Beginners Question

[stoneroses6300]

Hi. Firstly, I wanted to say thank you in advance for everyone providing help with shopsite and this wonderful program in general. I will be starting an ecommerce site this week and the flexibility of shopsite is amazing from all the video tutorials I've watched.

Quick couple questions:

When an order is processed by a customer, I see that the order can go to "multiple email addresses."

1. What information is the customer getting in an automatic email when they make the order? How much will I be able to "customize" this in the shopsite dashboard?
2. If I want the order to go to a manufacturer (who will ship the item out to the customer, and I will then end up paying later) then I will obviously establish a contact with the manufacturer and let them know how my orders will go to them. If I put the manufacturers email address into the multiple email address field, then they will obviously receive the information. Products will have different distributors/manufacturers though. The question is, can I setup different email address recipients for each product? Every product will of course generate an email to me (the merchant) and the customer. Can I also have one sent out to the manufacturer of this specific product? And if this is possible, is there any way to customize the email they (the manufacturer/distributor) receive in distinction from the email that the customer and I receive?

Ok. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to get going with shopsite.

-Brian

[Jim]

The best way to see what the shopper will see in their email receipt is to place an order and look at the receipt. You can go to http://shopsite.com/demo.html#shopper and click one of the links under Try a Demo From a Shopper's Perspective. When you checkout you can use the Visa card number 4111 1111 1111 1111 with cvv2 of 111. You can use bogus address information, just make sure you use your real email so you will get the receipt. There is a section of the shopping cart template that defines the html email receipt, you can include text, graphics and use styles to change font, layout etc.

You an enter multiple email addresses to send orders to but that cannot be done on a per product basis. Since a shopper may order items that you would have to get from different manufacturers I would recommend that you do not put the manufacturer's email in the copy list. I would just forward the merchant email to the manufacturer after you have reviewed it. I would then only send on the information that manufacturer needs to fill the order.

Once you get going on your store your might consider an OrderAPI script that would review the products in the shoppers cart and use that information to seen to the manufacturers. This is more advanced functionality for Pro level stores so it usually involves hiring someone to develop the script for you (unless you are a programmer yourself.).

[stoneroses6300]

Thank you for the response.

So a script can be made to be that can send the shoppers info and order items to the manufacturer; it's a matter of getting it programmed.

When you say "Pro level stores," what is the difference between a regular store and a "pro level store?" Is is the same functionality between the two? Does the "pro level store" just have extra features and codes that are scripted to that store specifically by a programmer?

I need to try out both the merchant and shoppers perspective still. I will do this tonight. Thanks for the heads up on the fake visa to use when trying everything out. I appreciate the help thus far.

-Brian

[Jim]

ShopSite comes in 3 product levels, Pro, Manager and Starter. The Pro level has all features, Manager has a subset of the features and Starter is very basic. You can see a feature comparison of the 3 levels at: http://shopsite.com/scchecklist.html.

[stoneroses6300]

Oh no! My host (Hostmonster) offers the simple script for the starter ShopSite that can only have 15 products sold in 5 categories! Ugh. Why even offer it then?
So basically, I'm going to have to spend $495.00 to have unlimited products with shopsite?

-Brian

[jnarayan]

2. If I want the order to go to a manufacturer (who will ship the item out to the customer, and I will then end up paying later)

May be you already know this, but this is usually referred to as "drop-shipping". Many ecommerce merchants sell drop-ship products. But, like Jim suggested above, I would suggest that you do not send the email directly from your webstore to the manufacturer. Here are some of the reasons why -
1. The order may contain items to be shipped out from different manufacturers. Or half of it is shipped by you, half by the manufacturer.
2. Some merchants do not want to share the price information with the manufacturer.
3. Most merchants review the order before it is emailed to the manufacturer to ensure everything looks clean.
4. Some merchants do not want to share customer contact information (phone number, email etc) with the manufacturer.
Since drop-shipping is very common in ecommerce, just Google for it and you will find a lot of information about it.

Once you get going on your store your might consider an OrderAPI script

Depending on how you are doing drop-shipping, you may want to have the script do all the 4 things above. Another option is to look into a back office order management system that offers drop ship functionality. You can send me an email if you want to talk more about this. (For full disclosure sake, I work in that space and offer a software that does that)

My host (Hostmonster) offers the simple script for the starter ShopSite that can only have 15 products sold in 5 categories

I work with many Shopsite merchants who are using Lexiconn for their hosting. And they all seem very happy with their service. Lexiconn knows a lot about Shopsite specific stuff too, so may be you can check out their webpage before deciding on what hosting plan to go for etc.

Hope that helps.