ShopSite 10 sp1 Global Navigation Feature

The new navigation feature in version 10 sp1 makes it easy for you, the merchant, to create “flyout” (also called “mouse-over pull-down”) menus for the top navigation bar on your website—without needing to know HTML or other computer codes. It allows you to present your pages by category on the site so that it is easier for the customer to find what they are looking for.

This feature is located under Preferences > Navigation in your ShopSite back office. You decide the name you want for each link in your menu (Note: it does not have to be the same as the page name). You also select where the link goes. The options given as you create your menu are: select a ShopSite page, or enter the URL for a non-ShopSite generated page, or your View Cart URL.

You can view a video tutorial for the navigation feature at the following URL:
https://www.shopsite.com/tutorial/preferences-navigation.html

Recurring Billing with Authorize.Net

Are you selling subscriptions for magazines or newspapers? Are you selling services which require monthly billing? In our Manger and Pro version 10 sp1 software, recurring billing is easy thanks to Authorize.Net.

After Automated Recurring Billing has been enabled on your Authorize.Net account (and in ShopSite under Commerce Setup > Payment > Configure Processor), products can be set up to use subscription-model pricing (Products > Edit Product Info). It is as easy as checking a few boxes and then deciding if or how you want to handle the following three items:

How often a customer will be billed (and an ending time, if applicable)
If there will be an initial trial price so customers can evaluate before billing
If there is a one-time fee attached (such as for set-up or installation).

Check out the help documentation for this at the following URLs:
-Authorize.Net help documentation
https://www.shopsite.com/help/10.1/en-US/sc/pro/payment.authorizenet.html
-Edit Product Info help documentation
https://www.shopsite.com/help/10.1/en-US/sc/pro/edit.product.info.html

Did You Know That?

/ – ShopSite is on Facebook and Twitter - Visit our Facebook page to see what's happening in the world of ShopSite. You can also follow us on Twitter with our ID ShopSite.
ShopSite has video tutorials to help those who do better visually. The complete list can be found here. Below is a list of our newest tutorials:
Don't forget to checkout our other help resources such as help documentation for your type and version of Shopsite (Click here).

Merchant Tip

Question:I want to encourage my customers to buy more when they shop. What are some things I can do?

Answer: Well, there are the obvious tactics such as gift certificates, coupons, product discounts, store wide discounts, rewards programs, and cross selling; but have you considered free shipping incentives? This is a feature which is included in our Manager and Pro packages. I do not mean to say that everyone should stop charging shipping, however, deals such as “free shipping for orders over $50” often prove to be profitable and a great way for up selling. There could be customers out there who would decide that it is worth it for them to buy just one more item so they will not have to pay shipping on the order.

Let's discuss how to set up free shipping. Go to Commerce Setup > Shipping in your ShopSite back office; then scroll down to free shipping.

Check the box to enable
Pick the minimum dollar amount before the customer qualifies
Decide whether this is based on the subtotal or the product total
Look over the name and message (change it if you want)
Select the countries you want to allow free shipping to. There is a box to the right of the country name which you need to check to enable free shipping to that country. Please note: the box on the left which says “use” is not for free shipping but for whether or not that country appears in the country drop down menu on the checkout pages.
Decide if there are any zip codes within the allowed countries which you do not want to allow free shipping to
Save changes and publish your store.

The Support Queue 1

Question:Question: can a Print button be included on ShopSite's Thank You receipt screen?

Answer: Yes. A print button on a web page is a pretty simple matter, it is just a JavaScript onClick function added to a link or image, like this:

You can easily include something like this on your ShopSite's receipt page by adding it to one of the text areas on the Commerce Setup -> Order System -> Thank You menu in your ShopSite backoffice, such as the 'Text at the bottom of the Thank You screen' field.

If you wanted to get much more complicated than this, such as indicating that certain items like images and navigation menus on the thank you page should be excluded in the printed version, then you would need to add a special

CSS section to the page and in it define these particular classes with a 'display: none' style. It's possible that this could also require a custom shopping cart template so that you could more easily surround the items you want to exclude from printing with specific CSS classes that you could define in the CSS section mentioned above.

The Support Queue 2

Question: I have a ShopSite v9 or v10 store with many (multiple thousands) of products and the shopper's search results page seems to be taking a long time to display, is there anything that can be done to speed it up?

Answer: If you use the Subproducts feature with many of your products to relate products to each other this could cause a slowdown in the display of the search results page. The latest maintenance release of ShopSite, 10 sp1 r1, contains a fix that will significantly speed up this display by adding additional database field indexes to the product/subproduct relationship fields. If you are experiencing this issue, you should request that your hosting provider or ShopSite reseller upgrade your store to this latest version. See also:
http://support.shopsite.com/KBase/questions/2522
"* fixes slow shopper searches on stores that have many products with subproducts assigned"

Designer Tip

Question: What are “more info pages”? How can I use this feature to help my site?

Answer:Let's begin with what more info pages are. In our ShopSite Manger and Pro software packages there is the ability to generate an individual product page for each of your products simply by checking a box. Once the box is checked and you publish your store, ShopSite turns the name and graphic for each product into a link to a page which only contains that product.

Now you are probably wondering what use this can be. Why do you need a separate page for each product? Why can't you just display all of the information on the page which lists all the products under that category?

Well, if your products have a lot of information that needs to be displayed then by placing the bulk of the information on the more info page you will accomplish two things: 1) your site will have a neat, ordered, and professional look to it and 2) you will be able to list more products on each page. The customer can browse for products and can click to view more information.

Another benefit of more info pages is their SEO advantage. ShopSite has fields in the back office (Pages > Edit Page Content > More Info Pages) which allow you to enter Meta keywords, a Meta description, and a file name for the more info page. You can also include it in your sitemap. These simple optimizations increase the likelihood of customers finding your products when they search the web.

Industry Articles

Tax and Shipping Before Checkout – ShopSite Does It Right!
http://www.lexiconn.com/blog/2010/01/tax-and-shipping-before-checkout-shopsite-does-it-right/
"It's no secret shoppers want as much information about their intended purchases before actually completing a sale. Yet many online stores continue to hide all the costs such as shipping and tax, or make the customer wade through a number of screens before revealing this information. Why?"

PCI Compliance – What Every Online Merchant Needs to Know (Part 1 of 3)
http://m2.atstuff.com/pci-compliance-%E2%80%93-what-every-online-merchant-needs-to-know-part-1-of-3/
"If you process credit card data you should be PCI compliant. This post is the first of three posts that talk about the what, how, and why of PCI Compliance."

Your Meta Descriptions Now Affect Your Google Rankings Again
http://ow.ly/ZrVC
"Meta descriptions (the text snippets of the webpage you see in search results) used to be an important ranking factor. Until not too long ago both Google and Yahoo! officially announced they no longer used Meta-descriptions in their search algorithms. But recent developments in Google's search algo bring Meta description back to life as a ranking factor."

Recently Added Knowledgebase Articles

The following articles were recently added to the support knowledgebase:

v10 sp1 r1 maintenance release fixes some problems with initial v10 sp1 version

Can't login to ShopSite backoffice after installing WordPress, Drupal, or other CMS software

Current Version of ShopSite

Latest Releases:

Version 10 sp1 r1 on Linux and FreeBSD
Version 10 r7.2 on Solaris and Windows (2000 and 2003)

To upgrade your ShopSite store, contact your authorized reseller hosting partner.