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 Ecommerce
Guide
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PreSale
and Common Technical Questions
These are answers to
questions that have been frequently addressed for our
customers, as well as some pre-sale inquires.
PowerCommerce
Overview
Answers
to questions about Mercantec's PowerCommerce features,
including PowerWebBuilder, PowerSoftCart, PowerPayment, and
the Ebay Marketplace Manager.
SoftCart
Guide
These are questions
regarding the tools and features of SoftCart, as well as how
to's, and other advanced development references.
OsCommerce
Guide
A basic Q & A about installing and setting up the
osCommerce script in your account.
PreSale
Questions
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SoftCart
Common
Technical Questions
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What
is E-Commerce?
Electronic
Commerce is a convenient and affordable way to sell products
or services online. E-Commerce software and services such as
PowerCommerce, SoftCart and CyberCash enables individuals
to maintain an online business, while performing transactions
right from the Web.
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What
steps should I take to utilize
E-Commerce?
First,
choose a Commerce Blvd E-Commerce
Hosting Plan. Second, follow the easy online wizard to create
your PowerCommerce or SoftCart store (depending on
the plan you choose). Once your store is
created, decide on a processing method of either offline
or real-time processing. Our hosting plans offer
several options for processing credit
cards securely over the internet. Once you have completed these few steps, you can concentrate
on marketing your site and receiving orders.
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What
is Online Payment Processing?
When
a customer purchases products from your site with a credit
card, you or your site software will request approval that
the card is valid and that sufficient funds are available in
the customer’s account for the purchase. On approval, the
bank will reply with an authorization number and the order
will be officially "captured". In the next step,
the merchandise or service is sent to the customer and the
Merchant informs the bank where the Merchant Account is
held. The bank then deposits funds into the Merchant Account
as the customer’s account is debited the cost of the
products. Your Merchant Account bank will remove the
necessary service fees and complete the transaction.
Offline
processing entails some labor on the part of the Merchant,
but is easiest to adapt an existing business. In this case,
a business’s current credit card processor will suffice.
Real-time
processing requires little or no intervention by the
Merchant, and is ideal for businesses in need of processing
hundreds of orders per month. Credit Card numbers are
received through the Internet and cleared by CyberCash,
PayPal or other online processor.
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What
is a Merchant Account?
All
merchants of all sizes and types of business must open a
Merchant Account in order to receive credit card orders and
clear the transactions. The Merchant Account acts as the
deposit location for the customer’s money. The bank that
you choose to house your Merchant Account will take a small
percentage of the sale as a service fee. This fee is
extracted at the point of each sale.
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What
are the Benefits of E-commerce?
There
are two main advantages to selling within an online store.
Number One, the overhead cost of an E-commerce web site is
generally much less than the cost of a physical storefront.
Number two, you have the ability to reach customers all over
the world rather than being limited to a certain
geographical location.
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How
should I get started in building my SoftCart Store?
Be
sure to fill out the licensing agreement when you log on to
your Store Manager (StoreMgr) the very first time, so that
Mercantec can send you the hard copy of their user guide and
provide you a url to download the encryption program. You
may also download available
user guides.
Regardless
if you are planning to create a custom store or insert
SoftCart’s tags into an existing web site, it is
recommended that you should first use SoftCart’s
StoreBuilder (for details instructions, please refer to
SoftCart User’s guide) to create your store for the very
first time. This way, you can be familiar with how SoftCart
works. Many times, it is easier to modify an existing Store
Template than to create one from scratch. You may also
modify the default template one (1) page at a time and use
the "Store Generate" function to generate the site
to make sure your custom template is working properly before
you have made all the changes.
For
a Web designer that wishes to insert SoftCart’s tags into
an existing site, the Store Builder can also provide a good
example of how SoftCart’s tags work. You may simply review
the .html files that Store Builder generated (in your htdocs/scstore/
folder) for you and it should provide you a better
understanding of how you should insert the custom tags on
your existing site (you may also find more information in
the SoftCart User’s guide and the Technical Reference
Guide).
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After
I generated my Store, my site was created within my
htdocs/scstore/ folder. I want my visitors to access my site
via http://www.domain.com NOT http://www.domain.com/scstore/,
can I change that?
By
default, SoftCart Pagegenerator creates all of the store
files and stores them within the htdocs/scstore/ folder.
This is because if you already have an existing web site the
generated files may over-write your existing files. This
method also allows Merchants to have a non-SoftCart site up
while still working on the new Store. There are two
different methods to over come the issue about visitors not
being able to access your store via: http://www.domain.com
I.
(Recommended for all users)
You
may simply copy the index.html file within your htdocs/scstore/
folder and store it within your htdocs/ folder. You may need
to modify some of the image paths on your index.html page,
so that your images can load properly.
II.
(Recommended for all users)
Simply
create a custom index.html page that contains a refresh tag
(see below example), ftp this file to your htdocs/ folder.
When your visitors access your site via http://www.domain.com
your custom page can automatically re-direct the traffic to
enter your Store immediately. The instructions are below:
Edit
your index.html document and within the <head> and
</head> tags, insert the following:
<meta
HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" Content="0; URL=(copy
enter store url and place it here)">
Example:
<head>
<meta
HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" Content="0; URL=http://www.mystore.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/scstore/shophome.html?E+scstore">
</head>
III.*
(Advanced Users)
Advanced
developers may specify where SoftCart should generate the
store files. Once you are ready to make your Store live, you
may change these settings by editing the file found within
your cgi-local/scstore.cfg locate the line: "StoreDir /
scstore" and replace it with "StoreDir / " (ie.
To generate the page to the root web folder, htdocs/).
Please be sure to modify the scstore.cfg file with care, the
format should always be tab delimited and it should be
downloaded or uploaded via ASCII mode (do NOT set your ftp
program with auto-detect).
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How
can I create sub-categories with SoftCart?
Sub-categories
are not supported in SoftCart's Page Generator program by
default.
The
easiest way to create sub-categories within SoftCart is to
create your own index page with your categories on it, then
link it to the statically generated SoftCart category pages
(which would act as the sub-categories). These pages are
labeled: c-(your category here).html and should be
located within your htdocs/scstore/ folder. Make sure there
is still an "enter store" page before this one
though, so that a cart ID will be assigned to the shopper.
This requires some customization on the merchant or their
developer's part, but should produce the desired effect.
Example:
A
Merchant that is selling movies online and wishes to create
a first level of categories: DVD, VCD (video CD), and
VHS. Under each category, there should be
sub-categories – Comedy, Action, and Drama.
The Merchant should first create their own index page that
contains a link to the 3 categories: DVD, VHS, and VCD.
Within the Store Manager, they may then create the
categories: DVD-Comedy, DVD-Action, DVD-Drama, VCD-Comedy,
VCD-Action, VCD-Drama, VHS-Comedy, VHS-Action, and VHS-Drama
and input the products' information under each category.
Once the Store is generated, the merchant may edit the link
on their custom Category page to link to the Sub-Categories
(ie. C-DVD-Comedy.html should be the sub-category page for
DVD-comedy; this page should be generated within scstore/
by default).
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How
do I sort my SoftCart Categories or Products?
SoftCart
by default cannot sort the Categories or Products once they
have been entered into the Store Manager. SoftCart inputs
the most recently added info to the bottom of the list. Here
is a manual work-around for this obstacle:
If
you are familiar with FTP, you may transfer the product or
category database to your local machine and save it in a
tab-delimited, ASCII text format such as MS Access or Excel.
Sort the list alphabetically or whichever way you desire.
Save the file and upload it back to the server to the
products directory. You will need to utilize this process
each time you add a new product or category to your database
if you do not want the new information appended to the
bottom of the list.
The
directory path for these databases is:
merchant/shopdata/products/product4.pdb
for products and .../product.cdb for categories.
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I’m
currently using
a different host for my SoftCart site. Do I need to rebuild
everything from scratch if I am swicthing to you?
No,
There are easier ways to transfer files from your current
host and get your site up and running. The information below
assumes you currently have a functional SoftCart site and
have full FTP (file transfer protocol) access to your
current account on the different host. For more
information about FTP, please refer to our FTP
Tutorial
*Important
note: Please be sure NOT to
download any SoftCart executable files or configruation
files within your cgi-bin or cgi-local folder at your
current ISP/Web host unless you are absolutely
certain the file you download will NOT
have any conflict with our Server. You can always check with
us via support@commerceblvd.com
before transferring these files. (Please do not email any
files.)
A.Downloading
your Products and Category database
FTP
to your account on your ISP/Web Host server, locate the
folder that contains your product database (the directory
path for this database is normally: merchant/shopdata/products/
--However, this may differ for each Service Provider;
depending on how your current host has set up SoftCart, some
dig-around within the directory may be necessary)
Download
all of the files within the products/ folder, most of these
files should start with product4., *Note,
be sure to download these files via ASCII (do not
use the auto detect function for your FTP program).
You
may then ftp to your account on our server (refer to the
account setup notice email for FTP address, userid and
password). Select the folder merchant/shopdata/products/ and
upload all of the product4. files you previously downloaded
via ASCII format.
Your
product database has now been transferred to our server!
B
Downloading your shipping and sales Tax information
FTP
to your account on your current ISP/Web host server, locate
the folder that contains your shipping and sales tax files.
It should be: merchant/shopdata/salestax/
and merchant/shopdata/shipping/
Download
all of the files found in the above folders, it is
recommended to download these files into two separate
folders on your computer (to eliminate confusion). You may
then ftp to your account on our (new host) server and upload
all of the salestax files to your merchant/shopdata/salestax/
folder and your shipping files to your merchant/shopdata/shipping/
folder.
If
you have previously customized your files within your
merchant/shopdata/template/ folder, you will need to follow
the above instructions to download the file(s) within this
folder and re-upload the file(s) to the same folder on our
server. Otherwise, you may skip this step.
C
Store design and lay out
If
you are using one of SoftCart’s default template to
generate your store and you did not customize this template
sets on your current host, you may skip this step and
proceed to section E.
If
you were using the method to insert SoftCart’s tags to
your existing sites previously, please skip to section D.
For
customers that had previously created a custom template,
please FTP to your current host and locate your custom
template files within your merchant/SmPageGen/
folder. You should find the folder that contains your custom
template within merchant/SmPageGen/ (ie. merchant/SmPageGen/mytemplate/).
Please download all of the files within this custom folder
along with the .cfg file that was located within your
merchant/SmPageGen/ folder. The file name of your .cfg file
should be the same as the folder, (ie. if your folder is
named "mytemplate" the .cfg file should be "mytemplate.cfg").
You
may then ftp to our server and locate the folder: merchant/SmPageGen/
and upload the .cfg (template configuration) file via ASCII
upload. You may then create the custom folder within your
merchant/SmPageGen/ and upload all of your custom templates
to this folder via ASCII upload.
Please
proceed to section F. after this step.
D.
Transferring existing Web Site content (for customers that
inserted SoftCart’s tags to an existing site on their
previous host)
You
will need to locate the web site folders (ie. htdocs/ --on
some hosts the main folder you logon via ftp is the root web
folder). You may then download all of your files via Binary
transfer or Auto-detect (ie. .htm .html and image files) to
your computer. Once the download is completed, please ftp to
our server and change folder name to htdocs/ and upload all
of your files via Binary transfer or auto-detect. Please be
sure to keep the directory structure as found on your
previous host. Then proceed to section F. after this
step.
E.
Transferring product images and thumbnail files
FTP
to your current host and locate the folder where your store
files are generate--
ie. scstore (it should be the same as the Store Name),
within this folder, you should find two separate folders –
graphics and images. Download all of the
files (*note: be sure to use Binary mode or
Auto-detect) within these two folders to your
computer (you may want to separate them into two separate
locations on your computer to reduce confusion). Once the
download is completed, open an FTP session to our server and
change directory to htdocs/scstore/, you should be able to
find two separate folders – graphics and images.
FTP upload via Binary mode or Auto-detect all of your
graphic files you had previously downloaded to the graphics
folder and your image files to your images folder. This
should complete the transfer of your products' images.
F.
Log on to your StoreMgr
Please
logon to your StoreMgr on our server via the logon
information we provided you when we first setup your account
(via email). Under the "Store Admin" page, type in
the basic information as it appears on the StoreMgr at your
previous host, you may also want to setup the online and
offline email as well via the StoreMgr. If you have selected
CyberCash for a payment module, please be sure to setup your
payment system via your StoreMgr as well (you may simply
copy the existing information via the StoreMgr of your
current host to the StoreMgr on our server).
G.
Assigning Encryption Key
We
assume you are using the computer that has the SoftCart
Encryption program installed and has previously generated an
encryption key. If you have not done this previously, please
follow the instructions on the SoftCart User’s
Guide – Security Option P. 61
Within
your "StoreMgr", please select
"Security" – "Manage Encryption keys"
via the computer that had previous generated the encryption
key. From the Keys menu, select "upload a public
key"; select the public key you created previously; and
upload to your StoreMgr. Please be sure to assign
the key as well.
For
customers that are using "inserting SoftCart's tags for
an existing web site" after you have completed this
step, your site should be functional! For other
customers please proceed to section H.
H.
Generate your Store
Logon
to your StoreMgr, select "Site Design &
Generation". Under the template set drop-down list box,
select the custom template (if you have a custom template)
or the template sets you wish to use. Select the Site page
and the Catalog Navigation scheme from your previous
settings (on your previous host) and click on the
"Generate Site" button. Your site should be
generated and you should be able to access your Store via:
http://www.yourdomain.com/scstore/
or http://ipaddress/scstore/ (if
your domain name has not been transferred to us yet).
The
above information is a summary of steps which you may
perform to transfer your site; you may also want to review
the Mercantec SoftCart documentation for detailed
information. If you are having any problems with the above
instructions, please feel free to contact us at: support@commerceblvd.com
and be sure to provide us the domain name of your account
and the details of the problems, so that we can assist you
to make your site transfer as smoothly as possible.
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I
am having problems with my ClearCommerce payment system
or payment distribution into my Merchant Account. What's
wrong?
Mercantec
has provided us with vast information in their online help
for common issues experienced with the ClearCommerce module
while using SoftCart. Please try visiting the following link
to answer your questions first:
http://www.mercantec.com/support/paymentfaq.html
If
you cannot find any answers there, please contact us at support@commerceblvd.com
and we will assist you with opening a Mercantec support
ticket.
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