Getting Started with ShopSite

Getting to Know ShopSite

ShopSite is easy to learn and use, and these short topics will help to get you going by answering some questions that are asked frequently by new merchants.

Where is my store?

ShopSite has a both a storefront and a back office, just like a "brick-and-mortar" store in the physical world.

Your service provider should have given you two URLs. One goes to the storefront. If you have registered a domain name, the storefront URL may be something like www.mystore.com. You want everyone in the world to know this URL!

The other URL goes to the back office, and you should keep that one as private as possible. Only you and your authorized employees should know the username and password required to access the back office of your store.

Whenever you are logged into the back office, you can easily go to your storefront by clicking the My Store button on the navigation bar. Note that clicking the button will cause a new window to open in your browser so that you don’t lose your place in the back office. The storefront window will be on top of the back office window, or slightly to one side.

How do I Manage My Store?

You perform all store management functions through the back office. ShopSite has easy-to-use features for creating your storefront -- which includes adding products and pages -- configuring payment and shipping, processing orders, and viewing reports. You can go to the back office and make changes to your store at any time.

Basic and Advanced Screens

ShopSite has two modes for adding and changing products and pages: basic mode and advanced mode. To get you started quickly building your store, and to not overwhelm you with choices, ShopSite first presents you with the basic mode. The "Add a Product" screen only has six fields in basic mode.

Once you are comfortable with basic mode and want to exercise more control over your products and pages, click the Advanced Editing button to switch to advanced mode. The "Add a Product" screen can have up to 40 fields in Advanced mode, depending on the version of ShopSite that you are using!

You can switch back and forth between basic and advanced mode from either the Pages or Products screens.

Publishing Changes

You don’t have to know how to create and edit Web pages to use ShopSite -- ShopSite does that for you. When you are using the ShopSite back office to add products or pages or to make changes to existing products and pages, you are not changing the actual pages that customers see. Instead, you are changing the information that ShopSite uses to build your store. You can make one simple change or a lot of dramatic changes, and your customers will not see those changes until you tell ShopSite to build your store.

ShopSite displays the Publish tab to remind you that you’ve made changes that customers can’t see yet. Click the Publish tab when you are ready for ShopSite to build your store and make your changes visible to your customers. After ShopSite has finished publishing your store, click the My Store button to go and look at your changes.

Who Does What?

Just as a traditional business has to maintain relationships with banks, vendors, shippers, etc., an online store also requires relationships to carry out its day-to-day operations. It is important to understand who these companies are, so here is a list of the major players:

Service Provider

Sometimes called the "hosting service", this is the company that is running the server where your ShopSite store actually exists. You probably have a service contract with them, which probably includes a certain amount of hard disk space on the server, a copy of ShopSite, and a certain amount of traffic capacity for your store, all for a monthly fee. The packages offerd by many service providers often provide a lot of other features, too.

If you are having any problems with your ShopSite store, contact your service provider.

Merchant Bank

You must have a merchant account with a bank that will allow you to receive and clear credit card transactions over the Internet. This is sometimes called an "Internet Merchant Account." If you are not going to accept credit cards in your store, you can set up any type of bank account that will meet the needs of your business.

Internet Clearing Service

An Internet Clearing Service actually represents the credit card companies in transactions. These services receive the credit requests from physical and online stores when a customer attempts to make a purchase. The selected service then does all the checking necessary to either approve or deny the request. There are several large Internet Clearing Services, and each one processes thousands of request per second. You do not need to have an account with any of these services, but your merchant bank and your transaction processor must both work with the same service.

Transaction Processor (Payment Gateway)

A transaction processing service is the interface between your ShopSite store, an internet clearing service, and your merchant bank. When a customer enters credit card information to make a purchase, ShopSite sends that information to your chosen transaction processing service. That service attempts to verify the information, such as address and zip code. It then contacts an Internet Clearing Service to see if the credit card issuer will authorize the transaction. If the transaction is authorized, the transaction processing service notifies ShopSite, and ShopSite presents the customer with a receipt.

ShopSite Pro and ShopSite Manager can provide online credit card processing by working with any of several transaction processors; ShopSite Starter works with fewer processors. (Not all payment processors are supported on all platforms.) You must have an account with one of these payment processors in order to provide online credit card payments to your customers.

ShopSite Help and Resource Center February 13, 2004 Give Feedback

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