Working with ShopSite

ShopSite Storefront FAQs

Here is a list of questions and answers about what customers see in your store. You may also want to look at the Pages FAQ if you don’t find a specific answer here.

• Where is my store?
• Will my store pages look different in different browsers?
• How do I prevent search engines from indexing certain pages in my store?
• How do I add an e-mail link/button to my store so that customers can contact us?
• How do I add information about the store’s physical location and phone number to my store?
• How do I change the store URL on customers’ e-mail receipts?
• How do I change the e-mail address on customers’ e-mail receipts?

Where is my store?

Your storefront (what customers see) is hosted on a Web server that is run by the ShopSite Hosting Partner that you signed up with. The physical location of the server isn’t important because your customers get to your store over the Internet. The server could be in your own city or 3000 miles away -- it makes no difference on the Internet. What’s important is the domain name of your store (sometimes called the "URL"), which may be something like www.mystore.com.

The back office of your store (the place where you make changes and process orders) is also hosted on the same server, but it has a different URL and you have to know the username and password to access it. You can get that information from your ShopSite Hosting Partner, but be sure to keep it secret.

Will my store pages look different in different browsers?

There may be very minor differences in how your storefront appears in different browsers, but they will not affect its functionality. ShopSite has been designed and tested to work with all major browsers, so your customers should have no trouble browsing and buying in your store.

How do I prevent search engines from indexing certain pages in my store?

Most merchants want search engines to find their store pages, but there may be special circumstances in which you want to prevent search engines from finding and indexing your pages. You can do this in ShopSite Pro and ShopSite Manager, but not in ShopSite Starter.

1. From the Pages screen in the ShopSite back office, click on one of the pages that you want to hide from search engines and then click Edit Product Content.
2. Scroll down to the Meta Description field.
3. Enter the text below in the Meta Description field, exactly as you see it here:

   "><meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow

4. Click Save Changes.
5. Repeat the above steps for each page that you want to hide from search engines.
6. Publish your store.

Note that this may not stop all search engines from finding your pages, but it should work with most of them.

How do I add an e-mail link/button to my store so that customers can contact us?

It’s a great idea to have links in your store for customers to contact you, possibly on every page. You may even want to create a "Contact Us" page and list your e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses.

To add an e-mail link to your store, use the following line as a template and place it either in the footer of your store or in the Text 2 or Text 3 field on your pages:

<a href="mailto:customerservice@mystore.com">Contact Us!</a>

You’ll need to use a real e-mail address after the "mailto:" part. You can use any text or a graphic in place of "Contact Us!"

How do I add information about the store’s physical location and phone number to my store?

Many customers look for a "Contact Us" page to find a store’s mailing address and phone number. To create a "Contact Us" page:

1. Go to Pages and then click Add a Page.
2. Enter "Contact Us" for the Page Name (without the quotes).
3. In the Text 1 field, type in your store’s mailing address, phone numbers, and any other information that you want your customers to have. Remember to use simple HTML commands to format your text. Here are two examples that you can copy.

   The first one is pretty simple:

   <b>MyStore.com</b>
   <br>123 Main Street
   <br>Anytown, UT 80808

   <p>800-123-4567

   The results would look like this:

   MyStore.com
   123 Main Street
   Anytown, UT 80808

   800-123-4567

   
   The second one uses a table to format the information.

   <table>
     <tr>
       <td valign="top"><b>Mailing Address:</b></td>
       <td>MyStore.com
       <br>123 Main Street
       <br>Anytown, UT 80808</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
       <td valign="top"><b>Phone Number:</b></td>
       <td>800-123-4567</td>
     </tr>
   </table>

   The results would look like this:

   Mailing Address:	MyStore.com 123 Main Street Anytown, UT 80808
   Phone Number:	800-123-4567

4. Save your changes to the page.
5. Add links from other pages in your store to this page.
6. Publish your store.

How do I change the store URL on customers’ e-mail receipts?

The URL that is put on customer’s e-mail receipts is set by the Store URL field on the Preferences > Hosting Service screen. This setting controls what page the merchant sees when clicking the My Store button and also the URL that is included in e-mail receipts.

How do I change the e-mail address on customers’ e-mail receipts?

The address that is put on customer’s e-mail receipts is set by the Merchant e-mail address field on the Preferences > Hosting Service screen.

ShopSite Help and Resource Center February 13, 2004 Give Feedback

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