If you’ve got a business idea, why not get it off the ground with a little help from us? Our eShop and eBooking packages include everything you need to sell products or collect appointments for your service online, from the shop website and hosting to a shop admin area and tie-ins with payment gateways like PayPal and Sage Pay – from just £6.99 per month.

Short on time? Or just not sure where to begin?

Our Managed Setup service is perfect for you. We’ll happily work with you to get your shop up and running – just drop us a line and we can discuss your requirements.

First things first – the main changes:

Facebook integration to your shop – sell through the world’s largest social network

Use the world’s largest social network in order to increase your sales. Integrate your existing shop with a few click, from your Facebook fan page. Simply connect the Facebook application in the back office with your fan page, select the desired products for the shop and your shop will be ready on Facebook.

Optimized display for mobile devices

Mobile commerce is a force to be reckoned with in retail. That’s why ePages stores have an optimized display for nearly all mobile terminals available.

Without changing your settings, your online shop is automatically displayed on devices like the iPhone or the Galaxy Tab. The optimized display for mobile devices is easy to use for your end-customers and is independent of the resolution of the screen.

Central shop dashboard – find all your relevant information in one place

For any successful business, the ability to keep track of important information is vital – this applies to your eShop too.

That’s why we’ve implemented a new dashboard, where all your key information can be found. You can customize the Dashboard completely to suit your needs. You decide which widgets appear, and where they are placed.

In the near future we will develop more widgets and make them available to you. (We also plan to open the API so that third parties provide their own widgets easily).

Downloadable products are here!

You can now sell virtual products (e.g. pictures or music) using the downloadable product feature. The feature allows you to specify if the virtual product is available for a limited time period, or can be previewed before purchase (e.g. pre-listening to a song before downloading it).

The first thing to do is prepare your product images – you’ll need to make sure that they’re no larger than 800 x 600 pixels, though we’ve found that 600 x 600 pixels is optimum. You don’t need to worry about creating separate images for slideshows and thumbnails etc – the system will automatically scale the image you upload. Do make sure you don’t have any spaces or special characters, like umlauts, in the filename.

Once you’ve done this, head to the Content/Categories section of your shop’s back office and open file management. Create a new folder with a meaningful name – we’ll use ‘Import’ by way of example. Now upload the product images you’ve just prepared to this folder – you can upload multiple images at once by marking multiple files in the selection field.

Next, create the products in your shop – you can also use the Import/Export function to save time. Create a test product with all the necessary specifications, and then export the product data. You’ll receive a CSV file which can be used as a template for the remaining products. To create additional products, just fill out the CSV file.

There are two columns in the CSV file that you will need to use to assign the product images you just uploaded to the newly created products: “[ImageLarge]” and “[ImageSlideShowString]“. In the “[ImageLarge]” column, enter the path to the product image that will be used as the main image for the respective product. In our example, this would be: Import/ProductA_Image1.jpg.

In the “[ImageSlideShowString]” column, enter the file path to the images that will be used for the gallery in addition to the main image, separating the file paths using a semicolon. In our example, this would then be: Import/ProductA_Image2.jpg; Import/ProductA_Image3.jpg; Import/ProductA_Image4.jpg.

Once you’re done, save the CSV file and upload it back to your back office. The shop will now integrate the files from the ‘Import’ folder into the database and assign the product images accordingly. After it’s finished, you can delete the ‘Import’ folder in the file administration if you wish – files will no longer be needed.

Don’t overwhelm your customers

Your home page is the online equivalent of a shopfront – you can use it to win customers’ trust. Unfortunately, a lot of online merchants make the mistake of cluttering up their home pages with too much information. Consequently, customers can’t find what they’re looking for and end up leaving the site without making a purchase. So, don’t cram all your products onto your home page – instead, use it to set the stage with large-scale, high-quality and topic-specific images. You can also use your home page to draw attention to categories. You should use large-scale, topic-specific images here, too – you’ll find that manufacturers sometimes provide such images to merchants.

Accentuate your products

Use as many product photos as possible on product pages. Every image helps turn interested visitors into paying customers. Use merchants’ product images or – better yet – if you have a decent camera and lighting, take your own photos.

Products are typically photographed in front of a white background to make them stand out, and we also recommend that you use a white background for those sections of your online shop where you will present products.

Don’t forget to add flourishes of colour to your online shop, though! In menus or the page elements, perhaps, which appear near your products, to add a bit of visual interest to the page and draw attention to important items such as ‘buy now’ buttons or special offer flags. The colour manager by ePages is in the Design menu.

Make the most important elements easy to find

You should always place the most important items at the top of the screen – ideally, upper right. Users are accustomed to looking there for key information. You should also make sure that you have, clearly visible at the top of your online shop, a shopping basket and the product-search function.

If you want to convert interested parties to customers, you must ensure that people in your shop always know which step they must take next to complete the process of buying something. We therefore recommend using colour or a large format to emphasize buttons which are essential to the buying process. While you are selecting graphics for buttons, make sure you choose an icon set familiar to your customers. The symbol for “Add to shopping basket”, for example, should be instantly recognisable. Accepted methods of payment are also significant concerning the buying process. You should therefore prominently display the logos of all payment providers on every page.

In general, you should guide customers through your shop. A navigation bar and properly organised categories will help them to get oriented quickly. A “bread crumb” – in other words, showing the current menu item as a path – can also help customers. Because users look first to the footer (the section at the bottom of a web page) if they want to find mandatory information –such as a site’s legal notice or links to contact options – you should place such information in the footer.

Assuming you’ve followed the steps in our first article, here’s how to get your products onto the marketplace:

Specifying products

You can now enter those products which you wish to sell via Amazon in the “Products” tab in your eShop back office. Enter a product number in the corresponding field, and then save.

You may find it easier to use your shop’s clipboard to select products for Amazon Marketplace – just switch to the “Products/Products” menu, select products and use the drop-down menu to store them temporarily. Then return to the Amazon link and transfer all the products from your clipboard in just one click.

Associating products with Amazon’s offerings

You now need to associate the products you have added to the goods already available on the Amazon Marketplace. Click on “Complete” to specify these settings for each product. Please note: once you have created an association, it cannot be deleted so make sure you’re happy with it before saving.

You have various options for creating associations, but it’s easiest if you have already entered the EAN for the products as described in our last blog article. If you’ve done this, your shop will immediately recommend the appropriate product, as it is listed on Amazon Marketplace. You merely need to click on “Assign” to confirm the association.

If you have not yet entered a product’s EAN, you have other options. The ‘associated’ link will search Amazon Marketplace’s stock for the product name and then suggest various products – you just need to select the right one and confirm. Do make sure that you assign the right product and select the right version of it so that there are no complications in future with your customers. You should also keep in mind that once you have created an association, it cannot be deleted. It is therefore advisable to play it safe. You can also enter an EAN code after the fact, on the page for product associations.

After you assign a product, you can specify various settings for its placement in the marketplace, for example, you can set a different price for your product in the marketplace than that which is charged in your shop. In addition, you can describe the condition of the product. Is it new or pre-owned? Use a small informational text to let your Amazon customers know if the product shows any signs of use.

Offering product versions via Amazon

If you would like to link a product’s versions on Amazon, you must confirm the association for each version individually. As emphasized above, we strongly recommend that you use the EAN code to associate your product unambiguously with the corresponding offer on Amazon. Particularly in the case of product versions, it is inadvisable to blindly trust the results generated by the search function.

Processing of orders

If a customer purchases a product from you via Amazon Marketplace, you’ll receive a standard confirmation in the “Orders” menu. You can tell that an order was transacted via Amazon by means of the “Amazon payment” designation. Orders which come in via Amazon are automatically labelled with the status of “Paid”, because the customer has already made payment on Amazon. Amazon will only collect the customer’s money once the order has been shipped so place a check mark next to the order status of “Shipped” in order to notify not only your customer but also Amazon that you have sent out the purchase.

For every order transacted via Amazon Marketplace, you will see a link in the order’s details to Amazon Seller Central. You can verify here at any time whether the status of “Shipped” has been saved in Amazon’s system.

Amazon does not transfer money for each Marketplace order individually, but rather collectively – so you’ll receive a payment once every four weeks.

Creating new goods at Amazon

What to do when products in your shop are not listed on Amazon and you therefore cannot associate them with an existing item? In this (relatively uncommon) instance, you must create these new products via your account at Amazon Seller Central. Amazon provides extensive Excel lists which you must complete by providing all relevant product details as per the Marketplace’s requirements. You can access these templates via Seller Central’s help function, under “Templates for inventory-level files”.

You can also use Seller Central to submit new product images for an existing product. Keep in mind, though, that these images will become a standard component of the product description, and all merchants in the Marketplace can thus use them for the same items.

Existing Enterprise customers and new ones alike will find the new addition in their eShop backoffice area.

Here’s how to set it up:

Head to the “Marketing / Product portals” menu, place a check mark next to the Amazon Marketplace where you would like to sell your products and then save your settings.

You’ll obviously need to set up with Amazon Marketplace, too. Firstly, they require that you give an EAN (European Article Number) for each product. You should have received this from your supplier along with the usual product details, and you can enter it if you go to Settings on the “Prices/Warehouse/Shipping” tab:

Once you’ve added your EANs, create an Amazon seller account at Amazon Seller Central. You may find that you need to meet special requirements for certain categories of item or that there are seasonal restrictions on initial registrations.

When you’ve registered with Amazon, you’ll need to ask the Seller Services division to enable XML retrieval of your data. Find the contact form on Amazon Seller Central and send an e-mail under the “Inventory level” menu item requesting that the generation of XML order reports (including billing address and shipping address) be activated.

During the registration process, you will receive a log-in name, a password and a merchant token – you’ll need to enter these in your eShop back office. Just click the activated Amazon link in the list of product portals and follow the steps given.

We’ll talk you through how to associate your products with those already on the Amazon marketplace next week.

Order Processing

The “Orders” menu is pivotal. Under “Incoming”, you will find all recently placed orders that you haven’t yet processed. Under “Orders/Orders” menu, you will find an archive of all orders, and you can use the search function to locate orders that you’ve processed or completed. Click on any individual order for a closer look at it.

Order status

You can specify an order status for every order. This allows you to see at a glance whether, for example, you are still waiting for payment or if goods can be processed. An order’s status code also serves as the basis for automated customer email notifications which allow you to keep your customers updated on the status of their orders. For more information on e-mail events, please see the fifth article (Putting your eShop live) in this blog series.

Depending on which payment provider you choose, the status of an order can automatically change to “Paid” as soon as payment is deposited into your account with the provider. If you prefer to monitor payments manually, you’ll find an overview of transactions in the “Orders/Transactions” menu.

Batch processing

Would you like to reduce the time it takes to create invoices? Simply use your shop’s batch-processing function! Just mark all the invoices you want to process and then choose “Create documents” in the drop-down menu in order to generate all necessary papers. Links to logistics companies such as UPS  allow you to quickly create corresponding shipping labels and to request with just a few mouse clicks that goods be picked up.

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Search engine optimisation

Your eShop has been tailored to the requirements of search engines such as Google and Bing to ensure that people find you quickly. You can also create an XML site map under the “Marketing / Google registration” menu item in your eShop back office, so that the next time Google visits your shop it will read the XML file to obtain an optimal overview of your shop.

Short URLs, which are generated automatically for you, ensure that instead of a cryptic database number every category and every product gets a URL consisting of your shop’s domain and a category/product name. Thanks to a URL such as www.pharmacare-direct.co.uk/blood_pressure_monitors/Omron_M10 (created by one of our customers) Google can more precisely associate the page with the relevant search terms. Your customers also benefit from this feature, since such URLs in Google search results are more persuasive and thus more likely to be clicked. You can modify the short URL of any product or category by changing settings as follows:

In the “Description” sub menu on the same tab, you can also use HTML meta tags to present relevant product-related keywords to search engines.

Selling via product portals

Customers often use product portals such as Ciao, shopping.com and Google Product Search to find the best prices for a particular product and to read reviews written by fellow customers. To help you reach these customers, your eShop has been preconfigured to interact with several of the most common product portals. Simply access the “Marketing / Product portals” menu item to activate those portals you wish to use for advertising:

In the settings for a given product portal, you will see (at the top of the tab which appears) all the information you need to register your shop with a given provider. Click on the registration link to reach the portal page, where you can create a merchant account and post your shop’s URL.

During registration, the product portal will issue you a one-of-a-kind access ID or a user name and password. Enter this data into the appropriate area in your back office. Please make sure that you transfer all data correctly.

Now you just have to access the “Products” tab to define which products should be offered via a portal. Using the tray allows you to enter a lot of product numbers in one go. You can find more information about the tray in the first article in this blog series: A tour of your shop back office.

Certificates

In the Marketing menu, you will find several European certification providers such as TrustedShops and SafeBuy. After checking your shop, these providers will issue a certificate that you can integrate into your shop, thus demonstrating to potential customers that they will be in good hands. Your eShop already meets the technical requirements specified by certification providers, which paves the way for a quick and easy registration. Following successful certification, you can access the design menu to insert the corresponding logo as a page element on your website.

Cross-selling

Boost your average order value (AOV) by suggesting products which are similar to the goods customers have already selected – we’ve all seen those ‘customers who bought this also bought these’ promotions. You can either use the automatic cross-selling function (in the “Products / Product settings” menu) or assign suitable related products to each product in your settings. In the case of automatic cross-selling, the system supplies appropriate suggestions based on the shopping behaviour of other customers.

Newsletters and coupons

Use promotional coupons to create an incentive to buy. To create a voucher, access the “Marketing/Coupons” menu. Create a new campaign, give it a clear name such as ‘January Sale 2011′, and adjust the settings to suit.

You can specify percentage-based or cash value discounts, stipulate a minimum purchase amount or make your campaign a limited-time offer.

Would you like to use the same coupon for your campaign and, for example, insert it into a flyer? If so, specify that codes are valid for more than one purchase.

Now it is a matter of generating the codes for this campaign. Either enter an easy to remember code manually or have a quantity of your choosing generated automatically.

Now you just have to distribute the coupons to your customers. A really effective way is by including them in a newsletter that you can you send to existing customers and/or interested parties. To make your newsletter, access the “Marketing/Newsletter” menu.

Create a campaign—“January Customer newsletter”, for example. Click on Save and then on the new entry. Enter your sender data in the “General” tab and activate the campaign so that customers can subscribe to your newsletter.

Now write the e-mail itself in the “Newsletter” tab. In e-mail options, you can use an editor to conveniently enter and adapt the content.

Would you like to send each recipient their very own coupon code? If so, just link the newsletter with the corresponding coupon campaign. Insert a placeholder at the position in your e-mail where the coupon code should ultimately appear.

You can also specify a date for the e-mail to be sent or opt to send it manually.

Complete control with Google Analytics and etracker

Monitor the effectiveness of your marketing measures by integrating Google Analytics or etracker. Switch to the “Marketing” menu and then choose one of the providers.

You should see a link to the provider’s registration page and the information regarding your online shop that will be required for registration. Set up an account with the provider of your choosing and then enter the registration data they provide in your back office.

Once you’ve set up the tracking, you can check how many people visit your shop every day – or leave without making a purchase – as well as analyse your customers’ browsing habits, making it easier to respond to your customers’ needs.

Creating delivery methods

You will need to define at least one delivery method and its costs so that your customers will receive their orders. To do so, switch to the “Settings / Delivery and payment” menu in your shop’s backoffice. Create a new delivery method and specify a basis of calculation. You have a variety of options such as fixed price, number of products and value of shopping basket. If you want the system to calculate the shipping price based on the weight of products in the shopping basket, you must first ensure that you have set a per-unit weight for every product.

You can access the settings via “Complete”. Enter the costs for shipping here and switch the delivery method to “visible”.

Automated e-mails to customers

In your merchant back office, you can assign one of many status codes to every order placed in your shop. Status codes range from “Order seen” through “Paid” or “Ready to be shipped“ to “Delivered”. You can modify the status of any order by clicking on it and then placing a check mark next to the current status.

These various status codes ensure that you always have an overview of orders which still require processing, and they can also serve as the basis for automatic e-mail notifications which allow you to update your customers on the status of their orders.

If, for example, you specify an order’s status as “Processing”, then an e-mail is sent immediately to your customer—who will then see that their order will be delivered before long. Your customers will know that they are in good hands.

To activate automatic notifications and to tailor the corresponding e-mails to your preferences, click on “E-mail settings” in the “Settings” menu. On the “Events” tab, you can select the phases of an order which trigger automatic e-mails. Many more events—such as password changes or confirmations of dates—can be associated with automatic e-mail notifications. Use the Editor to adapt text for an e-mail.

Going live

You can now go live with your online shop. But first, activate your shop’s page cache to speed up surfing for your customers. To do so, either click on the red banner in the uppermost header of your back office or activate the page cache in the “Settings / General settings” menu. Once you’ve done that, you can throw open the doors to your shop in the “Status” submenu.

But don’t forget, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Check for yourself that your shop is functioning properly. Make a small purchase in your own online shop and complete every step of an order. Do not forget to make an actual payment and to verify that the money does indeed end up in your account.

So, two questions for you:

1) is there anything eShop/eBooking-related that you think we’ve missed?
2) now that we’ve worked some magic with eShop, what else would you like us to tackle?

Let us know – you can either leave a comment on this blog post, go and Like our Facebook page (it’s new, so we’re still working on it, but the more the merrier!) and start a discussion, or tweet us.