When it comes to avoiding life's little pitfalls, received wisdom is hard to beat. My mum, for example, always warned against keeping my coat on indoors, otherwise I "wouldn't feel the benefit", and it's true. Likewise, by avoiding the cracks in the pavement I've yet to be troubled by the bears which - my best friend at school once told me - live there.

So, if I was ever to setup an online shop I'm pretty sure I'd use Actinic, as several people who know all about these things have told me it's the best tool for the job. More importantly, according to those same know-it-alls, an e-commerce novice like me could be can be up and trading within hours of opening the Actinic box.

Now, having tried the latest Actinic v7 package, I have to take issue with the second of those claims. True, it's an easy package to install and use with lots of well designed tools for novices like me. But, there's still a lot to learn and I'm sure I'd need several days to setup anything other than a very basic site. The supporting documentation could be better too and I wasn't that impressed by the "Quick Start" tutorial, new in v7, which adds little and tends to clutter the interface. However, such niggles are minor when you get inside the package and discover exactly what it has to offer.

What you get with Actinic v7 is a full set of tools to not just design an online store, but actually run it on a day to day basis, including the ability to receive and process orders, manage stock, generate invoices and accept payment from customers. Development and testing are done on a standard Windows PC and the results implemented either on a Web server of your own or, more usually, a remotely hosted Windows or Linux system.

Three implementations are available, starting with Actinic Catalog (£379 + VAT) aimed at the small, first time trader. This is followed by the more expensive Actinic Business (£799 + VAT) which allows more products to be listed (up to 10,000) and adds more sophisticated trading options such as BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) offers, discount vouchers, and download of electronic goods such as ring tones and MP3 music files.

The Business package also adds support for named customer accounts and dynamic links to third party databases. Plus you get a free integration module (Actinic Link) for use with QuickBooks and Sage Line 50 accounting packages, previously sold as a £500 add-on. Lastly, Actinic Developer (£1,250 + VAT) enables professional developers to create and run multiple sites using just one licence key.

All three start the same way, by loading up a sample eCommerce Web site included in the package. Similarly they are all driven from the same interface which now not only lets you see and navigate the structure of the site, but preview its appearance as customers will see it in their browsers. Any changes made are immediately reflected here, making it easier to spot mistakes, with the option of closing the preview window to make more work space if required.

When it comes to design, a set of pre-defined templates is provided which govern the appearance and layout of Actinic sites. These can be customised in terms of things like colour and your own logos and other flourishes, but you don't get as much freedom as you would with more conventional Web tools.

On the plus side, however, there are lots of professionally designed layouts to choose from with the option of having the design tweaked later by the many Actinic professionals offering add-on services. Indeed, there are plenty of people ready and able to do the whole thing for you, if that's what you want.

But then that would spoil the fun and its surprising how quickly you get used to the way Actinic works. The main tool is a tree-like display used to list and organise your products with a 'properties' panel alongside which will be familiar to any Windows user. These make building a store straightforward with facilities to define not just single product items but those with optional extras (such as batteries, for example) and others, like PCs, which customers specify from a list of component parts.

You can either add new products from scratch or import them from existing spreadsheets and databases. Pictures too are easily imported into an Actinic shop and products categorised and moved from one part to another simply by dragging and dropping.

A separate menu is used to define the company itself, your trading terms and so on. You also get a complete order processing and stock control system which, in v7, has been extended to enable phone and other offline orders to be entered alongside those from online customers. Added to which there's support for a range of payment handling services, such as Nochex, Paypal and Worldpay, enabling even the smallest of businesses to offer customers a choice of secure online payment methods.

Having built and tested your site you then need to upload it and here too the Actinic package makes life simple. In fact all you really have to do is tell it the address to use, then sit back and let the software work out how to handle the whole process for you.

It's all very logical, and the know-it-alls appear to have been right. It may take longer to get to grips with than claimed, but the Actinic package really does make it easy to get an online shop up and running. The only extra required on top is someone to deliver the goods and look out for bears.

Verdict
Actinic v7 provides everything you need to design, build and run an online shop, from displaying the products to taking and processing orders and receiving payment. The template approach takes a lot of the hassle out of the process for novices with plenty of customisation options for the more experienced. It's not an instant solution, but it's the next best thing and it works.

Company: Actinic

Contact: 01932 871010

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