Launch of PinangTreeBooks.com, The Penang Bookshelf's Website for Customers in Malaysia

PinangTreeBooks.Com

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The Penang Bookshelf's

Website for

Customers in Malaysia

Although The Penang Bookshelf was established mainly to provide books about Malaysia to customers in Malaysia, once we hit the internet in November 2010, we built up an overseas clientele as well. Until now our main website  has been in USD. That just happened to be the easiest package for setting up an online store that we could find. It was linked to our store at Malaysian eBay where the currency is Ringgit. That's been doing well. The Penang Bookshelf is an eBay 'Power Seller' whatever that means. However it's been unsatisfactory because potential customers had to sign up to eBay and often grapple with the complexities of PayPal, eBay's preferred payment mechanism.

In fact, most of The Penang Bookshelf's Malaysia based customers would see an item on our main website and contact us direct to buy the books. All this seemed crazy since our operating currency is and has always been ringgit. A search for a website mechansim that would offer customers a choice of currencies for payment has been long and arduous. We reached a dead end. So it seems that probably the best choice was to set up a mirror site in ringgit. That's how www.pinangtreebooks.com was born. (How the name came about is a long story that's best left to another time.)

So now, at last, The Penang Bookshelf's Malaysia based customers have a website where they will be able to make payments through banks in Malaysia and see the book prices in a currency that's easier to deal with. At the time of writing about half of The Penang Bookshelf's advertised stock is up online and the rest should be there by the end of March.

As usual, if you have any problems, want to suggest any improvements or get in touch for any other reason, please contact William Knox by email or by phone on 012-972-6485