: The carpenter is responsible to build the bookshelf but the owner is the one to place the books onto the finished bookshelf and maintain them thereafter. Similarly, we will build your online electronic storefront, but it will be your responsibility to add your products on the “shelves”, using the supplied eStore Control Panel. No special technical knowledge required. Nevertheless, if you require assistance writing, designing and placing content on your web pages, or creating your product pages including product photo optimization for the web and other optimizing functions, we can help! You may either add additional hours of professional development services on your project, or see our custom website design projects instead.

Do I get to know how often is my site visited? Yes! Our all-inclusive business website design plans come with comprehensive traffic statistics currently based on the Urchin Analytics System. Reports include most frequently visited pages, visit duration, bounce rates, referrers, search keywords, visit path, traffic by time, visitors by country, etc.

Do you cover domain name registration? Of course! Our professional e-Commerce website design programs are all-inclusive and they also include full domain name services. Tell us which domain you wish to register, or find out if your desired domain name is available using our free and automated Domain Lookup service and we will register it for you. All fees, including domain renewal for one domain name, are already included in your package.

How do I choose a hosting plan? Our Professional e-Commerce plans are all-inclusive. An appropriate business web hosting plan is already included in your package. Your business eMail needs are also covered. (If you are looking for Enterprise eMail features please see our hosted MS Exchange solutions.) We choose the right hosting plan that will accommodate the package you have chosen. We have a large arsenal of servers to choose from, for a variety of required configurations and specifications, therefore upgrading is never an issue either.

Do I get a Control Panel to edit my site? Yes. You get an eStore Administration Control Panel, which allows you to add products, descriptions prices, put products on specials and more. See the Shopping Cart Details for all sorts of functions that will be under your control.

How do I add a regular website, over and above my eStore? We have a variety of business website design plans. Or contact us for a fully-custom solution.

Can I keep my Domain Name when I change hosting providers? Yes. Even if you purchased your domain name from somewhere else we will help you with all required details during the development of your project.

WE DO NOT EXPERIMENT. WE SIMPLY DELIVER!