E-commerce Walkthrough
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Introduction
This page explains the E-commerce features of WebSBA. It assumes the reader is familiar with the basic features of WebSBA.

About Shopping Carts
Like most e-commerce solutions, WebSBA's e-commerce tools are centered around the electronic "Shopping Cart." Shopping carts allow customers to gather product information and place orders themselves--using your website. However, WebSBA does not stop there, but also integrates the shopping cart with your accounting, inventory, production management, and other data.

Designing an e-Store
As with their physical counterparts, electronic shopping carts require a retail environment to function. You need to design an electronic store for this purpose.

Before designing your actual e-store however, you need to categorize your products so you can group similar items together in your store.

  1. From the Main Menu, click Maintain Products under the Products heading.
  2. Click Search to display a listing of all your products.
  3. Select a product you want to sell in your e-store and click Maintain Product.
  4. Click the Edit link.
  5. Enter a Category to categorize the item. 

    Note:  The Class field serves the same purpose as Category and can be used to further categorize the item. You will group items in your store by selectively displaying all items that have certain Category and/or Class values.
  6. Click Save Product.

Repeat steps 1 - 6 as necessary to organize your products. You can always come back and reorganize them.

Once you have several product groups categorized, you can begin designing your e-store. First you will select its appearance and then add your products to it.

  1. From the Main Menu, click Cart Administration under the Tools heading.
  2. Select General Preferences and click OK.
  3. Enter a Window Title such as your company name.
  4. If you have a logo graphic you would like to display in your e-store, select Yes for Display Logo and enter the logo's URL for Logo Path.
  5. The next field, CSS File, allows you to customize the colors and fonts of your e-store. If you do not know what a CSS file is, ignore this field.
  6. Skip the "Add to Cart" button file field. It is optional and used to further customize your e-store.
  7. Select 7030.asp for Default Storefront. This specifies the layout of your e-store.
  8. Unless you will be selling assembly products (products that you assemble before selling), you can ignore the BOM Totals field. This field applies to Bill of Material products only.
  9. Click OK.

Now you can add products to your e-store.

  1. From the Main Menu, click Cart Administration under the Tools heading.
  2. Select "70-30" Generic Storefront and click OK.
  3. Now you need to add product categories to your e-store. These will allow your customers to browse through and find the products they want.
    1. Find the lowest row labeled with (new).
    2. Enter the name of the category you want to add.
    3. Enter the Categories and Classes that define the category. Separate multiple values with a comma and a space and shown in the example.
    4. Click OK.
  4. You will receive confirmation of the changes to your shopping cart.

Accessing Your e-Store
WebSBA provides easy access to your e-Store through a link on the Main Menu.

  1. From the Main Menu, click Web Shopping Cart under the Tools heading.
  2. Your actual e-Store will be displayed within a frameset, which provides a link back to the Main Menu.

Utilizing Your e-Store
The WebSBA e-commerce features are designed to be integrated into your existing website. The recommended way to do this is the use a frameset to "pull" your e-Store into your site. Your e-Store will look like it is part of your site, but it is actually located on the WebSBA server.

Creating a frameset is beyond the scope of this tutorial, however, we have provided several demonstration websites which show how it can be done. The following steps explain how to find the URL to your e-Store, which you will then use in your frameset.

  1. From the Main Menu, click Web Shopping Cart under the Tools heading.
  2. Your actual e-Store will be displayed within a frameset, which provides a link back to the Main Menu.
  3. Right-click a blank area in your e-Store. A pop-up menu will appear.
  4. Click the Properties option.
  5. Look for a value labeled Address or URL.
  6. Select and copy the value, which should begin with http://.
  7. You may now paste this value anywhere you need it.

Summary
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