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Help Build A Dynamic Shopfront

Build A Dynamic Shopfront

Why you should create a Shopfront display

Your website shopfront is similar to a traditional retail store window display, a place where you promote special, new or featured products, and rotate products on a regular basis to keep return customers interested.

Your Shopfront has its own URL and is easy to remember: www.yourbusinessname.com.au/shop (of course, no spaces).

Your Shopfront display can differ greatly from your Shop's top-level product category displays where every product within the category is presented to your shoppers. So instead of displaying every product within a category, your Shopfront can be instructed to only display select products, categories or products with visual Product Flags 'On Sale', 'Featured' or 'New' - or any combination of these. This allows you to create a dynamic "window display" similar to those built by traditional bricks 'n' mortar retail shops; a high-profile place to showcase specific products

On this page

  1. Planning your Shopfront
  2. Populating your Shopfront with Products

FAQs

  1. What will customers see if my Shopfront Page is left empty?
  2. My Shopfront Products have disappeared. What happened?
  3. Once a Promotion Period expires, what happens to Products within my Shopfront that feature Product Flags?

Screen illustrations

Clicking this icon will display an illustration relevant to the step being described:   Click this icon to view illustrations

 

Planning your Shopfront

Tip: Product images

To place more product groups in your Shopfront, simply repeat steps 3 through 12 making sure that your mouse cursor is placed on a new line within the Content Editor beneath the previous yellow embedded shop-content rectangle.

What goes into your Shopfront should be approached in the same way as any sales campaign. Plan ahead and choose products relevant to your active advertising campaigns. If you advertise products in either print or Pay-Per-Click campaigns, use your Shopfront to promote those products for the duration of your campaign.

If you sell products that enjoy success during particular seasons of the year (such as fashion), try to incorporate some or all of those products in your Shopfront for that period.

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Populating your Shopfront with Products

Your Shopfront display can be as simple or as complex as you choose. You can instruct your Shopfront to display any number of products from any number of different product categories, and these can also include products using Product Flags. 

Follow these instructions to build your Shopfront. It is good practice to place short descriptive headings above each block of products such as, "This week's featured products" or "Don't miss these sale items", etc.

  1. Go to Dashboard > Click the Design navigation tab located on the far right of the Dashboard, next to the Preferences navigation tab.
  2. Select the Shopfront navigation tab. Unless editing an existing Shopfront, the Content Editor region should be blank.
  3. Within the Content Editor, write a heading that reflects the product group you plan to display, e.g. "New Products for 2013" or any suitable heading that announces the product group. Style your heading by positioning your mouse cursor anywhere within the line of heading text then select Heading 1 from the WYSIWYG Toolbar ’s Format drop-down menu list.
  4. Within the Content Editor, position your mouse cursor on a new line after your heading. This is where your first group of products will appear on the page. 
  5. Click the Insert Module Content gold star icon located on the WYSIWYG Toolbar. The Module Manager pop-up window will appear.
  6. From the Select Module drop down list, select Shop. A new configuration bar will display drop-down menu lists and check boxes.
  7. From the Category drop-down list, select the product category containing the products you want to place on your Shopfront page.
  8. From the Formatting Style drop-down menu list, selecting Default will display products from the selected Category. Selecting Sub Category List will display sub-category links (i.e. not products, but sub-categories within the top-level category selected in the previous step).
  9. Enter the # of Products you want to display from the selected category.
  10. Check one or more boxes for On Sale, Featured or New to display products within the selected category that have active promotion Product Flags (see Shop Products for detailed instructions on using Product Flags ).
  11. Click the Preview button to review how your products will display. To make changes, simple edit the options provided then click the Preview button once again to view your changes.
  12. Once satisfied with your choices press the OK button to save your changes. The Module Manager window will close and a yellow rectangle will appear in the Content Editor signifying that embedded shop content is present on the page 
  • To place more product groups in your Shopfront, simply repeat steps 3 through 12 making sure that your mouse cursor is placed on a new line within the Content Editor beneath the previous yellow embedded shop-content rectangle.

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What will customers see if my Shopfront Page is left empty?

Unless you direct your customers to your Shopfront's URL www.yourbusinessname.com.au/shop , they're unlikely to know it's there. Otherwise a blank page is displayed within your website's design template.

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My Shopfront Products have disappeared. What happened?

It is likely that your products were using the Product Flags promotion feature and the promotion end-date has expired . To automatically have your Shopfront "call up" those products again, move each product's promotion end-date ahead. To prevent this happening in future, closely monitor a product's promotion end-date or record end-dates in suitable spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel®, etc.

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Once a Product Flag Promotion period expires, what happens to Products within my Shopfront?  

If you have instructed the Module Manager to display products on your Shopfront page (or any other page) with Product Flags then those products will disappear from your Shopfront page after their promotion period expires (see above). We recommend that you create a simple reminder system such as a spreadsheet or diary to keep track of which products are being promoted, and to eliminate the possibility of having empty regions on your Shopfront or promotion pages.

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