Help - Shop Manager

This page is not accessible through the directory indexes. It contains help information for members of the directory.

Overview

The Shop Manager is used to configure all aspects of an online shop. You can select suppliers and types of product, enter products for each supplier, set payment options and delivery rates, and set up the text and instructions to customers that appear on your shop pages. When customers place orders, you can review orders held.

General Guidance

1. When setting up a shop from scratch, start small with just a couple of suppliers and a few types of product. Enter enough products and pictures so that you can see how your shop looks.

2. With a few products in place, take time to get all the sections of text that surround the customer pages of your shop configured. Prepare these using a word processor. Get the spelling and grammar right. Then cut and paste your text into the respective ‘Msg’ files as described in “Edit Messages in Buyer Pages” below.

3. Take time to get the “Payment Options & Delivery Rates ” configured. As with the products, start with just a few countries, a simple delivery price structure and a minimal number of payment options.

4. Your shop is now ready to try a few test orders. Your shop customer pages can be found at “http://www.deepsea.co.uk/shops/yourshopname/moreinfo/shop/shop.htm”

5. Only once you are happy with the way your shop looks, all the sections of text displayed to customers and the basic payment options, should you start adding lots more products, more payment options, and more countries and respective delivery costs.

6. When you have enough products for your shop to go live, let us know and we will link it to your main page on www.deepsea.co.uk.

7. You can continue to add products, suppliers, product types and more delivery and payment options after your shop is live.

8. Don't forget to provide customers with an overview of the buying process, their legal rights for mail/web order and your service policy. The obvious place for this is in “Search First Entry Msg” or “Search Top Msg”. You may also want to repeat a customers mail order rights and your service policy in one or more of “Basket End Msg”, “Checkout End Msg”, “Checkout Final End Msg” and “Bill End Msg”.

9. You may also want to inform overseas customers of any special export/import/customs issues. A way to do this without confusing UK customers is with one or more “Payment Options” specific to overseas customers which include information about these issues.

Main Menu

The main menu comprises a set of panels relating to various shop management functions. In the image below the captions are numbered in the sequence that you loosely follow when setting up a shop from scratch, though of course in reality the process is no-where near this well defined and you will hop from menu to menu as it suits.

The following help sections go through the menu panels in order.

1. - Edit Suppliers List

This selection leads to a text editor for editing the list of suppliers. Name each supplier on a separate line and click to save the edited list or to return to the main menu and abandon any changes.

You need to add a supplier to this list before you can “Edit Products for Supplier” as described below.

Blank lines and lines beginning with a “#” are ignored. You can use this to format your list and annotate it to remind you what you have done. A neat trick if you want to temporarily remove a supplier from your shop is to just put a “#” at the start of its row, then when you want to put the supplier back in you just delete the “#” and it is back again!

We have a running example of a car dealer (see right), where the suppliers are car manufacturers.

# Car Dealer
# - Suppliers

Ford
BMW
Jaguar
Volvo
Volkswagen
Skoda

# temporarily removed..
# Honda

2. - Edit Product Types List

This selection leads to a text editor for editing the list of product types. Name each type of product on a separate line and click to save the edited list or to return to the main menu and abandon any changes.

You need to add a product type to this list before it can be used in “Edit Products for Supplier” as described below.

As with Edit Suppliers List”, blank lines and lines beginning with a “#” are ignored.

In our example, the product types are the ways cars are classified, by the customer or the dealer. Whilst a particular car can have only one supplier, it could be in more than one product group. e.g. A diesel estate which is on special offer.

# Car Dealer
# - Product types

Saloon
Hatchback
Estate
Van
Pickup

Petrol
Diesel
Electric
# (we live in hope)

Special offers

3. - Edit Products for Supplier

Edit products for a supplier by selecting a supplier from the pull down menu and clicking .

The next page contains a form where individual products can be entered and edited. It is split into a “Control Area ” containing editor controls (the area at the top left with a yellow background) and a “Data Area ” where product data is entered.

Control Area

Will load the individual product specified in the “Item” menu. If “new item” is selected, a new blank product will be loaded.
Will save the product data in the data area as the item specified in the “Item” menu. If “new item” is selected, the data will be saved as a new product. If any other item is specified, its data will be over-written when is clicked.
Will delete the selected “Item”.
Will sort the “Item” menu alphabetically by either “stock code” or “heading”.

Data Area

“Stock Code:” Is whatever code you use to keep track of stock items. It could be a suppliers catalogue number or a code you create. Other than that, it is up to you. While most businesses give each item a unique stock code, your deepsea shop will not break if stock codes are accidentally duplicated.
“Heading:” Is the name or title of a product. e.g. Mondeo Saloon.
“Product:” Is a set of tick boxes taken from the “Product Types List” (see 2. above). Tick whichever of these apply to the product being entered (you can tick more than one). e.g. ‘Estate’, ‘Petrol’, ‘Diesel’ and ‘Special offers’ as we will be selling both petrol and diesel versions as special offers.
You can select any of the pictures associated with your web pages using the “Picture” menu to associate the picture with a product. The picture will be displayed when a customer views the full product details. The maximum dimensions of a picture are 400*400 pixels. Any larger pictures will be scaled to fit into these dimensions.
Similarly you can select a thumbnail picture using the “Thumbnail” menu to associate the thumbnail with a product. The thumbnail will be displayed on a customer's search list and shopping basket. Thumbnails are identified as files ending in “_th.jpg”. Thumbnail pictures must be no more than 100 pixels high or wide.
Will display a preview of the picture or thumbnail specified in the menu.
You can upload pictures using the Picture Files link from your deepsea Member Login page.

“Introduction:” Is a short overview of the product. It will be displayed on a customer's search list and shopping basket.

5 seat family saloon car with plenty
of luggage space

“Description:” Is a full description of the product with whatever details you want to add. It will be displayed when a customer views the full product details.

Sales Rep Weekly car of the year 1998. Highly
reliable and will cruise at over 100 in the outside
lane with nice bright headlights to flash at anyone
getting in the way. Side impact bars and airbags
give that extra security when forcing the way out
at junctions ... blah ... blah ... blah ... fuel
economy ... service intervals ... insurance
group .... e.t.c. e.t.c.

You are advised to edit and spell check any large sections of text on a word processor, then cut and paste to the form before saving.

“Price Structure:” What you enter here is used to create the buttons in the customer part of the shop. The format is critical and is a series of lines of the general structure ‘Item for price’. The example would generate the buttons:

for 10995.00
for 11495.00
for 12495.00

1.6GL for 10995.00
2.0GL for 11495.00
2.4DL Diesel for 12495.00

“In Stock?” If an item is not in stock, it will be visible to customers, but they will not be able to add it to their shopping basket.
“Weight” Is the weight in kilograms. Be careful to get the decimal point in the right place. The weight of all items in a customer's shopping basket is added up and used to calculate the delivery rate (see 5. below).
“Index?” Selecting ‘no’ will prevent an item from being seen by customers.
“Notes” Is for your own private use and will never be seen by customers.

4. - Edit Messages in Buyer Pages

The pages a customer sees have blocks of configurable text at various points in the pages. This is generally at the top and end of a page, sometimes in the middle and sometimes within panels on the page.

Selecting a message file leads to a text editor for editing the text within the corresponding block of text. Then use to save the edited message or to return to the main menu and abandon any changes.

Creating new ‘payment options’ in Edit Payment Options and Delivery Rates” below will add corresponding files to this list for you to edit a description of a payment option.

# Search Top Message
# - displayed at the top of the search page

Please select the type of product you want
and tick one or more suppliers (ticking
none is the same as ticking all) to display
a list of matching products in the shop.

An alternative method for entering and editing most of these small blocks of text is to click the link ‘Customer Pages - Development Mode’ at the bottom of this panel. This will take you to the customer side of your shop, but with all blocks of editable text highlighted with a red border and a link to edit them ‘Edit Text’.

Payment messages are a special case. See Payment Messages below.

‘search_shop_closed_msg.txt’ is another special case. See Opening Your Shop for Business below.

5. - Edit Payment Options & Delivery Rates

This page again edits a block of text, this time defining payment options and delivery rates. As usual will save the edited options and will return to the main menu and abandon any changes.

The file contains 3 types of entry, each of which MUST follow the format shown:

Postage Region
Region=Country1::Country2:: ....
A postage region defines the name of a region and the countries in that region. In our example, we have declared ‘UK’ as a region containing the countries ‘UK’, ‘England’, ‘Wales’, ‘Scotland’, ‘Northern Ireland’ and ‘Channel Islands’. Note how more than one line is used to define a larger region.

Each country defined will be offered as a menu selection to customers when they enter their address.

# UK
UK=UK::England::Wales::Scotland::
UK=Northern Ireland::Channel Islands::
UK::0.01::0.77
UK::0.5::2.49
UK::1.0::5.20
UK::100::15.00
UK-Payment::PayPal::PhoneIn::PhoneBack 50::Cheque::

# European Union
EU=France::Belgium::Spain::
EU::0.1::1.25
EU::0.5::3.66
EU::10::12.50
EU-Payment::PayPal::PhoneIn::PostIn::

Delivery Rate
Region::Weight(kg)::Price(�)
For each region, a sequence of delivery rate lines defines delivery rates in ascending weight bands. The weight of a customer’s shopping basket is added up and compared to the rates, with the corresponding delivery cost being added to their bill. In the example, up to 100 grams (0.1 kilograms)is priced at �1.25, then up to 500 grams is priced at �2.49.

Payment Options
Region-Payment::Option1::Option2
For each region, a single line of payment options defines which payment options will be presented to customers from that region. The names of options can be whatever you like, as long as they are single words without spaces. These names are used to create option message files that you edit using “Edit Messages in Buyer Pages” (see 4. above).

In our example, the option ‘PhoneBack’ is associated with the message ‘Payment Phoneback Msg’ and you could edit the text in this message as shown on the right. This message will be presented to customers on the checkout page. See Payment Messages below.

# PhoneBack payment option

When you have placed your order, we
will phone you to get your credit
card details.

Each option has an optional number which indicates a value in �. You can ignore this, but if you set it the payment option will only be displayed to a customer if the value of their order exceeds the value. In our example, the PhoneBack option will only be displayed to UK customers if the value of their order exceeds �50.

6. - Review Orders and - Review Baskets

Clicking “Review Orders” takes you to a page where you can orders placed and old orders. When a customer confirms and order by taking their shopping basket to the checkout, the system will email an itemised bill to both you and your customer. A copy of this bill is kept on the system in this area for future reference.

The part of the shop system is NOT intended or designed to track orders once they have been placed. It is just for reference and you are advised to orders from this part of the your shop system once they have been delivered.

Clicking “Review Baskest” takes you to a page where you can shopping baskets that have yet to be taken to the checkout and baskets that have been abandoned. When a customer confirms and order by taking their shopping basket to the checkout, the system will clear the basket and create a correponding order.

7. Configuration info:

This panel display information about the configuration of your shop; the email address to which orders are sent and the number of products entered in your shop database. If your database exceeds the limit set for your shop, please contact deepsea to arrange for a larger shop.

8. - Delete Unused Files

As your shop grows and your business processes change, the system may accumulate files that are no longer used such as supplier files for suppliers you no longer deal with or payment methods you no longer use. These files are listed in the “Delete Unused Files” menu and you can select a file and delete it with .

Payment Messages

Payment messages are tied to specific methods of payment available to the customer at the checkout. They come in two parts, the basic payment message presented at the checkout, and a ‘final‘ message that is displayed on the invoice page, but only if a further action (such as payment by PayPal) needs to be explained.

The basic payment message presented at the checkout can include [special tags] that control the way the payment option is presented and how the payment button behaves.

# PayPal payment option
[Label:PayPal]
[Action:DS_SHOP_PAYPAL_CGI]
[PayPal_Account:john@deepsea.co.uk]
[PayPal_Submit:DS_PAYPAL_ONLINE]

Pay online using the PayPal secure payment system

[Label:Name] Supplies a for the payment button. If no name is given, the button defaults to .

[Action:DS_SHOP_PAYPAL_CGI] Tells the deepsea shop which special module within the deepsea system handles that payment option. Changing it is dangerous and should be left to the webmaster.

[PayPal_Account:john@deepsea.co.uk] Is specific to payment options that use PayPal. It tells PayPal where to send the payment.

[PayPal_Submit:DS_PAYPAL_ONLINE] Is specific to payment options that use PayPal. It tells the shop where to find paypal. Changing it is dangerous and should be left to the webmaster.

Opening Your Shop for Business

The open state of a shop is controlled by the message ‘search_shop_closed_msg.txt’. In addition to a messgae to display when the shop is closed, including the special tag [Closed] will close the shop and display the closed message. Without this tag, the shop is open for business.

The [Closed] tag is ignored in development mode.

# Shop Closed Message
[Closed]
Our shop is currently cuntly closed.
In the mean time, you can always
phone an order in.

To open yor shop, edit the file ‘search_shop_closed_msg.txt’ to delete or comment out the [Closed] tag and the shop will be open.