Terminology and Overview
The KHZ StoreFront is designed to enable the average DNN User to avidly engage in eCommerce using an intuitive yet powerful interface. However, to fully understand the features, there are some terms or phrases that we use to describe the elements of the eCommerce system. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with these concepts:
Menus
The Menus for the KHZ_StoreFront are nested into three tiers. The first tier is visible to all users.
When an administrator or host is logged in the first tier menu adds buttons for functionality.
Clicking the ‘Control Panel’ button for an administrator will bring up a vastly different tier 1 menu containing all the necessary functions to maintain your product catalog.
Clicking any of these buttons will display a second tier of menu choices for controlling the different aspects of the KHZ_StoreFront.
Some items such as products require so much information to be entered that in order to display it in an ease of use style the number of controls were split into different pages, thus creating a need for a third menu level or menu tier 3.
You should now understand how to navigate around the store in order to set everything up to your liking.
Catalog
The Product Catalog is the Heart and Soul of your eCommerce system, consisting of the Navigation and Visual components required to present your products to customers. It is essential that the Catalog is easily browsed or searched, and can be linked to using URLs or hyperlinks from other pages on the web, or from newsletters and advertisements.
Categories
Your Product Categories have many advanced properties allowing full control of the display options and attribute inheritance by the products placed in that category
Traits can be inserted into the Category by adding them to the right side listbox during category add / edit. These Traits are then available as Features or Custom Options when adding or editing the Products within that category.
A Category can optionally have an image selected that will be displayed within the Category Menu.
Traits
Traits are used to search the product listing by a specific word, phrase, or a part of a word. Traits are composed of a number of Qualities which define the elements of the specific trait. In turn these qualities are represented within your products as standard features or options which the user can select to customize their purchase.
For example, a shirt may come in different sizes and colors, You can create a size Trait and assign the different sizes to that trait as qualities. While creating you product within the database, you will be asked if the traits you have created and assigned the category the item is in actually apply to the item, you would select the size trait and specify which qualities relate to the product. This allows you to have a category ‘Shirts’ with a trait ‘Size.’ Your tee shirts may only come in small, medium and large, but the long sleeves come in x-small, small, medium, large and x-large. Therefore your trait size would contain the five qualities for the sizes but you would only assign the ones needed to each individual product.
Qualities
Qualities define the characteristics of the Products in your store. These are separated into two parts:
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A Trait is the grouping container for the qualities of a product.
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A quality is a single characteristic of a product.
When searching the product catalog, you will be able to use these Trait names, or Quality names as Keywords (partial keywords will work during searching).
If the store administrator has designated a Quality as an Attribute Link, a menu will be visible by a shopper that displays the Attribute Links. Clicking on any of the menu items will filter the product catalog view to show matching and similar results, or product details.
Note: Throughout this guide, you will notice our use of the words Quality and Attribute. They are similar in many regards but are markedly different as to usage.
Qualities are a generic definition, which grouped together serve as features or options within a Trait.
Attributes are product specific. In the generic sense, Qualities become Attributes once they are assigned to a Product.
Attribute Links are the equivalent, which act as a filter to show only products that use match the quality represented in the link.
If the store administrator has designated any Traits as Trait Links, these will be visible by the shopper as a series of dropdown lists with the name of the Trait beside each dropdown list. Selecting any list item will post back the page and filter the results by the attribute name selected.
Products
The product is the item you are offering to the public. It can inherit attributes from the category you select for it, or can have individual attributes assigned to it during add/edit.
To view product details, click on the image of any product from the product listing pane.
The Shopping Cart
This is where all the magic happens. People purchase your products right from this central page. You want to make this as flexible as possible but you can’t do it alone, the following are examples of who can help make your transactional life easier from production to implementation.
Suppliers
These are companies you have created a supply and demand relationship with. Their products are for sale on your web site. These settings define all aspects of your suppliers. In the product settings, you can set the on-hand requirements to schedule inventory deliveries, so your suppliers are able to restock your inventory before you run out of stock. Supplier management, Purchase Order generation and fulfillment are covered extensively later in this guide.
Shippers
These are the companies you have created contracts with to ship your product to the buyer. Matching your account details with their required login and activation process will allow you to automatically calculate accurate shipping rates and send your orders on their way.
The KHZ StoreFront currently has options for UPS and the US Postal Service. Although the KHZ StoreFront will operate efficiently without you having an account with a shipping service, it is a recommended action as the sheer volume of transactions that may occur while a server is online could swamp a snail mail company and actually put them out of business.
Processors
These are the people who make online credit card processing possible. Be sure to get an account with the most reputable firm around as security is essential. Entering your account login and other account information here will allow for instant online transactions. The KHZ StoreFront currently has options for Authorize.Net, Paypal and Moneris.
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Authorize.Net is a superb choice for your credit card based international eCommerce transactions. They are a worldwide, industry standard and have leading fraud detection software for all merchants.
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Moneris is a leader for Canadian credit card based eCommerce transactions.
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Paypal is a worldwide leader in web based eCommerce transactions. If your customers tend to use this web mail based payment gateway, Paypal is an easy, cost effective way to get your orders.