Actinic has been around for a long time now and we've been impressed by every new release of this popular e-commerce application. However, as the years roll by, new features and enhancements have become a lot less obvious, with nothing hugely significant in the long list of tweaks to be found in the latest Actinic v9 update.

Despite this, Actinic continues to lead the field when it comes to small business e-commerce applications, providing an extensive set of tools to first design and build an online store, then run it on a day to day basis, using nothing more than a Windows desktop PC.

The most obvious changes in v9 include an enhanced network setup wizard to configure the software to work with web hosting products, including Windows servers. There's also a new 'Start Here' panel to make it easier for newcomers to get up and running. Plus big changes, too, when it comes to getting help, including new context-sensitive 'How do I?' buttons and easier to understand error messages for when things go awry.

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A new design wizard is another obvious addition, making it easier to customise the basic store layout that every new Actinic users starts with. Most of the layered tabs have also been replaced with Outlook-style bars and the whole interface given a fresher, more modern, appearance.

Order processing is enhanced by the addition of a single form for recording phone and other offline orders, along with the ability to take credit card payments for offline orders using the optional Actinic Payments service. Offline and online postcode validation has also been added, as has PayPal Express Checkout integration. The ability to pass orders to Actinic's EPOS application has been enhanced to make it easier for retail businesses to keep tabs on stock levels.

Another - long overdue - change is the ability for prices to be displayed inclusive of tax, the Actinic software working out the VAT element automatically. Plus there's a new Product Options wizard to help set up and manage options such as product sizes, colours and so on. Elsewhere, visitors can now be tracked by Google Analytics as well as the built-in management tools, and there are also minor improvements to the site upgrade tools.

The Actinic software can be had in a variety of formats, starting with Actinic Express, a basic hosted shopping cart service (£49.99 plus £19.99 per month), although Actinic Catalog (£399 + VAT) is the more usual entry point for the smaller business.

The Catalog package is, however, designed solely to support small online stores, and for companies looking to support high volume sites or process phone and other offline orders, the Actinic Business package we tested is the one to go for.

Previously separate multi-site and multi-user versions have also been consolidated as part of this release, creating Actinic Business Plus, starting at £1,249 + VAT and £300 + VAT per additional user. Packages for professional Web designers are also available.

An update to the popular Actinic e-commerce application, the emphasis in this release is on making the software easier to use. There are some new features, including tax inclusive pricing, a new offline order processing form and a postcode validation service, but nothing of major importance compared to the previous version.