XpertMart (tm)
Web Store

Configure Web Store

    The configuration of the XpertMart web store is done in two places. Most of the configuration is done in the XpertMart main station and then synchronized up to the web store. The very basic configuration of the web store database and its synchronization options are done directly on the web in the web store's online configuration module.

    To set the Web Store configuration options you select the Web Store Configure option from the Configure menu as you can see here below:


    When you choose the Web Store configure option you will see this window:



    The first two options have to do with which on hand stock is to be offered on your web store. Since XpertMart is a multi or chain store system, you may have the inventory of more than one store in your XpertMart main. If you check "Use Stock of all stores on web store" then if you have an item in stock in any store it will also show up on the web store. If you do not check this first box, then in the second space you need to write the store number whose stock will be offered on the web store.

    You can choose whether to show in the web store only those items with on hand stock or whether to show all items on your web store. If you basically order from your vendor what customers order from you then you want to publish all of your items, irregardless of  whether you have any in inventory at the time.

    If on the other hand you really want to sell what you have in stock, then you can choose to only show on your web store those items you have in stock. If you put all orders in invoices then XpertMart immediately deducts sales from stock  so that your web store only shows the items actually in stock.

    The option "Only permit order of items with stock" can be used independently of the previous settings regarding what items should be shown on the web store. If you check this box then the customer will only be able to order or buy things that are actually in stock.

    "Show quantity in stock", if checked will allow the customer to see the quantity of the item he is about to order that you have in stock. If you do not check this then the customer will only see texts that inform him whether the item is in stock or not. These messages are configured below.

    The option "Show stock by stores" is very useful if you want use your web store to promote shopping in your brick and mortar stores. If you select this option then the customer can see whether the item he is looking at is available in one of the store locations.

    The option "Show zero quantity of stock by store" applies if you are showing stock by stores. If this box is checked and a store does not have any stock of the item the customer is looking at then a zero is shown. If you do not check this box then if a store does not have any stock of the item it is simply not listed in the list of stores.

    Last of all you can configure the texts to use in regards to stock. These four fields are pretty self explanatory.



    You must also specify the price list to use for the prices on your web store. XpertMart will use the list price in the items catalog for the normal prices. It will look at the price list you specify as the actual sale prices. If the price in the specified price list is less than the price in the items catalog, then this price will be shown as a sale price.

    Show gift registry will activate the gift registry functionality of the web store.

    The following settings affect the labels of the buttons that appear on the main page of the web store.

    The Home button text is the text that will appear on the button that takes the customer to the start of the web store.

    The Client login button text is the label that will appear on the button the client will use to login from the home page.

    The Shopping Cart button text is the label that will appear on the shopping cart button.

    Selecting the round radio button "Sales go directly to an invoice" will have the web store put all sales directly on an invoice. This has the effect of immediately removing the items sold from the inventory on the web store. The credit card or other form of payment is immediately charged in this case.

    If you choose to have sales go directly to an invoice then you can select the Invoice type to use for web store sales. You could for example create an invoice type called "web sales".

    In the same fashion you can select the Invoice flag to use on the invoices made by web sales. You could have an invoice flag called "web sales".

    Selecting the round radio button "Sales go to a Sale Order" will have the web store put all sales onto a sale order. Sale orders do not remove the items on the order from the inventory. The credit card or other form of payment is not charged in this case. You would process these sale orders once they are synchronized back to the main or a store. You would proceed to make an invoice for the Sale Order, after either making sure you have the merchandise or ordering it from your vendor. When you make the invoice you would charge their credit card or other form of payment as is standard practice.

    Selecting the round radio button "Sales go to a Corporate Sale Order" will have the web store put all sales onto a corporate sale order. Corporate Sale Orders do not remove the items on the order from the inventory. The credit card or other form of payment is not charged in this case. Once these Corporate Sale Orders are synchronized back to the main you can use the normal Corporate Sale Order tools to create Sale Orders for different stores based on their on hand stock. You can also use the Corporate Sale Order tools to create purchase orders to order stock needed to fill the CSOs. Once the Sale Orders created from the CSOs are synched to the corresponding store you would proceed to make an invoice for the Sale Order. When you make the invoice you would charge their credit card or other form of payment as is standard practice.

    If you have a chain of stores the web store could be a virtual store if you wish. For example if you have four stores, then the web store could be store number five. In this case you would transfer merchandise from one or more of the brick stores to the virtual web store five to cover the merchandise that you are going to invoice from a Sales Order or have already invoiced directly on the web store.

Notification of Sales

     The web store can be configured to send a copy of the invoice or sale order of the sale to an e-mail address you specify in either image or HTML format. In addition to this, since the Corporate Sale Order, Sale Order or Invoice will be synched to either the main or a remote then you can run reports and see what web store sales have been made.

    The final box allows you to choose whether you will activate the Promotion Coupon page on checkout. If you activate this then your web store customers can take advantage of special promotions you create for them.




    You must select how you want to handle Colors, Sizes and Second Sizes. There are two basic options specified by the two circles that can be checked.

    The first option titled "Use separate menus for colors and sizes" produces in the Web Store a menu to select the color, another menu to select the size and still another menu to select the second size if the style uses second sizes.

    The other option titled "Use same menu for colors and sizes" only uses only one menu in the Web Store, it produces a menu entry for every existing combination of color, size and second size (if the style uses second sizes). An example of a menu entry in this case would be:

                                        Blue / 32 / Wide

    The advantage of using separate menus for color, size and second size is that you normally would have just a few options in each menu. For example if you have three colors, then there will only be three options on the color menu. if you have six sizes, then likewise the size menu will only have six options, and finally if you only have two second sizes then the second size menu will only have two options. If on the other hand you use the same menu for colors and sizes, then you would  have a menu with 36 entries in it. (3 x 6 x 2 = 36).

    If you choose to use separate menus you can select what each menu entry will be called in the Web Store. For example if you are selling jeans you might want to have the Sizes Label be called Waist and the Second Sizes Label be called Length.

    If you opt to have only one menu then you can decide with the label on the menu will be called. For example Color / Size / Second Size, or Color / Waist / Length.
    Also if you opt to have only one menu it is important to configure the separator XpertMart (tm) should use to separate Color, Size and Second Size. We strongly suggest that you use " / ", that is Space, Slash, Space.





XpertMart Classifications

    It is important to understand the classification system used in XpertMart to classify styles in order to comprehend the options you have in sending your data to your web store.

    Each style belongs to a department. Each department in turn belongs to a line, class, subclass and type. This means that each style belongs (or can belong) to a line, class, subclass, type and department. The department name is actually a concatenation of the line, class, subclass and type names. For example if a department belongs to the Men's line, the Shoe class, the Casual subclass and the Loafer type, then the department name would be: Men's Shoe Casual Loafer.

    While this is a super classification system, depending on what you are selling, then you may only want your shoppers to pick the line (Men's), then the Class (Shoes) and then see the 10 to 20 departments that are from this line / class combination.

    As you will see below, this is totally configurable so you can use whatever you want on your web store.

Navigation Options

    In the XpertMart web store  you can let your customers navigate through your web store in four different ways or via four different dimensions. These four dimensions are: Categories of  Merchandise, Brands of Merchandise, Collections of Merchandise or Sales Merchandise.



    The categories settings section allows you to decide if you want customers to be able to navigate your store by merchandise category and how this navigation should work.

    You can decide if you want to have the shop by categories appear in the web store as a single option represented by a single button. If you want the categories to show up as a single option under a single button then you need to specify the text that will be on the button and also the text that will appear if they click on the categories button.

    The next five options determine what levels of classifications of XpertMart (tm) the customer will click down through if they choose to navigate by merchandise category. You normally would not want to use all five of these. Maybe lines, classes and then jump to departments. You could also just use Departments. But you can use this as you wish.

    Last of  all you can choose the color of the buttons you want to use for the categories navigation.



    The brands settings section allows you to decide if you want customers to be able to navigate your store by brands and how this navigation should work.

    You can decide if you want to have the shop by brands appear in the web store as a single option represented by a single button. If you want the brands to show up as a single option under a single button then you need to specify the text that will be on the button and also the text that will appear if they click on the brands button.

    The next five options determine what levels of classifications of XpertMart (tm) the customer will click down through if they choose to navigate by brands. You normally would not want to use all five of these. Maybe lines, classes and then jump to departments. You could also just use Departments. But you can use this as you wish.

    Last of  all you can choose the color of the buttons you want to use for the brands navigation.



    The collections settings section allows you to decide if you want customers to be able to navigate your store by collections and how this navigation should work.

    You can decide if you want to have the shop by collections appear in the web store as a single option represented by a single button. If you want the collections to show up as a single option under a single button then you need to specify the text that will be on the button and also the text that will appear if they click on the collections button.

    The next five options determine what levels of classifications of XpertMart (tm) the customer will click down through if they choose to navigate by collections. You normally would not want to use all five of these. Maybe lines, classes and then jump to departments. You could also just use Departments. But you can use this as you wish.

    Last of  all you can choose the color of the buttons you want to use for the collections navigation.



    The sale prices settings section allows you to decide if you want customers to be able to navigate your store by sale prices and how this navigation should work.

    XpertMart will use the list price in the items catalog for the normal prices. It will look at the price list you specify as the actual sale prices. If the price in the specified price list is less than the price in the items catalog, then this item will be included in the sale prices navigation.

    You can decide if you want to have the shop by sale prices appear in the web store as a single option represented by a single button. If you want the sale prices to show up as a single option under a single button then you need to specify the text that will be on the button and also the text that will appear if they click on the sale prices button.

    The next five options determine what levels of classifications of XpertMart (tm) the customer will click down through if they choose to navigate by sale prices. You normally would not want to use all five of these. Maybe lines, classes and then jump to departments. You could also just use Departments. But you can use this as you wish.

    Last of  all you can choose the color of the buttons you want to use for the sale prices navigation.

Web Store Images

    You can determine the sizes of the images to use in the XpertMart web store and whether you want images to be enlarged in any case. This is under the Web Store Images configuration as seen below.



    The first check box is to decide if you will allow the web store to enlarge images. Images that are enlarged usually show up with poor quality and often pixeled. If you check this box, then images will never be enlarged. Also not that if images are not enlarged then you can determine your maximum image size in pixels based on the size of the image itself.



    The next option is to determine the size or maximum size in pixels of the Catalog Header images. In the example above the image to the left of the word "Women's" is the catalog header image.




    Another option is to determine the size or maximum size in pixels of the Catalog Body images. In the example above the images to the left of the words "Children's" and "Men's" are the catalog body images.



    The third option is to determine the size or maximum size in pixels of the Items Header images. In the example above the image to the left of the word "Kalanda" is the Items Header images.


    The third option is to determine the size or maximum size in pixels of the Items Header images. In the example above the image to the left of the word "Kalanda" is the Items Header images.



    The final option is to determine the size or maximum size in pixels of the Shopping Cart images. In the example above the image below the word "Kalanda" is the Shopping Cart image.

    Experiment with image sizes and decide which works best for you.

Online Configuration Options

    Some basic options of the XpertMart web store must be setup directly on the web store server. To enter the configuration section of your XpertMart web store you add the following to your store's URL: "/config/home". If your store's URL is "www.mystore.com" then the config URL would be "www.mystore.com/config/home".  Once you go to this URL you will see on the left side the following buttons:



    If you click on the "Configuration Login" button you will then see a login screen as shown here:



    Your webmaster will assign you the User Name and Password to use to enter the web store configuration module. Once you enter a correct User Name and Password you will see the following icons for the configuration options.



    The Reload button is very important. If you make any changes in the configuration and you want to make sure these are activated you should click on the Reload button.

    If you click on the General icon you will see the General Configuration options. The online General Configuration options are identical to the configuration options under Configure - File in the normal XpertMart application. The only difference is that here the format is HTML instead of the normal application format. Another difference is that instead of folder tabs for each section here you have a grey bar with the name that would normally appear on the folder tab.

    If you do not want to make any changes simply click on the Cancel button. If you make any changes click on the Apply button so that the changes will be updated in the configuration. As the next step you will have to click on the Done button.



    If you click on the Synchronize icon you will see the following Synchronize Configuration page.



    Within the Synchronize Configuration if you click on the General Synchronize button you will get the following configuration page:



    This configuration is exactly like the synch configuration option under synchronize in the normal XpertMart application. The only difference is that here the information is displayed in HTML format. Also instead of having an Ok button, it has an Apply button to save the changes you make.




















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