How Do You Add Products to Your Web Store?

[lbohen]

We have 13000+ audio book products which are maintained on a desktop MS Access db. Selected records are uploaded each day to add products or change existing products at our ShopSite Pro store.

I am curious how others, with 1000s of products, add products to their ShopSite stores.

[tfoy]

I have not messed with Access a lot, but Excel does open Access database tables. You could use Excel to open the Database and save it to Tab Delimited Text File, then from ShopSite Admin area under utilities, Database, Upload you can upload products there.

If you update the products with new descriptions and such, just be sure to keep Sku's the same when uploading. New products will be added.


You will have to assign the products to pages and assign templates and such, but if you have rights to add fields to your access database or if you add the extra fields in Excel you can but all the details in there instead of in the shopsite area and save some time.

Best thing is to download the products database file from the Shopsite Admin area and open it up and see what fields are there and which ones would save you time filling in offline in a spreadsheet or access database.

[lbohen]

I guess I should have been clearer in my question.

I have been using MS Access for years and upload every day to our ShopSite Pro store. Each record's fields has the appropriate HTML. I am quite adept at maintaining the products at our Web store with Access.

I would love to hire someone to add audio book products to our Web store but don't want them to have to learn Access or even Excel. Ideally a GUI form would be used which would apply the appropriate HTML. All the person would have to know how to do is type.

[dortchjm]

I'm looking for ideas, too. Currently I've been entering my products manually through Shopsite Pro 9. I try to use the global fields whenever possible to save time and enter groups of similar products. I have also edited back and forth with downloads/uploads using a Works spreadsheet, but it's not perfect, the large fields tend to get lost or truncated. Haven't tried Excel yet.

Just when I think I'm making progress I will get a price update from one of my vendors. So far I have about 600 products loaded, but I have thousands to go.

Janice

[dortchjm]

Larry,

It's been years since I last used Access, but can't you create a GUI front end for it?

Janice

[lbohen]

I am not a programmer and I don't have one on staff.

A few years ago I hired a sub-contract programmer who created a GUI with Visual Basic. Unfortunately he moved to another state and we discontinued the GUI's development before it was ready for use.

Do most ShopSite owners use the [Add a Product] feature?

Does the ShopSite [Add a Product] feature do the HTML or does the person entering the information have to include the HTML? I.E. strikethroughs, bold, paragraphs, font colors....

[dortchjm]

The Shopsite [Add a Product] feature is straight text, there's a list and you fill in the blanks similar to a GUI front end. You would need to go through and make a note of which fields you use. I don't use all of them. It's pretty straight forward and you could have someone doing straight typing with it one item at a time.

The html, bold, font colors, etc. are in the page and product templates. The person entering the product data does not do any of this. I customize my templates, but it is not a requirement as Shopsite has many ready made templates.

I use the [Add a Product] feature to add my products.

Janice

[tfoy]

I can create a compiled .exe GUI for the products database that will run on windows 98 or higher. I created one in a few minutes. It would require some work to get all the fields set up to have easy access to them as they all won't fit on a screen.


What types of features would be useful for an app like this?

Import, Edit, Export product database. <-- does is have to directly download and upload to shopsite?

html edit of product description, More Info Test fields or just ability to paste html code in there with a preview option.

should all available fields from the shopsite database be included?

Sort, Query, and Find feature for finding and working on certain products.

Table view for working similar to a spreadsheet view?

Any reporting features?

any other ideas or suggestions or just generally more information about what is needed


Thanks
Tom

[extragear]

Hi,

Was any progress made on this? Meaning, did anyone undertake the development for the GUI front end for using Access to maintain the products database?

We've used Shopsite for about 1-1/2 years and would like to make the maintenance of products easier on ourselves. Using the Shopsite interface isnt bad.

Thanks

Tim Sweeney
Cycleluggage.com
607-693-1031