Products
Products Manager | Sales Periods | Discounts | Product Options
Products Manager
This is where you manage all the products on your website. The system caters for price-changes and you can have the same product name a number of times in different 'Sales Periods'.
You can filter the list. Click on the 'Filter' button to make the filter options visible.
To prevent the screen from being too cluttered, just the main details are shown. Click on the 'Create' link to make the product's Create Options visible. Click on the 'More' link to make more options visible. You can opt to show the 'More' info by default in the General Settings.
You set your affiliates commissions here. Commissions must be actual values, not percentages. If you only want to pay 1 or 2 levels, just leave the other commissions at 0.
Products can be subscriptions in which case PayPal/StormPay etc. will bill your customer every period that you specify. The 3 fields following the 'Subscription?' field are only relevant if the product is a subscription.
You can include an attachment in the confirmation email when an order completes. This is an easy way to provide automatic fulfillment of your digital products. Attachments should be ZIP files.
You can specify the text to send in the confirmation email that's sent out to customers. This is where you'd add any special instructions on accessing the product etc. If a customer buys a number of products in a shopping cart (i.e. you have it enabled in your settings) then the text for each product they buy is added.
Here's a list of the fields and what they mean:
| Main Product Settings |
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| Name | The product name. If this is to be a membership-product, the name must conform to the string defined in the settings. i.e. 'MembershipLevel3', or just 'Membership'. This can be the SKU if required. |
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| Title | The product title. |
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| Desc | A brief description of the product. |
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| Image | The URL (or relative path to) an image of the product. The image should be about 100x100 pixels. This image appears in search results. |
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| Large Image | The URL (or relative path to) a large image of the product. This image appears in product containers where you specify. |
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| Category | Which category this product belongs to. This is a plain text field. |
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| Valid-From | Date this price is valid from. |
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| Valid-To | Date this price is valid to |
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| Show Note? | Allow the user to attach a note to the sale. |
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| Show Qty? | Allow the user to specify a quantity. |
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| Require Addr? | Require the user's address. |
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| Full Desc | A long description of the product. Up to 64Kb. This is designed for display in pages dedicated to a single product. |
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| Create Options |
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| Create Schedule? | Create a schedule when the product is purchased?
- Type - The new schedule's type
- Category - The new schedule's category
- Template - The new schedule's template. If set - the new schedule is an exact copy of the template - except for the name.
- Schedule Description - The new schedule's description.
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| Create Item? | Create an item when the product is purchased?
- Type - The new item's type
- Category - The new item's category
- Schedule - The new item's schedule. If set to THIS uses the new schedule created.
- Item Expiry Interval - Overrides the default expiry interval.
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| Create Event? | Create an event when the product is purchased?
- Type - The new event's type
- Schedule - The new event's schedule. If set to THIS uses the new schedule created.
- Event Description - The new event's description.
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| Renew Item? | Renew an item when the product is purchased? This will add the Expiry Interval to the remaining time left for the item, or set the expiry to now + the expiry interval if the item has already expired. |
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| Renew Event? | Renew an event when the product is purchased? This will add the Expiry Interval to the remaining time left for the event, or set the expiry to now + the expiry interval if the event has already expired. |
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| Renew Schedule? | Renew an schedule when the product is purchased? This will add the Expiry Interval to the remaining time left for the schedule, or set the expiry to now + the expiry interval if the schedule has already expired. |
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| Quantity Discounts |
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| Quantity 1-3 | The quantity at whcih the discount starts. An integer - i.e. 100 |
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| Price 1-3 | The price of the product in this band. |
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| Qty 1-3 Shipping/Handing | The shipping and handling prices in this band. |
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| More Options |
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| Button Image | Override the Buy-Button Image specified in the Settings. |
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| Button Text | Override the Buy-Button Text specified in the Settings. |
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| Product URL | The URL of the web page giving details of the product. |
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| Related Products | This is a (case-insensitive) regular expression defining the names of products which can be displayed as 'related categories'. Example: if the product's a sony digital camera, you might want to show memory and batteries, so the string might look like: mem|batt. |
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| Related Categories | This is a (case-insensitive) regular expression defining the names of categories which can be displayed as 'related categories'. Example: if the product's a sony digital camera, you might want to show memory and batteries, so the string might look like: mem|batt. |
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| File | A file associacted with the product. This can be the product itself - if it's a file. This can be included as an attachment, or shown as a protected download link (with the Downloads module). |
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| Attachment? | Send the file as an attachment in the order confirmation email. |
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| Commissions | Commission to pay your affiliates. L1 = Level 1 (the referrer), L2 = the refererrers referrer etc... |
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| Price | Product price. Currency is specified in the Settings. |
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| Setup Fee | Charge for the setting up the service. This is used as the price of the trial period for subscriptions. |
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| Shipping 1 | Shipping charge for the first item. |
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| Shipping 2 | Shipping charge for subsequent items. |
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| Handling | Handling charge. This is added to the product price. |
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| Setup Fee | This is added to the product price for a normal product. For a subscription - it is the charge for the trial period. |
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| Option1 | An optional further specification - i.e. colour or size, for the product. |
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| Option2 | An optional second further specification - i.e. colour or size, for the product. |
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| Email Text | The text to appear in customer's confirmation emails. This text appears after the standard greeting you specify in the Email Settings |
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| Subscription? | Is this a recurring payment. |
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| Renewal Period | How often do payments occur?
PayPal format (more flexible): i.e. '1 MONTH', '2 WEEK', '10 DAY', '1 YEAR'.
StormPay format a number of days i.e. '30' |
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| Num Repeats | How many times does this payment recurr? If blank - forever. NB: StormPay do NOT support this |
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| Trial Period | Trial period. If blank - none.
PayPal format (more flexible): i.e. '1 MONTH', '2 WEEK', '10 DAY', '1 YEAR'.
StormPay format a number of days i.e. '30' |
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| Online? | An easy way to disable products. If not set, the product is not displayed on the website. |
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| Product Options |
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| Name | The option name. i.e. 'A3' |
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| Description | The description of the option. i.e. '200gsm Watercolor Paper: A3' |
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| Price (1-3) | The price of the option, with (optional) quantity discount prices. |
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Notes
StormPay subscriptions with a FREE trial period still carry a charge of 69c to the vendor.
Sales Periods
If you have sales where you sell your products for a lower (different) price, then you'll need to set up your sales periods.
You should create a 'Baseline' sales period, called 'Baseline', which covers the whole time you anticipate trading - i.e. from now until 20 years in the future (you can change this later!). All the products you create initially should be created against this baseline period (they will automatically if it exists) so you can then define sales-periods where the price and other details change.
To create a sale, first create the sale-period. You have to define the bounding dates, a name, and a description (i.e. 'Spring Sale 2005' and '50% off all fabrics and furnishings').
To add products to the sale, select them in the Products Manager, then click on 'Create Sale Version'. This will create an exact copy of the product, but it's valid dates will be set to the nearest sale dates (i.e. the closest sale start date to today). You can now change any part of the products details m(i.e. price, image, commissions etc.), and this will be applied during the sale period.
O3 includes sales in it's affiliate commissions calculations, so you must keep old product data from sales if there are still outstanding commissions to pay on them.
Quantity Discounts
You can offer up to three levels of quantity discounts on each of your products. The discount is automatically calculated for the user's cart.
To make the discounts box visible in the Products Manager, click on the 'discounts' link. Once discounts are defined, the box will be visible by default.
For each discount band, you must define:
- The lower limit on the band (the quantity of this product that must be in the cart before the discount is applied) - i.e. 100.
- The price within that band - i.e. 12.99
- The shipping and handling costs within that band.
Product Options
From guitars to cars, many products come with various options - at different prices...
O3 allows you to create unlimited options for a product in the Products Manager. Each option has a description, a price, and you can define Quantity Discounts for each option too.
O3 allows customers to choose the option they want from a select box, then view and even change the option from within the Shopping Cart (The CA-CHANGE-OPTION macro shows the form).
You can switch the Product Options functionality on or off from within the General Settings. If you don't need to use it - switch it off.
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