Introduction to the eCommerce Software

Hello and welcome to this tutorial brought to you by Aliarts Website Marketing. This video is an introduction to the eCommerce software we provide here at Aliarts to create your online store. This tutorial will show you how easy it is to manage your online business from within the backend of your new website.

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Can’t watch video? Here is a transcript of the audio.

First of all, head over to your website and log in with your username and password as usual.

If you have the eCommerce cart installed, you have more options than other users of the Aliarts CMS. Your backend will look a little different to the dashboard in the other videos, because you have a little more responsibility. For this reason, I have left the windows that you never need to use closed to avoid confusion, and accidents! It’s a good idea not to mess with the settings in any of the closed windows, or the sky may fall on your head. Well, not that drastic, but you get what I mean.

Also with eCommerce users, your Dashboard page will be different to the other videos as well. I have it set up so when you log in, you are presented with the stats, orders and products associated with your store. You are quickly and easily able to see how many products you have sold over the last 30 days, the lifetime of the cart, the status of your orders, your recent bestsellers and your lifetime bestsellers.

So let’s get acquainted with the options available to you in your new eCommerce store.

Scroll down your dashboard until you come to your Shopp options here in your sidebar menu. This is where you will find all the information you need to successfully run your online store. Let’s go through the options to give you an overview of what’s possible with the cart.

First on the list is your orders link. Click on this to be brought through to your recent orders.

Here you will see that I’ve had an order from, me, for the princely sum of one cent. If I wanted to delete these order details, I could tick this box here and click delete. This would erase this order from the system forever, so use this option wisely.

You can filter the list here with this dropdown menu, and only view pending or completed orders. Click update to view.

Next you are able to filter the list by orders made today, this week, this month and so on, or, you can choose custom dates and enter them here. Click Filter to view.

Finally on this page you have the option to export your sales for your accountant or your own records. You have options here in the dropdown menu to export, the most common spreadsheets being those for excel. Click download and your document will export to your desktop. I strongly suggest you do regular backups of your transactions with this utility, just as you would with anything you do on your computer. Data becomes corrupt and gets lost, just like anything stored on your hard drive. Regular backups are important with any data, and the same goes with anything here.

Next on the list we have a log of all the customers who have ever bought anything through the store, along with all their contact details. Once again, you are able to filter these customers by those who made orders today, this week, this month, and so on. You can go in and change any of the information stored for any of your customers by clicking in to view their details.

Next on the list we have your promotions page, where you are able to enter and update your latest promotions. Here you can click New Promotion to bring up the Promotion Editor.
But more on this option in the next tutorial.

Next we have the option you will be using most of the time, the product editor. Here you click New Product, and you are able to add unlimited products to the system. Once again, I have a tutorial dedicated to adding your own products to the store.

The last of the options available to you is the categories menu. Here you can add new categories to your sidebar menu, so customers can quickly find what they need within your store. Once again, more on this later.

Finally here is the settings menu. You won’t need to worry about any of these settings as they will all be set up for you already. It’s best not to change any of what’s been set up here either as, you guessed it, sky falling.

So there you have it. An introduction to all that is possible within the backend of your online store. Once again, if any of this is unclear, or you need to go through it with me, please feel free to let me know on any of the numbers at www.FreeWebsiteDesign.co.nz, or Aliarts.co.nz.

Thanks again, and I’m looking forward to seeing you in the next video in the series.