Quick Start Guide (eShop 4.0)

Congratulations! Your website has now been designed and built and we want to help you get up and running and, more importantly, selling as quickly as possible. Depending on how much experience you have had with online retailing will depend on how quickly you will grasp our great CMS system. If you are new, we recommend sticking closely to this guide to help you get started. Once you have set up the basics and start to play around, gain confidence in yourself and the system you will pick it up in no time. And don’t forget we have our great support team that are just an email away.

1. Before you start adding products we suggest you set up the core functionality of your website so that when you do add your first product you will be ready to process the order.
2. As you get started don’t worry about the features and Tabs that you are not sure about.  Just focus on what you are wanting to get done, and master those areas. As you become more familiar with the basics you will then get more confidence and understanding about the more advanced settings and features and will progress onto those.
3. There is not much that you can “break” so we encourage you to take some time just to click on all the tabs and pages to get a sense of what is there.

Step One – Adding Company Information

1. Go to Settings > Company. Enter all relevant information regarding your company. Save changes.

Step Two – Payment Methods

1. Go to Administration > Payment Methods
2. Here you will find some of the most common Payment Methods half setup for you already. All you have to do is edit them and activate them!
   -Paypal Express Checkout
   -eWay
   -Direct Debit
   -Phone Ordering

Step Three – Shipping

Before you start to add in your Shipping Methods, you will need to have a clear idea of how you plan to handle your shipping. For a break down of the different ways you can set up shipping, view this article. 

If you need any further clarification on this, please visit the Shipping section of the knowledgebase.

To edit your shipping methods, go to Administration > Shipping & Taxes > Shipping Methods.

Step Four – Taxes

By default, tax is set up to be inclusive of the prices that you enter, provided you select the GST checkbox when creating your products (see step 6 for more information). From this, the cart will then calculate backwards how much tax is in the products you have entered.

Step Five – Creating Categories

Before you can add your products, you must add in your Categories.

IMPORTANT: Before doing the below, please do not use or edit the categories we place there by default to show you how the categories and products will look on your website.  Delete the test categories once you've had a good look at the products and the potential ways to set them up - Do not edit over or use them or you will have very odd looking URLs/links for your categories!  Go to Products > Categories and click 'delete' next to the test categories.   Then follow the below.

1.  Go to Product > Categories and then click on the + symbol (Add Category) button.

2.  Fill in the Name of your category.

3.  For Location, if you would like this category to be a Top Level category (eg. Books) leave it as Root Level. If you would like it to be a sub-category (eg. Books > Fantasy), you would then select the category you would like it to come underneath (eg. Books)

4.  The other fields are optional. You may enter a description or image to appear on the category page, but it is not required.

5.  Click Create and Close

Step Six – Adding Products

Now that you have created your Categories, you will be able to add your Products.

Please note:  Do not edit or use the test categories or example products we have placed there by default which showcase some of the ways you can set up your products. 

1. Go to Product > Products and then click on the Add Product button.
2. Fill in the Name of your product.
3. Click on Add Categories and tick the Categories you would like this product to be listed under. Click Add Categories And Close.
4. Enter the Price for your product.
5. Enter in a Description for your product.
6. Under Images, click on Local and browse your computer for the image you would like to use for this Product. Please read this article before starting to upload images to your website to save you unnecessary time fixing and resizing images on your website further down the track.
7. All other fields are optional, but can be beneficial for tracking. You may want to fill in a Product Code, as well as the In Stock field. This determines how many of the item you can sell before the product is listed as out of stock.
8. If you do not wish to track inventory, change to Do Not Track under Inventory.
9. Click Create and Close

Step Seven – Final Checks

Once you have filled in your website with your products and information, we recommend testing the cart itself, as well as your contact form.

Create a test product with the value of $1. Add this product to your cart, and check out as if you were a visitor. Select your payment method (we recommend checking each of them, to make sure they are indeed working) and place the order. You will then receive notifications from the cart that the order has been placed, and that payment has been received from your payment method.

Check your contact form is submitting correctly by filling it out and clicking submit. The form should then successfully be delivered to your inbox.

If you need any help along the way please email our support team.