Video: Op Shop software / Charity Shop software / Community Enterprise software
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Yes, it’s AFL Grand Final public holiday!
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It’s a public holiday here in Melbourne today, where our head office is based. No matter, our help desk is open today 8:30am through 5pm for those not having the day to prep for tomorrow’s AFL Grand Final.
No matter what you’re up to today, we hope it’s wonderful, and may the best team … win!
Retail business advice: not all website traffic is useful traffic
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Oh wow, look at the huge traffic to my website, aren’t we amazing to achieve this!
We see too many small business retailers fall into the trap of chasing website traffic to achieve a big number. They think traffic is what matters. Okay, it may make one feel good. You can’t bank traffic though. All you can bank is business transacted.
The internet is a transparent place. Plenty of us can see the traffic websites get if we pay to access the price professional data access services. This access to data helps us understand traffic value, not only for our website but for others … for clients for whom we build websites, for competitors, for any website we like.
Business owners should analyse their website traffic carefully, to understand what brings visitors to their website. They need to track the traffic through to transactions for the business as it is these transactions that matter.
A website we were looking at recently achieved a significant spike in traffic. 30% of their traffic is now coming from outside Australia. They only sell to Australia. 66% of their Australian traffic is for keywords they have targeted solely for traffic, keywords that have nothing to do with what they sell.
The first keyword relates to their business accounts for 3% of their total Australian online search traffic. The traffic count itself has not changed in a year.
The website traffic growth they have chased and won appears to have no actual commercial value for the business.
Our advice to local small business retailers is to chase valuable traffic over volume every day. Five visitors spending moment with you is far more important that five hundreds visitors and only one spending with you. While the five hundred may give you bragging rights to anyone who cares to listen, those five hundred visitors do not put food on the table.
Understand what brings people to your website and tune the content of your website to achieve what you want for your business. Tune is a good word here since you can tune your website to achieve what you want.l Anyone can.
Online, slow and steady wins the race when it comes to content curation in pursuit of commercially valuable website traffic. You can bank on it.
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Tower Systems builds beautiful websites, Shopify websites, Big Commerce Websites, connected to POS software, for local small business retailers. Here are some we have delivered recently:
- Needleworx Mackay, https://needleworx.com.au
- The Centre Newsagency, https://thegiftmart.com.au
- Prospect Marketplace News, https://thetassiemart.com.au
- newsXpress Bendigo, https://destinationgifts.com.au
- Ocean Hut Compleat Angler, https://compleatanglernarooma.com.au
- Olivia and Grace (Mount Lawley News), www.oliviaandgrace.com.au
- Berri Plaza News & Photographics, https://www.abbyrosecollective.com.au
- Pittwater Pets, https://pittwaterpets.com.au
- Garden Pets https://finsfangsfeathersfur.com.au
We have built hundreds of live websites for many different retailers. This experience, and the experience with our own websites helps us create there advice we provide in blog posts like this.
Tower Systems POS vs. Square POS: A Cost Comparison
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Tower Systems is committed to offering our customers the best value and functionality in our POS software made for specialty retail channels, independent small business retailers. In this blog post, we’ll compare our Tower Systems POS software to Square POS, focusing on the key cost factors and unique features that set us apart.
Let’s start with the Hidden Costs of “Free” POS
While Square POS often advertises as “free,” there are costs for the retailer associated with using their platform. The primary revenue stream for Square is transaction fees charged through their integrated EFTPOS system. These fees can add up quickly, especially for businesses with high transaction volumes. In our experience, the EFTPOS fees are higher that a retailer could access from elsewhere. These fees are a cost to the business regardless of whether they pay them or their customers pay them in our opinion.
Cost Savings with Tower Systems
Based on our analysis, we believe that most retailers using Tower Systems POS and a competitive EFTPOS rate that we have seen as low as half the cost of the Sharpe POS rate will save between $3,000 and $5,000 annually compared to Square POS. This is due to a combination of lower transaction fees and additional features included in our software.
- Loyalty Program: Tower Systems POS includes a built-in loyalty program at no extra cost, while Square POS charges a per month fee for this feature.
- Support: We offer 24/7 support, ensuring you always have assistance when you need it. From what we can see Square’s support hours may be more limited and accessing a human for a conversation more challenging.
- Integration: Tower Systems seamlessly integrates with popular accounting software like Xero and e-commerce platforms like Shopify, saving you time and effort.
- Enhancements: Our software is regularly enhanced thanks to suggestions from and voted on by our customers.
Personal service
At Tower Systems, we provide personal service to our customers. Our team is available to discuss your specific requirements and offer a tailored demonstration of our software. We’re committed to helping you find the right POS solution for your business, if that is us we are committed to helping as much as we are able. We actively support local small business retailers.
When comparing Tower Systems POS to Square POS, it’s important to consider the total cost of ownership, including transaction fees, additional features, and support. We believe that Tower Systems offers superior value and functionality,making it a more cost-effective choice for Australian businesses.
Father’s Day 2024
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Giving back every day
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Are some retailers passing on the cost of their POS software platform to consumers in their ‘EFTPOS’ surcharge?
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In a shop the other day we were surprised by a surcharge of over 2% of an everyday purchase. We know a bit about EFTPOS fees and know for sure that the business would not be paying 2% for EFTPOS fees. Their actual EFTPOS costs would be around 1%, maybe a little less.
They are using software though that bundles payments with the software in a way that gives the software company more revenue. We suspect it is the cost of the POS software platform that is included in what they say is an EFTPOS surcharge. If this is the case, it’s something the ACCC may be interested in.
The ACCC website offers details:
Costs that businesses can include
The Reserve Bank of Australia sets out the costs that businesses can include when determining their reasonable costs of accepting payment types.
Before introducing a payment surcharge, businesses should read our Payment surcharges guide and the Reserve Bank of Australia guidance material. Consumers may also wish to read these guides for further information about how excessive payment surcharges are calculated.
Business costs of accepting payments
Businesses receive monthly and annual statements from their bank or payment facilitator. These should include the business’s average percentage cost of accepting each payment type. This figure will generally include service fees, costs for card terminal rental and maintenance. It may also include other fees the bank or payment facilitator passes on to the business for processing card transactions.
Businesses should contact their bank or payment facilitator, or the Reserve Bank of Australia, if there are issues obtaining these statements.
Reading through this and going to the various links, we do not think a retail business can surcharge their shoppers the platform costs, costs associated with the POS software itself. What we are wondering of course is whether the overseas POS software companies are facilitating behaviour that may be open to challenge through the ACCC. While we don’t know, back at the shop we visited with the high surcharge we do wonder if that is their case in that business. It an explanation we can think of.
If you have encountered an excessing EFTPOS surcharge you can make a report to the ACCC.
Retailers using our Tower Systems POS software can use whatever payments platform they choose. We directly integrate with many. We have also negotiated competitive rates for retailers interested in leveraging the power of our community of retailers, although they are not as good as the rates some of Australia’s biggest retailers have.
How much does POS software cost?
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At Tower Systems, our POS software pricing is transparent.
Charities, community owned and run enterprises and op. shops, our pricing is half.
A message for local independent retailers
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The news cycle is dominated by headlines about economic downturn. Daily there are stories about people doing it tough. While these stories can be unsettling, focusing solely on negativity can be counterproductive.
Here at Tower Systems, we understand the importance of fostering a positive and optimistic environment, especially during challenging times and even more especially in local small business retail.
Local retailers can nurture a more positive local tone.
Yes, the economic climate is challenging and complex. That does not mean there aren’t opportunities. Many local businesses have seen positive developments in 2024. There are green shoots. We encourage you to focus on what’s working for your business.
Here are some suggestions:
- Highlight your successes: Showcase new products, host in-store events, and promote exciting developments on social media.
- Maintain a sense of normalcy: Continue providing excellent customer service and keep your store environment upbeat with cheerful music and engaging displays.
- Focus on what you can control: While external factors exist, you have the power to shape your business strategy and customer experience.
We’ve weathered economic downturns before, and each presents unique challenges. While the global situation adds complexity, many local businesses are finding success in this new landscape.
Let’s be proactive, optimistic, and focus on what we can do to build stronger and more resilient businesses. Remember, a positive outlook is contagious, and it can make a real difference in these times.
In out software for local small business retailers there are plenty of opportunities for sharing happiness and optimism with customers from easy to run cash discount offers, positive messages on receipts, bundles offers and event based offers that offer joyful celebration.
By not being part of the doom and gloom news cycle, your local retail business can set its own narrative of positivity that locals are likely to appreciate and respond to.
Our advice this Friday morning is to embrace positivity, look at what you can do to make your shop a haven of joy and happiness, a shop offering value, a place where you can your work colleagues enjoy serving each day. These are differences you can make that themselves will make a difference to you.
POS software for Op. Shops, community enterprises, not for profit and charity shops
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Op. shops, charity shops and community run shops benefit from software made for their needs and software priced in a way that reflects the good they do in the community.
Tower Systems is grateful to serve these not for profit retail; businesses with a 50% discount off our usual pricing while providing access to the software and full kit of support service.
Op. shops, charity shops and other community run retail businesses have unique needs such as easy to learn for volunteers, the ability to track and sell items that are not barcoded, the opportunity to price by different categories and the ability to serve community members with discounted or free product while still tracking product movement.
Our charity shop software, op. shop software and community enterprise software manage this for these organisations. Plus, the software can connect to deputy and others for rostering, Xero and others for accounting and many different banks for easy to use and manage EFTPOS.
It also offers the opportunity of different pricing for members of the community group as well as offering fund raising opportunities from within the software.
Here at Tower Systems we are grateful to serve many charity related businesses with our op. shop and related POS software.
Tower Systems is a small business focussed POS software company developing, and supporting POS software for niche specialty retailers.
Jewellers, garden centres, bike shops, toy shops, produce businesses, farm supply businesses, fishing shops, pet shops, charity businesses, landscape gardening businesses, antique shops, sewing shops, haberdashery businesses, newsagents and more benefit from this software.
AI generated content can show why a business is not worth doing business with
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Plenty of AI generated content online is junk put there to try and drive the position of a website. Often, it offers little genuine value. It’s text written for the tech bots, and not for humans.
You can see it on plenty of company blogs: boring content with the same bubbly emotions, similar lists and the ever present use of bold text.
There is a sameness to AI generated content that shows it for what it is – filler put there as a marketing exercise.
Here at Tower Systems we serve local small business retailers, independent retailers. Their point of difference is their product knowledge, their local knowledge and their ability to share this. An AI engine is unlikely to capture the knowledge of those in the business and share it in a meaningful way.
Our advice to our customers is: the more you share your knowledge in ways that are genuinely useful to your customers the more they will trust you, the more your business will grow. Retail is human at its core. AI content is unlikely to add value to the human contact. While it will save time, it is unlikely to add appreciated value.
We get that local small business retailers are time-poor and looking for ways to do more in less time, using AI to generate content about your business and what you do is not the saving you think it might be for your AI generated content joins data centres full of AI generated content. It’s value is limited.
We think a local small business could get more value from one authentic and genuinely useful blog post than ten AI generated blog posts on the same topic for in that one human-generated blog post you can share genuinely new information or insights that add real value to what is know about the product or service of which you write.
AI cannot replace you, it cannot replace your innovation. This is your point of difference, it is what you need to share so people see the value of you and your business. It’s what helps you stand out.
With the advent of more tools available for identifying AI generated text and image content, it is easier to rank content, to determine the authority of it. AI generated fodder will be seen for what it is, and we think this is a good thing. By all means use AI tools as a springboard or to treat a thought drought. For the content you publish in your name or the name of your business, give of yourself for that is what matters the most.
We sometimes play a game here at Tower Systems: spot the AI junk. It’s fun for a while and then it makes us sad that businesses feel it’s okay to publish what they publish, thinking that something is better than nothing, except that it’s not.
Our difference is us, each of us here in this business. We interact with our customers authentically, one-on-one. What we publish here reflects that. Retail is human after all.
Low EFTPOS fees benefit local retailers and their customers
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ANZAC Day
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No, retailers don’t have to pay their software supplier a percentage of each sale
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Hey news outlets and reporters, not all businesses and CEOs want employees to return to the office
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It is tiresome reading news reports claiming that businesses and business CEOs want employees to return to the office – often backed by a survey of CEOs.
Sure, some do. But, plenty don’t.
These stories about returning to the office are often vested interest based: landlords wanting their commercial space to be filled, companies wanting the space they have leased to be filled, businesses needing office-based trade to thrive and consultants serving businesses in these situations.
Think about local retailers benefiting from people working from home, regional retailers too. Force people back to the office and they lose the business they have won.
Landlords, property developers and others wanting people to return to the office for selfish reasons need to stop being selfish.
Smart employees of workers who want work from anywhere want their people to work where they are happiest. If that’s home, let them work from home.
Happy employees are valuable to any business.
Journalists and news outlets need to stop being boosters for the selfish demanding people work at the office and not from home.
Families benefit from more time with people able to work from home rather than losing family time to a commute.
Local communities benefit from people working from home shopping more locally and having mor time for local engagement.
Those calling for people to return to the office think their needs are more important than family time or local community time. They are wrong.
At our POS software company, Tower Systems, where people work is up to them. We actually started on this model in 2019, ahead of the pandemic, and then we escalated it to be companywide. We are lucky to be in a business where work location is not an issue.
We hire people we trust, provide them with resources they need and offer as much flexibility as we can in terms of their work situation. We have some team members saving close to twenty hours a week – that’s money in the bank for them.
Sure, we have a small crew in the office, where the job requires it. We support them. We are also grateful that each member of this crew actually prefers to be there, in the office.
Now, we do have a vested interest in all this. We make software for local small business retailers. They benefit from more people who work from home. So, of course we will support work from home from a commercial perspective. But our pitch makes sense right – happy people = productive people = people less likely to look elsewhere = a more successful business.
We think it all comes down to how you view people working in your business. If you see them as a line item on your P&L, a cog in a big machine that serves a P&L result only, you miss the opportunity to see people working in your business as people, families, members of local communities.
We don’t support the calls for people to return to the office and we wish news outlets would stop being used as mouthpieces for the vested interests making these selfish pitches.
Happy New Year
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Merry Christmas
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Relax. Unwind. Recharge.
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We think the payments pitch by Lightspeed is wrong, inaccurate, and here’s why
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A massive competitor of ours, Lightspeed, the HUGE Canadian POS software company, is promoting Lightspeed Payments as being revolutionary, delivering to retailers new benefits. Check out this pitch, which they published recently via Inside Retail.
At the forefront of this transformation, new payment systems are now advancing the way retailers handle transactions and manage their businesses. Instead of manually inputting sales into separate payment terminals after processing them on their point-of-sale (POS), retailers are now increasingly turning to systems that sync their POS with their payment processors, allowing transactions to seamlessly flow between the two platforms. These setups are commonly referred to as integrated payment systems.
There is no advance, no new technology.
Tower Systems has offered integrated payments for more than 15 years.
Lightspeed Payments is new to Lightspeed and so it makes sense that they pitch it a an advance. For them maybe it is an advance, bot not for Tower Systems and plenty of other software companies that have delivered this for may years.
The big Lightspeed Payments advance is that they integrate with their own payments platform, a payments platform off of which Lightspeed makes money from every payments transaction in a retail business using their software.
This is the advance – that Lightspeed makes more money from its customers.
It is disappointing seeing news outlets publish news of an advance that is really a tool or tax of retail transactions conducted through specific software.
Is this fair for retailers?
If you are Lightspeed customer and you choose to not use their payments platform Lightspeed has started charging customers a fee to compensate for them not making payments revenue from you.
In our opinion, what Lightspeed claims is an advance in its technology solution for retailers via Lightspeed Payments is, in fact, a price increase in the use of its software, something imposed on retailers but dressed as some great advancement.
Here at Tower Systems we believe that retailers should get to choose the payments platform that is right for their business. This choice can lead to significant savings in the cost of payments. We know of retailers paying way less than if they were using Lightspeed and were locked into the Lightspeed Payments platform.
But let’s go back to the article at Inside Retail by Lightspeed and check in on another claim.
Where Lightspeed takes things a step further is in conjoining these linked systems into a single, comprehensive platform that combines POS and payments, allowing every aspect of the transaction process to be seamlessly synchronised.
In 0ur opinion, this is a misrepresentation of the facts.
Okay, Lightspeed Payments may take things a step further compared to what Lightspeed did in the past. But for many POS software companies, for manny years we have provided a single, comprehensive platform that combines POS and payments. And, we have done that for a lower cost and with more control offered each retailer.
Lightspeed is a mighty and successful company for sure. We are not even the size of an ant in comparison. The size difference does not mean they should get a free kick in terms of marketing spin. In our opinion, the claims being made in relation to Lightspeed Payments are inaccurate and shallow.
Our advice to retailers is to do your homework, look at the total cost of ownership, and, choose the software that serves your needs best as functionality and customer service are the two most critical factors. All good POS software puffers integrated payments, what Lightspeed claims as an advance is not – they are late that party.
Today, we remember
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Aussie news outlets publish nonsense about work from home
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There is so much nonsense in the media at the moment about work from home and the push to get back to the office 5 days a week. Just today there was a story reporting that CEOs claim work from home will be history in 2 years. We think (hope) they are wrong.
Here at Tower Systems, we are grateful for a terrific team creating and supporting our software for local retailers. They are welcome to work where it suits them. We trust them. Always have. More than two thirds of our team have worked from home since March 2020 and there is no pressure on them to return to the office.
We think the media stories about people getting back to the office are likely from landlords who want to fill offices and businesses that rely on office workers for food, clothing and other sales. These sales are still occurring, but closer to home, for which local retailers are grateful.
We have work colleagues who have 15+ hours a week for personal and family time that they did not have prior to opening up to working from home. That’s 720 bonus family time hours in a working year. The value of that for individuals and families is extraordinary.
The whole community benefits from this. This is even more true in regional communities.
People are at the heart of local retail
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We are grateful to be able to share this …
Is Arielle Executive right when it promotes 7 Best POS Systems In Australia For 2023?
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Arielle Executive claims to list 7 Best POS Systems In Australia For 2023.
We think what they actually promote is software companies that pay them to be on the list. We think theirs is an ad platform.
Why do we say this? Because they’ve not assessed our software. Okay, we’re a small company. But we do have 3,500+ local Aussie business customers.
We think that if you are going to pay Google to rank well for listing the best POS systems in Australia you should have at the very lease actually looked at POS systems made for retailers in Australia. Like, you should have done the work to enable you to make the claim.
Oh, and by looking at POS systems we mean looking at the actual software, comparing functions, getting into the total cost of ownership and understanding each product before making an assessment leading to the claim you promote.
We are suspicious about comparison websites like that offered by Arielle Executive because in our experience they are ad platforms you pay to list your product to be considered ‘best’, when really the ranking comes down to an amount of money you spend.
Arielle Executive is a commercial business that offers a range of services. None of the services listed at the Arielle Executive claim expertise in assessing the best software of any kind.
We get that Arielle Executive is running a business and has to make money. We wish they were clearer about what they were doing with the ads they are running on Google claiming to list the 7 Best POS Systems In Australia For 2023. And while they products they list are well known and loved by many, whether they are the best comes down to much more than whether they have paid money to be on the marketing list promoted by by Arielle Executive.
Here at Tower Systems we are a transparent company, clear in what we offer. People considering us can see demonstrations of our software on our website and on our Google channel. We’re not pushy either. Folks who enquire about our software are respected. We are keen to understand their needs. If we think we are good fit we will say so, and show how.
If you are considering POS software for your business, take your time, do your homework, trust what you discover and not a marketing lost others have paid to be on.
Advice for small business retailers on dealing with increasing retail theft
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We know from the news that retail theft has increased. Shoplifting, stealing, retail theft, call it what o=you like, has a financial cost as well as an emotional cost. It can debilitate business owners, managers and team members, multiplying the total cost to the business.
Employee theft is easier to uncover, track and address than shopper theft.
Good POS software will offer proven tools for indicating potential employee theft and do this in a way that empowers business owners to act before the cost to the business is out of control.
The challenge is that many small business retail owners and managers do not use theft discovery and mitigation tools in POS software. We know because our Tower Systems POS software is well resourced in theft detection and mitigation and too often in talking with customers it is discovered later rather than earlier.
Our advice for retailers on employee theft is to use your software, check regularly, act on the indicators to see if there is something concerning there. In our case here at Tower systems – call or email – one of our senior theft mitigation specialists will help. These are people who have worked with the police and insurance companies on such situations. They will Bring that experience to the table for you.
Shopper theft, shoplifting, stealing of products is best discovered by a regular process of what we call spot stock takes. Choose several high interest product categories and every week check stock on hand. This will indicate if there is an issue. If there is not, choose another.
Having a consistent approach to spot stock takes if key to the discovery point of shoplifting.
The best deterrent is your action. Here is our advice to be known as a shop not worth stealing from:
- Greet people when they enter the shop. Them seeing you see them, eye to eye, will deter some people planning to steal.
- Have systems to collect evidence: CCTV and, when appropriate, matching POS software data.
- Always report people caught to the police.
- Write about reporting it to the police on social media.
- If you have camera evidence of theft but no knowledge of the name, use the photo to try and figure out the identity.
If the problem in your shop is serious and at a point where it is distressing you, consider bringing in a uniformed security guard for a week or two. While there is a cost with that, it makes a physical statement about your approach to the security of your space.
Complaining about theft is not action.
Catching someone and getting your goods back is inadequate action.
Not acting on a hunch because of a fear for what you might discover is not action.
Theft requires action. Typically in local small business retail it is costing the business somewhere between 3% and 5% of turnover. In our experience, retailers trend to not act because they are not sure where to start.
Here at Tower Systems we offer guidance to retail business owners on what to do, actions to take, processes to establish to at least get a handle on what might be happening. That is the best place to start if the business has not been acting consistently up to that point.
POS software for op. shops and community enterprises
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