Product List Window options -list by SKU?

[ericray]

I have over 350 products in my store in numerous catagories. We created an SKU system that we can identify products and will upload to Shopsite via an excel doc. Can I have the products listed by SKU and not alphabetically as they seem to be defaulting to. When I "add a product" the 1st field is name. I can't scroll down a long list of out of order products based on alphabetical arrangement in that window.

Im using Manager

Eric

[Jim]

The Pro level of ShopSite has a product search feature that you can select various fields for ordering the list of products. But that functionality isn't in the Manager version.
What I have seen some merchants do is add an html comment <!-- some value --> to the beginning of the product name. That way when they are listed the "some value" will be the part that gets sorted on and so your could change the value to have similar items together in the list. It wouldn't be to hard to add something like that in a spread sheet and then upload it to your store. Make sure when you upload that you match on SKU or you would end up with duplicate product, ones without the comment that are currently in your store and the new ones with the comment.

[ericray]

I just need to be clear about what I am asking - because this could be a deal breaker. I am not referencing any kind of search for customers or even for myself. I am using shopsite to use the order anywhere button. I am just adding function to an existing site. So - I have 100's of products with lots of names and catagories. OK. I am talking about that backroom window that shows the list of products. I understand that I will go that that little window/list to click on it to "show me the code" or change product infor. I know that I can upload product info into shopsite via excel. What I am trying to avoid is a long list of product names only in that window. The alphabetization method would make it cumbersome and confusing to quickly reference any one product to alter or find code. What I testing in the initial demo of Shopsite was an upload of products lists (excel) using SKU numbers. Can I upload a product with a long name that includes the SKU# number first and then a name. It is all about organizing that list in the backroom.

thanks for your time and response.

Eric

[Jim]

Since you are using Order Anywhere links there is really no reason for you to need to look things up in the backoffice. You can just create the order anywhere links with the SKU in them instead of using the product id. Here is an example of a simple Order Anywhere link for a product with the sku bbspangle

Code: Select all

<a href="http://mydomain.com/sc/order.cgi?storeid=*100bd218ab0744409e25&dbname=products&sku=bbspangle&function=add">Add To Cart</a>


and here is one for a more complex one with a quantity input field. (Note the sku in this one is "j12345 - ") Because there is a field (the quantity value) that needs to be passed to the cart it must be done using a form

Code: Select all

<form action="http://mydomain.com/sc/order.cgi" method="post">
Quantity <input type=text size="2" name="j12345 - :qnty" value="1" >
<input type=hidden name="storeid" value="*100bd218ab0744409e25">
<input type=hidden name="dbname" value="products">
<input type=hidden name="function" value="add">
<input type=hidden name="sku" value="j12345 - ">
<input type=submit value="Add To Cart">
<input type=submit name="checkout" value="View Cart">
</form>

You would need to replace the "http://mydomain.com/sc/order.cgi" with the appropriate url for your store. And you would need to replace each instance of the sku in the above examples with your sku. In the first example it is straight forward since there is only one place where the sku, bbspangle, appears. In the second example there are two places where the sku is used, once in the line starting Quantity... where the sku is used in the name="j12345 - " and the second in the line <input type=hidden name="sku" value="j12345 - "> where the sku is part of the value= statement.

If your products have order options and you want those in the order anywhere links it gets a little more complicated but it is still possible to do without going into the backoffice of the store to copy the Order Anywhere links.

If you have a spread sheet of your products it wouldn't be to hard to create a column where you concatenate the sku field with other data so you can then just copy and paste the content of a cell with the completed code to your html pages. This could also be done using the merge functionality of a wordprocessor application like Word or WordPerfect or Open Office. You html edit might also have such a feature.