Sections: Product Setup, Business Setup, Payment Setup and Maintenance
This topic explains eSTORIS settings within STORIS. Certain setup steps need to be taken in order for a product to be viewed and purchased on your eSTORIS website.
Properly designing your product structure ensures that your products are web available in a way that is consistent with your business model. Being aware of how products are related to categories, groups and collections is necessary to facilitate this process. The diagram below provides a top-down hierarchical illustration that compares a simple hypothetical case (to the left) with STORIS’s and eSTORIS’s basic product structure (to the right).
As you can see in the above diagram, in order to see a product on the web, you must have at least one Web Master and one Web Category to which your product belongs. In order to make your web product structure consistent with your business model, your web masters will generally be similar to your product categories and your web categories will generally be similar to your product groups. Also notice that product collections and web collections are different. Product collections are still available on the web but are typically used to showcase a particular line of products. Web collections are often implemented as a web browsing convenience, to categorize like items that differ in some way (“size” for instance).
With this basic understanding of product structure, you can be creative and meet your unique needs. Be aware of the way in which the structuring is intended to be used. When you are ready to create these relationships, you need to do the following:
Create at least one Web Master in Web Master Settings. This is the top tier of your structure for products available on the web.
Edit the brands associated with your products. In Brand Settings, check the boxes at the following fields:
Available on the Web
Show Web Price
While brands are not strictly part of your product structure per se, brands do have a direct relationship with products. These settings must be taken into account when addressing product accessibility over the web.
Create at least one web category in Web Category Settings. This is the second tier of your structure for products available on the web.
Un-check the box at Unavailable on Web field.
Check the box at Display Selling Price field.
The ability to turn web categories on and off exists so you can build your categories in a safe environment. When you have completed building your categories and are ready to display them on the web, you can turn the web categories on.
Create a product in Advanced Product Settings.
On the eSTORIS 2 tab of product settings, check the Available on Web field.
The product must be added to at least one of the Web Categories you created via Web Category Settings.
To expedite this step we recommend downloading and filling out the ‘Product Conversion Spreadsheet’. You can find it by logging into http://support.storis.com. Once logged in, click ‘Conversion Spreadsheets’ found inside of the ‘Popular Areas of Interest’ section. Select the appropriate Conversion spreadsheet. After you’ve downloaded the spreadsheet you can fill it out with your data. Once completed you can begin performing an import of that data into STORIS using the Import Data process.
Set virtual store parameters in Web Control Settings.
Your eSTORIS site needs to be configured for online sales. This includes setting rules and defaults for salesman and store, inventory, credit handling, customer service/contact, administrative considerations and more.
The extended features below further define product relationships and structures, providing greater business context and enriching the overall browsing experience. Maintenance for these recommended and optional settings can be completed either via STORIS or via eSTORIS Admin.
Create Web Benefits via the eSTORIS 2 tab in Advanced Product Settings.
As shown in the diagram above, the web descriptions and web benefits only apply to eSTORIS and they take viewing precedence over their STORIS counterparts - product description and product benefits, appropriately.
If these web properties are assigned in STORIS, they display on your product page. Otherwise, the default STORIS properties of product description and product benefits display.
Create Kits in STORIS. Kits can be set up as Hard or Soft kits.
Kits are combinations of products intended to be sold as a group. Hard kits cannot be split up, but soft kits can. For example, if a dining room set with a table and four chairs is set up as a hard kit, the items in the kit cannot be sold individually. If the pieces in the dining room set belong to a soft kit, each piece can be sold individually.
Establish Web Collections or Filters. (These features are mutually exclusive. Products belonging to web collections are not filterable.)
Create Web Collections in Web Collection Settings. Web collections allow you to group and order similar products.
Establish web category Filters and their values via Web Category Filter Settings, Web Category Filter Value Settings, and Web Category Filter Value Assignments. Filters allow you to narrow the set of products for browsing, by selecting or deselecting filterable criteria.
Establish Product Add-ons in Web Item Add-On Settings.
Facilitate up-selling by offering additional products or web collections to be associated with a product in the customer’s cart.
Establish SEO and SEO URL settings via the SEO tab of Web Category Settings and Web Master Settings.
Increase your business’s web presence and improve search engine ranking by utilizing Search Engine Optimization.
Maintain information about tax jurisdictions in Sales Tax Settings.
Interface with 3rd party tax calculation programs in Alternate Tax Interface Control Settings.
Create and edit your delivery companies and their charge tables in Delivery Company Settings.
Assign route codes to zip codes via Update Zip Code Settings. If a zip code has a route code assigned, eSTORIS can deliver to this zip code. Otherwise, eSTORIS assumes you cannot deliver to this zip code.
Set up Route Codes, including assigning delivery companies, in Logistical Route Settings, Route Capacity Settings, Route Capacity Control Settings, and Route Mapping Control Settings.
Set the Delivery Method field on the Miscellaneous tab of Advanced Product Settings to Non-Parcel, Parcel or Either.
If the STORIS Credit Card module is active on your system, the payments and orders posted in eSTORIS are authorized via the payment provider you have contracted to work with in STORIS (TSYS, for example). If the payment is not authorized, the deposit is held in pending status and can be accessed via Process Web Payments, where you can view and manually authorize web payments.
If the STORIS Credit Card module is not active on your system, the order is submitted and the payment remains pending until it is manually authorized via Process Web Payments. The Process Web Payments screen allows for the input of an authorization number, which you receive from your external processor if applicable.
Specify preferences for credit card processing in Payment Card and Device Settings and Credit Card Validation Settings.
Set up credit card payment types in Credit Card Payment Settings.
View pending credit card deposits in Process Web Payments.
View web processing activity via View Web Transactions.
For order confirmation emails, enter the ‘From’ and ‘To’ Email Addresses on the Service tab of Web Control Settings. If emails are being sent from the web server, there are more options to be determined.