Custom Vantage Web™ How to Create a Customizable Product

Custom Vantage Web™ How-To Create a New Customizable Product

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the first of many explorations into Custom Vantage Web™. Here we will guide you, step-by-step, on how-to best utilize Stamp Shop Web™ for your business. Let’s begin with creating a new customizable product with 2 lines of custom copy, see example product, Image-1.

STEPS TO FOLLOW

First, as a Stamp Shop Web™ customer, sign-in to your website with an administrator’s username and password. To do this, click on the Sign-in link on your homepage. Once signed-in you will see a new button, Enter Admin (Image-2) – click this button to enter the admin area of your website.

Once signed-in, you will see the admin area of your website with blue tabs lining the top of the page. This area allows you to control your site, with many options and settings. We will review many tabs throughout this series, but for now click on the Products tab (See Image-3).

Once inside the Products tab, the Catalog menu (far left, see Image-4) contains links that provide you with product related options. For now, we will focus on creating a new customizable product.

The ADD New Product area (top center) sets the ID and type of your new product.  Type the New Product ID (SKU) number into the field for the new product. Keep in mind this should be numbers and letters only, no spaces or special characters. Next select from the drop down titled, Select a Type.  Let’s back up for a moment, within Stamp Shop Web™ there are different classifications of product types, below is an explanation of each type.

Generic Products – non-customizable products, your customers will add this product type directly to their shopping cart (examples: ink bottle, ink pad).

Customizable – products that allow the customer to design their impression using the Stamp Shop Web™ system and view a preview of their design before purchasing.

2-Color Customizable – products that allow the customer to design their impression with a selection of 2-color areas using the Stamp Shop Web™  system and view a preview of their design before purchasing.

Customizable with Layout – products that allow the customer to design their impression with pre-existing requirements set by you, the admin.  This product type gives control over the customer's final design, limiting the space or alignment on the product.

For now let’s select Customizable and click the Add New Product button. Once clicked the page refreshes and now we see the General Info (Image-5) for our new customizable product.

It’s important to understand once you see the General Info area you are editing the product. Within the General Info area we can edit the product’s name, price, short description, long description and much more. The product name is the only required field. The following explains the items we suggest are completed per product.

Site Cost – reflects the amount you, the store owner paid for the product. You can leave this field at 0 if you would not like to keep track of the cost.

List Price – the factory price of the product. If you would like to show a visual discount you can set the list price to be higher than the site price. Out in the store the product will have both prices displayed; however the higher price will be red and crossed out, while the lower price will be displayed in black.

Site Price – the cost of the product to the customer.

Short Description –  a character limited description of the product. Type in the field provided and as you type the amount of characters remaining will count down.

Long Description –  an area that appears on the product page where you may describe the product. Click on the pencil icon (WYSIWYG editor). Your screen will refresh and expand to display formatting options. Here you can edit the text, add images, view the HTML code, etc. (We will explain the variety of functions the editor provides in future discussions).

Sort Order – assign a number to this product which will alter its order of appearance within a category of products. (IE: Stamp Shop Web sorts products alpha-numerically, to change the display order start with 0, 1, 2, 3, etc).

Meta Tags Section

Meta Title, Meta Keywords, Meta Description – each section provides you the ability to add search engine optimization (stay tuned, we will cover SEO in a future discussion!)

Shipping Section

                Weight – the product weight in pounds (lbs). (IE: ¼ lbs would be .25).

                Extra Ship Fee – add the additional dollar amount to the shipping cost of this products.

To the immediate left of the words General Info you will see the Edit Product menu. This menu offers you the ability to edit product features, images, categories, all related to this product. We will expand on creating product features coming up in a future discussion.

Since this is a customizable product we see the Custom Product Design link included at the bottom of the Edit Product menu. NOTE: you will not see the Custom Product Design link if you are editing a generic product.  In order for customizable products to work properly we must set the impression size dimensions. To do this, click on the Custom Product Design link at the bottom of the Edit Product menu.

Once inside the Custom Product Design area you will see the following fields (See Image-6):

*Width – set the width of the impression size/die plate of the product in inches (numeric form; IE: 1/2 inches would look like .5).

*Height – set the height of the impression size/die plate of the product in inches (numeric form).

*Max Lines – set the maximum number of customizable lines on this product.

*Custom Attribute – select from the drop down menu which of the previously created sets of fonts/font sizes/colors you would like associated with this product. (IE: Inking Stamp, Round, etc.)

Custom Attributes are a collection of fonts, font sizes, and colors. Here at Connectweb we have created basic groupings that are added to your Stamp Shop Web™ site automatically upon purchase. You may create unique custom attributes which we will cover in next month’s discussion.

Stamp Design Wizard Ranking – select from the drop down menu which rank you would like the Wizard to associate with this product (choose from: no-ranking, good, better, best, economy, or budget).

*asterisk notes required fields. It is very important that the required fields are set; if they are not set properly the product will not work.

Once you have set the width, height, max lines and custom attribute for the product you may click the save changes button. Congratulations, you have now created a customizable product. Stay tuned for next month’s discussion of creating unique Font Set Definitions (FSDs) and Custom Attributes for your customizable products, which will give you more control over products you offer on the web.

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