Guide for website admins

When a QOP site is set up it will look uninviting and empty so it can be hard to know where to start. On this page an outline of what to do to make the most of this incredibly versatile e-commerce solution.

First of all start by filling in a brief introductory paragraph or two on the home page under 'Site Content' > 'Front Page'. You can upload a logo here too. It is also a very good idea to find out what keywords people tend to use to find a site such as your own and fill them in the web keywords section. These will be available on very page. It is important not to go overboard on the keywords however as it can adversely affect your search engine ranking. Of the keywords you do choose try to make them appear about 4-6 times on important pages especially the home page. If you have too many of the keywords search engines will treat your site as spam.

You can also upload a logo image. Try to make sure you upload the image at the size it will be displayed on screen for best results. The same goes for all images that you upload.

At this stage you need to decide what type of site you want to run. The main choices are business to business or consumer focused. A business to business site gives you more options for features such as customer accounts, budget control, order on account and so on.

The next step is to begin adding your content starting with your pages. Typical pages include an 'about us' page, a 'contact us' page and so on. You may also want to add pages such as 'Terms and Conditions' or a 'Privacy policy' page. When you create pages you may want them not to show up in the automatic list of pages that appears for example the 'my-account' page or 'terms and conditions'. To do this check the 'hidden in lists' box. Sometimes you may want a page to be a sub-page. The primary example here is the 'My Account' page. This is a section that lets you bring in some of the features of QOP.

QOP uses pages with specific file names to bring in its features. It is recommended to use the 'My Account' page as a parent page for the following:

• My Details (my-details.html or user-details.html)
• My Addresses (addresses.html)
• Order History (past-orders.html)
• My Users (my-users.html | business site + shopper admin user only)
• Approve Orders (approve-orders.html | business site + shopper admin user only)
• Order Pad (order-pad.html | business site and customer user only)

You can create links to these pages separately using the 'Site Content' > 'Links' section (discussed later) whether they are hidden or not. For now focus on getting your content into the site. Don't forget it is useful and kind to your customers if you create a 'help' section with useful links to contact information and information on your returns policy etc… This helps people feel confident about using your site.

Hint Make a page for the shopping basket, and then another for the checkout and set its parent page to your shopping basket page. Next make a page for the callback after a successful purchase (callback.html) and set its parent to the my-orders page and be sure to set it to be hidden in lists aswell.

Don't forget to add every page you will need. You don't need to write copy for every page, eg. search.html simply includes the advanced search form and your search results however you may want to add some explanation at the top for your users.

The following is in relation to the 'FreeStyle Template'

Useful navigation is crucial to a happy user experience on your website. The Links section will help to create this. In the admin section go to 'Site Content' > 'Links'.

Here you can add new links to your site. These can appear in a number of places depending on which link category you add them to. The categories are:

• Top: These links appear right at the top of the site immediately after the title. These should be used for quick links to important areas eg. 'My Account', 'Login/Register', 'Checkout', 'Favourites' and so on. Some links you can create are special links that only display if the user is logged in or vice versa. Links to '/register.html' are only displayed if the user is logged out or has no account. A link to '/?logout=1' will create a log out link only visible when the user is logged in.
• Tabs: Tab link appears just after the top links and are typically used for a horizontal menu of links to the home page, special offers, bestseller categories etc…
• Sidebar1: These links appear in the HTML typically used to create a sidebar. On the default FreeStyle template these are in the left sidebar.
• Sidebar2: These links appear in the HTML typically used to create a sidebar. On the default FreeStyle template these are in the right sidebar.
• Bottom: A menu of links to appear in the footer section of the website. Here you would typically link to terms and conditions, a privacy policy and contact us pages.
• Bestsellers: A list of links that appears in the main content area on the home page. These should be products that you want to highlight either because they are your bestsellers or because you want them to be
• Image: Not really used on the FreeStyle template but could be implemented later if needed.

So to catch up you should now have a site with the main content+feature pages created and some neat little menus to enable you to find the most useful pages as quickly as possible.

This is usually done with a CSV upload under 'Site Admin' > 'Data Upload'.

With regards to uploading content there are few types to consider:

• Product variations: some products will be variations on a single product for example different sizes of clothing, colours etc… One 'Master Product' should be created that will serve as a collecting point for the variations. In the CSV create a column called not_available and mark the 'Master Product' as not_available using the number 1. This will prevent it being added to the shopping basket, meanwhile a dropdown of the variations will be available from the master product page.
• Anything that has a 'parent' or 'master product': You will need to upload the same CSV twice if any fields have a parent eg. a category or product variation.

Now that you have almost everything in place, you can carry on configuring your site. You have the following options:

• Private: Make your site private by requiring that users login first before they can use it. This is only advised for internal corporate webshops as regular consumers will not give out their details to use a site if they have seen nothing of it.
• Require registration: This can be handy if you want to force users to register their details on the site before they can go through the checkout process. The advantage to this improving their user experience next time by speeding up the whole process of shopping and payment. You may also get them to agree to your terms and conditions as part of the sign up process. The disadvantages are that the user may not want to store their information with you but still wants to purchase items. It is advisable to give users both options to increase your conversion rate.
• Allow order on account: This is an option for business sites. You can allow users with a customer account to use a budget to purchase goods which can be paid off by the customer's admin user.
• Disable basket: If you want to disable the shopping basket and treat the site as an enquiry only or catalogue listing site tick this box.
• Enable enquiry: This enables the enquiry basket feature. Much like the shopping basket this allows users to create an enquiry list and send it to you, you can then ring them to go through their requirements for example or simply send them a quote or instructions on how to proceed.
• Enable favourites: This activates the favourites feature of the site. You must create the favourites page first and check this box to allow users to add products to a list of favourite items. This is useful if people order the same thing over and over again or if they want to create a wishlist that they may wish to share with others.
• Allow zero: Whether to allow orders that cost £0.
• Hide zero: whether to hide zero priced products in products lists.