FAQ - all about puresilva & e-commerce / CMS websites.
 What is puresilva?
puresilva is the name of our templated website solution (see features list here). It has full e-commerce and content management facilities. This template gives you a website where you can sell items online, or just simply have an information website that's easy to update. You can easily (at the click of a button) add sections such as e-commerce facilities, a forum, a blog, a photo gallery, or simply pages to your website, as well as design your site in minutes with our design facility.
This is an ideal solution for businesses who want a professional e-commerce / content-managed website for a reasonable price, up-and-running quickly. The template retails at £250 which includes a lifelong license (with free updates for life).
Hosting costs are £8.25 per month. However, the first year's hosting is included in the £250 purchase price.
To find out more about the people behind puresilva, read our "who we are" page!
Why use a website template?
- robust, fully tested code
- free updates
- better support since there is a development team always working on the same code your site is running day in/day out
- your site is tracking the latest developments in search engine optimization, web standards and accessibility guidelines
More and more online businesses are realising that templated websites offer a greater number of features for their money than bespoke solutions which are costly, and certainly not guaranteed to be reliable, secure, search-engine friendly, accessible or even usable. Much-used templates (such as our own) offer stability and security through a tried-and-tested codebase, with free updates.
Don't templated websites all look the same?
We understand having control over the look and feel of your website is an important part of running an online business; you want to portray a particular image and the website is your shop window. This is why we've introduced a much-updated design facility in v3.0 of our template. We also recognise there are quite rigid rules to website design
to ensure the accessibility and usability of your website is as good as it can be to make sure your shoppers can easily access and navigate your website.
I can get an e-commerce website for FREE from ZenCart, OSCommerce (etc). Shouldn't I just save my money and pick one of these?
Hopefully not to sound too crude here, but selling online is all about making as big a profit as possible. Yes, you can pick up FREE e-commerce templates such as ZenCart or OSCommerce. These solutions offer feature-rich, robust websites from which you can sell from, for free. You can simply download the files necessary, and away you go. The problem we find with these solutions isn't the solutions themselves, it's the fact you'll invariably need to hire a web design company to actually configure and host your website for you. This adds a considerable cost to the running of your site while adding an unknown quantity to the success of your site (how easy is it to get hold of the developer? How much do they actually know about your chosen solution? etc).
What's more, the usual hosting solution for such free e-commerce sites is a shared server, for simple convenience (these are normally configured to make it as easy as possible for web design companies to install such known templates) - which will undoubtably impact on your website's overall performance and yearly aggregate uptime, and raise a question over the regular backing up of your data AND uploaded images/files. Some other things to consider:-
- Your web design company who configures such free e-commerce solutions on your behalf will not have actually developed your website from scratch - they only know how to install it and alter the look of it, and perhaps some of the code. puresilva has been entirely hand-written by ourselves from scratch and is in constant development by ourselves. When you contact us, you're talking direct to the actual developers of your website. Not a project manager. Not a salesperson. Not a reseller. The majority of web design companies who claim to be e-commerce web developers are merely reselling templated solutions that they haven't themselves developed. When you ask for help, they invariably go to developer forums on the net to ask the same questions you asked them.
- Any ostensible savings in money by choosing a free e-commerce template are made irrelevant by the fact that the entire purpose of your website is to make you a profit. A serious online business will be looking to make at least a 5 figure (GBP) profit margin throughout any given year. The profit margin is entirely dictated by the quality of the website, your products, your level of service, the marketing and advertising, and the presentation. This means a good solid website as the vehicle for a good solid business plan. Going "free" to initially save you money can actually mean you end up with a website that limps along, rather than races along. It's all about the long-term.
I already own a website but am interested in switching it to puresilva - how easy is it to do that?
Very easy - in fact you don't need to do anything other than tell us the domain name of your current site. We will import all your content for you. And we will give you a 20% discount on our website template price as an extra incentive to switch. More information here.
How can puresilva help MY online business plan?
It's not enough just to have a website that simply 'does the job' in terms of functionality. It must also:-
- be based on a proven successful model now running live on many existing e-commerce wesbites that are making substantial profits from sales over the last 3 years
- be 'on-page' optimised for search engines, with tools to make sure they are always optimised for search engines as well as provide tools for 'off-page' optimization to make it easy for you to build links between other websites
- have been through usability tests to ensure ease-of-use for your customers. People can purchase items in as little as 3 mouse clicks
- be based on a model that has evolved over 4 years with alterations made to them based on visitor feedback and constant bench tests
- be fully content-managed by yourself and always looks professional no matter what design you apply to it
- be constantly evolving
We offer all of the above with our puresilva e-commerce/CMS solution (for the last point, we offer free updates to all sites).
Tell me about e-commerce websites & puresilva's e-commerce facilities.
E-commerce websites typically have 'core' features and puresilva is no different. You can add categories, products, put special offers on, check orders, and have orders tracked by your customers, customise your shipping and handling arrangements, optimize your products so they can easily be found by search engines, besides a lot more other e-commerce features. In order to take your customer's payments, your e-commerce website will automatically be connected to PayPal, Nochex and Protx (or a combination thereof). You can plug into one or all of these instantly.
I don't have any products to sell, I'm not interested in e-commerce websites - is it worth it for me to try out puresilva?
Yes - The template includes a blog facility, a forum, and strong content management overall, plus you can use all the e-commerce facilities if you want to promote a catalogue of items (just they cannot be sold on the site, but people could enquire abour them). You can add unlimited pages and place files/images ANYWHERE on each page.
So how much does it cost?
The website template retails at £250 (this could be paid off at £50 per month over 5 months) for a lifelong software license plus a year's hosting included in this cost - and you can be trading online within 24 hours of purchase. We will pay for the registration of the domain name on your behalf, if a new domain name is required. Hosting costs run at £8.25 per month after the first year.
No other costs whatsoever. All updates are 100% free.
E-commerce/CMS websites constantly have new content added to them. Will my site be backed up so I won't lose any of my content in the event of a crash?
Yes, we understand the need for e-commerce/CMS websites to be backed-up regularly. We back up all of our sites daily.
What about updates? Am I entitled to any?
Yes - whenever new features are added to the puresilva software (which is often), they will be automatically installed on your website. See here for all the latest updates to puresilva.
How do I order my website?
Click here. If you want to talk with us first, our phone number is +44(0)207 193 2755.
What about hosting? Is it reliable? I've had problems with web hosts before!
We have had so many troubles with shared servers in the past as customers ourselves, that in order to be a serious web development company we had to purchase our own dedicated servers, ensuring a reliable service, very fast loading websites with daily backups of all data and files.
Our hosting costs are a bit more than you will be quoted from major hosting companies (actually, not much more) but we definitely give a more reliable service with daily back-ups - all insured by our 30-day money back guarantee. We monitor our server's performance constantly and do not allow more than 60% capacity to be used typically during the Peak Hour (the busiest hour of the day), to prevent server crashes caused by traffic spikes. The site you are reading from now is hosted on a dedicated server. Click through this site and see how fast it responds.
Can I get my money back if I'm not satisfied?
Absolutely. We want to have happy and satisfied customers. We will refund your deposit if you request your money back within the first 30 days of trying out your website. All we ask is that you have properly evaluated the website (see terms and conditions).
I've heard enough - where is it I order again?
Order your puresilva e-commerce website here. |
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