TAKE A JOURNEY INTO GRAVIT-E

Owing to the current extreme weather conditions affecting Wales and much of the UK, we have closed our office for Thursday 1st of March. The entire Gravit-e team will be working and support services will be available by email and through our support portal as normal. Our phone system is being redirected this morning. Please contact support@gravit-e.co.uk with any queries. Three things to think about... If the snow is affecting your business at the moment, here are some hints and tips for how to handle things online. 1. Update your shipping rules If you offer some shipping methods that are not going to be available during the extreme weather, such as next day delivery, consider switching these off in your shipping matrix.  This is easy to do - just find the appropriate rule, edit, untick the "Activate this Shipping Band" checkbox and save.   2. Let your customers know If the snow is affecting other services you offer, such as telephone support, use an email campaign (like this one!) to let your customers know how to contact you. You can also add a blog post with additional information.   3. Have fun! #snow, #StormEmma, CLOSED, and #beastfromtheeast are all trending on Twitter at the moment. Join the conversation - pictures of locations across the UK that are under heavy snow are being widely shared. Just remember that, for some people, the extreme weather conditions are very serious.

We're very excited to be welcoming a new member to our team today - Arthur Ficial. Arthur is an employee with a difference - because he's an algorithm. He's Arthur Ficial (or "Arty Ficial" for short - don't worry, only Chris thinks this is funny!) Designed to managed our support queue and help customers and team members alike stay up to date with projects, Arthur is scanning our support queues daily checking for a variety of request types that need to be updated, prioritised, or highlighted to the team. If you're a Gravit-e customer, you may see updates in our support system from Arthur in the next few days. Why did we create this software? Arthur is not just a gimic - he's a serious piece of software. We analysed our performance over the past few months and realised that ticket admin and management was taking up anything from 10 to 15% of the working week. We knew we could do this better. Arthur is also our first step into deploying artifical intelligence into our software stack. We're working hard on a variety of projects that will be bringing machine learning and AI techniques into the heart of our platform. Far more than a CMS, Gravit-e is evolving into a tool that won't just let you manage your website - it will help you with advice and guidance on what to do next. If you're interested in artificial intelligence or are looking for your next eCommerce platform, be sure to check out one of upcoming webinars to see what Gravit-e (and Arthur!) can do for you.

There have been intermittent problems with both the live SagePay gateway and with the live "My SagePay" environment since late afternoon on November 18th. The team at SagePay are investigating and posting status updates both to the SagePay System Status Monitor page and to their Twitter feed. Information has been sparse up until this point but the Gravit-e Team has been carefully monitoring the situation. SagePay posted a notification at 12:00 today (November 19th) that the service had been restored and had been stable for a number of hours. Whilst our own team have been aware of the situation since the first official notification yesterday it appears that many other providers were not able to get updates from SagePay and, in a key trading weekend before Christmas, there are a number of disgruntled SagePay customers and resellers venting their spleen on Twitter. Sadly, payment gateways do sometimes fail - this is why, at Gravit-e, we always recommend that customers implement a least two payment gateways and always provide customers with the ability to switch a payment gateway off in the event of a technical issue.

We're often asked if our shipping matrix can handle "Highlands and Islands", as many of our customers use couriers that charge extra to reach the more "further flung" areas of the United Kingdom. Of course, our answer is a resounding "YES" - our shipping matrix can handle banded shipping right down to an individual street level for the UK - but we're very much aware that the days of charging more to customers based on their postcode are seriously numbered.   In recent months there have been a number of high profile cases, including complaints about Halfords and Lloyds Pharmacy, that have prompted a response from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in First Minister's questions "The level of charge that Richard Lochhead has outlined today is shocking. Certainly based on what he has said today, it seems vastly out of proportion and, yes, I am in full agreement that excessive charging for parcel deliveries is unacceptable." It certainly feels like shipping is becoming a "postcode lottery" with little more than a few miles separating standard and exceptional areas in terms of pricing and some courier treating the "Highlands and Islands" like a trip "North of the Wall". Shipping isn't just about postcodes though - here are some tips from the Gravit-e team on making your shipping matrix better reflect the real costs of shipping. Use a weight matrix Your Gravit-e system can calculate the total weight of an order and you can create multiple shipping bands based on weight. Light parcels may not attract the same charges as larger items with your courier and you can reflect these lower charges in more competitive shipping for customers. Use a sliding scale for charges If you don't want the hassle of maintaining a fine-grained set of weight bands, think about using the "Scaling" option in your Gravit-e shipping matrix instead. With Scaled shipping charges, you can start with a lower initial charge and then increase the charge based on weight up to a ceiling value. Some customers may still receive higher charges, but you guarantee that you are only charging what is required. Offer Free Shipping on Larger Orders Everyone loves free shipping - consider offering free shipping on larger orders even if they are heading to one of the more outlying regions of the UK. Your Gravit-e shipping matrix can be configured to offer free shipping based on a variety of factors including order value. Improve the Accuracy of your Postcode Matrix As we mentioned above, sometimes it is a matter of just a few miles between what is considered "Highlands" and what isn't. You aren't restricted to working with just the first part of the customer's postcode - consider using the full postcode in your shipping matrix to make shipping costs more accurate and make sure you're up to date with what charges your courier has in each area. Take the shock out of shipping costs One of the most common places to lose a customer during the checkout process is when you add shipping charges to their basket. When charges are high, you're at extra risk - customers hate the "bait and switch" routine.   Gravit-e lets you pre-select shipping rates that are previewed to your customer in their shopping basket, fully calculated based on the customer's basket contents. There's no reason for the customer to get a nasty shock during checkout and no reason for you to risk losing their order.   Overall, whilst there's nothing we can do from behind our desks at Gravit-e to change the shipping costs for customers in the Highlands and Islands of the UK, we're definitely doing all we can to make sure our customers can treat their customers as fairly as possible and make sure that shipping charges are calculated fairly.