It’s the brainchild of Brian Trevaskiss and team at the MoreFrom Group, and the idea is that you rebadge morefrom.co.uk as your own site. If people order from you, you’ll get 1% commission (or more if you manually increase the price), which appears as credit in your MoreFrom account. So you don’t get cash, but you can put that money towards future purchases.

The other clever thing is that you can order from it yourself. So let’s say you’re about to buy a £1,000 laptop. By ordering it from your version of the site, you get £10 credit applied to your account. This could be of particular appeal to small businesses that rack up purchases over the course of a year.

And if your business would benefit from an online shop, MoreFrom is offering a way to rebadge its site to do precisely that. Head to www.morefrom.biz.

So how easy is it to set up your own site? Shockingly so. Allow me to demonstrate:

Step 0: Head to www.morefrom.me

You can watch the video if you want, but I suspect most people will simply hit the big “FREE Get Started” button.

Step 1: Add your name and picture

Get in quick if you want a particular username…

Step 2: Choose your colour scheme

Some are more dubious than others, but by hitting the “Customise your theme” button you can choose the exact colours you want.

Step 3: Enter your name and email address

I had a quick scan of the terms and conditions and couldn’t find anything dubious, but as ever it’s worth going through this more closely if you intend to make serious use of this service. One thing to note is that you don’t see the credit until 30 days after the purchase, to avoid unscrupulous people buying products, spending their credit and returning the goods in the meantime.

Step 4: Set a password

And after four short steps, you’re pretty much done…

Step 5: Start adding recommendations

Now head off to your website and start recommending. It’s simple to do: browse to your chosen product and click the “Add to My Recommended” button that appears halfway down the page. Up to four of your recommendations will be surfaced at the top of your page by default.

If you’re feeling greedy, you can also tweak the prices. Click on My Account, and then the Manage button underneath “morefrom.me/yourname”. Click Prices and you’ll be able to increase them by anything from 1% to 25%. The mark up is split 50/50 between you and MoreFrom.

And that’s it. Have a look and let me know what you think.

And if you need a few hints for hardware/software to recommend, head to our very own A-List.

According to the latest study from eDigitalResearch the UK has just experienced something of a truly digital Christmas. I’m not too surprised that 86% of us used the internet on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, or that 22% of us did it via a smartphone or tablet device.

It’s no great shock that 30% of folk visited the online sales on Boxing Day either, or that 62% of those shopping online over the Christmas weekend were looking for sales bargains.

What did surprise me, however, was just how badly some of the biggest names in retail dealt with the snowmageddon disruption in the lead up to the seasonal festivities when compared to your average small business.

Not that I would dream of dismissing the December weather as a storm in a retail teacup, especially as I live in rural South Yorkshire where for the best part of a fortnight we had more than a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures dropped to as low as -15 overnight. At the height of the Arctic conditions, the Royal Mail was unable to get down my lane to deliver any post for an entire week; I lived in the village of the snowy dead to all intents and purposes.

So what am I doing complaining about retailers having trouble delivering online orders in time for Christmas? Actually, what I am complaining about is the difference in how the biggest and smallest retailers handled the crisis.

Here’s a simple truth: big retail business brands simply said ‘no problem’ and took my money for online orders when they had no idea if my items would arrive in time or not, and even (I suspect) when they knew there was a fair chance of them not arriving at all. Smaller retailers, on the other hand, were totally honest and up front, even if that meant they lost an order.

A seemingly common practice amongst bigger retailers is not to provide parcel tracking details, whereas the small guys nearly always send this data out with the email confirmation of your order. It might seem a small detail, but it’s one that makes a huge difference in terms of customer service when things go wrong, as I found out.

When a number of my deliveries from a handful of small retailers — ranging from one-man-and-his-dog confectioners to village real ale brewers — were delayed by the weather, I was able to use the tracking data provided and discover where they were and when they were likely to arrive.

You simply cannot decide to use snowmaggedon as a convenient excuse to try and cover up a poor understanding of the very basics of customer service

When my order of a trio of Apple iPod Touch units failed to arrive from Tesco Direct, despite assurances on the telephone that they would be delivered within 48 hours of my order, I was left none the wiser about their whereabouts or estimated time of arrival. Bigger was not better, not least as I had no tracking information. What I did have was an email informing me the items had been dispatched, but when I finally got through to customer services I discovered that the Tesco definition on dispatch was different to mine. Dispatch does not, I was informed, mean the item is on the way to you. Apparently it means it has been sent to the courier.

Unfortunately, Tesco Direct doesn’t reveal who the courier is unless you telephone them to ask, as I did. And nor do they provide the customer with the tracking codes that the courier gives them, unless you telephone and ask for them.

Yes, the bad weather played a big part in delaying Christmas deliveries across the UK. But you simply cannot decide to use snowmaggedon as a convenient excuse to try and cover up a poor understanding of the very basics of customer service. One has to ask why it is that small business can appreciate that, when selling remotely across the internet, the customer appreciates as much information as possible about the transaction, including parcel tracking codes, yet big business apparently cannot.

For all the changes in the way we shop, as the first decade of the 21st century becomes just a very cold memory, one thing remains as true as ever: the customer is king. Forget that, no matter how big a business you are, at your peril.

It isn’t just about Kelkoo and Google Products any more either. These days there’s a huge choice of specialist sites, catering for everything from supermarket shopping to selling your mobile phone. Here’s our pick of the best.

1. MySupermarket.com

This is not your run of the mill price comparison site. Instead of comparing prices of individual products, it allows you to compare the cost of your whole shop. First, choose from one of the four supported supermarkets – ASDA, Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Waitrose – then fill up your cart with groceries as normal.

The site displays the cost of your shop in tabs at the top of the screen as you go; you can switch to the cheapest at the end and even book your delivery slot.

The truly impressive thing about this website, however, is its Swap & Save feature, which suggests better value alternatives to items you’ve already selected. It has an uncanny knack of rooting out the best bargains, and has the potential to slash even more off your weekly bill.

2. Omio

Trawling around the individual mobile networks’ websites trying to find a good deal on a phone is so tortuous the CIA ought to use it on terrorist suspects as an alternative to waterboarding. If you want to avoid the pain, we suggest Omio – a fantastic comparison website for skinflints with no patience.

It compares prices across a huge number of brokers and networks, and offers every filter and sorting option you can think of. Want a free phone on a 24-month contract with internet but below £15 per month? How about the best free gift or cashback offer? Omio’s sliders and simple-to-use front end make it easy to ferret out the best value deal. Give it a whirl: even £5 cut from your monthly mobile bill would save £120 over the course of a 24-month contract.

3. SellMyMobile

You can maximise your money saving in the New Year not only by using a price comparison site for your new smartphone, but also selling your old handset to the highest bidder. One way of doing this is to hawk it on eBay, but if you don’t want to take the risk of the phone being damaged in transit, or having your buyer fail to cough up, this is the website to try.

SellMyMobile compares the prices mobile phone recycling websites offer for your model of phone and helps you find the best one. Prices offered for an 8GB Apple iPhone 3GS ranges from £150 to £186, so it definitely pays to use the site.

4. Scccope

This one isn’t a specialist comparison engine, but it does offer one unique feature that no other site we use does. As well as straight product prices from all the big name vendors, Sccope also offers price analysis tools.

Displayed as a line graph alongside your traditional results, you can see maximum, minimum and average prices across all retailers over the past three months. The filtering options across the various categories could be better, but for the tactical bargain hunter it’s an indispensible aid: a flat graph for months, then a momentary dip in the minimum price might indicate a not-to-be-repeated deal, for instance, while an unstable, fluctuating graph could help you decide whether to wait for a currently high price to drop again.

5. Cable.co.uk

Visit Virgin Media or Sky’s websites and it’s easy to be confused into signing up for a deal you don’t want, and paying more than you planned to. You can cut through the confusing bundles and options, however, by using Cable.co.uk.

Pop your postcode into the search box and it quickly allows you to compare sports, movies, and HD packages available in your area, as well as broadband and phone packages across multiple suppliers. Through the website we discovered a deal for Sky Sports 1 and Eurosport, plus 65 other channels, for £17.75 a month for the first six months, then £21 per month for the remaining 12 months of the contract. It’s a brilliant way to save on what for many people (especially sports fans) is one of their highest monthly outgoings.

6. TOP10.com

Of all the broadband comparison websites we’ve seen (and there’s a bundle out there, believe us), TOP10.com is the best. Although very simple, it has a wide-ranging list of suppliers on its books: type your postcode into the box on the home page and you’ll be provided with not only a list of deals, sortable by speed, cost, or the size of the download cap, but also a page of information showing you how far you are from your nearest exchange, and the sorts of speeds others near you are getting from their broadband suppliers. Don’t take its results as gospel – some quality providers such as Zen Internet don’t make the TOP10.com cut – but it is very useful as a general guide.

7. Tunechecker

If you’re not among the legion of illegal music downloaders, there’s no need to pay top whack for your downloaded music. Tunechecker compares prices for MP3 downloads (and CDs – remember them?) across a total of 11 different services. It isn’t the most attractive website, but in a matter of seconds it will find you the cheapest single or album and allow you to search by artist, single, album title and more. With potential savings of up to a fiver an album these aren’t savings to be sniffed at.

8. uSwitch.com

With energy prices rising every year there’s every reason to switch supplier, but with each of the big companies offering an array of prices and deals that would baffle even money-saving expert Martin Lewis, it can be hard to see the wood for the potential eco-friendly energy source.

Use uSwitch.com’s comparison engine to keep on top of prices, however, and you could be saving yourself over £100 per year. Not only that, but it’s a good source of news on price rises and movements in the energy markets, so you can make sure you’re not switching to a supplier that’s about to put its prices up by 10%. uSwitch also has comparison tools for everything from mortgages, credit cards and loans to insurance and broadband. A well-laid out, very easy to use comparison site.

9. eBookPrice.info /

We love the Amazon Kindle for the sheer convenience and the (generally) low cost of books in the Kindle store. But some prefer the more open approach, the touchscreen and better build quality of Sony’s eBook readers. Trouble is, the prices of non-Kindle ebooks can vary wildly from website to website, making it a slow process to find a good price on a particular title.

eBookPrice.info may be a bit sparse on the design front, and it certainly isn’t exhaustive in its list of suppliers, but as it’s the only comparison site we’ve come across to make an even halfway decent stab at comparing eBook prices, it’s worth bookmarking.

10. Google Products

No price comparison round-up would be complete without mentioning the king of comparison engines, Google Products. It’s great: we use price comparison sites every day at PC Pro to find the best prices for laptops, netbooks, peripherals, PCs, gadgets and phones, and the one we come back to every time is Google’s.

In short, there is no general price comparison search engine that can match Google’s reach and breadth of product search, and it manages to pack in a wealth of features too, from overviews and specifications lists for individual products to reviews and ratings for the retailers themselves. We wouldn’t be without it, and nor should you. A class act.

Here are 18 ideas for boosting your online shop’s conversion rate. I have used them on one or more of my sites: it’s all about testing to see if they’re effective for your particular business. There’s no sleight of hand, trickery or underhandedness here – it’s mainly about making your e-commerce site easier to trust and buy from.

1. Guarantees

Offer a meaningful guarantee that’s easy to understand. If it’s a physical product then your customer expects to  enjoy the same guarantee as they’d be offered in a high street shop (in addition, of course, to their legal rights), so it’s probably even more important to offer a guarantee for an online service or download. And remember that a guarantee that’s tied up in lots of exclusions and is hard to qualify for is worse than no guarantee at all.

2. “Trust” logos

When I surveyed the visitors to PassYourTheory.co.uk who didn’t buy, one of the main reasons people gave (aside from “I don’t want to pay”) was their concern about whether the site was genuine. By joining Safebuy or the ISIS scheme, your site will be checked to see if it complies with best practice in various areas. If it does, and on payment of the annual membership fee, you’ll be able to display a logo which links back to a verification page on the site. The only decision you need to make is whether the presence of one of these logos is worth £100-£125 per year in extra sales: in most cases the answer is yes!

3. Add-on/related/upgrade purchases

If a customer is prepared to order an item, they are much more likely to agree to purchase an add-on at that time – especially if it relates closely to their main purchase. I’m a bit more wary about upgrades because it’s difficult to recommend an upgrade to your customer without undermining the original purchase.

4. Coupons

Regular coupon offers can be very effective for physical products. At MakingYourOwnCandles.co.uk we offer a coupon to those who sign up to our mailing list, along with a free gift. As with promotions (below), it’s usually a good idea to have a theme for your offer – whether that’s an introductory discount or a Christmas sale.

5. Promotions

Customers don’t expect to pay full price. We’re saturated with special offers of varying validity and, if anything, customers expect to see even deeper discounts online. It helps if your product isn’t available on the high street (or at least difficult to get hold of) but I’ve found promotions to be the single most effective way to increase conversion. Surprisingly, I’ve often found that the promotion drives buying customers to the site in greater numbers but they often buy items that are not on promotion!

6. Member benefits

Encourage customers to become “members” of your community by offering coupons and/or free gifts or some other tangible benefit. They should get something out of joining up without buying – at this stage most visitors are not prepared to commit to a purchase, so a coupon on its own is unlikely to be enough.

7. An ongoing relationship

It’s easier to sell to a current customer than find a new one. Once a customer has signed up to your mailing list and bought from you, they should go onto a different mailing list only for customers. These are your very best leads and need to be treated as such. Use that mailing list sparingly, only send emails of genuine value (you should be doing this anyway) and cultivate a win-win relationship.

8. Payment Options

Different sites need different payment options. As a minimum you need to accept credit and debit cards. You can achieve this with the standard PayPal package. On Passyourtheory, we found that our conversion rate increased by around 25% when we added Nochex as a “credit/debit card” option alongside PayPal. You could consider accepting payment over the phone but that requires a dedicated call handler during business hours and so might not be practical. In my experience accepting cheque payment is more hassle than it’s worth except for large payments.

9. Self host the payment page

This is worth testing: are your customers more likely to buy from you if they are sent off to the PayPal site to pay or if the payment process takes place entirely on your site? This will depend on your customers but I know that if I’m asked to pay for something via an integrated process, that suggests to me that the company I’m buying from is a more serious and credible outfit. I still associate PayPal with personal payments and eBay, and integrated systems with sites such as Amazon – I would prefer that my customers associated me with Amazon rather than eBay.

It’s easy enough to integrate the payment process into your site if you have an e-commerce package such as BigCommerce – it’s just a case of signing up to PayPal Pro (or similar).

10. Make it easy to buy from you

Making it hard for a customer to buy from you is moronic. Imagine you’re buying a paper in WHSmith. You pick your chosen rag and turn to go into the queue, only to see that it’s 20 people deep with one person serving. In all likelihood, WHSmith has now lost your business – don’t let your purchasing process be the online equivalent. Your shopping cart should be easy to use, and the purchasing process as short as possible.

11. Use Adwords wisely

By setting up pay-per-click campaigns focused on small groups of keywords, you can then send potential customers to the right product page. For example, if a searcher wants to make candles out of Beeswax sheets, they’re much more likely to buy if they see an advert that specifically mentions Beeswax candle making kits with a link to the Beeswax page.

12. Add personality and humanity to the site

As a small business, you have the advantage of being able to inject your personality into your site. Identifying a human being with the site and its products is hugely effective if it’s done genuinely. It’s especially valuable in building up a long-term relationship with your customers. Don’t make the mistake a lot of small businesses make of trying to appear corporate.

13. Identify yourselves

It’s amazing how many e-commerce sites still don’t have real contact and identity information. Not only does this flout the law but it undermines the confidence of potential customers. If you put a bricks and mortar address and contact information into your About Us page, customers will perceive you as a genuine business and not a fly-by-night scam.

14. Clear terms and conditions

Again, this is simply best practice, but far too many companies ignore it. If you want to qualify for a “trust” logo then you’ll need to include this information in any case, but doing so establishes trust and credibility. And if your product and service is good, why not?

15.  Present products in terms of their benefits

Don’t assume that customers will know how your products will be useful to them. They might have arrived with a vague idea, it’s up to you to present the benefits of your product/service both in themselves and compared to the competition. People buy with their emotions but justify their purchase rationally -  in other words, they may want your product but they’ll often need to be told why.

16. Have plenty of photos and videos

Online, customers don’t have the chance to touch your products as they would in a shop. The next best thing is to have lots of photos and, if it makes sense, videos.

17. Unique products

If your product is unique then, all other factors being equal, your conversion rate will be higher simply because your customer cannot get it anywhere else. This assumes that you’ve researched your product to find a need and developed it to fill that need. Generally speaking, you’re much better as a big fish in a small pond.

18.  High prices

Test increasing your prices: you might be surprised!

The biggest bugbear has been the lack of built-in support for bulk emailing customers, which has meant that I’ve been forced to export my customer database from BigCommerce and import it into MailChimp each time I want to send a mailout.

The good news is that one of the standout features of version 6, which I’m beta testing at the moment, is excellent integration with MailChimp. V6 makes it possible to link BigCommerce with your MailChimp account in such a way that new subscribers to your newsletter and/or new customers can be automatically added to the mailing list. You can set the system up to follow the standard “double opt-in” approach which requires the user to confirm their subscription or to opt-out if you’ve already done this via your shop’s customer registration process.

BigCommerce 6 also includes e-commerce templates for mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Palm and Android so far) which renders your site in an optimised form for those smartphones. However, for many the most exciting new feature will be version 6’s integration with eBay which allows you to sell products both from within your shop and on eBay from the same product listings (no more typing everything twice). It looks to me like an easy way to maintain two shops but I need to see it working in practice before I’d be prepared to use it in anger (and anger is my usual reaction when it comes to eBay selling!).

Aside from those major features, version 6 also adds a whole host of more minor new features, upgrades and enhancements. For example, you can take and manage pre-orders (only useful for some business models of course), the integration with Facebook has been improved allowing you to sell from within the world’s biggest social community, and more of the system’s guts have been exposed so that you can tweak your site for Search Engine Optimisation purposes.
It’s naturally very difficult to give an e-commerce beta a proper test. Although BigCommerce set me up with a duplicate of my working site, I can’t use it to test the entire process since customers can’t purchase from it. The other problem is that version 6 has been in the offing for a long, long time now and there’s no definite release date yet. Clearly with an e-commerce product, it must be stable before it’s applied across the board but it would be disappointing if it’s not up and running ahead of the festive blow-out.

But coming in a close second are those companies who issue paper invoices and offer an online payments system. When you get to the payments page, you can look up your Customer Number, or in this particular case, your DHL Air Waybill No. And then you discover that the numbers you have simply don’t work on their e-system.

So you resort to phoning them, and you get through to a polite chap who umms and arrrs and says that these invoices are clearly not on “the system” and transfers you to a black hole of continual plinky plonk music and a voice telling me how important my custom is to them.

So Mr DHL, given that your systems don’t appear to accept that I actually exist, and that these invoices have never been generated, can I therefore assume that I don’t owe you anything? After all, if your internal processes are so screwed up that you are able to generate invoices for import VAT and duty that’s owed, presumably from a database somewhere, but you can’t join this up with your payments system, then clearly it’s not my problem?

And it’s not just DHL – TNT, a company whose services I otherwise rate highly, will quite happily generate a red warning letter for late payment a whole working week after you have paid them by credit card. According to the staff at their call centre, it takes 14 days for their payments-inwards system to talk to their accounts ledgers.

One wonders how these companies manage to pass any sort of audit for their end-of-year accounts.

When asked why the bank hadn’t informed the children’s parents that they were issuing them with a licence to drain their pocket money, the bank replied: “We don’t always have the parents’ contact details or know the family’s circumstances.”

It’s a shot in the dark, I admit, but wouldn’t the child’s address be a good place to start looking for mum and dad? Or is Lloyds TSB dishing out mortgages to 11-year-olds too?