Evanta Ecommerce Software

Looking for a template-driven content management system for your website, a web shopping cart solution, a web forum system, a web survey or other smart web software to improve your e-presence and realise more of the potential of web business? Evanta, an outgrowth of a long experienced Internet provider, is delivering these and more in easy-to-operate affordable web hosting environments.

The Activator Software range of Evanta assists business people to trade effectively on the Web with reduced expenditure, secure payment methods and self-management of their websites. <a href="#webactivator” >Web Activator provides an economical way to set up a website. <a href="#cartactivator”>Cart Activator helps vendors to develop a shopping cart without undue expense and manage the shopping cart themselves. <a href="#epayactivator”>Epay Activator is designed to ensure secure financial transactions with clients, using Paymark, the secure payment system established by four of the five main New Zealand banks.

Evanta is a new division of Plain Communications Ltd, the oldest full Internet Service Provider in Canterbury and the first New Zealand ISP to offer commercial web hosting.

NZine is a not-for-profit ezine and has been sponsored from the beginning by Plain Communications. I asked the managing director, Robert Hunt, to answer some questions about the company and the latest expansion of its work.

How did Plain Communications Ltd begin? “Plain Communications began as a company providing infrastructure for one of the earliest full Internet Providers in the South Island, which was PlaNet Canterbury. Plain at that time did all the technical work setting up the servers and organising the access systems and Internet connection.

“Over time, as Plain introduced the first commercial web hosting to New Zealand, the staff were required to have more and more skills in diverse areas to meet the changing requirements coming with web hosting. While email and dial-up Internet provided a certain growth opportunity a lot of that growth was targeted by the larger telecommunication providers whereas those who specialised in web hosting took up the challenge of work requiring more specific expertise”.

What is meant by ‘specific expertise’? “Simple web hosting where what we call static content is being served did not require any advanced expertise. However, the business objectives of many people coming for web hosting were to sell something on line or to have some interaction with their customers or their clientele via their website.

“Methods for doing that soon led to requirements for databases to be held behind the websites and programming for advanced interactivity, so skilled teams for web programming and for SQL database administration and maintenance became an important issue. The relationships with the customers using this kind of service became more intense, focusing on “solutions” to the many aspects of their controlling their online presence and operating trading mechanisms effectively. Simply moving with the times and the changing requirements for expertise made it clear that the specialists within Plain working specifically on the area of advanced web services
and Ecommerce were a team quite distinct from simple Internet Provider staffing.”

What does Ecommerce include? “Ecommerce doesn’t simply refer to interactivity within a website. It refers to the ability to do things that are significant to business such as transactions or systematic ordering and perhaps in some instances web facilities that assist various players in what is sometimes called “the value chain” – the onsellers, the parties with different relationships to the firm that holds the website. Responding to the needs of customers to find Ecommerce solutions in areas where there often was either no pre-packaged solution previously possible or where the only ones were too costly, meant that Plain found itself building not only specific interactive trading websites but also applications for recurring web needs. The demand for the new suite of applications resulting from this and the associated services led to the establishment of Evanta.”

What are the advantages in dealing with a ‘Solutions’ business rather than a web designer or an ISP? “Sometimes people have sought help purely from a web designer when really they would have benefited from advice and assistance that would go beyond the scope of design. Newcomers to receiving web services may fail to appreciate the distinction between a web design firm including some dynamics in a web page and a professional ecommerce solutions team providing a well engineered solution for business on the web. Often it isn’t enough simply to have what the designers often propose – some graphics, HTML and an web form that sends an email with the order and credit card number. The prospective web trader needs to know

• how to use a secure website in the safest way
• how to move complex ordering data through a shopping cart phase and into check-out phase and generate advisory emails to themselves and customers with customised content
• how to manage over time the information coming out of multiple orders

and should expect to get

• reports on their trading
• ways of looking up orders based on the order’s date-time and/or customer information
• integration to a range of epayment solutions that work for the market that they are entering
• short settlement times for epayment to be realised to their trading account

That is the sort of work that requires a company with a clear focus on helping solve business problems using the Internet.

“You can look at the difference between this company and an Internet provider whose primary concern is Internet connections, whether these are broadband or dial-up or some dedicated business circuit. Such a company deals with only one layer of what is to be fulfilled to have a successful Ecommerce operation. If you start talking to the support desk of an Internet provider about a rather specific and complex Web Ecommerce challenge you will obviously find that this takes them out of their depth.

“We have staff now under the Evanta banner who are specifically addressing Ecommerce issues and are highly customer responsive. They spend their days programming, customising, designing, and planning and analysing with respect to the Ecommerce processes.”

How do the new Evanta softwares help business people? “Evanta will program to create any web application that makes business sense. However the Activator Softwares are quite specific: Cart Activator – for Online traders to be able to present a shopping cart without having the cost of all the software being designed specifically for their own websites. This software is now in its second release with many features helpful for online trading.

“Often you will find that people are limping on as they can afford it to put more facilities into the shopping cart which has in many instances cost them well over $10,000, and sometimes well over $20,000. These kinds of challenges that are being met separately by different websites can be addressed much more economically if the Solutions Provider has a central piece of software where the customer can lease use of sophisticated technology to undertake these web tasks. Cart Activator gives an online administration for an online shop and the vendor can manage adding products and images and weights in the products and alter the look and feel of the shopping cart simply by making choices in the administration forms. We give assistance to customers to design the look and feel, but then they really can drive a lot of aspects from the administration. For example they can launch a sale on products in their webshop by a few clicks through Cart Activator’s administration.

“EPay Activator for the e-payments phase is another area in which we have sophisticated software ready to go for clients. It integrates into Paymark, the system operated by ETSL the company owned the four major banks in New Zealand for electronic transaction services.

“Then we have other Activator Softwares for specific purposes. Web Activator which allows a simple website to be launched entirely through web forms – what we call template website development Newsletter Activator for the production of an online newsletter for an organisation Forum Activator which gives the opportunity for discussion forums with a wide range of features and controls. For example the forums can be behind login protection. There can be multiple forums for one organisation.

“Each person can log in separately and reach just the forums that the organisation has chosen to permit (via web forms again). From the login their identity is automatically visible when they do a posting. Or the forums can be run in a more anonymous mode. There can be a threaded forum so that contributors can follow separate subject threads and view the forum according to those – i.e. People can respond to an initial posting or respond in turn further down the track to one of the replies to the postings. Forum Activator is a very good web discussion tool especially useful in an intranet, for organisations to have internal discussion space where they can develop ideas and see everybody’s comments.

“These forums can be moderated – a choice for the organisation concerned. Moderation would mean either that after you posted an item to the forum the moderator can choose to reject a posting at some point after it goes up. Another alternative is for moderation to mean that when someone puts in a posting it does not immediately appear on the forum but has to be held until the moderator gives it the tick.

“Catalogue Activator is a smaller product that can be useful if an organisation wants to keep an online database of library resources in different media – CDs, videos, publications, periodicals.

“Survey Activator is for the creation of web surveys and the statistical analysis of their results.

“Link Activator creates a web site that runs link indexes in the portal style made popular by some of the large directories. A business can put up lists of resources and links to the associated sites from a web controlled site administration.”