Tutorial 2.5: Advanced ecommerce options

When you are in product details in eCommerce -> Products, in the action box on the right, you will find links like Create upsell/crosssell, Group products together, Create attribute groups, Add poplet images and it will also show you how to setup volume discounts. The following are the explanations of what these do.

Create upsell/crosssell (Related Products)

This e-commerce system allows for effective cross and up-selling of products. Imagine a customer purchasing a Cell Phone. You can significantly increase sales if at the time of adding the Cell Phone to the shopping cart, the customer was invited to also add a Hands Free Kit or a Car Charger or both. The Related Products feature of the system allows you to easily link products to each other in order to up sell and cross sell as one is added to the cart.

The related list may only be displayed on the large product layout. All you have to do is place {tag_relatedproducts} inside this layout wherever you want the related products to be displayed. If you require customers to see the related list before adding a product to the list then you may remove the Add to Cart and Buy Now options from the small product layout so customers are forced to click on a product and see its details. And hence see all the related products.

Below is an active example of related products where Warranty is being recommended to the customer at the time when they add a Plasma TV to their shopping cart.

Use {tag_relatedproductslist} to display checkboxes. Alternatively use {tag_relatedproductslist,7} to display radio fields instead.

Below is a more passive example of related products where these are displayed separately on the large product layout. To display related products in this format use {tag_relatedproducts}. To only display the product image without any text use {tag_relatedproductslist,8}

Group products together

You can use product grouping where you have the same product that comes in different sizes, colours, weight, quantities etc.

E.g. if you have the following products:

• Black cotton t-shirt M
• Black cotton t-shirt L
• Black cotton t-shirt XL

Instead of showing all of those t-shirts on the page, you group them and show one and the system will automatically render the other products in the dropdown menu wherever you place {tag_grouping} in the product layout

I have used http://www.catfishdesigns.com.au website in this example. Twister (CB) product has been grouped with other 4 products that are of the different size.

If you click on the Size dropdown menu you will notice that other products are there. When you click on one of the other product in the dropdown, the price, name, image will change in case they are different for the other products in the menu.

Adding products to product grouping

If you wish to group certain product with other products, all you have to do is go to eCommerce -> Products -> click on the product name and click on Group Products Together. There you have to move products you want to group together from box on the left to the box on the right by clicking onto the arrow outlined below.

You then need to enter the product descriptions you want to be displayed in the dropdown. If you do not enter these, the product names will be used.
Default will let you choose the product you want to display as default when customer views the product.
Weighting lets you re-order the products. Product with the highest weighting is displayed first in the dropdown menu.
Description in Group is added to the product name when product is rendered.

Adding grouping to your product layouts

To display the grouped products in the dropdown list you need to add corresponding tags to the product layouts -

• {tag_grouping} - displays grouped products in the dropdown menu

or

• {tag_grouping,7} - displays grouped products as radio buttons

or

• {tag_groupinglist} - displays grouped products as a list

Product layouts can be found in Admin -> More Customization Options -> Online Shop Layouts.

Create attribute groups

This option allows you to create attribute groups for any Product. For example a t-shirt can have a few attribute groups, e.g. Size selection (Small, Medium, Large), Color selection (Blue, Green, Yellow) and Type selection (Short Sleeved, Long Sleeved). Each attribute group is displayed as a drop down which the customer can choose a value from. Each attributes does not represent a different product unlike Product Grouping where each option in the group is a different product.

To add attributes to any product go to eCommerce -> Products -> Choose a Product and select the "Create Attribute Groups for this Product" from the Action Box. You'll also need to add {tag_attributes} to the Large Product template. Finally attributes can also be imported.

To learn more about the syntax please download the latest Product Import Template file.

Add poplet images

Poplets will allow you to add additional images to your product. In eCommerce -> Products you can add up to 10 images to each individual product.

Poplet images will be displayed as thumbnails and when customer clicks on the thumbnail the full image will display in a cool lightbox effect. The poplets tag can take extra variables and these are optional:

{tag_poplets,rowlength,width,height}

rowLength - number of poplet images per line

width/height - the size of the thumbnail (poplet) images (the system will create the thumbnails)

Example:

{tag_poplets,3,200,200} - this tag will display thumbnails in 3 rows which will have size 200x200px.

Here is an example of poplets:

http://oodlies.com/CatalogueRetrieve.aspx?CatalogueID=8558&ProductID=137266

Setting up volume discounts

To setup volume discounts you need to click on Add product prices when you're in product details and enter the relevant information. Please see the following screenshot for example:

Here we have setup the product pricing and so that the individual product when purchased costs $164.95. If customer add to cart two of these products at $164.95 every product they add to the cart after that will cost $155.95 up to 5 products. After 5 products the cost per product drops to 145.95.

• Tutorial 2: Setting_up_your_online_shop
• Tutorial 2.1: Ecommmerce product advanced options
• Tutorial 2.2: Configure my shipping options
• Tutorial 2.3: Configure my payment gateways
• Tutorial 2.4: Customize my ecommerce look and feel including products, catalogs, shopping cart and invoice layouts
• Tutorial 2.6: Applying Tax Codes
• Tutorial 2.7: Offering Discount Codes
• Tutorial 2.8: Offering Gift Vouchers
• Tutorial 2.9: Setting up Affiliate Programs