Selling your products online couldn't be easier. paul mann offer's bespoke ecommerce systems built to suit differing requirements and budgets. You can either add an ecommerce shop and ordering system to your existing website, or have a brand new website designed to direct visitors to your products.
To make the most out of your ecommerce site you may want to consider the following list of available features:
Products Management
This is the management system which - as an administrator - you have access to add, edit or remove your products list. Each product will have the following
- A Price - a default price that is to be displayed to your customers on the website
- Hit Count - an incrementing number that shows you how many people have viewed this product.
- Order count - a quick report of how many people have ordered this product! Interesting when compared with the products hit count!
- Image Library - a place where all images for this product are stored. They are separated into a main image, a thumbnail image (smaller image to be displayed in a list), and close up shots! Put together all this gives your customer a full view of your product!
- Live? - this little tick box allows you to add your product to the database, but not show it on the website if eg… its currently out of stock! You can load all your products in to the database for future use without having to turn your customers down!
- Summary - A short description of the product to be displayed when in a list
- Description - The full description of the product ( HTML WYSIWYG available but not recommended)
- RRP Price - if preferred you can show this price to attract your customers to potential savings
- Ordering Quantity - If required you may want to add a limit to the number of items a customer can order in one setting
- Discounts - Add a discounted price to this product
- Discount availability - add a date range of when the discount applies! This will remove the discount after the date expires incase you forget to remove it!
- Supplier - a list of suppliers and their contact details applied to each product will help you quickly get in touch with the right people to complete an order.
- Show on the home page - this can either be a tick box or a number giving you the option of showing just this product on the home page, or having a few listed in a particular order
- Featured Product - if your website gives you the potential to show a product off in a specific area this tick box will put it there! For all your customers to see!
Options System
Each product can carry an unlimited list of available options, entered and selected by you! If your product is available in a range of colours aswell as sizes, no problem! All options are catered for, each option can affect the final price of the product whether it be addition or discount!
Option Variables - Some options may not be available with others, eg… a shirt is available in red but not in sizes 10 - 12, whereas blue is available in 10 - 14. This complicated system is handled easily and effectively - updating the customers options list as they select each option!
Dynamic Product Pricing System
If you prefer to stay one step ahead of your competition you may want to opt for a dynamic product pricing system. Quite simply, this system tracks your costs instead of your pricing, then you can add and alter your margin on top of your costs as you want! Thus creating a global pricing formula system giving upto date prices across your website, for example:
Product cost + Delivery cost + Options Cost + MY MARGIN (10%) = PRICE
Product Categories
To help your customers find their product quickly and easily you can categorize each product! This includes a manageable list of categories that you can add, amend or remove! Each category can have a summary that will describe the sort of products the customer can expect to see! Each product can appear in an unlimited number of categories, showing itself off to your customer as often as possible!
Search
If you do or do not choose to have a category based system, you can opt to have a search box listing out any products that match what your customer searches for.
Shopping Cart
As your customer browses your list of products they will have the opportunity of adding a product and their required options to a shopping basket. This page will collate all products into one order allowing your customer to purchase them all at the same time rather than having to come back and go through the process multiple times. The shopping cart lists out each product selected with its thumbnail, a link back to the full product information, a break down of its prices and vat amount ( if applicable ), as well as an option to increase the quantity required.
Order System
The order page will compile all final costs to be charged and clearly show this to the customer. A link to your terms and conditions should be displayed as well as a tick box giving their consent. A few fields will ask for their email address and password if they have one - this allows the system to update the rest of the form with their previously used address and delivery details- also their email address gives you marketing information you may want to use in the future as well as any needed correspondence to fulfill their current order.
Payment System
The payment system needs to be integrated with, first and foremost, an internet merchant account provided by your accruing bank, once setup with them, they will issue you with your personal and unique merchant account number. With this number you can setup a "payment processor" - this is basically a company that will link your website with your bank account. Some bank accounts will offer you this processor with your merchant account number but its not a problem if they do or do not.
From here your customer is ready to put in their credit card details and finish their order - you have the option of :
Do I send my customer to my processors website for them to put their details in there?
Or
Do I keep my customer on my website for them to put their details in here?
The choice is yours but the end result is the same, your bank will either approve the card details and process the amount - or will reject the details and tell you why.
In either case, your website will say thanks to the customer for their order or say sorry and ask them to try again.
Approved Order
When your bank approves the order, your website will add it to your order list for you to process and post! The customer is sent a receipt via email with thanks and the transaction is finished.
Follow Up
You now have the option of automatically sending the customer a follow up email to see how they are enjoying their product, what they thought of your website, your service and if they would like to add a testimonial?
Such marketing techniques as emailing the customer with your current special offers or company news and events will remind them of the pleasant ordering process they experienced at your site - motivating them to keep you in mind for their future purchases!
Reporting
Once you have ordering data in your database you can easily view ordering patterns by looking at reports. These could be:
- Most popular products
- Most frequent customers
- Most productive month / year
- Products most viewed vs Products most ordered
This information can prove invaluable when it comes to fine tuning your marketing or your product range!