Web Shop Manager News

Easy to Update Website Slideshow

Creating a slideshow for your eCommerce site pages, or home page is incredibly simple using Web Shop Manager™ (WSM) as your content management system (eCommerce CMS). Photo slideshows can be used in a variety of ways to get the attention of site visitors and emphasize special features of the eCommerce site.

For instance, a photo slide show can be used to showcase a new product, or a popular one.  A slideshow located above the fold (shown without a site visitor having to scroll down on the page) is a great way to help people quickly identify what makes your products or services unique.

In addition, contests or special promotions including a coupon code could be highlighted in a slide and then hyperlinked to a site page or eCommerce blog post for more information and details.

Furthermore, if you offer free shipping, or quantity discounts be sure to mention them in the slideshow in order to increase adoption from your customers. Slides could also be made for the seasons and simply hidden when not in use.

As an eCommerce merchant it is your job to explain to your customers as quickly and clearly as possible what makes you different from the competition and why they should chose to work with you. Photo slideshows can help creatively and graphically explain the differentiating facts and put you one step in front of the competition. While helping your customers gain insight into why they should buy from you, slideshow titles can also be SEO optimized to help get found in search engines and bring even more relevant traffic to your eCommerce website.

Creating Slideshows for your eCommerce Site

In order to help our clients be as successful as possible with their eCommerce endeavors WSM is committed to providing tools that are simple, easy, and effective.  Time is finite and the learning process should be short and sweet.  Putting you in complete control of your eCommerce website is something that we take pride in, and make a high priority.  Adding slideshows to your eCommerce website can be a fun, interactive way to engage site visitors and help lead them toward conversion.

Utilizing WSM to its full extent is empowering and once you start to get a feel for how to create slideshows there will be no stopping you!

Creating your Photo Album & Preparing Graphics for your Photo Slideshow

The Photo Gallery Module included with WSM allows you to create photo albums that can be displayed on dedicated site pages, or embedded within content or on the homepage in the form of a slideshow.

To begin to create your slideshow highlight Modules, Click Photo Gallery from your WSM dashboard.

To add a new album, click the Add Album button.

The Add Album screen is discussed in detail below. After you create your album you can return, make changes, and add photos. It is not necessary to have all of your photos ready to upload before you create your album.

Each numbered item is discussed below.

1.Title – This is the name for your album. This name should describe where your album is used and

for what purpose i.e. Home Page Slide Show. Optimize the title for search engines to help get found in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

2. Description – Use the description for additional information about the album. Use this field for reference notes for coworkers.

3. Priority – Priority sets the order the album is displayed in the gallery. Higher priority albums are

placed before items with a lower priority.

4. Parent –This is similar to creating folders and sub folders on your computer. This is useful if have several slide shows such as holiday, or special promotions. If this is the case, you may want to create an album named Slide Shows and add sub albums for each individual show.

5. Template – Several site page templates may have been created for you by the WSM web design team.  If so, you can specify which template is to be used with this drop down.

6. Hidden – Slide shows are special albums used in conjunction with a program on your site (which

the WSM staff will setup for you). If you do not plan to use this album for any other purpose than

Slide Shows with Web Shop Manager, you should select Yes.

7. Add Album – Once you have provided the required information click the Add Album button to

create and save your album. You can always edit the album later if you need to make changes.

Organizing Graphics in your Photo Album

There are many great photo editing tools available to you.  If budget is a concern, try using free tools such as, Sumo Paint, or gimp.  Sumo Paint, and gimp are intuitive and can help you to easily crop, resize, or enhance photos to include in your slide show.  It is important to have slides that share the same dimensions to eliminate skewing, or distortion.  The easiest way to find out what size of graphic you need is to look at an existing slide created by WSM.  If you are using Mozilla Firefox, simply right click, and click on ‘view image info’.  Pixel dimensions will be displayed in a dialogue screen.  If you are in Internet Explorer, right click, and click on ‘properties’ to view pixel dimensions.

Custom photography would be fantastic to include in your slideshow, however if this is not an option for you, take a look at royalty free photo sites like istockphoto.com. Professional looking photos can help differentiate your site from your competitors and will help convey your message graphically. In some cases this can mean the difference in reaching your target market, or missing them completely. 

Adding Photos to your Homepage Slideshow

Once you have made the appropriate changes to your photos, upload them to the slideshow album already created. Here is a brief overview of the buttons available in the Photo Gallery. They are located to the left of each album name.

This icon will allow you to edit the information you entered when you first created the album.

This icon will display sub-albums, if any, that are assigned to this album.

Use this icon to access the photos you have already uploaded to the album and to add photos.

This icon will display the album as a web page. You will not display the album to your viewers in this format.

You can add photos two different ways, individually or multiple files at the same time. Both are available from the same Add Photo screen.

To add photos, as mentioned above, click the   icon.

Adding the Slideshow to your Homepage

In addition to preparing your photos, and then your photo albums for the slideshow there is one more item that needs to be in place for the photo slideshow to be completely functional. This component is called a Widget. The Widget will include parameters that control how the slide show is displayed to your customers.

After reviewing this section if you need assistance with setting up the widget, please contact the WSM support staff.

First, what is a Widget?

Widgets are small programs that make an application or service perform in a specific way. They allow users to access applications without  in-depth knowledge of what is happening behind the scenes. You will need to place a small piece of widget Code for your album to function as a slide show. The slide show can function with a few basic settings. The only code you need to change is the ID and the height of your images, see example below. The ID identifies which photo album you want to use for this slide show. You also need the parameter for slideshow. The parameter is what tells the widget to display the album as a slide show.

To determine the ID for the photo album from within your eCommerce dashboard, highlight Modules and click Photo Gallery. Look in the ID column for the album you created and note the ID number.

To add the widget code to your Site Page, highlight the code below, press Ctrl C to copy, while editing the predetermined Site Page, place your cursor where you would like the slideshow to appear on the front end, then press Ctrl V to paste. Delete the 123 ID and type the ID number for the photo album you have created for the slideshow.

{{ widget name='widget_cycle' gallery='true' id='123' show_prev='false' show_next='false' cycle_controls_top='true' instance='_1' imgsize='F' width='737' height='279' cycle_timeout='8000' cycle_speed='200' cycle_fx='fade' }}

Additional Modifications to your Website Slideshow

You can add additional parameters to your code to change the way your slide show functions and appears. Each setting is described below.

Required Parameters:

gallery: determines that the gallery module is to be used for this widget.
Required value: gallery='true'

instance: recommended to use only if there are one or more instances of the widget that need to be styled differently. It adds a unique div id value to the <ul> tag
Values: numeric or alpha
Example: instance='_myslideshow'

limit: must set a limit on the number of images that get loaded to the slideshow. Max recommended is 5
Values: numeric
Default: unlimited
Example: limit=5

Control the animation and pagination of the slideshow:

cycle_fx: this controls the transition animation between slides. Most of the effects listed here will work: http://malsup.com/jquery/cycle/browser.html for list of effects
Default: fade
Example: fx='slideX'

cycle_timeout: Time between the fades in milliseconds
values: milliseconds
Default Value: 3000 - which equates to 3 seconds
Example timeout = '2000'

cycle_speed:  Fadingspeed
Values: in milliseconds
Default Value: 1000
Example: speed = 2500 - which equates to 2.5 seconds

height: Height of the containing element
Values: Any css-height-value such as px, em, % - recommend doing px value
Default Value:120px - which equals the default thumbnail height
Example: height = '315px'

Pagination Controls:

cycle_pager: determines to show pagination controls
Default: true
Example: cycle_pager='false' - will remove pagination controls

show_prev - used to hide previous button
Default Value: True
Example show_prev='false'

show_next - used to hide previous button
Default Value: True
Example: show_next='false'

cycle_controls_top: move pagination controls to the top. Controls are defaulted to show under the slideshow of images.
Default Value: false
Example: cycle_controls_top='true'

cycle_pager_thumb: pagination links can be the thumbnails of the images
Default Value: false
Example: cycle_pager_thumb='true'
Related parameter:
img_thumb - size of the thumbnail.
Values: T=thumbnail, M=medium, F=fulsize
Default=T
Example: img_thumb='M'

cycle_pager_name: pagination links can be the Name of the image
Default Value: false
Example: cycle_pager_name='true'

cycle_skin_overlay: pagination controls are overlayed on top of theslideshow. Only the Prev and Next links are present.
Default: false
Example: cycle_skin_overlay='true'

Control Link of the images:

The default setting is to use the URL places in the URL field when creating the album image. But you have other options as needed.

link_image: link to the photo view in the album
Default: false
Example: link_image='true'

lytebox: open up the image in a lytebox popup
Default: false
Example: lytebox='true'

Other Parameters:

show_info: show the description of the image
Default: false
Example: show_info='true'

Increase Conversions with Photo Slideshows

Photo Slideshows have been used by eCommerce industry leaders to effectively promote products, and increase sales. Create your own professional looking website slideshow in a matter of minutes with WSM!

If you are looking for a Content Management System & eCommerce Web Design Company to take your business concept and help transform it into a selling machine, contact Web Shop Manager today. We take care of the details so you can concentrate on your e-business.

Have you seen WSM in action yet?  Take a moment to sign up for your own LIVE demonstration.

eCommerce Competitor Analysis Report

A marketing plan should be an integral part of your eCommerce business’ strategy.  There are many ways to start thinking about a marketing plan however; there are two very different schools of thought.  The first is to make decisions based on instinct, while being influenced as little as possible by outside sources.  Do not look at eCommerce competitors, and shoot from the hip. 

The second looks at eCommerce competitors with an analytical eye, breaking down campaigns, and messages to determine where there is room for improvement.  In my experience the most effective way to determine a course of action is by looking at where others have gone, and then making the best decision based on a significant amount of research.

Look for Opportunities

In order to maintain our status as the most comprehensive Web Design Solution, part of our premium eCommerce Web Design Package includes a Competitive Marketing Analysis.  The Competitive Marketing Analysis will assist in providing information about your current or under construction website, amongst a group of peers.  We will also look for any buzz happening currently about your company or brand online, and help you determine where it would make sense to maintain online profiles.  In other words, help to specify where your time and efforts will be the most effective online. 

The first portion of the report will examine Customer Experience, or how your customers are led through the site, and how that effects conversion.  After all, the point of eCommerce is to make money.  Any measure that you can take to increase online sales will be worth looking at further.

In addition, WSM will examine Search Engine Optimization SEO including organic and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.  We will include information regarding Meta data and how to use it properly, as well as a glimpse at what your competitors are doing in terms of PPC campaigns.

The third component of the Competitive Marketing Analysis will include a Social Media assessment.  This portion will take into account your current profiles, if any exist, as well as recommendations for profiles including approximate time requirements to help budget appropriately.  You can also expect some tips and tricks, and great examples of jobs well done to learn from.

Looking at what others have done in terms of Customer Experience, SEO, and Social Media will reduce the learning curve and provide relevant examples of what is working well, and what can be improved upon.  This report will provide you with a road map, and a tremendous amount of information to help with your online marketing efforts.

How do you Define Goals if you don’t Know Where you are Starting From?

Without establishing a baseline there will be no way to understand where you should go from here in terms of Internet Marketing.  By assessing your current online presence, and that of a peer group, you will gain a solid understanding of how to help make your company more successful online.  This 20+ page report is an invaluable resource to help solidify your online presence.  This report will help you combine the phenomenal eCommerce features that WSM has with some examples of use that will take your eCommerce business to the next level in no time.

Over the years we have learned what differentiates successful businesses online.  Using that knowledge base we design websites to our client’s specifications making suggestions along the way.  If you need fantastic eCommerce web design & development to set apart your company or brand, look no further for the boutique style web design firm that will take your goals and help them become a reality.  Take the next step and complete our free webdesign quote form, or request a free website analysis to have a small taste of what you can come to expect from an eCommerce partner like WSM.

Fashion eCommerce is a large and continuously growing market.  It is easily accessible for anyone with Internet capabilities.   This saves customers time and allows them to find things worldwide that they would not normally have access to.  Anyone can sell their fashion retail products online once they have an established website.  For more details on how to start a fashion website, please refer to our previous fashion blog post, “What to Know Before Starting Your Own Fashion Website”

Once you have a fashion website established, it is time for you to start thinking about how to market your products online and bring customers to your site to purchase those products.  Not only do you want to have your products listed, but you also need to find a way to set your products apart from similar products on other websites, for we all know there are many brands and businesses in the fashion industry.

What Features Help Sell Products on a Fashion Website?

Along with listing your products in a catalog on your fashion apparel website, it is important to find ways to further help your customer find what they are looking for, or help them find something similar.  If a customer can’t find what they are looking for within thirty seconds, they will leave your fashion website and look elsewhere.  We need to think about ways to prevent them from leaving.  Some eCommerce modules to consider include:

Live Chat which allows an eCommerce customer to click on a button on your website, which will alert your customer support, the customer can then ask the questions they may need to take the final step in purchasing a product. The customer support, in return, can answer questions as quickly as they are received.  If clothing is an item that will be sold on the fashion eCommerce website, it is important to know that the #1 reason why people stop short of purchasing is concern about proper fit.  If there is a customer service representative available to chat with the customer while they are looking at the product, they will have the ability to explain how it fits best and some things about the fit that they want to consider when buying.  Reassuring the customer will help to encourage the sale.

Ratings and Reviews offer an opportunity for new customers to see what previous customers thought about the product that they may be considering purchasing.  On each product, there will be a review below the description, which will show what the past customer’s opinion of that product.  This could help with a sale, especially when they are indecisive about making the purchase.  It will increase their confidence in the product and give them the extra push to follow through.  For example, if your customer wants to purchase a handbag online, they may want to be assured that the product is durable and nicely made.  If there was a previous customer who also bought that handbag and wrote a review, they would be able to see that the customer was very happy with their purchase and pleased with the quality.  This may be the extra boost that your new customer would need to make the purchase.

As well as listing your products on your own fashion eCommerce site, you also want your products to be searchable on other websites.  Shopping Data Feeds work on a “pay-per-click” basis, like Google AdWords.  Using Shopping Data Feeds, you pay for specific words that relate to your products or business based on your choosing the words and how much you want to pay for them per click.  You are only liable to pay for it if a customer clicks on it to go to your website.

Another option is using free shopping feeds like Google Shopping, which lists your product with similar products for your customers compare prices and products side by side.  This tool is free and beneficial for all products.  In addition, Web Shop Manager (WSM) automatically updates your product listings nightly.

Cross-Sell/ Upsell is a great tool to use when you want to show the customer a similar product to the one they are viewing.  For instance, if the customer is viewing a summer dress, you may want to recommend sandals that would work well with the dress, or you could suggest a different type of summer dress.  Cross-selling offers an opportunity to sell more than the one item that the customer was initially considering purchasing, which of course leads to increased eCommerce sales.

How easy is it to Manage an Online Shopping Website?

Deciding to start an online fashion website is a huge decision.  You are probably right where I once was, trying to figure out how you were going to juggle all the business, and creative tasks.  Learning to manage an eCommerce website can seem overwhelming.  Well, it could be overwhelming unless you use WSM as your fashion eCommerce Content Management System (eCommerce CMS).  I know you will be as amazed as I am at how quickly you can add content to your photo gallery, eCommerce fashion blog, and add events to the fashion calendar. 

When you are ready to start thinking about an eCommerce solution that includes fashion website design with a hosted shopping cart remember WSM.  Contact WSM today to schedule your free live demonstration to see for yourself how easy the WSM, our eCommerce CMS is to use. 

Brooke Nevins

Bcat Threads

The best Integrated Content Management System just got better...

Over the last six months Web Shop Manager^TM (WSM) has received some serious improvements. We believe that you will find that our Content Management System (eCommerce CMS) is the most comprehensive, easy to use CMS out there. We are continuously working on adding more features, and fine tuning WSM to help our clients run their shopping carts more efficiently, and to make more money.

Order Management for eCommerce Stores

Order processing and shipping are major component of an eCommerce website's effectiveness. In a continuing effort to help our eCommerce thrive, we spend a considerable amount of time listening to our clients, and responding to their comments and suggestions. Just one example is how we have streamlined the eCommerce order processing function even more. Now you will find that when 'Will Call' is selected as the shipping method for your local customers, tax is added and the cost of shipping is eliminated.

For those shopping cart items that must be shipped via LTL or truck freight, business owners can choose their own custom message to convey how those special circumstances will be handled. This eliminates customer confusion, and will ensure them that they will be contacted, and by whom.

Within the integrated basic shipping configuration you can specify which areas of the world you are willing to ship to, including the choice to ship to the continental US only.

Using the WSM FAQ module you can create a clean looking, content filled, question and answer style page for all your checkout and shipping policies. Effective use of these pages will help minimize customer confusion, customer service inquiries, and can be easily accessed throughout the checkout process.

eCommerce business owners have more control than ever over order processing. They can capture payments or issue refunds for an entire charge from within WSM using Authorize.net. In addition, for special circumstances, charges can be applied to more than one credit card, or, when adjustments need to be made to the order after the checkout process, products can be added, or deleted from the order with a push of a button.

Customer Management for eCommerce Shopping Carts

Insight into your customers buying habits, including first and last products purchased, can be incredibly helpful when you are organizing up-sell/ cross-sell product promotions, and in developing targeted marketing campaigns. Using the CSV Data Import/Export, customer statistics, orders, and inquiries can be easily exported for further examination.

From your CMS dashboard you can now have the ability to not only see a list of inquiries, but to mark them with their appropriate status. The status column will help you to see at a glance what action needs to be taken next.

Our new custom form builder allows business owners to create their own inquiry forms to meet their specific business needs. Each submitted inquiry automatically generates an email, which can be sent to any email address, and can include cc and bcc email addresses.

Email order notifications are more detailed than ever with the inclusion of Product Option information. These product options may include size, color, finish, etc. to ensure that any mistakes within the order can be amended quickly.

Catalog & Product Management for eCommerce

Take advantage of the brand new, advanced Year Make Model Attribute System. Attributes can be utilized in any instance where selecting the correct part or product is critical. They are used heavily in the automotive aftermarket industry to help site visitors find the correct part for their vehicle by first selecting the item they are interested in, and then specifying the year, make, and model for the search query. When the information has been entered to their satisfaction they will click 'shop' and will be redirected to a dedicated landing page for the products that match their search.

The customer entered search criteria selected will be remembered throughout their shopping session even if the customer clicks away from the landing page. This will reduce customer frustration, and will allow your customer to easily modify their search criteria, or easily clear it and continue shopping.

From a business owner's perspective, the attribute system is easy to manage. With one action you can add a range of years for a specific product. In addition, if brand or manufacturer implements a price increase, business owners have the ability to issue a mass price change for that brand or manufacturer.

eCommerce Site & Feature Management

Our e-commerce CMS modules were designed to be multi-functional and an alternative to labor intensive web development. Our CMS modules are not only easy to customize, but are now even more feature packed, including a field for topic descriptions in modules where topics are assigned. The Resources/ Links module has been updated with the inclusion of assigned topics, and the ability to upload files, and images.

Helping to keep WSM organized we have developed expanding/collapsing folders within the content management system which operate very much like they do in your desktop keeping content neatly bundled for quicker navigation.

On the occasion that you need to delete a file, blog post or image, utilize the new 'quick delete' icon. Another time saving feature is the Multi-Image Uploader. This fabulous CMS feature is now available in the product section of the eCommerce CMS. Putting multiple images to good use, the product image view allows images to be swapped without the need for a slide show.

eCommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Over the last 6 months we have increased the opportunities for eCommerce business owners to combine their SEO efforts with our automated SEO. We have made SEO improvement to Categories & Brands by including an extended description field for you to load up with search engine optimized copy.

Part of a good SEO strategy is to use Blog/News articles to further your efforts and optimize your site with relevant content enriched with even more keywords and phrases. Because of this, WSM has added customized SEO fields. Your eCommerce blog isn't the only thing to benefit from these additions, now your content pages can be assigned topics for categorization, and SEO flexibility.

WSM your eCommerce Solution

If you are currently using the WSM Content Management System you know how powerful, and intuitive it is to use. If you have yet to experience its power, and flexibility we encourage you to take a look at a few of our satisfied customers in our eCommerce Portfolio.

Our goal is to provide amazing eCommerce sites with customized hosting solutions that matches your goals, and budget. Contact WSM today to find out how we can become your e-Commerce partner for the life of your current project, and the next one.

We may begin to see the sun peaking through the recession clouds, but we are not of its shadow quite yet.  However, the quickest companies to rebound will be those that are willing to invest in the technologies that allow them to increase market share.  And where has the market turned?  The Internet.    

“When the recovery fully takes hold, the growth will be driven by the web, and retailers that want to survive and grow need to fish where the fish are. eCommerce Merchants with worn-out old systems won’t be the ones getting the business online. The ones that will are making a sound investment in better e-commerce technology now.” Kasey Lobaugh, retail analyst and principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP

Solutions for a Newbie or an eCommerce Veteran

As business owners we need to ask ourselves what our customers want and need.  Listening to our market, Web Design Solutions developed an ideal solution, Web Shop Manager™ (WSM™).

Recently, an article was published in Internet Retailer entitled “Internet Retailer Survey: E-retailers are ready to buy new technology, and they have long shopping lists.”  Reading this article reminded us just how big the need is for an all-encompassing eCommerce platform.  We provide many of the mentioned features in the article as part of our standard product offering, and we couple all of that with custom eCommerce web design. 

Built in response to our clients ever evolving needs, WSM™ offers a feature packed arsenal including – but not limited to:

Automatic SEO - WSM™ optimizes every page of content for you by generating your Google XML sitemap, URL list and robots.txt file every night. 

Target Marketing - Using customer statistics gathered by WSM™’s Content Management System (CMS), site owners can pinpoint exactly what customers are interested in, in order to develop highly targeted marketing campaigns.  Imagine knowing exactly which customers would be most likely to take advantage of an offer and exclusively providing them with an enticing coupon code. 

Robust Content Management System - The WSM™ CMS is every bit as powerful as it is easy to use.  From first time eCommerce site owners to veterans, there is something for everyone.  There are a myriad of eCommerce features, but here are just a few that are included in your WSM™ site: 

• Resources and Links
• Dealer Locator
• Event Calendar
• FAQ Pages
• Photo Gallery
• Blog/ News
• User-Generated Content  
• Customer Ratings and Reviews

WSM™ for an Ever Evolving Marketplace

Web design and eCommerce platforms have come a long way from their inception years ago.  Web Design Solutions/ Web Shop Manager™ are continually adding more eCommerce features and modules to provide flexible technology for our discerning clients.

eCommerce platforms may vary in size and prices, but as far as we are concerned WSM™ provides the best answer for those that require customized web design with an incredible CMS.