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In today's newsletter we reveal that Pricerunner.co.uk has gone to some lengths to point out just how much more expensive shopping on the high street can be, compared to online. Its mystery shoppers scoured 11 high streets across the UK to find out just how much more consumers can spend in bricks and mortar shops, compared to their online rivals.

Pricerunner describes this difference, of some 31% across a basket of fast-moving consumer goods, as a 'high street tax'. Retailers will protest that they'd struggle to compete on price with the lowest cost venture to be found online.

But the reality increasingly is that customers do use price comparison websites to find the lowest possible price for that must-have item. That must be part of the reason why online sales are rising fast while high street sales are falling.

High-street retailers may not be able to compete on price - but what they have always had going for them is convenience. But it's no longer enough just to be there. Stores must also offer competitive prices, even if they're not the lowest, alongside customer service that challenges what's to be found online in terms of convenience.

That's something that John Lewis, a recognized leader in multichannel retailing, is putting the emphasis on in its new ad campaign, also covered in the newsletter, which is based on service, quality and price.

Elsewhere in today's newsletter you'll see both Tesco and Asos reporting convincing rises in their online sales, while fashion designer Paul Smith's new website has extended its use of e-commerce.

New Features in Enterprise Edition Version 1.8

Magento Enterprise Edition Version 1.8 features a new module enabling merchants to increase customer retention through sending configurable, automated email reminders for abandoned shopping carts and wishlists. This enables merchants to target promotions and discounts to customers based on browsing activity.

Magento Enterprise Edition Version 1.8 also includes the addition of Solr as an alternative search engine to the standard Magento search, providing options to merchants for on-site search, and bringing enhancements to the speed, quality and relevancy of the search results provided to customers.

Additionally, Magento Enterprise Edition Version 1.8 includes performance enhancements through a Flat Sales module, as well as a module providing merchants the ability to archive orders after a configurable time-period. These modules are joined by a new feature that allows customer service representatives to assist customers in shopping through adding items to shopping carts, modifying wishlists, and more. All of this is coupled with many other enhancements and improvements to the existing functionality.
 

I’ve had a few discussions with people now about how to upgrade to Magento 1.4 in the best fashion.  Here is my approach, which works well, and I believe provides the cleanest solution.

   1. Backup everything!
   2. Create a sub-directory called /new on your server
   3. Copy 1.4 release to /new
   4. Take a copy of the existing 1.3.* Magento database, rename it and upload to MySql
   5. Change urls in core_config_data to point to /new
   6. Run magento installation process on /new, referring to the copied Magento database created in step 4 above
   7. Copy media data from base Magento directory into /new

After the installation has completed attempt to login to the magento installation at /new – what you should find is that you still retain all your catalog/customer/settings from 1.3.  If you look in the database you will see that this has been updated to a 1.4 database. As far as I can see there are no downsides to following this approach, Magento copes well with upgrading the database.

From here you need to re-install your extensions and create/install your theme. Because the 1.4 release is so signficant I think you will find that you will need to get a new theme, and possibly new extensions. I certainly wouldnt recommend installing a 1.3 theme on 1.4 – it’s not going to work.
 

Thanks to Karen @ matrixrate, for an excellent tip and a great extension.