What is the Online Store?

The Online Store is a feature-rich online store, that gives you one-stop store and customer relationship management. Providing an incredible, diverse range of advanced options, the Online Store provides you with functionality such as:

• Currency support for most currencies
• Social networking and social tracking functionality
• Facebook page store integration
• Customer management
• Inventory management
• Order and stock management
• Product options and combinations
• Integration with many payment gateways (e.g., PayPal)
• The ability to accept a wide variety of payment methods (e.g., fax order, credit card, wire transfer)
• Shipping management using a wide variety of carriers (e.g., UPS, U.S.P.S, FedEx)
• The ability to add tax rates to your products
• The ability to create promotional and discount codes
• Ability for your customers to create accounts and save their payment details
• Ability to customize notification e-mails
• Advanced product set-up, including variable pricing for product options like different sizes, colors, models, etc.
• Dozens of supported languages for your storefront including English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and many more.
• Adaptive product browser

Having advanced e-commerce functionality on your website will take your business to the next level. You’ll be able to interact with your customers, build relationships and create a reputation as a reliable and professional provider.

Adding the Online Store to your site is easy. Simply drag-and-drop the Online Store Widget onto your site. You don’t need to change anything on your site, or even create a new one (unless you want to!). The store integrates fully into your existing site, and you can use it immediately.

Once you have your online store up and running, you can even integrate it with your Facebook page so that your customers can buy from you whenever, wherever!

How customizable is the Online Store? 

Once you have set up your store, you can start customizing it immediately.

You can change options such as currencies, languages, taxes, shipping and more via the System Settings. 

You can add Facebook "Like" buttons, and a Facebook comment box, and you can integrate your store into your company's Facebook page!

You can also offer your customers a range of product options - perfect if you are selling items like t-shirts, and need customers to choose sizes and colors! And, you can provide them with discount coupons. 

What's the difference between the Online Store Widget and the PayPal widgets?

The basic PayPal Widgets provide a way to display your products on your website, either individually or in a catalog. These are added to a PayPal cart, and payment is processed via PayPal. These widgets allow either single product purchases, or limited shopping cart purchases. They do not include product management and metrics, and you can’t store information about your customers.

You can think of the basic PayPal Widgets as pictures of your products that take your customers to a checkout screen. Once your customer has purchased an item, PayPal processes their order and they receive it.

The Online Store includes payment gateway integration so, your customers buy directly from your site. What’s more, you can store their details, add taxes and shipping costs, manage their orders, track delivery and follow up with them.

While the PayPal Widgets do not include inventory and stock management, the Online Store includes all of that in an easily-accessible dashboard in the SiteBuilder.

How do I manage my products and stock?

The Online Store is integrated into the SiteBuilder, so the control panel is right at your fingertips, and is the heart of your online store management.

This is where you can:

• View recent orders: A list of the five most recently-placed orders. This can be expanded.
• View a sales graph: Track sales figures, per day.
• Add additional products: Add additional products to your catalog.
• Access advanced options (such as discounts and promotions)
• Edit categories 
• Edit tax rules
• Edit shipping rules

How do I sign up?

You can add the Online Store to your account via the SiteBuilder:

1. Log in to the SiteBuilder.
2. Click on Online Store in the top menu.
3. Select “Upgrade Now"
4. You’ll be taken to the checkout screen to confirm your purchase.
5. Once your order has been processed, return to the SiteBuilder to begin building your Online Store.
6. You will also receive a confirmation email with all the information you need.

What will happen to my existing online store?

If you have created an online store using the PayPal Widgets, you can still use them, and customers can still purchase products using the PayPal functionality.

However, your existing PayPal Widgets will not be integrated into your store. You can have both types of stores (Online Store and basic PayPal Widgets) active at the same time, but they don't work in conjunction with each other. For example, features such as the Online Store inventory control will not be applicable to your PayPal Widgets.

Although it is not possible to transfer your product data from the basic PayPal Widgets to the store, once you have copied the information across, it is much easier to manage and update.