Shopinabox On-line shop and E-Commerce by K4IT in Sandy, Bedfordshire

ShopInABox™ was specified & designed against ‘the best’ on-line shops to offer leading functionality
 
ShopInABox™ was then optimised to allow for large scale, meaning that searches are rendered to the User very quickly, for example in under a second with over 60,000 Products and 20+ potential Facet filters in play

Enabling the customer to quickly find the product(s) they are looking for and to drill down on their selection, is critical

Well organised Categories are a good start but the best on-line shops go much further & ShopInABox™ is designed to be stronger than most!

Filtering is controlled by Facets, properties that allow the User to sub-select a set of products

ShopInABox™ Facet types:

• Product property – filter on any data field on the product record, e.g. manufacturer. Users can check a manufacturer to filter the list 
• Colour swatch – define a set of possible colours and then assign products to those colours, e.g. T-shirt B107 is available in Black, White & Blue. Colour swatches are displayed as a coloured shape. Users can click a colour to filter the list
• Feature Facet – a single or list of properties, which can then be linked to products – e.g. shirt size may include XS, S, M, L , XL. Users check one or more selections
• Range – allows for the sub-division of products based upon a numeric property – e.g. hard disk drives can be allocated to a capacity band. Users select the band required
• Availability – is the item in stock – Users can select to only view items in stock

Facets are applied in a cumulative manner and the User can make more than one selection for Feature Facets. This means the User could progressively filter within Men’s Trainers to Nike, size 11 in colour Black or Blue, for example

Facets can be set as inherited, or not. Inherited Facets applied to a Category are automatically inherited by child categories and their products 

• A key aspect of a successful on-line shop is getting found and driving traffic
• Critical to traffic is good rankings with Search Engines
• Critical to rankings is rich page content – for landing, category, listing and product pages – e.g. 500+ non-plagiarised words on a page
• Customer Reviews, Information Tabs, Specials, Offers, Category & Product rich text, together with quality Images, all help

ShopInABox™ payment options:

• Pay on Account, via credit limit
• Pre-integrated on-line payment methods
  • PayPal
  • WorldPay
  • RealEx (HSBC)
• On-line payment methods are PCI compliant
• On-line payment transactions are made in the User’s currency

Obviously, products are the key element of ShopInABox™

• Basics – part number, title, manufacturer, Selling Price, VAT code, Delivery, etc
• Short & long descriptions – both can be just text or long HTML blocks (Content is king)
• Product Images – see product images below
• Links to Information Tabs - displayed on the product listing (Content is king)
• Links to Categories
• Facet Filters & product specific values 
• Stock Management – control the stock levels for all Facet variants of the product
• Related products – for ‘want that, also buy this’ and ‘you may also like’ Cross Sales display
• Customer Review management
• Statistics for Customer Review ratings, viewed, sold
• Specification – unit of issue, weights & dimensions & custom properties
• Links to Vendors – if required, products can be linked to Vendors to allow the display of a list of places where the User can buy a product
• Search keys, product URL & meta tags – for SEO
• Controls, disabled flag, display order, etc

Loading product images

• Manual – you can upload product images manually
• Automatically – product images can be uploaded via FTP as they become available and automatically adopted to a product via a Scheduled Task
• Each image file must be named with the product part number and optionally with a number, say p123.jpg or p123_1.jpg, p123_2.jpg
• Uploaded images are resized for large and thumbnail, against set parameters and if present, have a watermark applied as an overlay
• Automatically uploaded images are sequenced as processed and the first is used for the thumbnail

Product image management

• Administrators can manage images for a product – upload, delete, select primary, thumbnail, sequencing
• For products with colour variants images can be assigned to a specific colour – User colour selection, via a Swatch palette will change the image displayed

Product image display (Content is king)

• For product listings the thumbnail is used
• Available images are displayed on the product page
• If only one image is available, that will be used
• If more than one images is available, the product’s images are displayed in a carousel
• If an image is large enough, a zoom will be available to the User, on both desktop and mobile devices

• Link related or complimentary products. These can then be displayed on the product page to promote additional sales & maximise revenues – e.g. ‘you may also like..’
• This is achieved in two ways: Link several products to a product. Adjust the sequence of the linked products. The first link will be displayed as a primary in a more prominent position, with the others displayed in a list lower down the page

ShopInABox™ is organised using a cascading, nested category structure. Parent & child categories can contain further child categories or Products, allowing for a category structure as complex as you choose to make it.
 
Each category has a range of features:

• The basics like a short title for menus and a longer title for full display
• Tile content & image, for displaying a sub-set of categories in a grid on a category listing page (Content is king)
• Splash content & image in case you want content to appear above the product listing for the category (Content is king)
• Categories can be linked to Offers which will then be displayed on that category page
• Categories can be linked to Information Tabs. These tabs will then be included in the product listing for Products within that category (Content is king)
• Categories can be linked to Facet Filters which are used for search filtering. For example, size & colour facets linked to a category means that products in that category will have size & colour selectors
• Each category has a set of defined formats, with defaults, that determine the display and styling when the category is displayed

• For simple shops a simple search will deliver a User’s results with speed, rendering a product listing of results
• QuickSearch delivers a list of products with a match against the search term on a number of data fields. Selection re-directs the visitor to the product page
• For complex shops, more sophisticated search may be required or necessary
• Advanced Search offers the User a search input together with a full set of available Facet Filters. For shops with large numbers of products, a category selector is added.
• The User can search for any term against a number of data fields, selecting no or a number of Facets. Again the results will be delivered quickly via a product listing

• In addition to the standard features, ShopInABox™ offers friendly category & product URLs and schema.org product data encoding for eCommerce products
• This automatically codes product pages to identify products that search engines look for.
• ShopInABox™ Sitemaps clearly define all product categories and products for full Search Engine registration

• Users can browse the shop via Category menus and (sub) Category listing pages, what we may call the traditional way
• Once the User arrives at a list of products the Facet Filters for the active Category are applied
• ShopInABox™ displays Breadcrumbs & a contextual menu for the current category
• The User can quickly & intuitively navigate through the shop
• Product listing pages include Facet Filters, Sort, Number of Products & Pages & Pagination

For available products the User call to action is via a clear Buy button
Different layouts allow for the display of:

• current stock position
• order by cut off time for same day despatch
• quantity required (default 1)
• Currency / VAT selling price
• Social media Like & Share

Customisations allow for:

• call for price / price enquiry where you want to restrict sales
• sourcing request

Non-buy options can also prompt use of the Chat service

Discounts can be made available by issuing coupon codes which the customer enters at the checkout

• Coupons can be for a percentage or a fixed amount discount
• Coupons have a start & end date & time so that offers can be planned and set up in advance.
• A quantity is specified so that a coupon can only be used a limited number of times, counted when the order is created
• A coupon can be customer, product or product category specific – percentage product and category coupons are only applied to the value of qualifying items
• A single product or order value threshold can be set. For example, the customer either needs to order a product of value £x or an order of £x in total
• The threshold can be checked against the items value or the full order value incuding delivery

ShopInABox™ includes a mini-basket, with total, item count, link & mouse-over to display a summary, displayed on all pages

Checkout provides a stream-lined but clear process:

• Basket review
• Delivery address
• Delivery method
• Payment
• Confirmation

Checkout features:

• In-line login / registration (including 2-step confirmation), which manages where the user swaps from one device to another
• Multiple invoice / delivery address management
• Delivery method selection
• Discount Coupon entry & validation
• Payment method selection

Payment or payment failure triggers administrative notifications
Successful orders trigger order request confirmation to the client

Promotions allow for the inclusion of extended rich text content on category pages with title, rich HTML, image & display formatting

Special offers allow promotions for selected products
 
Each product has:

• start & end date & time
• promotional price

 
Specials are then displayed within ShopInABox™ pages as required

• Information Tabs allow for the inclusion of extended rich text content on product pages (Content is king)
• Links can be made for a Category or a specific product 

• Delivery types allow for normal and special delivery requirements, e.g. for heavy or bulky items
• Delivery methods are mapped to delivery types and geographic zones
• The combination of delivery types & methods together with the content of the User’s basket provides for a potential order value, total weight and delivery options for the delivery address
• Delivery methods then have a weight range and an order value range, together with a price
• All of this allows for a selection of delivery options to the User during checkout, based upon shipping restrictions and basket content
• For example, allowing free delivery above a certain order value is simple

• ShopInABox™ includes a list of countries and these are mapped to geographic zones
• Countries have flags to deny service or on-line payments

• Products specify a product VAT treatment code 
• Zones are assigned a geographic VAT treatment code
• These are combined with Basket / Order content to calculate taxes

• ShopInABox™ has flags to determine which stock solution to use when determining whether the user can buy a product
• No limitation - for example when sending electronic eCards which do not have a physical product, there is no stock limit
• Standard stock – stocks are managed on the system with unique stocking units for each Facet Filter combination (e.g. blue, XL) - Call to Action Buy buttons are driven by the need to choose options, which are controlled by stock levels (e.g. cannot choose blue if not in stock)
• External stock files – these are synchronised by customisation - Call to Action Buy buttons will not be displayed for products without stock and the system will not allow these products into the basket

• Genuine customer reviews provide content & encourage trust (Content is king)
• Users can post ratings of products via the product page
• To avoid abuse, reviews require moderation by the Administrators before they are displayed
• Reviews include a rating and accepted reviews are incorporated into product statistics for an average rating

• ShopInABox™ caters for multiple currencies including date & time based exchange rates
• Users can switch currencies with ease
• Pricing is automatically displayed in the selected currency
• All basket & order values, sub-totals, taxes and total are expressed in the currency 

• ShopInABox™ includes a flag to specify that product prices include VAT, or Not
• The net price of a product & VAT will be calculated accordingly
• In product listings the User can also toggle prices to be displayed with or without VAT with a click

• In addition to SiteInABox™ features, ShopInABox™ allows for Order history review & returns
• User companies can enter an EU VAT code, which when validated, will exclude VAT from orders
• EU VAT codes are validated via a scheduled task or within the Checkout process, whichever happens first
• Administrative staff can create user accounts and orders on behalf of Users, together with viewing & editing User orders

• ShopInABox™ can hold all of the data necessary for the shop to operate, which can be entered & maintained via the Administration section
• It is possible to build customisations to allow the upload  & automated update of shop data
• K4IT have developed a ‘live interface’ to one client’s core systems, whereby changes are automatically synchronised for customers, products & stock every few minutes

• Manufacturer images can be uploaded as they become available and automatically adopted to manufacturers via a Scheduled Task
• Each image file must be named with the manufacturer’s short tag, e.g. mana.jpg
• Uploaded images are resized for large and thumbnail, against set parameters
• Where a product image is unavailable, the manufacturer image is displayed