IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I'm Lawrence Cramer, and welcome to
Building an eCommerce Web Site using
| | 00:08 | Dreamweaver and PHP.
| | 00:10 | In this course, you will look at how to
build an eCommerce site, in Dreamweaver
| | 00:13 | using its powerful features and PHP and MySQL.
| | 00:17 | I'll talk about what sort of eCommerce
types and platforms you have to choose from.
| | 00:21 | Then I'll show you how to add
eCommerce capabilities to your Website by first
| | 00:24 | adding a simple Buy button to an
existing HTML site, and then how to build a
| | 00:29 | full-featured database-driven eCommerce site.
| | 00:32 | I'll show you how to take your store
live as well as how to manage it and
| | 00:35 | protect it to secure
your customers' information.
| | 00:39 | To get the most out of this course, you
will need to have a good grasp of Adobe
| | 00:42 | Dreamweaver, and while you don't need
to know how to code, you'll need to be
| | 00:45 | willing to learn just a little along the way.
| | 00:48 | The demand for eCommerce
sites is higher than ever.
| | 00:51 | So knowing how to build one is a real
asset to any Web designer or developer.
| | 00:55 | So let's get started with Building
an eCommerce Web Site with Dreamweaver
| | 00:59 | and PHP.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium member of the lynda.com
Online Training Library or if you're
| | 00:04 | watching this tutorial on a DVD-ROM,
you have access to the exercise files used
| | 00:09 | throughout this title.
| | 00:10 | The exercise files will be contained in
a folder called Exercise Files. And you
| | 00:15 | open that, and in it will be folders for
the various chapters that have exercise
| | 00:19 | files associated with them.
| | 00:20 | For example, in Chapter 11, when we talk
about terms and conditions, and policy
| | 00:25 | statements, samples of
those are available there.
| | 00:28 | These files can be used as examples and
starting points for you to practice with.
| | 00:32 | When we get to the part of this
course where we are setting up the shopping
| | 00:35 | cart, we will be using the Cartweaver,
a very popular eCommerce application.
| | 00:40 | If you're using a different
application, go ahead and install it and follow
| | 00:44 | it along, because many of the principles we
cover apply to most any shopping cart application.
| | 00:49 | If you don't have access to these
exercise files, you can follow along from
| | 00:52 | scratch or with your own assets.
| | 00:55 | So let's get started.
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| Previewing finished projects| 00:00 | In this video, I'll teach you how to
develop and create a full featured online
| | 00:04 | store where you can search for products,
find products, look at them, order them
| | 00:11 | and your site will interact with
payment gateways and your customers will be
| | 00:13 | able to place orders and you
will be able to manage orders.
| | 00:16 | I'll also show you how to use the
backend admin for this site, where you can
| | 00:20 | enter and control your products, control
your orders, and manage your customers.
| | 00:25 | Essentially, you'll learn what
it takes to develop and deploy a
| | 00:28 | full-featured online store.
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1. Gathering The ToolsWhat you need to have on hand for the simple solution| 00:00 | What you'll need for this
course is Adobe Dreamweaver.
| | 00:03 | And you'll want to Download XAMPP, the
installer that will be used to set up our
| | 00:07 | development environment.
| | 00:08 | You may also want to create a PayPal
account, so you can follow along when we
| | 00:13 | cover adding a Buy button to your site.
| | 00:15 | We will also be installing a
shopping cart application in this course.
| | 00:19 | We will be using Cartweaver as an
example, but you may want to research ahead
| | 00:24 | of time what you want to use, meaning,
the principles I discuss are common
| | 00:27 | among shopping carts.
| | 00:29 | You'll also need to have some product
photos and some information about your
| | 00:32 | products, so you can add this
to your work as you follow along.
| | 00:36 | Finally, you'll need a willingness to
learn a little bit about databases, and
| | 00:40 | just a little bit about code.
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2. Setting Up a Simple Ecommerce SolutionDeciding what solution is right for you| 00:00 | There is a wide array of options and
ways to add eCommerce to the Website.
| | 00:04 | They range from full-blown database-
driven eCommerce solutions that reside on
| | 00:09 | your host, a virtual server or a
dedicated server, to offsite hosted solution
| | 00:14 | such as eBay or Yahoo!
| | 00:16 | Stores or as easy and simple as
adding a Buy button to an existing site
| | 00:21 | using Google or PayPal.
| | 00:24 | All these systems have benefits and
drawbacks but all the choices can basically
| | 00:28 | be broken down into three groups.
| | 00:31 | Those three groups are hosted solutions,
standalone solutions, and simple solution.
| | 00:37 | Let's take a moment to
look at each one of those.
| | 00:40 | First of all, let's look at
what the hosted solution is.
| | 00:44 | A hosted solution, like
here, the example of Yahoo!
| | 00:47 | Stores, is where the entire
eCommerce capability is offloaded to a
| | 00:52 | third-party vendor.
| | 00:54 | The site and everything
is hosted on their system.
| | 00:57 | We can see here that Yahoo!
| | 00:59 | gives some good examples of stores
that were developed using their system.
| | 01:04 | And it is pretty flexible, although
there's quite a learning curve involved, but
| | 01:08 | with these hosted solutions, you can
have a fairly robust system up very
| | 01:12 | quickly, but there are some disadvantages.
| | 01:15 | Another vendor that a lot of people use is eBay.
| | 01:19 | If we scroll down on their page here,
it shows that there is a fair amount of
| | 01:23 | customization available, but your users
will basically always know that it's an
| | 01:28 | eBay store, but that's okay, and if it
fits into your business model and your
| | 01:32 | customers expect it that's just fine,
and a lot of businesses do a lot of
| | 01:38 | business on these type of solutions.
| | 01:41 | But there are disadvantages to examine.
| | 01:44 | First of all, on these systems
everything is housed, again, on their servers.
| | 01:49 | So later, if you should decide to
change, there is a real problem because
| | 01:54 | you're tied into their system very tightly,
and so changing later can be quite a problem.
| | 02:00 | But again, if their systems fit what
you need, then this may not be a problem,
| | 02:05 | but it's something to look at.
| | 02:07 | Next, there is the standalone solutions.
| | 02:09 | Standalone solutions are complete,
self-contained, full-featured eCommerce
| | 02:13 | application including database,
programming platforms such as ColdFusion or
| | 02:17 | PHP that resides on your host server, virtual
or private server or even a dedicated server.
| | 02:24 | There are many advantages to having a
full-featured, self-hosted site, and we'll
| | 02:29 | cover those topics at great
length later in the course.
| | 02:32 | But first let's look at a couple of examples.
| | 02:34 | Here's an example of a Standalone solution.
| | 02:38 | As you can see, it is a very robust
database-driven site with many, many
| | 02:43 | products and offers the developer or site
-owner a great deal of control over how
| | 02:48 | the products are displayed and how they're sold.
| | 02:51 | We can see another example here.
| | 02:56 | A Standalone solution offers the
merchant and the designer a great deal of
| | 03:00 | flexibility in the look, feel, and
presentation of the products, and it's an
| | 03:05 | ideal solution if your needs call for it.
| | 03:09 | And again there's the simple solution.
| | 03:11 | A simple solution is primarily having a
standard HTML-driven Website, and then
| | 03:17 | selling items from that site
by using a third-party service.
| | 03:21 | You can simply add a Buy button to your
site, the person purchases the item by
| | 03:25 | going to a third-party vendor
and then returns to your site.
| | 03:28 | This simple solution makes it very
easy for a developer or a designer or a
| | 03:33 | merchant, to sell a few items from a
basic site without incurring the expenses
| | 03:38 | or the complexity of a Hosted
solution or a Standalone solution.
| | 03:42 | The important thing is, is of these
let's see what fits your needs best and then
| | 03:47 | pick the right solution.
| | 03:49 | For the time being let's focus on the
simple solution and see if that will work.
| | 03:54 | So what exactly is the simple solution?
| | 03:56 | Let's assume that you have a standard
HTML Website that represents you or your
| | 04:00 | company, and you have a couple of
items you'd like to sell online.
| | 04:03 | For example, a self-published book or
manual or some craft items that you make,
| | 04:08 | and you simply want to add them to
your Website and sell them online.
| | 04:12 | The simple solution is an ideal
choice for this type of eCommerce site.
| | 04:17 | So what are some of your options?
| | 04:19 | Two of the most common options
are Google Checkout and PayPal.
| | 04:24 | We'll briefly look at each one of these
and weigh what the differences are, and
| | 04:29 | take a look at what services they offer.
| | 04:32 | First of all, Google Checkouts as we can sees
operates basically the same way as PayPal.
| | 04:38 | They both allow you to put a
Checkout button on your site.
| | 04:43 | Here, they give us an example of how that works.
| | 04:46 | You'll add a product to your
site with a Checkout button.
| | 04:49 | The user will then click the Buy button.
| | 04:52 | At that point they're taking to Google
Checkout servers where they enter their information.
| | 04:57 | This offloads the complexity of
gathering user information and credit cards
| | 05:01 | off to their servers.
| | 05:04 | Once they fill it out they place the
order, and then they'll return to your site
| | 05:09 | to a page that you designate to say thank you.
| | 05:12 | If we look at PayPal, their system
works pretty much the same way, you sign-up
| | 05:16 | for a PayPal account, which we'll cover later.
| | 05:19 | They provide you a script that you add
to your site, you add that script to the
| | 05:25 | code of your site and it's a pretty
simple process, and then you're provided an
| | 05:31 | eCommerce application like this where
they simply click on the PayPal button.
| | 05:36 | And upon clicking on that button
they're taken to the PayPal servers to gather
| | 05:40 | the order, and then
they're returned to your site.
| | 05:45 | You can see that this is a pretty simple
solution, and it's not very robust, you
| | 05:49 | wouldn't want to be using this for a
hundred different products, but if you've
| | 05:52 | just got two or three items
to sell, it's a good way to go.
| | 05:58 | When deciding on which solution is best
for you, it's important to decide what
| | 06:02 | your long-term needs are going to be.
| | 06:04 | The primary deciding factor, whether a
simple solution is right for you or not,
| | 06:09 | is where you see your Website going.
| | 06:11 | If you just have a few items that
you're going to sell and you don't plan on
| | 06:15 | expanding any larger, then that
maybe a perfect solution for you.
| | 06:19 | If you have larger needs, you may want to look
at a more robust solution such as the standalone.
| | 06:25 | Adding eCommerce capabilities to your
Website can range pretty much from quick
| | 06:29 | and easy to very complex.
| | 06:31 | The associated expenses of adding eCommerce
to your Website is also a factor to consider.
| | 06:36 | For many, the ease and simplicity of
going to a hosted solution such as Yahoo!
| | 06:40 | Stores or eBay offers a simplicity and
speed to market that they're looking for.
| | 06:45 | If this choice sounds interesting to
you, I would recommend that you look at
| | 06:49 | some stores using these systems or
perhaps even e-mail or talk to a few
| | 06:53 | merchants to see what they think
to see if this maybe right for you.
| | 06:57 | For the remainder of this course
we'll be focusing on adding eCommerce
| | 07:00 | capabilities directly to your site.
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| Setting up to sell from a site| 00:00 | Using a simple eCommerce solution such
as PayPal or Google to have a Buy button
| | 00:05 | on your site is a quick and easy
way to begin selling on the Internet.
| | 00:09 | Even though it's fairly straightforward,
simple procedure, there are a number
| | 00:12 | of things to consider about your site in
order to maximize your sales potential.
| | 00:17 | It's important that you present
your products and services in a clear
| | 00:21 | and understandable way.
| | 00:23 | Additionally, your Web site will now be
more mission-critical to your business,
| | 00:27 | because it generates revenue.
| | 00:28 | So it's important to consider the
reliability of your host. Simply put, if your
| | 00:33 | site is down you are losing money.
| | 00:36 | So properly setting up your site and having
a good reliable host is vitally important.
| | 00:41 | There are number of considerations
to keep in mind when choosing a host.
| | 00:44 | First of all, there's reliability.
| | 00:47 | Even though the site using a simple
eCommerce solution, is basically a standard
| | 00:52 | HTML Web site and therefore
not very resource-intensive,
| | 00:56 | it's still important that your host
offer reliable service with guaranteed
| | 01:00 | uptime for your site.
| | 01:02 | For standard information-only type Web
sites, if the site is down for a brief
| | 01:06 | amount of time, it's not a big issue.
| | 01:09 | But if you're selling products or
services and your Web site is down, you are
| | 01:13 | losing money and you could be losing
customers as well, customers that may not come back.
| | 01:19 | So if you have some reliability issues
with your host, you may want to find a
| | 01:23 | more reliable host before you begin
selling on your site, or if this is going
| | 01:27 | to be a new site, you'll want to
carefully check out your host and make sure
| | 01:31 | that they have a very
reliable network and good service.
| | 01:35 | Another hosting consideration is what
kind of tech support or customer service
| | 01:39 | your potential host offers.
| | 01:41 | It's important to consider how
knowledgeable they are and how quickly they can
| | 01:45 | resolve issues if you
should have one on your Website.
| | 01:49 | How quickly they respond to tech-
support issue is vital. And are they
| | 01:53 | available on the phone?
| | 01:55 | These are important questions to consider,
because they have a direct impact on your sales.
| | 02:00 | When it comes to customer service,
don't take their word for it.
| | 02:04 | Of course every host Web site claims
that they have the very best in customer
| | 02:08 | service which may not always be the case.
| | 02:12 | So take some time to do your homework first.
| | 02:14 | Does the host have a user forum?
| | 02:16 | If they do, spend some time on the
forum and see what the general mood is, are
| | 02:21 | their current customers happy, or are
there a lot of problems and complaints?
| | 02:25 | This is a good indicator
of the quality of the host.
| | 02:29 | Also, you might try calling their tech-
support and see how long it takes to get
| | 02:32 | an answer, and how knowledgeable
and polite the technician seems to be.
| | 02:37 | A little bit of time spent double-
checking your host in advance of selling items
| | 02:41 | from your Website can go long ways in
assuring that your site will be up, and
| | 02:46 | reliable and serve your customers well.
| | 02:49 | Another point is, don't be an afterthought.
| | 02:51 | When planning to sell from a site
using a simple eCommerce solution, it's
| | 02:55 | important to take time to plan out
your products or services and how
| | 02:59 | you'll present them.
| | 03:01 | When you're going to be selling from
your Web site by simply adding a Buy
| | 03:04 | button, there is a danger that the
product or service may look out of place,
| | 03:09 | like an afterthought.
| | 03:10 | This can impact sales because your
potential customers may wonder if you're
| | 03:14 | serious about selling from your Web
site and if they're going to be receiving a
| | 03:18 | good quality product or
service, and value for their money.
| | 03:21 | So it's worth the time and effort to
carefully integrate your products and
| | 03:25 | offerings into your Web site and present
your products in the best way possible,
| | 03:30 | to reassure your customers
that you are a quality business.
| | 03:34 | A good point to keep in mind is that you
don't have to be big to be professional.
| | 03:40 | Most Web sites that use simple
eCommerce solutions or smaller companies or
| | 03:43 | private individuals, who are selling a
limited number of items or products or
| | 03:48 | services on the Web.
| | 03:50 | The point to keep in mind is that you don't
have to be a large company to be professional.
| | 03:54 | If you're adding eCommerce to an
existing Web site, this may be an ideal time
| | 03:59 | to analyze the look and feel and
design of your site, to see if they can
| | 04:03 | benefit from a redesign.
| | 04:06 | You want to be sure that your site inspires
confidence and represents your company well.
| | 04:10 | It could be a simple, limited page Web
site, like the example we will be using
| | 04:16 | later to add the Buy button to, or it
could be a much larger site with a larger
| | 04:22 | number of products that are
added manually one at a time.
| | 04:26 | We'll be talking about this later as
well. This is part of planning ahead.
| | 04:29 | Is your site going to grow to the
point where you need to have a larger
| | 04:34 | solution? It's better to look at that upfront.
| | 04:37 | But the simple Buy button solution
can work very well, for even a large
| | 04:41 | number of products.
| | 04:42 | The important thing is, is that you
meet expectations and make it easy to buy.
| | 04:47 | Most of your potential customers are
accustomed to shopping on the Web, and most
| | 04:51 | eCommerce sites on the
Web work in similar fashion.
| | 04:55 | So it will be important that the
design and navigation of your Website meets
| | 04:59 | customers' expectations and makes it
easy for them to find the products and buy.
| | 05:04 | Spend time examining the hierarchy
and the flow of your Web site and your
| | 05:08 | products, even if it's only one or two
products to make sure your customers can
| | 05:12 | easily find the products and
that the decision to buy is easy.
| | 05:16 | Purchasing decisions are made rather quickly.
| | 05:18 | So if a person is on your Website and
wishes to buy, you want to make it easy as
| | 05:23 | possible so they can act quickly on this desire.
| | 05:27 | Any time you spend working on your
site analyzing its layout and design, its
| | 05:32 | look and feel, in order to offer an
appealing and easy to follow and understand
| | 05:36 | presentation to your potential
customers, is time well spent.
| | 05:41 | There is an old saying that you don't
invite guests over to a dirty house.
| | 05:45 | And this applies to Web sites as well.
| | 05:48 | When you begin to sell products or
services from your Web site, you'll likely be
| | 05:52 | getting new visitors, and
hopefully new customers.
| | 05:55 | So spend time getting your house in
order, so to speak, and make sure that your
| | 05:59 | Web site is visually appealing and
easy to navigate and sells your company
| | 06:03 | and your products well.
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| Choosing a payment vendor| 00:00 | An important step in setting up the simple
solution is choosing your payment vendor.
| | 00:05 | There are a lot of payment vendors to
choose from that offer this sort of
| | 00:08 | service and more are being added all the time.
| | 00:11 | So it may be hard to choose one from the
other. It's worth taking time to make the
| | 00:15 | selection carefully because it's likely
to be a long-term decision and one that
| | 00:20 | will impact you, your
business, and your customers.
| | 00:24 | Like I said, there's a lot of payment
vendors to choose from, but for now let's
| | 00:28 | look at the major players, and that
would be PayPal and Google Checkout.
| | 00:33 | The first one we'll look at is Google Checkout.
| | 00:36 | Both Google Checkout and
PayPal work basically the same way.
| | 00:39 | You'd sign up for an account, and then you'd
be able to take advantage of their services.
| | 00:44 | Google describes their services here,
basically adding a Checkout button to your
| | 00:49 | Web site and being able to go to
the Google system to pay for it.
| | 00:53 | They explain what their cost and fees are,
and also what it takes to get started.
| | 00:58 | Next we look at PayPal.
| | 01:00 | Again with PayPal, you'd sign-up for a
PayPal account, and in this case, once
| | 01:05 | you've signed up for an account, you
would go to their Merchant Services tabs.
| | 01:09 | Here you'll find out what services they
offer, how to add them to your site and
| | 01:14 | what the fees will be.
| | 01:15 | We'll be using PayPal in a demonstration
later and we'll get into this in much more detail.
| | 01:21 | The important thing is, is that you'll
look at the options available to you and
| | 01:24 | weigh the differences.
| | 01:25 | We've seen by looking at these
vendors, that there are quite a few
| | 01:29 | similarities between them but there are also
major and minor differences in the way they work.
| | 01:34 | There can be significant differences
in their charges and fee structures as
| | 01:38 | well, and these are just a few of the
vendors that are available because there
| | 01:42 | are more coming online all the time.
| | 01:44 | So it's important to take your time and
weigh the differences and select the one
| | 01:48 | that offers the services that suit you best.
| | 01:52 | The decision of which payment
provider to use is a very important one.
| | 01:56 | Take time to examine each of the
options closely and be well-informed on what
| | 02:01 | they cost, and how their services are
implemented into your site, and what kind of
| | 02:05 | customer service they offer.
| | 02:08 | You would do well also to ask around
the development community and see what
| | 02:11 | others are using, and what they think
of the vendor that you're considering.
| | 02:15 | The good news is, is there are quite a
few reliable, affordable providers to
| | 02:19 | choose from, and many offer systems
that are very easy to add to your site.
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| Setting up a PayPal account| 00:00 | Let's take a moment to talk
about setting up your PayPal account.
| | 00:03 | PayPal really blazed a new trail in
offering the ability to accept payments
| | 00:07 | online. And fortunately they've
stayed the forefront of the industry, and
| | 00:12 | continue to improve and innovate.
| | 00:15 | Another factor worth considering is
because of their tie-in with eBay and the
| | 00:19 | long history in the marketplace, they have a
solid, well-established brand and reputation.
| | 00:26 | So most online shoppers feel
comfortable and confident about using PayPal to
| | 00:30 | make their purchases.
| | 00:31 | They also have excellent
documentation and pretty decent customer service.
| | 00:36 | So let's get started.
| | 00:38 | There are a few key points to keep in mind
when you're setting up your business account.
| | 00:42 | First of all, keep things separate.
| | 00:45 | It's a common mistake to use one's personal,
existing PayPal account. Don't do this.
| | 00:51 | You want to set up a new
account for your business.
| | 00:54 | Even if you're a sole proprietor
and the business is just you. Why?
| | 00:58 | First of all, for better record-keeping.
| | 01:01 | It's always better to keep
personal and business accounts separate.
| | 01:04 | Also you can connect to the right bank account.
| | 01:07 | You can set up PayPal to deposit
directly into your business banking account and
| | 01:12 | that account should be
separate from your personal account.
| | 01:15 | Also portability and transferability.
If your business should really succeed
| | 01:21 | and you decide to sell it or
transfer it to a child, having this account
| | 01:25 | separate will be important.
| | 01:27 | Also privacy, you may want to give key
employees access to your account and you
| | 01:32 | wouldn't want them to gain
access to your personal account.
| | 01:35 | And finally, estate considerations, the
account can be part of the business and
| | 01:40 | therefore less entangled in an estate case.
| | 01:43 | For more information about creating
your PayPal account check out the "Creating
| | 01:48 | an Account on PayPal" movie in the eBay
for Sellers Essential Training Course,
| | 01:52 | here in the lynda.com Online Training Library.
| | 01:57 | While you're setting up your PayPal
account you'll want to consider how you plan
| | 02:00 | on getting your money.
| | 02:01 | PayPal has a number of ways that you can
get your money, from your transactions.
| | 02:06 | PayPal can send you your
money via mail with a check.
| | 02:09 | But this is more costly and slow.
| | 02:11 | The best way to go, if you're going to
be selling from your website, is to set up
| | 02:16 | a connection for PayPal to your
bank account, and then go through the
| | 02:19 | validation process.
| | 02:21 | Doing this will allow you to request
money in your PayPal account to be directly
| | 02:26 | deposited at your bank account, which
only takes a couple of days and can be
| | 02:30 | done at no additional charge.
| | 02:32 | PayPal, and other services like it, have
made getting set up to sell on the Web
| | 02:36 | about as easy as it can be.
| | 02:39 | They realize it's in their best
interest to do so, and offer easy solutions, and
| | 02:43 | make as much help available as possible.
| | 02:46 | Be sure to take the time not just to
sign-up for an account, but become familiar
| | 02:50 | with their online community, and their
online help and documentation and the
| | 02:54 | help that it offers.
| | 02:56 | Doing so will make setting up the
simple eCommerce solution for your
| | 02:59 | website, even easier.
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| Adding a buy button| 00:00 | Well now that you've a website and you have
your PayPal account setup and ready to go.
| | 00:05 | We've come to what is really the
easiest part of the whole process.
| | 00:08 | Actually adding the Buy buttons
and getting ready to sell something.
| | 00:12 | You'll be very pleased to see how
quickly you can add Buy buttons to your site
| | 00:17 | and start generating revenue.
| | 00:19 | The first thing you'll want to do is
go to your PayPal account and get the
| | 00:23 | script that we'll need to place
the Buy button on your website.
| | 00:27 | So let's go to your PayPal account and
once you're in your PayPal account, go to
| | 00:31 | Merchant Services tab and here
you'll see a button called Buy Now Button.
| | 00:37 | This one we'll be using.
| | 00:38 | Now you can see there is quite a few
other services that PayPal offers and I'd
| | 00:43 | highly recommend becoming familiar with them.
| | 00:45 | There is many other things that you
can add your website, even as far as
| | 00:50 | constructing full-blown cart
solutions using PayPal services.
| | 00:54 | But for now, we'll be going the
simple route and just adding a Buy button.
| | 00:58 | So let's do that by clicking here.
| | 01:01 | The form that loads is what we will need
to go through to create our Buy button.
| | 01:05 | So first we'll choose the type of
button and we'll just leave it set at the
| | 01:09 | default, Buy Now, and then we go to
Item Name and we'll be using a practice
| | 01:15 | item called BigChick.
| | 01:19 | So we enter that and you'll need an
ID number, this is just for reference.
| | 01:25 | So just make it something that makes sense to
you, but it doesn't have to be any complicated.
| | 01:32 | And finally set a price, we'll be selling
this for $5 and we can select the currency.
| | 01:40 | You can see there's quite
a few currencies available.
| | 01:42 | But we'll be staying with the US dollar. Okay.
| | 01:47 | Now you can see there is quite a
few other options that are open to us.
| | 01:51 | But those aren't necessary.
| | 01:53 | Again I would recommend learning what
they are and seeing how you could possibly
| | 01:56 | use them in the site.
| | 01:58 | But for right now we're going to have
a simple Buy button, just like what you
| | 02:01 | see here and what we've
entered so far is all we need.
| | 02:06 | So let's go ahead and create
the button and there you have it.
| | 02:10 | PayPal has generated the code that
you'll need to place on your page.
| | 02:14 | To place a button that
looks like this on your site.
| | 02:18 | So simply Select Code and copy that,
hit Ctrl+C. Then we'll go into Dreamweaver
| | 02:26 | and add this code to our page.
| | 02:28 | All right now that we're in
Dreamweaver, we'll be adding the code that we
| | 02:33 | selected from PayPal to a page that's in
the sample site that's contained in the
| | 02:37 | Chapter 2 folder in our Exercise files.
| | 02:41 | The product that we created was
called BigChick, if you remember.
| | 02:43 | So we'll go ahead and select
the page by that name and open it.
| | 02:50 | In Design view we can see that we've
got our product, we have got a picture of
| | 02:54 | it there, we've got their
description and its all already to go, except
| | 02:58 | there's no Buy button. So let's add that.
| | 03:01 | We'll click here, now let's
add an X and select that X.
| | 03:06 | The reason we're doing that is we
need to paste that code that we got from
| | 03:10 | Dreamweaver in Code View.
| | 03:11 | So this way we'll know
exactly where we need to place it.
| | 03:15 | So with the X selected, we go up Code
view and click on that and there it is.
| | 03:21 | We can see the X that we selected.
| | 03:23 | Let's go ahead and make a little space
here and delete that and now let's paste
| | 03:29 | in the code we got from PayPal and there it is.
| | 03:35 | So let's go to Design view and look at it.
| | 03:37 | We can see that something's been added to the
page but it does look that good in Dreamweaver.
| | 03:42 | But let's see what actually happened.
| | 03:44 | Go ahead and save that file and now we're
going to hit F12 to preview and there it is.
| | 03:52 | We can see it's added the Buy button
just like the one we saw in PayPal and
| | 03:56 | we're ready to sell that item on the web.
| | 03:59 | So let's go ahead and click the button.
| | 04:02 | You can see that takes us to PayPal's
site, with the item that we're going to
| | 04:06 | purchase and it's all ready to accept our
Credit Card information so we can make the purchase.
| | 04:11 | It's just that easy.
| | 04:12 | We've added a button to our site and
we're now ready to sell that item from our
| | 04:17 | site and if we need to have
additional products, we just repeat the process
| | 04:21 | that we've just gone through and you can add
a Buy button for each one of your products.
| | 04:25 | Actually adding the PayPal Buy button
to your site is the easiest part of the
| | 04:29 | project and requires only minimal HTML skills.
| | 04:33 | As you've seen, in very short order
in just a few minutes, you can add
| | 04:37 | eCommerce capabilities to your static
website and begin generating revenue by
| | 04:42 | selling on the web.
| | 04:44 | Now you just need to test your
work and your ready to go live.
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|
3. Setting Up a Local Development EnvironmentUnderstanding the benefits of a local development environment| 00:00 | We have looked at the simple eCommerce
solution and decided that while it's easy
| | 00:04 | to set up and easy-to-use, we need more.
| | 00:08 | Let's say our web site is selling
hundreds of products or more, and trying to do
| | 00:11 | so with a static web site would be impossible.
| | 00:13 | So now we're going to be looking at
setting up a full-featured, database
| | 00:17 | delivered, standalone eCommerce solution.
| | 00:20 | The first and one of the most important
steps in getting started is to set up a
| | 00:24 | local development and testing environment.
| | 00:27 | A local development testing environment
is, where we install the server and then
| | 00:31 | database and everything we need on our
local system, so we can develop and test
| | 00:36 | our work as we go along
right there on our own system.
| | 00:40 | Now this includes additional steps and
additional learning curve, so why bother?
| | 00:45 | First of all, it's a controlled environment.
| | 00:47 | With developing locally and testing
on the server, there are many unknown
| | 00:51 | variables, things that could slip
in that you have no control over.
| | 00:55 | So let's just avoid that.
| | 00:57 | Next don't play the blame game.
| | 01:00 | If you have a local testing and
development environment, and everything is
| | 01:03 | working, but when you upload it
to the server it doesn't work,
| | 01:06 | you are in a much better position to
deal with your host's tech-support.
| | 01:10 | When a dynamic site has issues, 9 times out
of 10 the tech-support will say it's your code.
| | 01:16 | If you aren't developing and testing
locally, you have no way of knowing if
| | 01:20 | that's right or not.
| | 01:21 | If you're testing locally and it works,
you can inform them of this and they're
| | 01:25 | more apt to try to find the problem.
| | 01:27 | Next, there is no one
foreseen connection issues.
| | 01:31 | If you're burning the midnight oil
on a deadline and now you need to test
| | 01:34 | something, and so you try to upload
it to your server and find that your
| | 01:37 | connection is down or your host is
doing maintenance, you're in big trouble.
| | 01:41 | If you're testing locally you can
proceed quickly without introducing
| | 01:45 | many unknown variables.
| | 01:46 | The next factor would be speed.
| | 01:49 | Over the course of a project not having
to upload your changes, then browse to
| | 01:53 | the server to test and having to make
sure that all the files you've touched
| | 01:57 | have also been uploaded before testing, not
having to do this can save you a ton of time.
| | 02:02 | Make few changes, click F5, have it
pop up in your browser and see if it
| | 02:07 | works. How easy is that?
| | 02:09 | Over the course of a project, that can
save you many, many hours, and also it's
| | 02:13 | an isolated environment.
| | 02:15 | What if you're adding new
features to an existing site?
| | 02:18 | Uploading and testing on the
server could crash your public site.
| | 02:21 | This is never a good thing.
| | 02:23 | And finally, don't make enemies.
| | 02:25 | Uploading and testing dynamic code to
a live shared server is quick way to
| | 02:29 | become very unpopular.
| | 02:31 | A bad bit of code could racing or
looping conditions, or cause memory issues,
| | 02:37 | and end up slowing down or crashing the server.
| | 02:39 | If this happens locally, no big deal,
restart your system and move on.
| | 02:44 | This happens on the server, you could
have your host and a lot of other users
| | 02:47 | very upset with you.
| | 02:49 | Simply put developing and testing
locally is just the right thing to do, period.
| | 02:54 | There are just too many reasons why
it's a bad idea to test on the server and
| | 02:59 | just as many good reasons to be testing locally.
| | 03:02 | Don't think for a moment that testing
on the server is a shortcut or that will
| | 03:05 | save your time, it won't.
| | 03:08 | Make the effort to set up your
system right so that you can test locally
| | 03:11 | and develop locally.
| | 03:13 | And you'll thank yourself time and time
again through the course of the project.
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| Best practices for setting up a local development environment| 00:00 | There are a number of ways to
set up your local testing and
| | 00:03 | development environment.
| | 00:04 | Let's cover some of the basics, and some
of the best practices, and ways that we
| | 00:08 | can streamline things, and
make your life a lot easier.
| | 00:11 | Again, taking the time and the effort
and going through maybe a little more
| | 00:14 | learning curve now, will really
streamline things and make your life much easier
| | 00:19 | and save you ten fold the time later.
| | 00:21 | So let's look at some points to consider.
| | 00:23 | First of all duplicate your
most likely online environment.
| | 00:27 | You have many choices of servers,
development platforms, languages, databases,
| | 00:32 | operating systems and versions of all the above.
| | 00:35 | And that can be nearly impossible to
duplicate that but you have to try. Try to
| | 00:40 | get as close as you can, so that your
test environment duplicates what's going
| | 00:45 | to be on your server.
| | 00:46 | Next, operating system.
| | 00:48 | Now this is a tough one.
| | 00:50 | The vast majority of developers or
either on a Mac or PC, whereas hosting
| | 00:55 | companies use many different environments
and wide arrays of servers and OS platforms.
| | 01:00 | So what to do?
| | 01:01 | Well for the most part, there's just one
thing to keep in mind, case sensitivity.
| | 01:06 | Windows for example is not case-sensitive.
| | 01:09 | UNIX and Linux-based systems are.
| | 01:11 | Not much you can do about that if
you're on a Window system, except be very
| | 01:15 | careful about how you name things.
| | 01:18 | I found it's best to just use all
lower case with hyphens to separate words
| | 01:22 | for better legibility.
| | 01:23 | But whatever you do make sure you
stick with it and be consistent.
| | 01:27 | And then there is the Web server platform.
| | 01:29 | It's best to keep your development
environment as current as possible, not
| | 01:33 | bleeding edge mind you, but you
shouldn't be comfortable motoring along with
| | 01:37 | the server platform
| | 01:38 | that is multiple versions behind the
latest shipping version, or stable build.
| | 01:42 | Whether you are on PHP, Coldfusion.NET,
or whatever, it's good to be using the
| | 01:47 | most recent shipping version,
or at least one version back.
| | 01:51 | This will give you your best chance
of matching what most of the hosting
| | 01:54 | companies are going to be offering.
| | 01:56 | Then next is the database platform.
| | 01:59 | It's absolutely necessary that you use
the same database platform locally as you
| | 02:03 | do on the server. It seems obvious.
| | 02:05 | But I've had developers say, where
they're having database issues only to find
| | 02:10 | that they used Microsoft Access
locally, because it was easy to use.
| | 02:14 | But then SQL Server on the host.
| | 02:16 | Note this isn't even impossible on the
Mac as it doesn't support access.
| | 02:20 | But anyway you look at it,
| | 02:22 | it's not a good thing.
| | 02:23 | The database platform you are using
locally should be exactly the same as what
| | 02:27 | you're using on the server.
| | 02:29 | And it should be as close to
the same version as possible.
| | 02:31 | This will lead to the fewest problems.
| | 02:34 | Finally, there is a little data source trick.
| | 02:36 | Here is a simple trick that will
save you untold headaches over time.
| | 02:40 | When you're setting up your local data
source, make it identical to the one that
| | 02:44 | you are going to be using on the server.
| | 02:46 | Having a local settings different than
on the server and trying to remember not
| | 02:50 | to upload the wrong files, is a sure
way to frustration and a broken site.
| | 02:55 | So if you make them both identically,
you can transfer files back and forth and
| | 02:59 | not have to worry. It makes things much easier.
| | 03:02 | By taking time to set up a local
development and testing environment that
| | 03:05 | closely mirrors your hosting
environment, you'll be able to test locally and
| | 03:10 | have great confidence that
what works here will work there.
| | 03:13 | It will allow you to get a lot of work
done in the shortest amount of time and
| | 03:17 | then upload the work from your local
site to your server and just move on.
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4. Installing PHP and MySQLInstalling XAMPP and checking the install| 00:00 | When it comes time to install your
local development environment there's a
| | 00:04 | lot of choices: there is platform like
ColdFusion, PHP, .NET, Ruby, and the list goes on.
| | 00:10 | For databases there is also MySQL, SQL
Server, Postgres, and number of other
| | 00:15 | open-source options and quite a few others.
| | 00:18 | But for this course we'll be focusing on the
two most popular and that would be PHP and MySQL.
| | 00:24 | Now for installing these into your
system you have several different choices.
| | 00:29 | You could go a la carte and that
would be actually download each individual
| | 00:33 | application and go through the setup
routine, and that's fine if you're a
| | 00:36 | diehard do-it-yourselfer but
there are easier ways to go.
| | 00:40 | What we'll be using is an all-in-one installer.
| | 00:43 | These applications are available for
both Mac and PC. For the PC for the local
| | 00:48 | development environment you can forget
IIS which is Windows built-in Web server,
| | 00:53 | and we'll go ahead and use an all-in-
one installer that has everything we need.
| | 00:57 | There is a couple of different
available for the PC platform.
| | 01:00 | There is WAMP as W-A-M-P and XAMPP, X-A-M-P-P.
| | 01:06 | Both of these are open-source,
all-in-one installers for the PC.
| | 01:10 | For the Mac, actually the Mac comes
with Apache already installed, which is
| | 01:14 | the Web server, but believe it or not
using one of these all-in-one installers
| | 01:19 | to set up your environment is
actually easier to use than the default
| | 01:23 | installation of Apache.
| | 01:24 | For the Mac there is there MAMP, M-
A-M-P, and again XAMPP, X-A-M-P-P.
| | 01:29 | These are all good choices and they
make setting up and configuring your local
| | 01:34 | test environment much, much easier than
doing it each application one at a time.
| | 01:39 | For this video we'll choose XAMPP because
it is available for both the Mac and the PC.
| | 01:45 | So, the first thing we
need to do is go download it.
| | 01:48 | So here we're on the XAMPP website.
| | 01:51 | XAMPP is our open-source community
project that creates this all-in-one
| | 01:55 | installer for several different platforms.
| | 01:57 | And so let's go ahead and download it
for Windows, let's scroll down and we want
| | 02:04 | to install the full Installer.
| | 02:06 | You can forget all the advertising
and just wait for the download to occur.
| | 02:12 | Sometimes Windows will ask if you want
to download it, and if it does just click
| | 02:15 | Yes, and save this to your desktop.
| | 02:18 | And here we see we've downloaded it and
saved it to the Desktop so we're ready
| | 02:22 | to install XAMPP into our local system.
| | 02:25 | When installing XAMPP, the process is very
much the same on both the Mac and the PC.
| | 02:30 | For this course we'll use the PC.
| | 02:32 | For example of how to install the Mac
version of XAMPP view the lynda.com course
| | 02:37 | titled Installing Apache, MySQL, and PHP.
| | 02:42 | So now let's install XAMPP.
| | 02:44 | To install it just simply double-
click the icon on your Desktop, choose the
| | 02:49 | language, just say OK, and
then click through the wizard.
| | 02:55 | We'll leave it in its
default location, so click Next.
| | 02:59 | And again, it's better just to leave
things in their default setting, so let's
| | 03:02 | go ahead and install.
| | 03:07 | And there we go, just click Finish
and it says, Congratulations your
| | 03:11 | installation is successful.
| | 03:13 | That's so much easier than setting
up all of those separate applications
| | 03:17 | yourself one at a time, so
let's click Yes and say OK.
| | 03:23 | After the installation, the Control
panel will open up and this is your central
| | 03:26 | location for controlling
your XAMPP applications.
| | 03:30 | What we're going to do now is
start it up and see if it all works.
| | 03:34 | First we'll start Apache, that's
your Web server, and then we will start
| | 03:38 | MySQL and that's it, now we have a
local development environment installed
| | 03:43 | and running.
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| Administering the database| 00:00 | While your server language in HTML and CSS
may be the heart and lungs of your application.
| | 00:06 | The database is the brains.
| | 00:08 | A fast, robust, reliable database is
essential to having a reliable online store
| | 00:13 | and providing a good user experience.
| | 00:16 | Even if you're using a pre-build
shopping cart solution, you are still going to
| | 00:19 | need to become a little familiar
with your database, in our case MySQL.
| | 00:24 | Having to set up and administer a
database, is usually the part of developing an
| | 00:28 | eCommerce site that sneaks up on you.
| | 00:30 | A lot of developers don't expect to
have to do that, but it's an essential
| | 00:34 | part of the equation.
| | 00:35 | So let's look at what is involved and you'll
find that it's really not all that complicated.
| | 00:41 | The first thing you will need to
do is check XAMMP and make sure that
| | 00:44 | your system is running. So let's do that.
| | 00:46 | And here is the Control panel where we
have left it and you can see that Apache
| | 00:50 | and MySql are running.
| | 00:51 | So you are ready to go in and
start administering your database.
| | 00:55 | To do that, let's click Admin.
Doing that will bring up phpMyAdmin.
| | 01:01 | This is the included MySQL
administrator that comes with XAMMP.
| | 01:06 | So what we are going to do now is we will
create a new database and administer it.
| | 01:10 | First we will cover the basics of the
phpMyAdmin and take a tour of its functionality.
| | 01:15 | And then we'll create a database.
| | 01:17 | So first of all let's look
through the different tabs.
| | 01:20 | Here we have databases.
| | 01:22 | Let me click there and it will list the
databases that are in the system right now.
| | 01:26 | There is a SQL tab, we will be using that later.
| | 01:29 | Now there are lot of other tabs that
we probably won't use much and we'll
| | 01:33 | kind of skip over those.
| | 01:34 | These are the key ones, the Database
one, the SQL one and then later on there
| | 01:38 | will also be the Privileges one.
| | 01:40 | These are the tabs that you will be
using most and these are the ones we will be
| | 01:43 | using in this video.
| | 01:45 | Okay, so now let's go ahead
and create a new database.
| | 01:48 | To do that go ahead and
click over here on the Home icon.
| | 01:51 | This is to bring the home page where
it opened up, and you'll see right here
| | 01:55 | Create a new database.
| | 01:57 | All we have to do to create a new
database is choose a name, so let's choose something
| | 02:01 | that we will remember here.
| | 02:02 | We will call lyndatest and basically we
leave everything else in its default setting.
| | 02:09 | And all we do is hit Create and there we go.
| | 02:11 | We have a new database.
| | 02:13 | It's just as simple.
| | 02:14 | We click on the database and it will
show that right now there are no tables or
| | 02:18 | any fields in it, but the database is
created and ready for us to take a look at.
| | 02:22 | If you're going to create your
own tables, you would do it here.
| | 02:25 | First of all you would simply enter a
table name and the Number of fields this
| | 02:30 | table is going to have and then hit Go,
and then you'd be given the opportunity
| | 02:34 | to enter the values of each one
of those columns in that table.
| | 02:38 | Most shopping cart applications, though,
come with the database and most common
| | 02:42 | form of delivery for those database is
for you to be provided with a SQL script
| | 02:46 | to run and add the necessary tables
fields and initial data to your database.
| | 02:51 | So let's run an exercise
file to show how this works.
| | 02:55 | And you will find the SQL script
in Chapter4 of your exercise files.
| | 03:00 | Now to open this up, what you want to do
is open Windows Notepad or for the Mac,
| | 03:05 | a text editor like BBEdit.
| | 03:07 | The next thing you do is go ahead and
take the SQL script and drag it and drop
| | 03:11 | it and open it in Notepad.
| | 03:13 | The reason we use Notepad is, a pure
text editor won't interject any other
| | 03:18 | characters or returns in it like Word would.
| | 03:21 | So don't use Word, make sure
you use a pure text editor.
| | 03:25 | Next thing we do is, go ahead and scroll
the bottom, and then select all and copy this.
| | 03:33 | Now, we open phpMyAdmin and the first thing
we will need to do is select our database.
| | 03:38 | And we will see it listed over here.
| | 03:40 | So we select the database that we
created and now we go to SQL, and in the box
| | 03:47 | we paste the SQL script that we have copied.
| | 03:50 | Next, we just click Go and that's it.
| | 03:53 | The table is created, and we can see
over here that all the information in
| | 03:56 | that table is listed.
| | 03:58 | Now that the database exists, we need to
set up users and privileges, so that we
| | 04:02 | can access that data.
| | 04:04 | So let's go over here to the
Privileges tab, click on it and we are going to
| | 04:08 | create a new user, so click Add new User.
| | 04:12 | Now a thing to keep in mind when you're
creating the user for your database is
| | 04:16 | try to make the username and password
identical to what it's going to be on the server.
| | 04:21 | The reason for doing this is that way
any settings that you have locally when
| | 04:25 | you upload them to the server remain the same.
| | 04:28 | And you don't have to worry about what
it is on local and what is on the host.
| | 04:32 | And if you accidentally upload files
with a wrong information, if they are
| | 04:36 | identical on both places, you don't have to
worry about that and it's a real timesaver.
| | 04:40 | So, let's go ahead and
enter your user information.
| | 04:43 | Right now let's just enter admin.
| | 04:45 | Of course you want to use something much
better than that, something that's easy
| | 04:49 | to remember but hard to guess.
| | 04:51 | Your Host is localhost, Password
let's go ahead and use admin again.
| | 04:58 | But again you'll want to use something
much better than that for your live site.
| | 05:02 | Now, let's scroll down to the Global
privileges and simply click Check All.
| | 05:07 | That way we will have all the
permissions to read and write and alter the
| | 05:10 | database anyway we need to.
| | 05:12 | After that, click Go. And that's it.
| | 05:15 | Your user is created and you will be
able to access the database using that
| | 05:19 | username and password.
| | 05:21 | While we were talking about
administering your database, there is something that
| | 05:24 | you should consider.
| | 05:26 | PhpMyAdmin is an excellent
administrator, but it's local to your system or
| | 05:31 | local to your server.
| | 05:32 | Now a third party MySQL administrator
can be local on your system but administer
| | 05:37 | remote databases as well, and that is
reach over to your server and administer
| | 05:41 | that database, as well as the one locally.
| | 05:44 | And there are a lot of advantages to that.
| | 05:46 | One of my favorites is Navicat.
| | 05:48 | With Navicat you can actually drag
and drop your database from your local
| | 05:52 | system up to your server.
| | 05:54 | This is an incredible timesaver where
you don't have to re-create the database
| | 05:58 | on the server after you've
already created it locally.
| | 06:02 | So a commercial third-party
administrator may be worth the price and the
| | 06:05 | time that it saves.
| | 06:07 | So now with the database set up and
running and populated, you're ready to move
| | 06:11 | on to the fun part and
actually creating your eCommerce site.
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5. Planning for Ecommerce FunctionalityDesigning with usability and user experience in mind| 00:00 | Now that your environment is set up and
you're ready to go, let's stop and think
| | 00:04 | for a minute about designing your site.
| | 00:06 | It's important that you design the site
with usability and user experience in mind.
| | 00:11 | You often hear designers say, I hate how
all stores look the same. It's so boring.
| | 00:16 | Well there is good reason for this.
| | 00:19 | The formula is understood and it works.
| | 00:21 | It doesn't mean your store has to be
ugly or boring, but while expressing your
| | 00:25 | creativity, and making your store
reflect your brand and your personality, you
| | 00:30 | have to keep in mind, what your
customers are used to and what the experience
| | 00:34 | will be on your site.
| | 00:36 | Keep in mind that your customers are
accustomed to how shopping sites generally
| | 00:41 | work, and you don't want to confuse them.
| | 00:43 | How to navigate your site should
be instantly familiar and natural.
| | 00:47 | And the design should help and not hinder this.
| | 00:51 | So to get this firmly in mind,
let's look at a few examples.
| | 00:54 | We will look at a small, medium and
large example site, and see how design can
| | 00:59 | help the user experience while
not getting in the way of eCommerce.
| | 01:04 | Here we have a relatively small site.
| | 01:06 | It doesn't have a lot of products, but
as you can see from the home page it's
| | 01:10 | instantly obvious what you were looking
at, what they sell, and by mousing over
| | 01:15 | you are guided to the products right away.
| | 01:18 | Also, the menu makes it really easy
for you to click and see the different
| | 01:21 | products, in different sections.
| | 01:23 | So it helps you and instantly
find what you're looking for.
| | 01:26 | Even though it's a small site, it's well
organized and presents the products well.
| | 01:31 | But what if you have more products?
| | 01:32 | Well let's look at a little bit larger site.
| | 01:35 | Here is a site, it is quite a bit
larger than the first one, but it still has
| | 01:38 | sites go, not that big.
| | 01:40 | But you can see it's instantly obvious
what's being sold and what's being displayed.
| | 01:44 | And it guides you with your interest,
if you are interested in dogs or cats or
| | 01:48 | wild animals, you're instantly
shown how to find those products.
| | 01:53 | Also, the navigation is very clear.
| | 01:55 | Again for dogs, cats it's very easy to find
what you're looking for quickly and go to it.
| | 02:02 | And you can see that the design is
still very pleasing, so the design doesn't
| | 02:05 | get in the way of
navigating and shopping on the site.
| | 02:08 | But what if you have a really large
site with maybe even thousands of products,
| | 02:12 | let's look at an example here.
| | 02:14 | Here this common home furnishings
company has a lot of products to sell.
| | 02:18 | But instantly upon landing on the
page you know exactly what you're looking
| | 02:22 | at, you know what their product is and you're
instantly guided to the various departments.
| | 02:28 | And their navigation again is
very easy to understand and navigate.
| | 02:32 | It takes no thought time or no
training to figure out how to find what
| | 02:36 | you're looking for.
| | 02:37 | So the theme of all three of these
sites we just looked at is simple.
| | 02:40 | It's easy to shop and
provides a familiar experience.
| | 02:44 | Regardless of the size your store
inventory, design your store to be easy to
| | 02:48 | navigate and to find what your
customers are looking for right away.
| | 02:52 | This may mean giving up some creative
freedom and following more traditional
| | 02:56 | lines, but the increased
profits will make it worthwhile.
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| Designing the site with the store in mind| 00:00 | Another thing to consider when you're
designing your site is to design your site
| | 00:04 | with your store in mind.
| | 00:06 | At this point it's understandable that
you're excited and just want to get going.
| | 00:09 | You may already have your site designed well
in mind or laid out in Fireworks or Photoshop.
| | 00:14 | So you just want to dive in and get started.
| | 00:16 | Well resist that impulse.
| | 00:20 | When developing an eCommerce site it's
vitally important that your layout and
| | 00:23 | design are done with your store in mind.
| | 00:26 | You should take a little extra time to
plan your site, for the same reasons that
| | 00:31 | every store, from Safeway to Saks Fifth
Avenue, spends significant amount of money
| | 00:36 | and time laying out their floor and
merchandising plans, that is for better
| | 00:41 | customer, experience and better sales.
| | 00:45 | So let's look at some things to consider.
| | 00:47 | First of all, know your customers.
| | 00:50 | Even if this is a new store, a little
research will teach you a lot about your customers.
| | 00:55 | If you're adding a site to a business
where you already have a physical store,
| | 01:00 | take what you've learned about your
customers and make sure that you carry
| | 01:03 | that over to your site.
| | 01:05 | If this is a new venture, take time to
check out your competition and see what
| | 01:09 | they're doing well, and what
they're doing poorly and learn from that.
| | 01:14 | Next it's important to convey not only
your brand but your voice or your personality.
| | 01:19 | On the web, you're not alone.
| | 01:21 | No matter what market you're in on the
Web, there's a lot of competition, often
| | 01:26 | in selling the same products that you do.
| | 01:29 | So what sets you apart?
| | 01:30 | If your first respons is "we're
cheaper," you're already domed. Face it.
| | 01:35 | Somebody is always cheaper and if you
sell a million dollars wroth of product
| | 01:39 | but make no profit you're still out of business.
| | 01:43 | If you have a successful bricks and
mortar store, and someone walks into it for
| | 01:47 | the first time after shopping on
your online store, there should be no
| | 01:51 | disconnect or surprises.
| | 01:53 | They should already feel like they know you.
| | 01:56 | Let's look at a couple of good
examples of this kind of design.
| | 02:00 | Here we have a site that focuses on what
you would call in niche market on sportsmen.
| | 02:05 | The minute you land on their homepage
there's no question that that's what
| | 02:08 | this site is all about.
| | 02:10 | New users to this site won't feel any
disconnect because they will know exactly
| | 02:14 | what the site is about and it's
easy to find their way around.
| | 02:17 | Also, if you were to go into their
retail stores, this same feeling is conveyed.
| | 02:24 | Here's another example in a completely
different market but, again, instantly you
| | 02:29 | know what they're selling and it
conveys the feeling of what the site is all
| | 02:32 | about. And again, if you're going to go
into one of their retail establishments,
| | 02:37 | there would be no disconnect.
| | 02:38 | You would have the same feeling
as what you did with their website.
| | 02:43 | Another important matter is to get to the point.
| | 02:45 | In the sites we just looked at, it's very
obvious when you get to the site what
| | 02:49 | they sell and what they're about.
| | 02:51 | If you put all the merchandise in the
back of your store and had your employees
| | 02:55 | waiting at the front door for your
customers, insisting on telling them about
| | 02:59 | your store's owners and history, and
so forth, how successful you would be?
| | 03:04 | Not very. Customers would leave
before ever having a chance to buy.
| | 03:08 | On the web however this is
very easy to do and commonly done.
| | 03:12 | Of course you want to make this
information readily available.
| | 03:16 | But don't force your customers to
sort through it to find your product.
| | 03:20 | Design your site to sell easy,
to sell early, and to sell often.
| | 03:25 | Next, take time to map it out.
| | 03:27 | Taking time to map out or wireframe your
site, even hand-drawn on a napkin, to be
| | 03:33 | sure that your site is organized
is a good exercise to go through.
| | 03:37 | Do the same for the
design structure of your pages.
| | 03:41 | It doesn't have to be pretty.
| | 03:42 | Just focus on the navigation and
content layout to be sure that everything fits
| | 03:47 | and that it is easy to understand at a glance.
| | 03:49 | For example, here we look at a common site map.
| | 03:54 | It's important to layout the
information architecture of your site.
| | 03:58 | So you can clearly understand ahead a
time how your product and your stores
| | 04:02 | going to be organized.
| | 04:04 | If you don't properly understand ahead
of time how can your site possibly convey
| | 04:08 | this and how can you customers understand it?
| | 04:11 | Take time to sit down and draw it out,
and really understand the information
| | 04:15 | architecture of your site, and how
things are going to be divided up.
| | 04:19 | Same goes for the page structure.
| | 04:22 | Take time to draw out where your
navigation is going to be, how it's going to
| | 04:25 | work, and how you're going to divide up
the different blocks of information that
| | 04:29 | you're going to convey.
| | 04:30 | Doing this ahead of time
will help you design your site.
| | 04:33 | But it'll also help you design the
information you put on your site and how your
| | 04:37 | products are displayed.
| | 04:39 | Once you've gone through this process,
you'll be ready to get started developing
| | 04:42 | and designing your site.
| | 04:44 | Taking time to properly map out your
site and design it with your product,
| | 04:48 | brands and customers in mind is
worth every minute it takes to do it.
| | 04:53 | The rewards will be quality
customer experience, and better sales.
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| Adding a store to an existing design| 00:00 | What if you have an existing site and
you wish to integrate eCommerce into it.
| | 00:05 | Many times developers or designers are asked
to add a shopping cart to an existing site.
| | 00:10 | The site has been around for a while
and you, or the client wants to start
| | 00:14 | selling the product from that site.
| | 00:16 | What are the things to consider when
doing this? What are the pluses and
| | 00:20 | minuses? Should it be done?
| | 00:23 | Sometimes it can take more money and
effort to integrate a store into an
| | 00:26 | existing site than it does to start
fresh. Let's look at what you need to
| | 00:30 | consider so that you can
make the right decision.
| | 00:34 | First of all let's look at the pluses. Legacy
and recognition is something to think about.
| | 00:39 | A site that's been around for awhile,
and especially if it has good traffic,
| | 00:44 | builds brand recognition and loyalty
with its users, and this is a valuable
| | 00:48 | asset, also there is search engine indexing.
| | 00:52 | If your site enjoys a good search
engine placement in your market category this
| | 00:56 | is a huge asset and not
something you want to mess with.
| | 00:59 | This above any other point makes it
worth your time and effort that it takes to
| | 01:03 | integrate a store into your existing site.
| | 01:07 | What are the minuses?
| | 01:08 | Well, first of all there's file types problems.
| | 01:11 | Many times the current site will be a
regular static HTML site with standard .htm
| | 01:17 | or .html file extensions.
| | 01:19 | Whereas your store is going to be a
dynamic platform with files ending in .php,
| | 01:25 | .CFM or ASPX or the like,
depending on what platform you choose.
| | 01:31 | Also is the content product driven?
| | 01:34 | A static site is geared more to tell
and not sell, which can be a bad thing.
| | 01:40 | The structure of your site may be such
that your store will always look like an
| | 01:44 | afterthought which could
have a negative impact on sales.
| | 01:48 | And finally there is a search engine penalty.
| | 01:51 | If not performed very carefully, adding
a store, or converting your existing site
| | 01:56 | over to a dynamic site, can wreak
havoc with your search engine ranking.
| | 02:01 | Next, it's important to rework your
homepage, even if you simply tack on the
| | 02:06 | shopping cart to your existing site,
be sure to take time to rework your
| | 02:09 | homepage to bring your product front and
center as soon as your customers come through the door.
| | 02:16 | Adding a store to your existing site
presents some real challenges, but it can
| | 02:20 | be done and if done properly it can be done
with minimal loss in search engine ranking.
| | 02:24 | Sometime it's better to just start fresh,
where you can really plan things out
| | 02:29 | from start to finish and take
maximum advantage of your upgrade.
| | 02:33 | The choice is up to you.
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|
|
6. Setting Up an Ecommerce Site in DreamweaverCreating a new PHP site in Dreamweaver| 00:00 | Now it's time to go through the
process of developing your Ecommerce site
| | 00:03 | from start to finish.
| | 00:05 | We've already installed XAMPP and
we've checked to make sure that our test
| | 00:09 | environment is running.
| | 00:10 | So now we will set up the site and get started.
| | 00:12 | First, we'll create a new site in Dreamweaver.
| | 00:17 | Setting up a dynamic site, be it
ColdFusion, PHP, or some other dynamic
| | 00:21 | language, is a different matter
than creating a plain HTML site.
| | 00:25 | There are a number of other factors to
consider about the site setup and placement.
| | 00:30 | Let's take a few minutes to go
over them and set up our new site.
| | 00:33 | First of all, it's where to put our site.
| | 00:36 | Unlike regular HTML sites, dynamic
sites need to be located where your local
| | 00:40 | server can find them.
| | 00:42 | An HTML site can be located pretty much
anywhere, and if you click on the file,
| | 00:46 | it will open up in your browser
and you'll see the page as expected.
| | 00:50 | Try this with a dynamic page and the
browser won't know what to do with it and
| | 00:54 | it will throw an error.
| | 00:56 | We'll need to put our new site where
the PHP server can find it and correctly
| | 01:00 | process the page request.
| | 01:02 | So let's do that in Dreamweaver now.
| | 01:05 | So here in Dreamweaver we're
going to create a new site.
| | 01:09 | So I click on Manage Sites, then click
on New, let's give it a Name, and then
| | 01:18 | let's give it a Folder.
| | 01:19 | Now, what we're going to need to do is
browse our computer and find the Root
| | 01:24 | Director where XAMPP expects to find PHP files.
| | 01:28 | So go to your C Drive, find xampp,
and then look for the htdocs folder.
| | 01:35 | Now, let's create a New Folder here, then
click on the folder, open it, and select it.
| | 01:43 | Another thing we need to do is tell
Dreamweaver what kind of server we're using.
| | 01:48 | So here let's click on Servers and
then let's go down to the Plus (+) sign,
| | 01:51 | click Plus (+), then we enter the
Server Name, which is localhost.
| | 01:55 | It's a local server so we choose Local/Network.
| | 01:59 | Then we find the Server Folder and that
is the lyndatest folder that we created
| | 02:05 | in the xampp root folder, select that.
| | 02:08 | Then we'll enter the Web URL so
Dreamweaver can find it and, again, it's
| | 02:15 | localhost and then forward slash (/)
and it's the same name as the folder, and
| | 02:20 | that would be lyndatest.
| | 02:22 | Now, what we need to do is click on
Advanced and we have to choose the Server
| | 02:26 | model, so we choose PHP MySQL, and we Save it.
| | 02:31 | And we see right now Dreamweaver by
default makes it a Remote Server, we want it
| | 02:35 | as our Testing Server, so we'll change
that and unclick that. There you go.
| | 02:38 | It's all set up and we Save
it, and we say OK, and Done.
| | 02:44 | Now that your site is set up in
Dreamweaver and located where PHP Server is able
| | 02:48 | to see it, you're ready to test your
site and be sure that everything is
| | 02:51 | working, and then you're ready to go.
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| Creating and running a test page| 00:00 | Now before going any further, it's
important that we're sure that our web server
| | 00:04 | Apache, our application server, PHP,
and our database, MySQL, are all running
| | 00:09 | properly and communicating.
| | 00:11 | To do this we'll create a simple
test page and run it. If it runs
| | 00:15 | successfully, we'll know our test
environment is ready and we can get going.
| | 00:20 | So let's go to Dreamweaver and
create a Hello World page.
| | 00:24 | So, now in Dreamweaver in our lynda
eCommerce site, let's create a new page,
| | 00:30 | we'll choose PHP and Layout
of none and create the page.
| | 00:34 | We have it open in Code
view, which is what we want.
| | 00:38 | Now first of all, let's save it, and let
save it as "helloworld" and make sure it's
| | 00:45 | a PHP and Save, okay.
| | 00:49 | Now what we want to do is create a
script that will output "helloworld," but
| | 00:54 | it requires PHP to run the script in
order to display those words. So this is
| | 01:00 | a script we'll use.
| | 01:01 | Now again we save the file.
| | 01:03 | Now let's run it in our browser and see what
happens, so you can hit F12 and there it is.
| | 01:10 | The fact that that "Hello World"
displays shows the PHP processed to the page and
| | 01:15 | put the output on the page in the
browser, so we know PHP is running.
| | 01:19 | The next thing we need to do is create
a data source or a record set, let's add
| | 01:23 | a script that creates a data
source connection to the database.
| | 01:27 | This script tells PHP what database to
look at, where to find it, and what the
| | 01:31 | username and password are to gain
access to the database. So let's go to
| | 01:35 | Dreamweaver. And here we are
on our page in Design view.
| | 01:39 | Now first thing we need to do is go
over to the Databases panel, click on that.
| | 01:43 | Make sure it's the Database tab and
then click the Plus (+) button. And we want
| | 01:48 | to create a MySQL Connection, and that
Connection name we'll call lyndatest again,
| | 01:54 | and MySQL server is a local host.
| | 01:57 | The User name, if you're remember we
just used admin. Same with the Password, and
| | 02:02 | then the Database name, if you're
remember, is lyndatest. And then let's test our
| | 02:07 | connection and its successful.
That's good, so say OK and say OK.
| | 02:13 | Now that we've added the data connection,
let's see if it works. We can do this
| | 02:17 | by adding a simple repeat region, or a
dynamic table. So let's go ahead up to
| | 02:21 | Insert and click on Data Objects. And
then go up to Dynamic Data. And then let's
| | 02:27 | choose Dynamic Table. And we
want to create a recordset.
| | 02:33 | Recordset we'll call just "test" and
the Connection we're using is "lyndatest."
| | 02:38 | That's good, and it shows the table that
we want to use. Let's go ahead and click
| | 02:42 | on categories and it shows this
connecting. Let's test, and it's pulling back
| | 02:47 | records. That's good, so say OK,
click OK and then finally say OK.
| | 02:54 | Now we're going to create our dynamic
table, so we can output this recordset.
| | 02:58 | So the recordset we want is "test."
Let's go ahead and have it deliver all
| | 03:02 | rows, don't worry about this, let just
is click OK and there is the information.
| | 03:08 | So, all we have to do now is save the
file and let's go ahead and hit F12. Okay
| | 03:14 | and there's our page.
| | 03:16 | So, now we know it works, PHP is talking to
MySQL and it's delivering the page as expected.
| | 03:21 | So, now we're ready to go.
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|
|
7. Installing and Setting Up the Cartweaver Ecommerce ExtensionInstalling the Cartweaver extension in Dreamweaver| 00:00 | Now we're ready to create our eCommerce
site. An easy way to do this is through
| | 00:04 | the use of a Dreamweaver Extension.
| | 00:07 | The Shopping Cart software that we'll be
using in this example is Cartweaver 4 PHP.
| | 00:12 | One of the advantages for those new
to dynamic websites or eCommerce site
| | 00:17 | development is that Cartweaver installs
into the Dreamweaver interface through
| | 00:21 | the use of the extension manager.
| | 00:24 | This allows you to add the shopping cart
to your site with the simple click of a
| | 00:27 | button and filling in a few form fields.
Let's first look at the Adobe Extension
| | 00:32 | Manager, and then we'll install a
Cartweaver extension into Dreamweaver.
| | 00:36 | So, here is the Adobe Extension Manager.
| | 00:39 | It handles the extensions for the
entire Adobe suite, so you want to click on
| | 00:44 | Dreamweaver CS5. It'll list all the
extensions that you have already installed
| | 00:48 | into Dreamweaver and if you want to
find extensions, you can actually go to the
| | 00:53 | Dreamweaver Extension Exchange and find
many downloadable extensions for free or
| | 00:58 | for very little cost.
| | 01:00 | So, now that we know what the extension
manager looks like, let's go ahead and
| | 01:03 | install the Cartweaver Extension.
| | 01:05 | Click on Install, browse to
wherever you've put the extension, click
| | 01:11 | Open, accept the licensing and that's it
you're done. The Cartweaver Extension is installed.
| | 01:19 | So, now we'll close out the
Extension Manager and we'll have to reopen
| | 01:22 | Dreamweaver and we'll see the results of that.
| | 01:26 | Okay, now the Dreamweaver is open
again, if we look up in the menu, you'll
| | 01:30 | notice that there's a new tab, a
Cartweaver tab. Click on that and there is
| | 01:35 | everything you need to
install Cartweaver into your site.
| | 01:38 | Since Cartweaver is a commercial application.
| | 01:40 | The Cartweaver files and extensions
are not included in your exercise files.
| | 01:45 | If you do not have Cartweaver, you can
follow along as I go through the process
| | 01:49 | of installing and setting up our e-commerce
site. This will be very beneficial,
| | 01:53 | Even if you use a different
shopping cart application.
| | 01:57 | Setting up your store and adding
products is something you'll have to do
| | 02:00 | no matter what program you use, and the
process and the logic behind it is very
| | 02:04 | similar in most of these applications.
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| Installing Cartweaver files on your site| 00:00 | And now for the easy part. It's true,
| | 00:03 | oftentimes the hardest part of the
process is getting your development
| | 00:06 | environment setup and working
properly. This is where the majority of
| | 00:10 | the learning curve is.
| | 00:11 | Now that you're actually to the part of
installing the shopping cart application,
| | 00:15 | things get much easier.
| | 00:17 | So let's look at the installation process.
| | 00:20 | First thing we need to do is setup the
Cartweaver database. But first we'll open
| | 00:24 | Notepad, or whatever text editor you use,
and then we'll drag our SQL script that
| | 00:29 | creates our eCommerce database into
Notepad and we'll click Edit > Select All,
| | 00:36 | and then we'll copy that and
now we'll open up phpMyAdmin.
| | 00:42 | Once we're in phpMyAdmin, let's go
ahead and create a database, let's call it
| | 00:47 | ShoppingCart, and then just Create, okay.
Let's go ahead and click on that and
| | 00:53 | now let's go SQL, and then we can paste
our script in and we're ready to go. So
| | 00:59 | just click Go, and this is going to be
a fairly long script to create all the
| | 01:03 | tables and fields, so let
it run and there it goes.
| | 01:06 | It shows all the tables and
fields that have been created.
| | 01:10 | Finally, as we did before, go to
Privileges, click on that. And let's add a new
| | 01:16 | user, and let just call the user "merchant."
Again, its local host is the "hostname."
| | 01:25 | For the password, let just enter "admin"
then retype it, then scroll down and click
| | 01:33 | Check All, and then go, click the Go
button. There we go our user is setup.
| | 01:42 | So, our database is setup and our user
is setup and we're ready to install our
| | 01:46 | shopping cart into our site, so
to do that let's go to Dreamweaver.
| | 01:51 | Okay, here in Dreamweaver we have the
lyndaeCommerce site opened up that we've
| | 01:55 | used before and we're ready to
install Cartweaver into the site.
| | 01:59 | So you go up here to the
tab, click then Install.
| | 02:03 | And here is the interface for
installing Cartweaver into your site.
| | 02:08 | These are the default pages and we'll
just leave those as they're, but you do
| | 02:12 | have the ability, if you wish, to change
the names of those pages if you decide to
| | 02:16 | change them to a particular
naming convention that you use.
| | 02:20 | Installation folder is, if you are
installing the shopping cart part of your site
| | 02:24 | into its own folder, you designate what
that folder is. And you see also that the
| | 02:30 | site that we're on is already
selected, so we're ready to go there.
| | 02:33 | The only thing that we need to enter
is our data source information and it's
| | 02:38 | just like when we created a data
source in Dreamweaver. This tells the
| | 02:41 | application what it needs to
know to connect to the database.
| | 02:45 | So, our hostname against "localhost,"
let's create a data source name we can pick
| | 02:52 | whatever we want, let's just do
"shoppingcart." And now the username this is the
| | 02:57 | username we'll used for the database
that we created, so that would be "merchant,"
| | 03:02 | and the data source password that we
used in the database and that was "admin" and
| | 03:07 | then click OK. And that's it,
| | 03:11 | Cartweaver is installed in your site
and you have a fully functional eCommerce
| | 03:15 | application ready to be worked on.
| | 03:16 | Next we will have to go to
the Admin and finish the setup.
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| Finishing setup in the Cartweaver online admin| 00:00 | Now that the Dreamweaver installation
process is done, we need to finish setting
| | 00:04 | up the applications default settings.
| | 00:06 | We do this by browsing to the admin in
our Web browser and logging into the admin.
| | 00:12 | The Cartweaver admin allows multiple
levels of access to the site admin.
| | 00:15 | We'll log in as developer which
gives us complete access to all settings.
| | 00:20 | So what we'll need to do
now is browse to the admin.
| | 00:24 | The easiest way to do that would be, go
ahead and open your site in Dreamweaver
| | 00:30 | and now with the site you just
installed into Dreamweaver, go ahead and click
| | 00:34 | on the cw4 folder and browse to the admin index
file and open it and now you can just hit F12.
| | 00:46 | This is the easiest way to open the
admin when you're working locally,
| | 00:50 | because then you don't have to
actually enter the address to the file and
| | 00:53 | browse to it in your browser.
| | 00:55 | Dreamweaver will open your browser
automatically and bring you to the page you
| | 00:59 | need to be to, okay.
| | 01:00 | Now to gain access to the admin
we're going to enter ourselves as the user
| | 01:04 | developer and enter the password, right
now it's just in the default and that's
| | 01:09 | admin, although you'll want to change
that later for sure, and then click Log In.
| | 01:15 | There you see the admin interface,
but we'll talk about all this later.
| | 01:20 | What we need to do now is just to do
the setting that gets our site functional
| | 01:24 | so we can begin browsing.
| | 01:25 | So what we'll do is go to Site Setup,
open that panel and go to Global
| | 01:31 | Settings and click that.
| | 01:34 | Any shopping cart application will
have this somewhere, where you setup the
| | 01:38 | global applications it
effects the entire application.
| | 01:42 | It's important that you enter the
proper information, so that your site
| | 01:45 | will function correctly.
| | 01:47 | We'll just go down through the steps
here and explain what each field is, and
| | 01:50 | then we'll be ready to go.
| | 01:52 | First of all, your site URL, this is
important because it tells a system what
| | 01:56 | your site URL is, so they
can be used in different links.
| | 02:00 | Then here we have the Site Secure URL,
you'll notice that the beginning of this
| | 02:05 | it uses HTTPS. What this does is, once
the user begins to check out, it switches
| | 02:11 | the system over and invokes the SSL.
| | 02:13 | Now we'll talk about SSL security a
little bit later in this course, but right
| | 02:18 | now this is how that system is
invoked, by having HTTPS in your URL.
| | 02:24 |
| | 02:25 | Next, Test mode. We'll want to have
that on, because during testing you want
| | 02:29 | the site to function normally, but
not require interaction with payment
| | 02:34 | gateways and that sort of thing.
| | 02:36 | So clicking on this allows you to test
the site fully functional, but without
| | 02:40 | having to reach out and
interact with third-party vendors.
| | 02:44 | That way it's a much cleaner test
environment while you're working on your site.
| | 02:48 | Next is database type, with PHP mySQL
is our choice, if they were ColdFusion it
| | 02:54 | would be my SQL or SQL Server,
but we'll just leave that at mySQL.
| | 02:59 | Enable non-https redirection.
| | 03:02 | We want to have this checked. What that
does is, if someone begins to check out
| | 03:07 | and they are linking from a non-secure
link, this will check that and redirect
| | 03:12 | them through to the
HTTPS, again, invoking the SSL.
| | 03:15 | We want to make sure that their
transactions are totally secure and encrypted.
| | 03:20 | Next we have Date Format, choose a format
that is good for your area or that you prefer.
| | 03:26 | Default Locale, this is an important
setting, because this setting determines
| | 03:30 | what sort of currency symbols
are used throughout the site.
| | 03:34 | If you're in the UK or in Europe,
it'll show you the appropriate symbols.
| | 03:38 | But here we'll leave it in English(US).
| | 03:41 | Server Time Offset this is an
important setting, because oftentimes where
| | 03:45 | your store as located is in a completely
different time zone than where your server is located.
| | 03:51 | And you want your transactions to
appear that they occurred at the proper time
| | 03:55 | where you're located.
| | 03:57 | Setting this or plus or minus the
Greenwich Mean Time will allow you to do that.
| | 04:01 | Check online to see what
the setting is for your area.
| | 04:05 | Cookie Expiration Term, most servers
have this setup by default, but if they
| | 04:10 | don't they set the default for that. And
the rest is just information about the
| | 04:14 | installation itself and we
probably won't have to change this.
| | 04:17 | One thing to note is, if you installed
your store into a different directory or
| | 04:23 | if you've changed directory names, these
fields with caution by them is where you
| | 04:27 | would make these changes.
| | 04:29 | My recommendation initially is just
leave in its default setting and in default
| | 04:33 | install and it'll let you get your
feet on the ground. But this is where you
| | 04:36 | would change that if you used it later.
| | 04:38 | Okay and that's that panel. Any changes
we made then we want to Save Changes.
| | 04:44 | The thing to remember about this is it
is a web application, so you can make
| | 04:48 | these changes and if you don't click
Save Changes they're not made, it won't be
| | 04:52 | written to the database and you'll come
back and your old settings will still be there.
| | 04:56 | And that's an important thing for you to
tell your merchants as well, because they
| | 05:00 | often forget. They think it's a
desktop application and forget to click the
| | 05:04 | button every time. Okay.
| | 05:06 | Then there is one other page
we'll check called Cart Pages.
| | 05:11 | Now during setup, if you remember, we
left everything as far as page names it its
| | 05:16 | default, so we can just leave this alone.
| | 05:19 | If you chose different page names
for these different functions, or these
| | 05:23 | presentation pages on the front end,
you would want to change them to the
| | 05:27 | corresponding names here as well.
| | 05:29 | That way your application
knows what files to look for.
| | 05:32 | And then changes that you make there go
ahead and you'd save them and that's it.
| | 05:37 | We've now got our shopping cart
installed into our site and have finished setup
| | 05:41 | and have a fully functional
eCommerce site setup and ready to go.
| | 05:45 | Now let's take a minute to examine the
files and see how things fit together.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Examining the site and code structure| 00:00 | Once you have your Shopping Cart files
installed into your site and are done
| | 00:04 | with setup, it's a good idea to take a
moment to examine the files and see how
| | 00:08 | they fit together and how they're structured.
| | 00:10 | Some of what we're going to look at is
going to be Cartweaver specific, but
| | 00:13 | again, much as applies to most any
Shopping Cart application, so it's
| | 00:17 | definitely worthwhile.
| | 00:18 | We would be looking at a little bit of code,
but that doesn't mean you have to know PHP.
| | 00:24 | But it's a good idea to get an idea of the
principles behind how the files work together.
| | 00:28 | This will definitely help you later
when you want to customize your design or
| | 00:33 | integrate your Shopping Cart into your design.
| | 00:36 | One of the important things we're
going to be looking at is what I call the
| | 00:38 | principle of separation.
| | 00:40 | Any good dynamic application not just
a Shopping Cart should be designed to
| | 00:45 | separate form from function.
| | 00:46 | What does this mean?
| | 00:48 | Simply that your application code and
your presentation code, which is your HTML
| | 00:53 | or your CSS, should not all be
mixed together in the same file.
| | 00:58 | Think of it this way, how would it be
if your CSS was all in-line mixed in
| | 01:03 | with your HTML tags.
| | 01:05 | This would be a mess right?
| | 01:07 | No, the correct way is to separate all
your CSS out into its own file and then
| | 01:12 | call the CSS from the page.
| | 01:15 | Your application code should be no different.
| | 01:17 | If you're looking at a Shopping Cart
application that uses the method of mixing
| | 01:22 | the code together, known
as Spaghetti code, move on.
| | 01:26 | Use one that follows the basic
essential principle of separating
| | 01:29 | presentation from function.
| | 01:32 | Now let's open Dreamweaver and look at
the Cartweaver file structure and see how
| | 01:36 | the presentation and
function files are arranged.
| | 01:41 | So in Dreamweaver let's go ahead and show
the local site and let's look at the files.
| | 01:50 | The files that are all lined up in
the root directory are basically your
| | 01:54 | presentation files and
we'll look at that in a minute.
| | 01:56 | But if you look up here in your cw4 folder,
here's where all your function files reside.
| | 02:04 | This is where you admin is.
| | 02:05 | That's where your CSS for your function
files is, along with all of the various
| | 02:11 | includes and everything that may
be called to actually integrate cart
| | 02:15 | functionality into your website.
| | 02:19 | Here are basically your presentation files.
| | 02:22 | Now what we'll do is, let's go ahead and
open a presentation file and there's all
| | 02:30 | the code, but let's look at the Code view.
| | 02:32 | If you'll notice, there is simply a
little bit of a code here and one include
| | 02:38 | call in the middle of the body of the page.
| | 02:42 | Now what this does is it calls in the
cart functionality, whatever it is for this
| | 02:46 | page, in this case it's the product list,
and places all that code into your page
| | 02:51 | with one line of code.
| | 02:54 | If you're integrating this code now into a
pre-existing design, that's pretty easy to do.
| | 03:00 | Basically you'd just be adding this code.
| | 03:03 | You don't even have to worry about what
functionality code is, you just place it
| | 03:07 | within your design and it's delivered.
| | 03:09 | Now that we've examined the site and
code structure, let's take a tour of the
| | 03:14 | Shopping Cart front end and get
familiar with how everything works.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Setting Up the StoreExploring Cartweaver functionality| 00:00 | Now that your store is setup, you're
ready to start configuring and adding
| | 00:04 | contents to your store.
| | 00:05 | But first let's take a moment to look
at a functioning store front end and make
| | 00:10 | a note of what the store does and how it acts.
| | 00:12 | Having this well in mind will help
you when you're in the admin setting up
| | 00:16 | your store and help to organize your
products with ease-of-use and customer
| | 00:20 | experience in mind.
| | 00:22 | So here we are to functioning store
front-end. We see it's a pretty standard
| | 00:25 | looking eCommerce site with products
displayed and navigation. But let's analyze
| | 00:30 | how things are presented, so it'll help
us understand the best way to enter our
| | 00:35 | products once we start doing it in the database.
| | 00:37 | The important thing to look at first of
all is the navigation of the products.
| | 00:42 | Basically what you have here are
categories of different types of products
| | 00:46 | contained in the store and you click
on that and it expands to subcategories.
| | 00:50 | This information architecture is
really important in trying to meet your
| | 00:54 | customer needs of finding the
products they're looking for.
| | 00:57 | So you want to take time to really try
to organize your products in a hierarchy
| | 01:02 | that not only makes sense to you,
but makes sense to your customers.
| | 01:07 | Sometimes we look at things differently,
because we look at the products all of the time.
| | 01:10 | The customers are coming in from
the outside and they look for things
| | 01:13 | differently. Try to meet
their needs and not yours.
| | 01:17 | So we see how the products are displayed.
Let's go ahead and look at the details
| | 01:22 | of this, we want to find
out more information about it.
| | 01:25 | So there it is, nice details page give
us all the information, gives related
| | 01:30 | items it maybe we might be interested
in, which is a common function of any
| | 01:34 | shopping cart application.
| | 01:36 | Okay let say we want this product.
| | 01:37 | So we go ahead and select what we
want. It give us the options that are
| | 01:41 | available with our selection.
| | 01:42 | If we don't like that, we can go back
and select other options and it narrows
| | 01:47 | down what we're looking for.
| | 01:48 | Once we have what we want, go
ahead and Add to Cart, there we go.
| | 01:53 | Now if you've been to the store before,
it may remember that you were here before.
| | 01:57 | So let's go ahead and
remove what was there before.
| | 02:01 | Okay, now we're down to just
what we want by this time around.
| | 02:04 | This is a common function, because
sometimes people will window shop online
| | 02:08 | stores and they'll come back and
their previous items are still in there.
| | 02:12 | So it's important to be able to remove
those from your cart when you're actually
| | 02:15 | wanting to check out.
| | 02:17 | Now you could Continue Shopping which
will take you back to your shopping area.
| | 02:20 | But let's say we're ready to check out,
so we click Checkout and here we go.
| | 02:25 | It gives us the opportunity to Log In
this is for Returning Customers and if
| | 02:30 | we're not a returning customer, we want
to go ahead and just create an account.
| | 02:34 | Okay and let's say our Shipping
Information is the same, so we'll click that and
| | 02:40 | we'll see it will pull what we
entered here and take it there.
| | 02:44 | This is a good feature to look for,
because that way the customer doesn't have
| | 02:47 | to enter it twice if it's the same.
| | 02:49 | So let's go ahead and create a
Username and Password, we'll just put "user" and
| | 02:54 | "password" right now, okay
then we'll want to continue.
| | 03:00 | Oh, looks like I entered something wrong there.
| | 03:04 | That's an important thing to look for
too is the error-checking must be six or
| | 03:07 | more, so I'll just put "username," okay.
| | 03:09 | That's another feature to look for in
your application is to make sure that it
| | 03:15 | validates the fields, so we know the
information we're getting from the customer
| | 03:19 | is valid and what we need in our database.
| | 03:22 | Now let's Continue and there we go,
gives us what the contents is and what the
| | 03:26 | Shipping is and we'll talk about how
to setup shipping in a coming video. So
| | 03:30 | that's look good, so we want to Continue.
| | 03:33 | Again we double check what's in our cart.
| | 03:35 | Asks us if we have any kind of a
discount code, in this case we don't, so we'll
| | 03:39 | just Continue, and then we
get ready to submit payment.
| | 03:43 | This particular cart allows us to
select multiple payment options, which is
| | 03:47 | pretty common these days.
| | 03:48 | A lot of people may want to use either
their credit card or go through PayPal.
| | 03:53 | So it's good for an application to support that.
| | 03:55 | In this case we'll just select Credit
Card and as you can see here I've already
| | 04:00 | entered in Test User information, but in
a real store that would be whatever you
| | 04:04 | need to enter and finally just Place
Order and there it is, our Confirmation.
| | 04:09 | We've gone through the complete series
of looking for products, selecting the
| | 04:13 | products, adding to the cart and checking out.
| | 04:15 | You can see this called TEST MODE ENABLED.
| | 04:18 | That's a feature that we
discussed earlier in setting up the site.
| | 04:21 | It's a good way to test your site
without having to actually interact with
| | 04:24 | your payment gateways.
| | 04:25 | When you get ready to go live, you'll
want to disable that so you can actually
| | 04:29 | test the interaction with your payment gateway.
| | 04:32 | We now have a good understanding
what's going on throughout the shopping
| | 04:36 | and checkout process.
| | 04:37 | Keeping this in mind as we go through
the admin and setup the store and begin
| | 04:41 | adding products, will be really helpful.
| | 04:43 | So let's go do that now.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring admin settings| 00:00 | The site admin serves many functions,
from the most basic settings, to products,
| | 00:05 | orders, and customer record control.
| | 00:07 | You may not want everyone to
see everything, no problem.
| | 00:11 | Cartweaver as well as many other
eCommerce applications allow multilevel access
| | 00:15 | to the admin features.
| | 00:16 | We'll look at what this
means and how to set it up.
| | 00:19 | We'll also walk through the other
settings available under the Admin
| | 00:22 | Settings menu panel.
| | 00:23 | To do that let's go back to the admin.
| | 00:26 | We'll want to login as developer, so
I'll have access to everything and let's
| | 00:31 | go to Admin Settings.
| | 00:34 | First of all let's look at the user settings.
| | 00:37 | Here is where we have the
multilevel user access control.
| | 00:41 | As we can see, we have the service,
developer, manager, and merchant. These are
| | 00:45 | various levels of access that
allow us to see different things.
| | 00:49 | Developer basically is
allowed to see everything.
| | 00:52 | Service and manager, I'd recommend you
click around and see what's available
| | 00:55 | there and what's not.
| | 00:57 | Merchant is something that
we can actually customize;
| | 01:00 | you may want to narrow that
down to just looking at products.
| | 01:03 | It depends on what kind of
access you want to grant.
| | 01:05 | This maybe, somebody in a customer
service department and they just see
| | 01:08 | products and customers.
| | 01:09 | You can dial that in later on
and we'll show you how to do that.
| | 01:13 | Now these are locked in, you can't change these.
| | 01:16 | But you can change the Password and I
definitely recommend that you do that when
| | 01:20 | this goes up on your server.
| | 01:21 | You can see what kind of access level.
| | 01:24 | You can create New Admin Users,
| | 01:26 | you're not locked into these.
| | 01:28 | You can go ahead and create a new
one if you want and give it what level
| | 01:30 | of access you want.
| | 01:32 | But right now we'll just
stay with the default settings.
| | 01:35 | Next, let's take a look at Admin Controls.
| | 01:38 | These are basic controls that controls
the admin itself, so we can see Use Admin
| | 01:43 | Error Handling, we want to do that;
Theme Directory, these are actually multiple
| | 01:48 | themes that come with Cartweaver, a
lot of eCommerce applications offer that
| | 01:52 | where you can tailor the look a little
bit or you can just open up the CSS files
| | 01:56 | and do what you want and
make it look the way you want.
| | 01:59 | The next three Enable Customer Paging,
Order Paging and Product Paging; what
| | 02:04 | that does is breaks up the display of
these pages in your admin, so that you
| | 02:08 | don't load up everything all at once.
| | 02:10 | If you have a small store you probably want
to disable those, because you won't need it.
| | 02:14 | But if you have a really large store it
could get really cumbersome loading up a
| | 02:17 | hundred different products with one click.
| | 02:20 | For a large store you would
want to definitely enable paging.
| | 02:23 | How many Records per Page, if these are
enabled then you can decide how many you
| | 02:27 | want to show per page.
| | 02:29 | Use Text Editor, now what this does is
there's built-in text editors throughout
| | 02:33 | the admin for entering information.
| | 02:36 | These are simple text editors, but they
really make formatting your text much, much easier.
| | 02:40 | But some prefer to paste in HTML
code, so if you disable that it'll be
| | 02:45 | just a basic text field, and then you can
paste your HTML code directly into those fields.
| | 02:50 | So it all depends on how you prefer to work.
| | 02:52 | The Text Editor CSS File and that
declares CSS files that the text editor
| | 02:57 | refers to when you're entering like
headline tags and that sort of thing, this
| | 03:00 | is all customizable.
| | 03:02 | And then again for Categories,
Options and Products, and we'll display those
| | 03:06 | a little bit later,
| | 03:08 | it allows you to choose whether you
want text editors there or not as well.
| | 03:11 | If you make any changes here, you
can just go ahead and save them.
| | 03:14 | If not, let's go ahead and move on.
Click on the Admin Widgets page and these
| | 03:19 | are various widgets that are used in the admin.
| | 03:21 | These are what shown on the Homepage
and most of the time it's good leave this
| | 03:24 | checked, because it gives you more information.
| | 03:27 | But let's say you just want order
information when you go to your home page.
| | 03:30 | That's the first thing you want see,
what orders you have, so you can
| | 03:33 | being processing them.
| | 03:35 | You can disable these other two and
clear out that introductory page if you want.
| | 03:40 | Then how many Recent Orders are shown
on the Homepage, how many Recent Products
| | 03:44 | shows you what you have added lately.
| | 03:45 | What your top customers are. That's
all is a good thing to know, who your
| | 03:48 | most common and most frequent customers are
and that can be displayed on the Admin Homepage.
| | 03:53 | Any of these if you set to
zero, it just won't show.
| | 03:55 | Again, Top Selling Products and you can
save that if you want or not, let's move on.
| | 04:01 | So this controls the Products section
in your admin. You have your Labels for
| | 04:04 | your product. And this is helpful if
you call them something different in your
| | 04:08 | company culture, you can change them to
what you want them to say so that your
| | 04:12 | staff will understand what they're using.
| | 04:14 | You can change these to whatever fits for you.
| | 04:17 | Default Price, you can set a Default
Price to all products entered and here we
| | 04:22 | just have it 0, but you could have it,
like I don't want any products to be under
| | 04:25 | five dollars and we don't want to
forget that, so we can add that.
| | 04:29 | You can use the Alternate (Suggested)
Price and all these features you'll see
| | 04:33 | when we add products that are available.
| | 04:34 | But you could turn them off and on at this page.
| | 04:37 | And for Alternate Price Labels you have that.
| | 04:40 | Use Product Additional Info, rather
than going through every field, basically
| | 04:44 | know that all the information you need
to control your products are selectable
| | 04:48 | here and controlled here and it would
be good thing to play around with this a
| | 04:52 | little bit and customize it
to your liking. And that's it;
| | 04:54 | we've gone through the admin settings.
| | 04:56 | We now have our user account setup
and have our basic product and admin
| | 04:59 | settings configured.
| | 05:01 | Next, we'll move on to the basic
store information under the Store
| | 05:04 | Settings panel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring store settings| 00:00 | Now we're going to setup
the company information.
| | 00:02 | What credit cards we'll take, how
discounts will be handled, how shipping and
| | 00:06 | sales tax will be handled?
| | 00:08 | So let's go back to the Admin now, and
let's go from where we left off and click
| | 00:12 | on Store Settings, and the first
panel here is called Company Info.
| | 00:17 | This information is what's
shown throughout the store.
| | 00:20 | For example, in the footer of the pages
and also used in your Emails that are on
| | 00:26 | order confirmations.
| | 00:27 | It's basically all the store
information that gets shared with your customers.
| | 00:31 | So you want to definitely go through
and enter the information here that
| | 00:35 | matches to your store.
| | 00:36 | One important thing to look at is the Emails.
| | 00:39 | There is two Emails here, there's
Developer Email and Company Email.
| | 00:43 | The Developer Email is used when
errors or something like that occurs and you
| | 00:48 | want it to go to the developer.
| | 00:50 | So if a developer is different then the
person who handles the store definitely
| | 00:54 | enter their Email here.
| | 00:56 | Then Company Email is the Email that
will appear on your receipts or your order
| | 01:00 | confirmations that go out to the
customers, and also will appear in the footer
| | 01:04 | of the store and so forth.
| | 01:05 | So that would be the general contact
information Email that you want to share.
| | 01:09 | Then the rest is just your basic
information and you'd want to ahead and fill that out.
| | 01:14 | Next, let's look at Credit Cards.
| | 01:16 | What this page does is allow you to
enter new credit cards or delete ones that
| | 01:21 | you don't want to use anymore.
| | 01:22 | And what the code is, make sure you know
what the code for your credit cards are
| | 01:26 | because the code is always different
than the actual name and this code is what
| | 01:30 | the credit card processors use to
recognize what credit card is being passed.
| | 01:35 | Next, let's go ahead and
click on Discount Settings.
| | 01:38 | And this page controls how
discounts are handled on the front-end.
| | 01:42 | Most Shopping Cart applications
offer various discount features.
| | 01:45 | And it's good to be able to enable them
or disable them and use them as you wish.
| | 01:49 | And that's what you do on this page
here, you can enable them, you can show
| | 01:52 | them in line or not, you can display
notes in the cart about the discount, and
| | 01:56 | there is a Notes field.
| | 01:57 | When we enter discounts later you'll
notice that there is a Notes field that's
| | 02:00 | the information that will be
displayed here and then show Thumbnails.
| | 02:04 | And just save the changes.
| | 02:06 | Next we'll look at Shipping Settings and
first of all you can enable Shipping or not.
| | 02:11 | If you don't charge shipping or if your
product is downloadable, and there is no
| | 02:14 | shipping you can just disable Shipping.
| | 02:16 | You can show a Single Shipping
Option or you can show Customer Shipping
| | 02:20 | Information, you can click Charge Base.
| | 02:23 | Now what this means and we'll show
that later when we setup shipping is that
| | 02:26 | there is a base fee that you can enter.
| | 02:28 | And that base fee is charged on every order.
| | 02:30 | It's just a flat amount.
| | 02:32 | Some may call it Shipping and Handling.
| | 02:33 | Now this would be the handling fee.
| | 02:34 | It's just a flat charge that you charge
on every order before you tack on actual
| | 02:39 | shipping costs and you
can enable or disable that.
| | 02:42 | Charge Location Extension;
| | 02:44 | this is part of the built-in shipping
matrix that you can charge higher shipping
| | 02:48 | for places further away from you, and
it's a powerful tool that calculate or
| | 02:52 | create a shipping grid that allows you
to charge appropriate shipping based on
| | 02:56 | location that you're shipping to.
| | 02:58 | Charge Range Based On, this can be
either Cart Weight or Cart Subtotal or None.
| | 03:03 | Most frequently it's cart weight
especially if you're using like UPS and here
| | 03:08 | there's a UPS API key.
| | 03:10 | If you're using UPS Shipping you'll
acquire a key from them and you'll enter it
| | 03:14 | here and then this authorizes the transaction
when your cart interacts with your UPS account.
| | 03:19 | And finally, let's look at Tax Settings.
| | 03:21 | We'll share more information
about shipping and taxes later.
| | 03:25 | But first of all you can setup Tax or VAT.
| | 03:28 | What VAT is, it's a Tax system in Europe,
and so you would select a system that
| | 03:33 | would fit your location.
| | 03:34 | We'll just leave that at Tax.
| | 03:35 | There is two different tax systems
that we'll show you a little later called
| | 03:39 | Groups and General, and you can go
between either one of those and we'll explain
| | 03:43 | that as we're adding taxes.
| | 03:45 | Tax Calculation Method, you can do
the Local Database system or you can
| | 03:49 | integrate with a third-party vendor
called TaxCloud and again we'll talk more
| | 03:53 | about the reason for this when we
actually go and in configure taxes later.
| | 03:57 | You can base your taxes on your
Shipping Address or your Billing Address.
| | 04:01 | And then set various defaults like
your Default Country or to Charge Tax on
| | 04:05 | Shipping or Display Tax on Each Line
Item in the cart or just the total tax.
| | 04:09 | Go down through these steps and make sure
it's all configured what's best for your region.
| | 04:13 | It's also important to enter your Tax ID
Number if you're required to share that.
| | 04:17 | If not you can just leave that blank.
| | 04:19 | Also you can select to
show Tax ID on your Invoice.
| | 04:23 | If you're required to do
that this allows you to do so.
| | 04:26 | If you are using TaxCloud which is a
third-party tax calculation vendor, your ID
| | 04:30 | and key would be entered into these
fields and that authorizes your transactions
| | 04:34 | between them and their servers.
| | 04:36 | And that's it, your basic
store settings are all ready to go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring site setup| 00:00 | Next, we're going to spend a few
moments configuring the site setup.
| | 00:03 | Under the Site Setup panel, you'll
find many of the key global settings that
| | 00:07 | govern how your site will work.
| | 00:09 | We'll go through this to see what
settings you should add or customize to tailor
| | 00:13 | your site to your specific needs.
| | 00:15 | So we'll go back to the Admin.
| | 00:16 | When you first click on the Site
Setup panel, the page you'll be shown
| | 00:20 | list Config Groups.
| | 00:21 | Now these are a key component to how
Cartweaver controls the various features
| | 00:25 | and functions of the application
and how the Admin handles them.
| | 00:29 | For now, it's good to know that
this offers a tremendous amount of
| | 00:32 | customizability, but it's also
important to know that diving into these takes
| | 00:36 | a lot of forethought and it is outside of the
scope of what we're going to be covering here.
| | 00:40 | If you should decide to use Cartweaver
as your store solution, you'll want to
| | 00:44 | consult the documentation on Config
Groups and see what can be done with them.
| | 00:48 | For this course, we would just leave
them in their default settings, which
| | 00:52 | is what you will do in the vast majority
of the sites that you're likely to work on.
| | 00:56 | So now let's go ahead and
click on Cart Display Settings.
| | 00:59 | This governs how the cart will be
displayed to the customer and so we can go up
| | 01:02 | here and we say Add to Cart Action.
| | 01:05 | What the Add to Cart Action will do is
either you can be taken directly to the
| | 01:08 | shopping cart and see what's in it,
or you can click Product Details page.
| | 01:13 | What that will do is they'll remain
on the page where they clicked, the Add
| | 01:16 | to Cart button, but they'll simply
be shown the fact that they've added
| | 01:19 | something to their cart.
| | 01:21 | Some prefer it this way where it
doesn't disrupt the flow of shopping.
| | 01:24 | Others prefer it because it
encourages them to buy right away.
| | 01:27 | You can decide how you want
to handle this with your store.
| | 01:30 | There are other basic settings here like
a small image shown in the cart or not.
| | 01:35 | You can show the SKU name in the cart,
and we'll talk about SKUs a little later,
| | 01:38 | they're part of your product entries.
| | 01:41 | Show Custom Values in the
Cart, Edit Custom Values.
| | 01:44 | You can also customize how your
products are ordered in your cart, ordered by
| | 01:48 | name or when they're added, and
also a Continue Shopping link.
| | 01:52 | In your Show Cart page, there will be
a link that'll say Continue Shopping.
| | 01:56 | With this setting, you can either be
taken to the home page of the site or just
| | 01:59 | back to the product page where you were.
| | 02:02 | This setting to Force Confirmation on
All Orders, even test orders will force a
| | 02:06 | confirmation if you have this checked.
| | 02:08 | If you want to go through
that, you can just uncheck it.
| | 02:10 | A good feature throughout the Admin that
you'll want to remember is when you see
| | 02:14 | these little blue Question Marks (?).
| | 02:15 | If you want to know what happens on
this line, go ahead and click it and
| | 02:19 | that'll expand it out, and then you'll have a
hint as to what that particular line handles.
| | 02:24 | This is used really frequently
throughout the Admin and you'll want to refer to
| | 02:28 | it if you have questions about
what each individual line does.
| | 02:32 | Next, we want to look at cart pages.
| | 02:34 | We discussed this before and when you
installed Cartweaver into your site, if
| | 02:38 | you just left the default settings for
the names of the pages, just go ahead and
| | 02:42 | leave that as is or edit it as needed.
| | 02:45 | Next, we want to look at Customer Settings.
| | 02:48 | We get a lot of requests for people who
want to just buy as a guest and not have
| | 02:53 | to have a username and password,
although I don't recommend this.
| | 02:56 | It's always good to make sure that you
have a username and password for your
| | 03:00 | customers because that way when they
come back, they're not going into your
| | 03:03 | database every time as a new customer.
| | 03:06 | But for some sites that don't have a
lot of sales or infrequent sales, this can
| | 03:10 | kind of be a problem.
| | 03:11 | So with this, you can disable whether
you have a customer account or if it
| | 03:16 | requires a customer account.
| | 03:17 | Also, you can show the Remember Me
check box, so that if they want to be
| | 03:21 | remembered after they're logged in, the
site will set a cookie and remember them.
| | 03:25 | Let's look at Debug Settings.
| | 03:27 | Debug Settings, we won't get
into a lot of detail on this.
| | 03:30 | You can go ahead and click on
the little Question Marks (?)
| | 03:33 | if you have questions
about each individual line.
| | 03:35 | But what the Debug Setting does is
you can enable the Debug Setting, and
| | 03:39 | while you're testing your site, if
it throws an error, instead of just
| | 03:43 | throwing a plain error that doesn't
give you any information saying there's
| | 03:46 | just an error on the page.
| | 03:47 | It actually gives you the details
of what kind of error was thrown.
| | 03:51 | This is really helpful in figuring out
why your site is broken, especially if
| | 03:55 | it's on the server and it doesn't work,
but it's locally and it does work.
| | 03:59 | Sometimes this will lead you
to what's causing the problem.
| | 04:03 | Once you're done with that, you can
uncheck it to disable Debug Handling.
| | 04:07 | Also, Enable Error Handling, what that
does is if it's checked, your users will
| | 04:11 | be shown a custom error page
that you can design and control.
| | 04:16 | If it's unchecked, if an error occurs
on the site, then the user will be shown
| | 04:19 | whatever error the server throws
and sometimes those are really ugly.
| | 04:23 | So once your site goes live,
you'll definitely want to enable that.
| | 04:26 | Then we go to Email Settings.
| | 04:29 | And again, there's quite a bit going
on here so we won't go into it line by
| | 04:33 | line, but what this does is first of all,
allows you to set the information of
| | 04:38 | what your email server is so that your
site can interact with your email and
| | 04:41 | send emails okay, what your format of
the e-mail is going to be, whether it's
| | 04:46 | just plain text or if it's HTML.
| | 04:48 | And then, there are fields here
where you can configure and enter the
| | 04:52 | information you want shown, for
example, your email Signature.
| | 04:55 | If you want a standard
signature, you can enter it here.
| | 04:58 | Also, Order Information and Shipping
Information, all this information will be
| | 05:03 | used in various parts of your
customer communication email, such as your
| | 05:07 | confirmation email and your order
shipped email and that sort of thing.
| | 05:11 | So this is where you control all that.
| | 05:14 | Next, we'll look at Global Settings and
we've already been here, you'll remember.
| | 05:17 | This is where we set things up when
we first installed the site, so we'll
| | 05:21 | definitely want to just leave
those because we've already set them.
| | 05:24 | And here we have the Image Settings.
| | 05:26 | First of all, you can set what
the folder name is for your images.
| | 05:29 | The default is Images and that's the
one that's used out of the box, but if you
| | 05:33 | have your own naming
conventions, you can change that here.
| | 05:36 | We also have a default image
that we upload to the server.
| | 05:39 | If a product doesn't have an image yet,
you haven't uploaded it yet, this image
| | 05:43 | will automatically be displayed.
| | 05:45 | If you want to disable that function,
you would just leave that field blank.
| | 05:48 | But it's a good thing to have because
it makes it obvious when you forget to
| | 05:51 | upload an image because
your default image is shown.
| | 05:54 | Finally, here the original image, when
you upload the image, images are going to
| | 05:57 | be resized to what they need to be in the cart.
| | 06:00 | Basically, this allows the
merchant to either delete it or not.
| | 06:03 | And if you want to maintain that image
up on the server for some reason, you can
| | 06:07 | disable the ability to delete it.
| | 06:10 | Here's your Payment Settings.
| | 06:12 | Your Payment Settings allows you to select
what payment authorizers you want to use.
| | 06:17 | The standard is pretty much just one.
| | 06:19 | For example, I am using Authorize.net
or I am using PayPal, and then you can
| | 06:24 | save the changes and that will
automatically be the only payment processor they use.
| | 06:29 | But sometimes, merchants
want to offer multiple choices.
| | 06:32 | Do I just want to check
out using my credit card?
| | 06:34 | In that case, maybe use Authorize.net;
| | 06:37 | or, I want to be taken to PayPal.
| | 06:38 | Based on what our selections here are,
the user, when they order, will have a
| | 06:42 | choice of which one to use when they check out.
| | 06:46 | Finally, Product Display.
| | 06:48 | There's a lot of information here, but
this really controls how your products
| | 06:52 | are displayed out on the front end.
| | 06:54 | First of all, you can look at Product
Categories, how to select or how your
| | 06:59 | product options are shown and selected.
| | 07:01 | You can either have dropdowns
or have them viewed in tables.
| | 07:04 | The number of columns that are used
when you do a search and results and
| | 07:08 | bring back your products.
| | 07:09 | The Quantity Selection, this is if you
want a select box where it drops down and
| | 07:14 | they can choose the number if they
want to select or just a text box and they
| | 07:17 | enter the number that they want.
| | 07:19 | Results per Page, again that's common
with search results, how many you want to
| | 07:22 | show per page before you would begin paging.
| | 07:25 | I would go ahead and click through
these various fields, and again, a very
| | 07:29 | useful function in the Admin is go ahead
and click on the little blue Question Mark (?)
| | 07:34 | if you want to know what
a particular field does.
| | 07:37 | Just know that this page, the Product
Display page, has a lot of impact on how
| | 07:40 | your products are displayed.
| | 07:43 | One thing I'll definitely want to
point out, down here there's a check box
| | 07:46 | called Allow Backorders.
| | 07:48 | If it allows backorders, when people
are ordering products off your site, it
| | 07:52 | will allow the inventory for that product to be
forced into below 0, otherwise a minus number.
| | 07:59 | Some companies that don't directly
inventory their own products want to go
| | 08:02 | ahead and allow that.
| | 08:03 | But if you have that unchecked, what
will happen on the front end is either a
| | 08:07 | product will just drop off the Web
and be gone until you replenish the
| | 08:10 | inventory, or it will
show an Out of Stock message.
| | 08:14 | Either one of those will happen.
| | 08:15 | If you allow backorders by
checking that, none of that will happen,
| | 08:19 | customers won't know the difference
of what your inventory is and it will
| | 08:21 | just go ahead and let them order.
| | 08:24 | This is one you should keep
in mind, Show Empty Categories.
| | 08:27 | If you have categories entered into
the system but you haven't associated any
| | 08:30 | products yet, you may not
want to show those in your menus.
| | 08:33 | So you go ahead and just disable that.
| | 08:36 | I would recommend that as your default setting.
| | 08:38 | And that way you're only going to show
categories that actually have products
| | 08:41 | associated with them.
| | 08:42 | And here, Relate
Categories and Secondary Categories.
| | 08:45 | What this does is it creates a
forced relationship and that is where you
| | 08:49 | have categories and subcategories which is
the most common way of searching for things.
| | 08:54 | In some cases, some people like to
search either one independent of each other.
| | 08:58 | It just depends on how it
works for your products.
| | 09:01 | Most of the time, having this checked
would be your default setting. And that's it.
| | 09:04 | We've gone through the Site Setup.
| | 09:06 | The Product Setting page controls much
of what users see when visiting your site.
| | 09:11 | Having this control in the Admin really helps
speed and streamline your front end display.
| | 09:15 | Since these settings have a real impact
on how your product pages will appear,
| | 09:20 | this page is hidden from all
Admin users other than the developer.
| | 09:24 | We have now in just a few minutes
configured the real nuts and bolts of how your
| | 09:27 | site will work and display your products.
| | 09:30 | You're almost ready to start adding
products and getting your store ready to go.
| | 09:33 | But there remains a couple of key
elements to address and that is taxes and
| | 09:37 | shipping and we'll address those next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring a shipping system| 00:00 | For shipping, the most common
options for calculating shipping costs are
| | 00:04 | either setting up a self-contained
shipping matrix, or connecting to a
| | 00:08 | third-party vendor such as UPS.
| | 00:11 | Both have advantages and disadvantages.
| | 00:13 | We'll look at both, so you can decide on
which one is best for your particular needs.
| | 00:17 | But the first thing you're going to
want to do is enter your country and
| | 00:21 | your states or regions.
| | 00:23 | So, let's take a look at that first.
| | 00:26 | Go ahead and click on the Shipping/Tax
dropdown, and click on Countries/Regions.
| | 00:32 | Here, you can add new countries and regions.
| | 00:35 | Regions is just another word for states.
| | 00:38 | Many countries don't have states, such
as the UK and Ireland, but they do have
| | 00:42 | regions or counties.
| | 00:43 | So that's what this basically means.
| | 00:46 | You enter the country, you sort
which ones you want to come up.
| | 00:49 | If you show multiple countries, you
can't set it up or you can just show the US,
| | 00:54 | or you can show US and Canada, or show
how ever many countries you enter. And
| | 01:00 | then you go ahead and enter the
states and they're listed here.
| | 01:04 | Throughout the Admin, there's
something that's shown on this page that's
| | 01:07 | important to realize.
| | 01:08 | There's a Delete check box
and an Archive check box.
| | 01:11 | Now, you notice that the
Delete check box is grayed out.
| | 01:15 | What does that mean?
| | 01:17 | Throughout the Admin, if a Delete box is
grayed out that means you can't delete it.
| | 01:22 | The reason you can't delete it is that
there's things associated with it that if
| | 01:27 | you did delete it, it would break
the database or cause orphan data.
| | 01:31 | In these cases, if you don't want to
see it anymore and don't want to use
| | 01:34 | it anymore, you can archive it, but
you can't delete it because that would
| | 01:38 | cause data corruption.
| | 01:40 | So, anytime that there's another
product or order or customer or whatever
| | 01:44 | related to a particular field, once
that relationship is created, you can no
| | 01:50 | longer delete that data.
| | 01:52 | So, that's something throughout
the database that you'll notice.
| | 01:55 | If the Delete button is not grayed out
that means it's free and you can delete
| | 01:59 | it which we will do a lot of during
testing, but once it's grayed out, it means
| | 02:03 | you have to first delete other things
if you want to to get rid of that, and
| | 02:07 | we'll take a look at that when
we get to orders or products.
| | 02:10 | Next, we click on Local Extensions.
| | 02:14 | This page affects both taxes and shipping,
so we'll come back to it briefly when
| | 02:18 | we get to taxes as well.
| | 02:20 | This basically shows the state code and
the name of the state or the region and
| | 02:26 | then what we're interested in
right now is the Ship Extension.
| | 02:30 | This is what I talked about before
when we were building a shipping matrix.
| | 02:33 | The internal extension here that's a multiplier.
| | 02:37 | Let's say, for example, it costs you
200 times more to ship a product to Alaska
| | 02:43 | than it does to ship it to the person next door.
| | 02:46 | You can enter that multiplier in here,
therefore, orders being shipped to Alaska
| | 02:52 | will have the shipping cost multiplied
by that amount, so you're charging an
| | 02:56 | appropriate amount to be
shipped to that destination.
| | 03:00 | This takes a little dialing in over a
period of your time, but once it's done,
| | 03:04 | the self-contained system becomes
very powerful and you can build out a
| | 03:08 | shipping grid that basically will
cover your shipping costs to various
| | 03:12 | different states and regions.
| | 03:15 | Here, we have Shipping Methods.
| | 03:17 | You can create different shipping
methods and associate them with different
| | 03:20 | countries that you have in the system.
| | 03:22 | For example, right now we
have UPS for the United States.
| | 03:27 | Base Rate, again, that's a flat
rate that's charged no matter what.
| | 03:31 | That's basically any other shipping costs
will be added on top of that, and a Sort field.
| | 03:37 | So if you have multiple shipping types,
you can force the Sort order in which
| | 03:40 | they appear and here's Calculation Type.
| | 03:44 | Local is what we were talking about
earlier, the shipping matrix that you built
| | 03:47 | into this system, it's self
contained within the database.
| | 03:51 | If you want to create a Shipping
Method that interacts with a third-party
| | 03:54 | shipper, you would do this at this select box.
| | 03:58 | Here, it allows you to select third-party
integrations that are available in the system.
| | 04:03 | As other third-party integrations
are available in the system, they'll
| | 04:06 | automatically appear in this dropdown.
| | 04:09 | Selecting one of these would mean
the shipping is not calculated locally.
| | 04:13 | It will go out to the third-party
shipper's system, and pull back their
| | 04:17 | shipping charges and add that to the total,
although, the base rate will still be added to that.
| | 04:22 | Now, if you don't want to charge
a base rate just set that to 0.
| | 04:27 | And again, you can Delete it or Archive it.
| | 04:29 | Again, we see here this must be used
in an order because you can't delete it.
| | 04:33 | So, if you want to hide this particular
Shipping Method, you'd just archive it.
| | 04:37 | Next, Shipping Ranges.
| | 04:39 | Shipping Ranges again are a part of
the local shipping matrix and it's
| | 04:43 | basically what the shipping type is, which
we've entered in the other page, and a From and To.
| | 04:50 | This for example, would be weight.
| | 04:52 | We just have one 0 to 999999.
| | 04:53 | What that means is, basically
everything we ship is that one rate.
| | 04:58 | But you can create multiple shipping ranges.
| | 05:00 | In fact, let's show you
how to do that right now.
| | 05:02 | So, we want to add a new
Shipping Range to US USPS.
| | 05:08 | You'll notice that it automatically
populates with the highest number of the
| | 05:13 | previous one plus 01.
| | 05:16 | The 01 is important, because you
don't want to have a small amount of gap
| | 05:22 | between this amount and the next higher amount.
| | 05:26 | If that's the case, if the calculated
weight should fall between that figure, it
| | 05:30 | would drop through and there
would be no shipping charged.
| | 05:33 | So, the system tries to help you
remember that by always adding the 01 to
| | 05:37 | your first weight range.
| | 05:39 | So, we would just add another weight range.
| | 05:43 | That would be a ridiculous amount but
just for examples, and we save the range.
| | 05:49 | We scroll down here and we
see that we've been added.
| | 05:52 | So, it's 0 to this number will
cost this, and then this number to this
| | 05:59 | number will cost this.
| | 06:00 | For the local shipping matrix, you
can also set your shipping to be charged
| | 06:05 | either on the dollar amount of
the order, or the total weight.
| | 06:08 | Most common is using a weight.
| | 06:10 | Finally, we go to Ship/Order Status.
| | 06:12 | There are various order
statuses that are available.
| | 06:15 | These are pretty much locked into the
system but you can change the order in
| | 06:19 | which they're sorted.
| | 06:21 | Finally, when you click on the
Shippings tab, what this will do is simply take
| | 06:25 | you back to Store Settings.
| | 06:27 | So, it makes it easily available from
this area but we've already set that, so
| | 06:30 | we don't have to worry
about that. So, that's it.
| | 06:33 | We've gone through our shipping system.
| | 06:35 | Shipping is a vital part of any online store.
| | 06:37 | So, taking time and effort
to get it right is important.
| | 06:40 | Whether you use a third-party
application such as UPS to calculate your shipping
| | 06:44 | cost or carefully set up your local
shipping matrix, you'll need to keep in mind
| | 06:49 | that none of these systems are perfect.
| | 06:52 | Despite your best efforts, there's
always going to be odd sizes and shapes
| | 06:56 | and weights and destinations and the like that
will fall outside of the normal calculations.
| | 07:02 | So, it's important, especially in the
first few months, to keep a very close eye
| | 07:06 | on your shipping charges and costs to
be sure that they're in line and make
| | 07:11 | adjustments when needed.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring a tax system| 00:00 | Now we come to the part
where we configure taxes.
| | 00:03 | Charging taxes is a crucial
part of setting up your store.
| | 00:06 | The government has no sense of humor about
being underpaid or overcharging your customer.
| | 00:11 | So it's important to take time to find
out what's required in your country or
| | 00:16 | state or a region and make sure
your store is set up correctly.
| | 00:20 | It used to be a lot more simple.
| | 00:22 | If a purchase was made from a state
in which your company had a physical
| | 00:26 | presence, you would charge sales tax.
| | 00:29 | If your company had no physical
presence in the state that the customer was in,
| | 00:34 | then you didn't have to charge sales tax.
| | 00:36 | It was pretty easy, and in most cases
in the US, it's still that way, but it is
| | 00:41 | getting more complicated.
| | 00:43 | In some states and regions, such
as Europe, it's not simple anymore.
| | 00:47 | This situation is only likely to
become more complicated as time goes on.
| | 00:52 | The card system we are using provides
both a very robust local tax system that
| | 00:57 | will cover most bases, but even the
most sophisticated built-in tax system
| | 01:02 | will have a hard time keeping up with all the
changes we're likely to see in the coming years.
| | 01:07 | So the answer to this problem
is third-party tax providers.
| | 01:12 | To deal with the changing landscape,
there are a number of third-party providers
| | 01:16 | that can offload the task to handle
calculating your tax, much in the same way
| | 01:21 | that payment gateways and shippers are handled.
| | 01:24 | Fortunately Cartweaver supports this system.
| | 01:27 | Depending on the tax requirements of
your location, you should be sure to check
| | 01:31 | for this support no matter what
cart solution you choose to use.
| | 01:35 | Okay, so let's take a look
at configuring our taxes.
| | 01:38 | Go ahead and click on Shipping/Tax tab again.
| | 01:41 | First of all, let's go down to Tax Settings.
| | 01:43 | Now we've been to this page before but
there are a couple of things we need to look at.
| | 01:48 | First of all, we'll look at the Tax Label.
| | 01:51 | This is simply the label
that's displayed on the front end;
| | 01:53 | in this case, it says Tax.
| | 01:56 | But if we're in Europe, we'd
want to change this to VAT.
| | 01:58 | So you'd want to change this
to what's good for your region.
| | 02:02 | Right now we'll just leave that at Tax.
| | 02:04 | Another thing to look at is the Tax System.
| | 02:07 | There is Groups and General.
| | 02:10 | General is the simplest tax system.
| | 02:12 | It simply charges tax based on state.
| | 02:16 | So if you're in, for example,
California and you want to charge a state tax for
| | 02:22 | California, you just enter that
information and that's all there is to it.
| | 02:26 | Groups is more complex and
we'll get into that in a minute.
| | 02:29 | The next field is Local Database which
is the local self-contained tax system
| | 02:35 | that we'll be looking at here in a minute.
| | 02:37 | But the dropdown
available here is also TaxCloud.
| | 02:41 | Now what TaxCloud is, it's a third-
party vendor that works much the same way as
| | 02:46 | a payment gateway or a shipper does.
| | 02:48 | In this case, it passes the
information out to this third-party;
| | 02:52 | they calculate your tax based on a
much more complex tax matrix that's
| | 02:57 | constantly updated based on
what the states are doing.
| | 03:00 | As things get more complicated, this
type of system is going to be more and more
| | 03:04 | important, so it's a good
thing that it's supported.
| | 03:06 | If you do select that, make sure these
bottom fields where it says TaxCloud APIs
| | 03:12 | that you enter the information that
TaxCloud provides to you here, that's your
| | 03:16 | authorization for the
transactions to go through their system.
| | 03:20 | So, if you're going to integrate with
TaxCloud that's how you would do it.
| | 03:22 | But right now we'll leave it to Local
Database and we'll also leave it to Groups
| | 03:28 | and let's go back to Shipping/Tax again.
| | 03:30 | One thing I'd like to show you,
here are several menu items or taxes.
| | 03:37 | Now we go back to Store Settings and
Tax Settings, let's go ahead and change
| | 03:42 | this to General and you'll see what happens.
| | 03:45 | Scroll down and update that.
| | 03:48 | Now, let's go to Shipping/Tax, and you'll
notice there is some Tax Settings missing.
| | 03:54 | That's because those settings have
nothing to do with a general tax system.
| | 03:59 | Basically what you do for the general
tax system is you go to Shipping and Tax
| | 04:03 | (Ship/Tax) Extensions, click on that
and you'll see the various states listed
| | 04:08 | here and for other
countries it would be regions.
| | 04:12 | And let's say you are in Georgia.
| | 04:14 | You would enter what your
sales tax is for that state.
| | 04:17 | So any state that you have a physical
presence in, you can go through this
| | 04:21 | system and add your state sales tax
and then the system will automatically
| | 04:26 | calculate and add that tax under
orders shipped into those states.
| | 04:30 | And that's how the general tax system works;
| | 04:32 | it's very straightforward and simple.
| | 04:34 | And fortunately, this system still
works fine in most of the states in the
| | 04:38 | United States and in some other regions.
| | 04:41 | Now let's go back to Store Settings and to
Tax Settings and change this to Tax Groups.
| | 04:51 | Go ahead and update that. Now let's go
to Shipping/Tax again and you'll see that
| | 04:57 | we have a couple of more options here again.
| | 04:59 | First of all, let's look at Tax Groups.
| | 05:03 | Tax Groups allows you to create
groups that are taxed at different levels.
| | 05:07 | For example, in some states food is nontaxable.
| | 05:11 | So if you're selling food in a state
that is nontaxable, but other items are,
| | 05:16 | you can create two different groups for
that state that will charge tax on some
| | 05:19 | items and not on others.
| | 05:22 | And then you can associate your products
with those tax groups to charge tax accordingly.
| | 05:27 | It's a very robust and flexible system.
| | 05:30 | Another thing that you might consider
is sometimes in some areas, different
| | 05:34 | products are taxed at a different level.
| | 05:36 | For example let's say electronics
or computers have a higher tax rate
| | 05:40 | than everything else.
| | 05:41 | You can create a specific tax group and
associate products with that tax group
| | 05:46 | and then the appropriate tax will be charged.
| | 05:50 | So let's go ahead and create a new
Tax Group just to see how it works.
| | 05:53 | So let's just go ahead and enter name
test group and let's just call it tg1 one
| | 06:01 | for your Tax Group Code, although it's
optional, but sometimes certain types
| | 06:06 | of tax have a particular code, so it's good
to enter that into the system if it exists.
| | 06:11 | And then you save the Tax Group and there it is.
| | 06:16 | Now let's go ahead and click on that tax
group and now we can configure that tax group.
| | 06:21 | First of all, the Region that it's
available in, let's say this is United States
| | 06:25 | and one of the regions in United
States is Alabama, because perhaps let's say
| | 06:28 | that's the State we are in.
| | 06:29 | We can configure that and add the amount
that is charged and go ahead and save that.
| | 06:37 | There, we have a region associated with it.
| | 06:39 | Now we can go through and create
multiple regions for that tax group and this
| | 06:45 | would be as the same way as building
out the states, so it'd be similar to the
| | 06:49 | general tax system that we
use in the United States.
| | 06:51 | You'd simply add a tax region for each
one of the states that you would have to
| | 06:55 | charge taxes in and then
associate your products with that.
| | 06:58 | Again, setting this up takes more work,
but in areas like the United Kingdom
| | 07:03 | or Europe where they have taxes in various
tax levels, this type of system is necessary.
| | 07:09 | Because you need to be able to associate
different types of taxes with different
| | 07:13 | types of products and regions and
this system allows you to do that.
| | 07:17 | Next, we'll look at Tax Regions
since we've just mentioned that.
| | 07:21 | Right now we've just created
three Tax Regions, one United Kingdom.
| | 07:25 | Let's say, we shipped to the United
Kingdom and we just have a tax rate that we
| | 07:29 | want to charge for that.
| | 07:31 | And again we have tax regions for
the United States and we would create a
| | 07:35 | different one for each state
that we have to charge tax for.
| | 07:38 | Again, very robust system, you have to
think about what you're doing and then
| | 07:42 | build it out, but it's good
to know that that's available.
| | 07:46 | All that being said, one of the things
you want to keep your eye on is if it
| | 07:49 | gets too complex in your area and you're
area supports a third-party vendor such
| | 07:55 | as TaxCloud and some of
the other ones coming online.
| | 07:58 | You might want to look at integrating or
make sure the shopping cart application
| | 08:01 | you choose supports those, because
eventually, things are going to get just too
| | 08:05 | complex to handle it in a closed system
and it will be of major advantage to be
| | 08:10 | able to reach out and have that system
offloaded and be handled by someone who
| | 08:14 | is going to keep up with all the changes.
| | 08:16 | Tax calculation and charges like
shipping is a vital part of any online store.
| | 08:21 | So taking the time and effort
to get it right is important.
| | 08:24 | Whether you use a third-party
application such as TaxCloud or carefully set up
| | 08:29 | your local tax system, you need
to keep an eye on your charges.
| | 08:32 | It's a good idea to audit yourself from
time to time just to be sure that what
| | 08:37 | you're charging for taxes is what you
expect and most importantly what the
| | 08:41 | government expects it to be.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Setting Up ProductsProduct administration walkthrough| 00:00 | Product Organization is
extremely important and requires a lot of
| | 00:04 | serious forethought.
| | 00:05 | If you only have ten products, well
they're not so much, but if you have
| | 00:09 | hundreds or more, the
proper organization is vital.
| | 00:13 | So to get familiar with the Products section,
let's just go to the Admin and take a look at it.
| | 00:18 | Okay.
| | 00:19 | Here we are back in the Admin.
| | 00:21 | So let's click on Products, and the
first thing that's displayed is the
| | 00:25 | active products list.
| | 00:27 | This is a listing of all the
products that are for sale on our site.
| | 00:31 | You can see it gives you enough
information to know what products you are
| | 00:34 | looking at and some basic settings. And
also up above, there is a search, so you
| | 00:41 | can enter keywords or fields
and try to search for products.
| | 00:44 | There is also an Advanced Search.
| | 00:47 | So if you know what you are looking
for, you can enter more information and
| | 00:50 | narrow it down quicker.
| | 00:51 | If you have a lot of products in your
database, this is a good tool to try to
| | 00:55 | find what you're looking for if
you're trying to change or update a
| | 00:58 | particular product.
| | 00:59 | Now, down here in the Product Lists,
we'll look at each product and there's a
| | 01:04 | little pencil by it.
| | 01:05 | Let's go ahead and click on the pencil.
| | 01:07 | What that does is take us to the
actual product management page.
| | 01:11 | We will go through the features in
this page a little later when we actually
| | 01:15 | add a product, but let's step through it
quickly just to familiarize yourself with it.
| | 01:19 | First of all, we can see that we have ID
number, whether to show it in the store or not.
| | 01:24 | That's a good feature because if we're
editing this product and we want to hide
| | 01:27 | it from the store for a while, you
can set this to no, and then it will no
| | 01:31 | longer appear on the store until you reset it.
| | 01:34 | And we will go through the other
settings a little later. One thing I'd like to
| | 01:37 | point out though, as we've mentioned
before, notice in this Product Options here
| | 01:43 | that the check boxes are grayed out.
| | 01:45 | Again, the reason for that is because
there is orders placed against this product.
| | 01:50 | So changing these would
cause problems in your database.
| | 01:54 | Since this product is already
associated with these options, changing the
| | 01:58 | options would break the relationship
with the products and leave orphaned or
| | 02:02 | junk data in your database.
| | 02:04 | So, once an order is placed against a
product, those are grayed out and they
| | 02:09 | can't be updated or
changed from that point forward.
| | 02:12 | Down here, we see the Archive Product button.
| | 02:14 | If you can't delete a product because
the fact that it has orders against it,
| | 02:19 | but you don't want to offer it anymore,
you can go ahead and archive it and it
| | 02:22 | will store it kind of off and out of
sight, so it's no longer on the website and
| | 02:26 | no longer in your way when
you're working through your database.
| | 02:29 | Next, we look at descriptions.
| | 02:31 | We can see fields for descriptions that
are shown on the website with handy text
| | 02:37 | editors to be able to update those.
| | 02:40 | Next, are photos, these are the
different photos that are associated with the
| | 02:44 | product, you can see
various sizes are available.
| | 02:49 | The good thing about this system is you
only have to upload the product photo once.
| | 02:53 | Once it's uploaded, the system will
resize the photos to the sizes you need.
| | 02:58 | Next, there are SKUs.
| | 03:00 | It's important that we take a moment
to talk about SKUs. What are SKUs?
| | 03:04 | Well, what it actually means like it
mentions here is Stock Keeping Units.
| | 03:10 | To explain what this means first
of all let's go back to Product.
| | 03:13 | A product is the actual product itself.
| | 03:16 | Let's say you're a clothing store
and you're selling Levi's 501 blues.
| | 03:21 | That's the product, but the SKUs are
each individual iteration or type or
| | 03:27 | size of that product.
| | 03:29 | So if there is a particular size and
color combination, those combinations, what
| | 03:33 | would actually be counted
in inventory, are your SKUs.
| | 03:37 | So it's important to realize that.
| | 03:39 | When you're entering products, the
product is the overview of the product, the
| | 03:44 | SKUs are the individual items under that
product that you'll actually keep stock count of.
| | 03:50 | Every product has to have at least one
SKU. Even if you have a product that, it's
| | 03:56 | one only product, and that's your
choice, like you just have a handmade pot or
| | 04:00 | something like that. You'd have to add
one SKU because that's where your price
| | 04:05 | and your weight and that
sort of thing is stored.
| | 04:08 | You could just enter an inventory count of
1 and when it's sold, it goes off the web,
| | 04:14 | it's done. But every product
has to have at least one SKU.
| | 04:18 | Next, we have Related Products.
| | 04:20 | Related Products are what we call upsell items.
| | 04:24 | When a user on the front-end is
looking at a product, if you've selected this
| | 04:29 | and added upsell products or related
products to this particular product,
| | 04:33 | these will also be shown as a recommended items.
Otherwise, if you like this, you may like that.
| | 04:40 | This is a great way to
increase sales on your website.
| | 04:43 | Now, back over to the menu.
| | 04:45 | Let's click on Archive Products.
| | 04:48 | Like we mentioned, once a product has
orders against it, you can't delete it,
| | 04:53 | but you can archive it and hide it
from the front-end and also just kind of
| | 04:56 | shuffle it off to this page out of your way.
| | 04:59 | It's a good way to store discontinued
items that aren't being offered anymore.
| | 05:04 | Next, there is the add product, and we
will spend some time here later when we
| | 05:09 | actually go in and add a product.
| | 05:12 | Now, we have Product Images.
| | 05:14 | Here is a listing of all the product images
that are used by all the products in our system.
| | 05:19 | Now, there are some buttons here to look at.
| | 05:22 | It's called Delete Originals. What's that mean?
| | 05:25 | Well, when you upload a product image,
the system takes that image and resizes
| | 05:31 | it to various different sizes it
needs, but it also retains the original.
| | 05:35 | But let's say, the original is a
pretty big image and you're trying to save
| | 05:39 | space on the server.
| | 05:41 | Well, you can delete these originals
and clear up that space, but it won't
| | 05:46 | affect the ones that have been resized
and that are being used by the products.
| | 05:50 | You can also delete unused.
| | 05:52 | So if you have some that you've uploaded
but you no longer use anymore or you've
| | 05:57 | updated an image for a product and
the old image needs to go, then you can
| | 06:01 | delete your unused images, or delete all.
| | 06:05 | Naturally, you would want to be careful with
this one, because it deletes all your images.
| | 06:11 | So be careful with that, but it also
has a warning dialog box if you try
| | 06:15 | to delete something.
| | 06:17 | So that's our overview.
| | 06:18 | Now that you have a good
understanding of the logic behind how products are
| | 06:22 | entered, organized, and managed,
we can now go ahead with adding and
| | 06:26 | organizing your products.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Organizing the store| 00:00 | Now let's talk about organizing your store.
| | 00:03 | When you walk into a department
store, you'll notice the great deal of
| | 00:06 | effort has been spent on organizing
the store into an easy-to-understand
| | 00:10 | system of departments.
| | 00:12 | The store is been designed to help
guide customers through the store, and make
| | 00:16 | finding what they're looking for easy and quick.
| | 00:19 | Your online store should be no different.
| | 00:22 | How successful would a retailer be if
they simply piled all their wares on one
| | 00:26 | big long table and to find what you need
you would have to start from one end and
| | 00:30 | just rummage your way through?
| | 00:32 | True, some customers would persist and
do this anyway but most would leave for a
| | 00:37 | more comfortable setting.
| | 00:39 | Sad to say, a lot of online
stores are pretty much like this.
| | 00:43 | So it's important to think about
information architecture and what are your
| | 00:47 | departments and aisles in your store.
| | 00:50 | How you categorize your online store
is the virtual equivalent to bricks and
| | 00:55 | mortar store separating its
products into departments and aisles.
| | 00:59 | It's essential to take some
time to think this through.
| | 01:02 | First we will address your departments,
that is, what your categories are.
| | 01:07 | Then we'll look at the aisles, which
would be your secondary or subcategories.
| | 01:12 | To get an idea what we are talking
about, let's look at a rough floor plan.
| | 01:16 | So here we have a floor plan of let's
say a department store, and a physical
| | 01:20 | store the product is organized into
departments and aisles or sections.
| | 01:25 | Online this would be your
categories or secondary categories.
| | 01:28 | Notice that the categories are unique
but secondary categories can be used in
| | 01:32 | more than one department.
| | 01:34 | Arranging your products this way
will give you the greatest amount of
| | 01:37 | flexibility and freedom.
| | 01:39 | But take a minute to think about
your products in your store and organize
| | 01:43 | them mentally like this.
| | 01:45 | That will translate very well
when we begin creating categories and
| | 01:49 | subcategories for our store.
| | 01:51 | Now let's take what we've learned to the Admin.
| | 01:54 | So here we are back in the Admin and
let's go down to the Categories tab, and
| | 01:59 | first of all, let's go
ahead and click Main Categories.
| | 02:03 | These are the categories that
we've already entered into the store.
| | 02:05 | Again, these would be
considered our departments.
| | 02:09 | Right now we have Collectibles,
Electronics, Housewares, Lawn & Garden.
| | 02:15 | So think of it that way.
| | 02:17 | If you were to walk into a department
store and walk around what the various
| | 02:19 | departments are, divide your store
online up into the same departments.
| | 02:24 | Again, we have the pencil, so we can
click and you see instead of being taken
| | 02:30 | to the other page, it just pops up and
can change the description, the order in
| | 02:34 | which it appears, and again, like
everywhere else in the database, there is
| | 02:39 | Archive and Delete.
| | 02:40 | Notice that the Delete field here is available.
| | 02:43 | That means that there's no products
associated with this particular category so
| | 02:48 | it can be deleted if we want to.
| | 02:50 | Next, we go add New Main.
| | 02:53 | Again, we can add a new Main Category by
entering the name in the description here.
| | 02:58 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 02:59 | I am going to just type in gibberish,
okay, and then we just save this new Main
| | 03:08 | Category and there we go.
| | 03:11 | It saves it and then allows you
to do another one if you want.
| | 03:14 | Let's go ahead and go back and look
at the Main Categories and there it is.
| | 03:21 | Since there is nothing against this
and we want to keep our database clean,
| | 03:24 | let's go ahead and delete that, and it's gone.
| | 03:29 | Another thing when we look at the
categories, you can see View Archived.
| | 03:36 | Again, it's the same thing.
| | 03:37 | We can archive a category that we
don't use anymore but it has products and
| | 03:41 | other things associated with it.
| | 03:45 | Let's look at Secondary Categories.
| | 03:47 | These basically again would be the
sub departments or the aisles in your
| | 03:50 | departments and here we have Cameras
and Photography, Desktop Computers, we can
| | 03:56 | see those obviously would be
associated with the Electronics that we had in
| | 04:00 | categories and we can see all
those various selections we have here.
| | 04:04 | Again, we can edit the description
just by clicking on the pencil and we can
| | 04:08 | change the sort order that they will
appear in our front end and we can Archive
| | 04:14 | it or Delete it if there is nothing
associated with it, and then we can add new
| | 04:20 | Secondary Categories.
| | 04:22 | The procedure here is the
same as adding categories.
| | 04:25 | Once these are all added, when we
begin to products, these categories and
| | 04:30 | secondary categories will be available.
| | 04:32 | In fact, let's show you that.
| | 04:33 | When we look at the products, here
they are right here, Main Categories and
| | 04:41 | Secondary Categories and you will be
able to check and associate that product
| | 04:45 | with the various different
categories and that's an overview of how the
| | 04:50 | Categories and Secondary Categories
works in our store and how to add,
| | 04:53 | update, and manage them.
| | 04:56 | Now that we've build the framework of
our store by creating the departments and
| | 05:00 | aisles, so to speak, that is, the
Categories and Secondary Categories, we're
| | 05:05 | ready to start stocking the shelves
by adding our products to the database.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding product options| 00:00 | In a physical bricks or mortar store,
all products are broken down into products
| | 00:04 | and SKUs and that is Stock Keeping Units.
| | 00:08 | Your store online should be no different.
| | 00:10 | To illustrate, a product could be like
Levi's 501 blues if you're selling blue
| | 00:15 | jeans and this may be the particular
product that the store will sell, but
| | 00:19 | this isn't how the storer keeps track
of price or reordering products or your
| | 00:23 | stock count and so forth.
| | 00:24 | This is all handled by SKUs.
| | 00:27 | A SKU is the actual product
item that a customer buys.
| | 00:31 | A SKU in this case is size, length,
color variation such as Stonewashed or
| | 00:36 | Indigo and so forth.
| | 00:38 | This is where product options come in.
| | 00:41 | A SKU is a combination of product
options that are associated with it.
| | 00:46 | You'll need these product options to
allow your customer to select the size and
| | 00:49 | color or any other defining factors
of a particular item that they choose.
| | 00:54 | To make this possible in our online
store, we need to add product option
| | 00:57 | groups such as color and then the
options themselves such as green, blue,
| | 01:02 | black and so forth.
| | 01:04 | So, let's go the Admin and see how that's done.
| | 01:07 | So, here we are in the Admin.
| | 01:09 | First of all, let's go to Products for
a moment and click on a product, so we
| | 01:15 | can see how the product
options relate to the product.
| | 01:17 | So, in the details of the product if we
scroll down, you'll see Product Options.
| | 01:22 | When we created this product we related
those Product Options, and these option
| | 01:28 | groups, to the product and then when
we create the products, we choose the
| | 01:33 | various different options like blue,
green or whatever that are associated with
| | 01:37 | those Option Groups.
| | 01:38 | You can have as many Product Options
as you wish associated with any product.
| | 01:44 | Some products may only have a
combination of one such as color;
| | 01:47 | other ones may have dimensions and
color like in the illustration of clothing.
| | 01:52 | So, it's good to add these ahead of time, so
they're available when you add the products.
| | 01:57 | So, let's go ahead and look at the Options.
| | 02:01 | First of all, we see a list of all the
option groups that are available that we've added.
| | 02:06 | Again, let's go ahead and go to Color.
| | 02:08 | You'll see that line item here and if we
want to edit it just click on the pencil.
| | 02:13 | Now, we can edit the Description and
we also can see the actual option items
| | 02:20 | associated with this option group and
these, in this case, are the colors.
| | 02:24 | If we look over here like everywhere
else in the database, if this option is
| | 02:30 | already associated with the product,
the Delete field is grayed out, meaning
| | 02:34 | it can't be deleted.
| | 02:36 | In our case here, Green is still available.
| | 02:39 | So, let's go ahead and Delete that
and see what happens. There we go.
| | 02:45 | It's gone.
| | 02:45 | We can also add a new option.
| | 02:47 | Just click Add New Option and let's say we
wanted to use green, so let's add it back.
| | 02:55 | This Description is more for your benefit.
| | 02:57 | It's not shown on the front end of the
customer but sometimes options can be a
| | 03:01 | little obscure, so you can kind if
explain it to yourself so you remember, and
| | 03:05 | then the Sort order.
| | 03:06 | Notice that all these here are just 1.
| | 03:10 | If you leave them all at 1, they'll
just be sorted in the order that they
| | 03:13 | were added to the database, or you
can force the order they appear by
| | 03:18 | changing this number.
| | 03:20 | So go ahead and add the option
and there we have green again.
| | 03:26 | So that's how we add and control the options.
| | 03:28 | Now, let's go ahead and add a new option group.
| | 03:32 | So, let's add an option
group called Flavor and save it.
| | 03:40 | Once it's saved, as you can see, we need
to create items for that option and we
| | 03:44 | have to create at least one,
add that. There we go.
| | 03:56 | So, we've got a couple of those added.
| | 03:58 | Now, if we go back to the product, let
me scroll down, we'll see that Flavor is
| | 04:06 | now available in our option list and
if we're creating a new product, which
| | 04:09 | we'll show that later, you'd be able to
select which of those options from that
| | 04:13 | option group that you want to use.
| | 04:17 | Finally, as elsewhere in our Admin, if
we have an option we don't want to use
| | 04:21 | anymore and is not associated with
products, we can go ahead and set that to
| | 04:25 | Archived and Save Changes and you see
it's gone from the list but if we want
| | 04:31 | to bring it back later, we can go to the
View Archived list and we can reactivate it.
| | 04:38 | There we go.
| | 04:39 | Oh, and, by the way, see this message up here.
| | 04:41 | That will continue to appear until we
change our Admin password from the default
| | 04:47 | which is just admin to something that
we would want to have on our live site.
| | 04:52 | So, when you see this during testing,
if you want to get rid of it, just click
| | 04:55 | on the red x and it goes away.
| | 04:58 | But don't forget to change your
password when you take the site live.
| | 05:02 | You can add options at any time but it's
best to create as many as you can prior
| | 05:07 | to adding your products.
| | 05:09 | Doing so will greatly streamline the
product adding process because you won't
| | 05:13 | have to keep going back and adding
options you need in the middle of the process
| | 05:17 | of adding a new product.
| | 05:19 | Carefully planning this step and adding
the majority of option groups and options
| | 05:24 | that you're likely to need ahead of
time, will really speed things along and
| | 05:27 | save you a lot of frustration.
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| Adding products| 00:00 | Now our store is laid out, everything
is set up, categorized, and organized.
| | 00:04 | So it's time to stock the shelves.
| | 00:07 | Whether you are selling ten
products or hundreds, the process of adding
| | 00:10 | products is the same.
| | 00:12 | Like stocking shelves in a
physical store, there are no shortcuts.
| | 00:15 | It needs to be done methodically
and well but the payoff is huge.
| | 00:19 | A well organized store with proper
merchandising, in this case, would be
| | 00:24 | good for photography and good descriptions,
translates into more sales and a successful store.
| | 00:30 | So let's go ahead and add a new product.
| | 00:34 | So here in the Admin, let's go ahead and
click on Products and now click Add New.
| | 00:41 | And here we go.
| | 00:41 | We'll just go through the fields
now and describe what each one does.
| | 00:47 | The part ID, you can use what the
manufacture supplies or something you use
| | 00:51 | in-house, but this isn't shown to the customers.
| | 00:53 | It's just how you ID the product.
| | 00:55 | So let's go ahead and add
that, then add the name.
| | 01:01 | Now this is what the
customer will see on the front end.
| | 01:04 | So I will make sure it's descriptive
or brand name of the particular item.
| | 01:09 | Right now, we will set this to No, we
don't want to show up in store until we
| | 01:13 | are done editing it.
| | 01:15 | Charge Shipping, Yes.
| | 01:17 | Which Tax Group we want to associate with,
let's just go ahead and click it to Standard.
| | 01:20 | We'll leave this to 0 right now,
but again, you can force the Sort order
| | 01:25 | of this product as well.
| | 01:26 | If you have hundreds of products,
that becomes kind of time consuming.
| | 01:30 | But if you only have 10 or 15
products, you may want them to appear in a
| | 01:33 | specific order, so you can use this box to
number them so they will sort by that number.
| | 01:40 | Now we go to Main Categories.
| | 01:41 | What we are adding is yo-yo, so what we
want to associate with is Toys, and then
| | 01:46 | a secondary category.
| | 01:48 | The one we are using is made
of wood, so we will click Wood.
| | 01:51 | That way someone searches on
Toys and Wood, they will find it.
| | 01:55 | Again, Product Options, we want to
go ahead and click Color, because it's
| | 02:00 | available on different colors.
| | 02:01 | We will leave the Out of Stock
Message the same, and a custom label.
| | 02:07 | If we leave this in it's default, then it
won't show, and we are going to do that.
| | 02:12 | And click Next, takes us to the descriptions.
| | 02:14 | We have the short description or
Preview Description and the Full Description.
| | 02:21 | Let's go ahead and put a full description in.
| | 02:22 | Now right now, I am just using Greek
Text, but this is a crucial part about
| | 02:29 | adding a new product to your store.
| | 02:32 | You should make sure that the Preview
Description and the Full Description are
| | 02:36 | not only very descriptive to describe
what the product is to your customer, but
| | 02:40 | you should also use keywords in the
description that will help search engines
| | 02:45 | categorize the product as well.
| | 02:47 | So well written descriptions are really
important and you should spend some time
| | 02:52 | to make sure you do it right
when you add it to the store.
| | 02:56 | Additional Information, if we don't
post anything in this, it won't show, if so
| | 03:00 | it will be available.
| | 03:01 | We are just going to leave that blank.
| | 03:03 | Now we can do Additional Search Terms.
| | 03:05 | This will help the search on the site find it.
| | 03:08 | If we have a lot of products, this is helpful.
| | 03:10 | In this case, we don't, so I am not
going to add anything, but if you have a lot
| | 03:14 | of products and you want specific words
to be given preference, you could enter
| | 03:18 | a comma-delimited list in this field.
| | 03:21 | And finally, the Photos, we want to upload
a photo, so go ahead and we'll click this.
| | 03:27 | These are photos that are already
available on the system, so if you already had
| | 03:31 | a photo of this uploaded, you could
just associate it here, but we don't have a
| | 03:35 | photo of this yet, so let's go ahead
and click Upload and it allows us then to
| | 03:39 | choose a file and I will go ahead and
browse to the photo that I have of that.
| | 03:45 | Okay, Start Upload, and there it is.
| | 03:51 | Doing this not only uploads the photo
but it resizes it to the various different
| | 03:55 | sizes that we are going to use in a
store and this is all done automatically.
| | 04:00 | So we are ready for this,
so we save the product.
| | 04:03 | Now once you save the product, then
you are given the option to create SKUs.
| | 04:08 | Every product has to have at least one SKU.
| | 04:12 | The reason for this is this is where
we state the price, the weight, extra
| | 04:18 | shipping cost if any, and
keep track of the stock.
| | 04:21 | So it's important that we have SKU.
| | 04:22 | Now the stock keeping unit name or the
SKU name, this doesn't show to the customer.
| | 04:28 | This is how you just keep track of it in-house.
| | 04:31 | So you may want to use this SKU ID that
manufacturer gives you for this product.
| | 04:35 | That way it's easy to keep track.
| | 04:36 | Here we go. Price, let's say if we are
selling this for $5, let's say it's a $6
| | 04:47 | manufacturer recommended price.
| | 04:51 | Weight, it would be quarter of a pound.
| | 04:56 | Shipping Cost, we will leave that to 0,
because there is no extra shipping for it.
| | 04:59 | You would want to use this if, for
example, let's say, an item has a odd shape
| | 05:03 | like really long, but doesn't weigh very much.
| | 05:07 | This will usually end up costing
more to ship than just by weight.
| | 05:11 | You can add in an extra amount there to
compensate for that, and let's say, we
| | 05:16 | have 100 of them in stock.
| | 05:19 | And we choose what colors are available, and
let's say, this is a blue one and there we go.
| | 05:28 | So let's go ahead and add one more and
this one, let's say, is green, okay and
| | 05:35 | there we go, we have added products.
| | 05:37 | So if we go out now to our Active Products
list, you will see that we have added the Big Yo!
| | 05:43 | And there it is and we can also
see the various sizes of the images.
| | 05:52 | Now there is one more thing to
do when we are looking at this.
| | 05:55 | If we want to, we can add related products.
| | 05:58 | What this does is when a customer
looks at a product, they will be showing
| | 06:01 | them not only the product they are looking
at but ones they may also be interested in.
| | 06:05 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 06:07 | Okay so here in our main store, we look
in the items and let's go ahead and look
| | 06:10 | at this camera and we see the
description and everything in the camera.
| | 06:14 | We scroll down, these are related items.
| | 06:17 | Of course, this is a demo store
because shirts and brooms doesn't have much
| | 06:21 | to do with the camera.
| | 06:23 | But you get the idea.
| | 06:24 | Anything that you add in the Related
Product field will be shown here when they
| | 06:30 | look at the products in the main store.
| | 06:32 | Okay, so that's it.
| | 06:33 | We have added our product.
| | 06:35 | It's just that simple of a process.
| | 06:37 | Again, you don't want to take shortcuts.
| | 06:39 | You want to go through and add your
products carefully with some forethought
| | 06:43 | and add good photos and good descriptions,
because again, this is merchandising your store.
| | 06:49 | That's what the customer is going to see
when they come to your store and that's
| | 06:53 | going to have a heavy influence on
their buying decisions so you want to take
| | 06:56 | time during this part.
| | 06:57 | But it's also the fun part, because now
that we've stocked the shelves, we are
| | 07:02 | actually getting very close to doing
what we want to do all along and that is
| | 07:06 | open the store for business.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selling tickets, memberships, services, and other intangible goods| 00:00 | What if you sell what may be
referred to as intangible products, such as
| | 00:04 | Memberships or Tickets to an event or concert.
| | 00:07 | Can you sell these from your store? Sure!
| | 00:10 | You just need to take a moment to think about
how you're going to add this item as a product.
| | 00:15 | The first thing you need to do
is decide what the product is.
| | 00:19 | We'll use an example of
selling tickets to a concert.
| | 00:22 | The process we go through will apply
to most any intangible that you may
| | 00:26 | sell from your site.
| | 00:27 | In this example, say we're selling
tickets to a lynda.com blues festival.
| | 00:32 | Now since this event is a single
item with its unique date, time and
| | 00:37 | description, it's easy to see that
this single event is the product.
| | 00:43 | So we'll enter it that way.
| | 00:44 | But first, what options are we're going to need.
| | 00:48 | For this event we'll be selling seats
in various sections and we'll also be
| | 00:52 | selling standard and VIP tickets, where the
VIPs can get in earlier get to meet the band.
| | 00:58 | So those are options, the
seating section and the ticket type.
| | 01:03 | So let's go ahead and add this to
the database and see how this works.
| | 01:06 | So we'll go through the entire process.
| | 01:09 | First of all, we're going to need to add
a new category and subcategory, so I'll
| | 01:14 | go ahead and Add a New Main.
| | 01:16 | I am going to say Concerts and I'm
not going to do a Description right now.
| | 01:22 | Then we need to add a Secondary Category.
| | 01:24 | I'm going to say Blues and we could add
another one if we want, say Rock, okay.
| | 01:36 | Now, let's go ahead and add the Options.
| | 01:39 | The options we talked
about, remember our Section.
| | 01:45 | Then we need to add the actual Option
items to the group, and then we needed to
| | 02:00 | add one more Option Group and let's
add the item to that, there we go.
| | 02:16 | Now when we add a Product, and
we'll leave that set Yes.
| | 02:32 | We won't charge Shipping because these
are going to be just will call tickets,
| | 02:35 | we are Standard Tax and here we go.
| | 02:42 | Main Category is Concert and it's a
Blues concerts, so it's your Secondary
| | 02:46 | Category and Product Options we want
Section and ticket type and then click
| | 02:53 | Next. We will add our
description again, here we go.
| | 03:04 | And we can add a Search Term
if we want, and finally a photo.
| | 03:12 | Now we don't have a photo for this yet
we're waiting for it and the photographer
| | 03:16 | hasn't sent it yet, so we can
leave this blank and add it in later.
| | 03:19 | If we show it on the front end of the
website before we add the photo then
| | 03:24 | that default photo will show, so we'll
definitely want to add this before we
| | 03:27 | go live with this product.
| | 03:29 | So we'll save that.
| | 03:31 | Then the SKUs for this particular
product would be, for example we could go,
| | 03:36 | front, VIP and we see here that this
SKU option show up and so the section we
| | 03:44 | would want front and VIP.
| | 03:48 | Then we add the SKU, there is no way.
| | 03:52 | We can have a Stock, so if that
particular section of the concert sells out then
| | 03:56 | that will drop-off, okay and we add the SKU.
| | 04:03 | Then we would go ahead and
continue to add the other SKUs.
| | 04:06 | As you can see by taking some time to
analyze what your needs are you can sell
| | 04:10 | almost anything from your online store.
| | 04:12 | You just need to decide what is
the product and what the options are.
| | 04:16 | And with a little creative thinking,
you can sell almost anything from
| | 04:19 | your online store.
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| Creating product discounts| 00:00 | Offering discounts or putting products on
sale is an everyday part of most any store.
| | 00:05 | So let's go through the process of
creating discounts, associating that discount
| | 00:09 | with product or products, and we'll
also take a look at how to create a global
| | 00:14 | discount, such as 10% off
everything for say this week.
| | 00:18 | So let's go ahead and go to the
Admin and see how this is done.
| | 00:22 | Once in the Admin go ahead and
click on Discounts, here is our existing
| | 00:27 | discounts, but let's go ahead and
just add one, so we'll add a new one.
| | 00:33 | Reference ID, again you want to make
sure this is unique and it's something for
| | 00:37 | internal use, so if you have a
particular ID that you want to look it up later
| | 00:42 | or whatever refer to this discount.
| | 00:46 | This discount, let say we're going to
discount everything in the store for 15%.
| | 00:51 | So we'll just name it and that's
what the description is as well.
| | 00:54 | Do we want to show the description
when the discount is activated? Say yes.
| | 01:01 | Promotional Code, what the Promotional
Code is, is you can actually create a
| | 01:05 | promotional code and, for example, give
it to a customers a reward or email it
| | 01:11 | your customers and then when they're
shopping on your site they'll enter this
| | 01:14 | promotional code and receive the discount.
But this isn't that kind of discount,
| | 01:18 | so let's go ahead and leave that. And
the start date, let say we're going to
| | 01:22 | start this next Monday and it's
going to go through Friday, here we go.
| | 01:30 | We can limit the uses otherwise if we
only want to sell a certain amount of
| | 01:33 | items on that price, if it's zero
that means there is no limit applied.
| | 01:39 | The limited number of customers that
can buy this discount, same thing, if we
| | 01:42 | leave it zero that means no limit is applied.
| | 01:45 | How is the discount is going to be
calculated by Product or SKU? Let's go ahead
| | 01:52 | and leave it Product/SKU Price.
| | 01:56 | The Amount or the Rate? Let's go
ahead and put 15% and here is the check
| | 02:03 | box Global Discount.
| | 02:05 | If we check that then this discount
will apply to everything in the store, so
| | 02:09 | for this particular discount right
now, let's go ahead and apply that.
| | 02:13 | Also we have a setting called Exclusive.
| | 02:15 | What the Exclusive does is, if it's an
exclusive discount, if that's applied to
| | 02:20 | a product, even if there is other discounts that
may apply to that product, they won't be applied.
| | 02:26 | Discount Priority, what this does, is
if your discount is not exclusive, you
| | 02:32 | can have a setting in your store to
apply multiple discounts or not to allow
| | 02:35 | multiple discounts, so you can set a
priority, so that this will always take
| | 02:40 | precedence over any other
discounts, then click Next.
| | 02:47 | So we want to choose a Customer Type.
| | 02:49 | Right now in the database we only have
two customer types, retail and wholesale,
| | 02:52 | so we'll go ahead and click Retail.
| | 02:56 | If we click Activate then this discount will
only apply to retail customers, not the wholesale.
| | 03:02 | If we don't activate it we can just
leave this blank and everybody gets this
| | 03:06 | discount or we can add discounts that
apply to specific customers and we can
| | 03:11 | paste their customer ID in here.
| | 03:14 | We can have a minimum or maximum cart
total that will be applied, we'll leave
| | 03:18 | these in default settings. Or
we can have an Item Quantity.
| | 03:22 | What the Item Quantity is?
| | 03:24 | Is if you buy so many of this particular
item, you'll get a discount, okay. Then
| | 03:29 | we Save Discounts and there we go,
we've our discount ordered we have, we have
| | 03:35 | the conditions to the discount, and
then we go to Active Discounts and there we
| | 03:40 | see the discount added to our list, so
it's ready to be applied to any products
| | 03:43 | that the customers buy.
| | 03:46 | Discounts are a powerful selling tool.
| | 03:48 | A powerful discount functionality is
an essential part of any online store.
| | 03:52 | Now that we have our products added and
discount set, we're ready to start selling.
| | 03:57 | Next we'll look around at what we've
created and then look at what's involved in
| | 04:01 | handling orders and managing customers.
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|
|
10. Managing WorkflowTesting locally| 00:00 | We now have everything setup and we're
just about ready to start selling, but
| | 00:04 | before we move everything to the
server and actually open the store for
| | 00:07 | business, it's a good idea to take some
time to look through and test everything
| | 00:11 | locally to see if things
are what we expect them to be.
| | 00:14 | Now before we start testing, let's
go first to the admin and Log In.
| | 00:18 | Now let's go back to the Store.
| | 00:21 | The reason we did that is, if you're
logged into the admin while you're testing
| | 00:25 | the store in this way, scroll down and then hit
F5 to Refresh, you'll see that a pencil appears.
| | 00:32 | What this pencil does is it allows
you to go directly to the admin and edit
| | 00:36 | that particular product, like this. So it takes
you directly to that product page in the Admin.
| | 00:42 | When you're done with that, you can simply
go back to the front end and continue testing.
| | 00:47 | This speeds the process quite a
bit and it's a nice feature to have.
| | 00:50 | Okay, so let's go ahead and click on
this product, click to enlarge the image
| | 00:55 | make sure that's working and also
read over the text, make show there is no
| | 01:00 | typos everything appears as it should be.
| | 01:03 | And we notice one problem here, in
the Related Items we have a Lawn Mower
| | 01:07 | related to this product.
| | 01:09 | That's probably not a good idea.
| | 01:11 | So let's go ahead and edit that.
| | 01:12 | We can click on this and it would be
take into in the back end go to Related
| | 01:16 | Products and there's that Lawn Mower,
so let's go ahead and delete that.
| | 01:21 | So now we can go back to the Store.
| | 01:25 | So, continue doing this as much as
you're comfortable doing it. Just click around
| | 01:29 | and really test the interface, test
your store and your products, look at the
| | 01:33 | photos. Make sure
everything is as you expected to be.
| | 01:36 | Next, let's go ahead and place an order.
| | 01:38 | So, we have items here in the cart and
say, oh we changed our mind we don't want
| | 01:45 | that, so let's update that. Okay that all works.
| | 01:49 | So let's go ahead and Check Out.
| | 01:52 | We'll create a new account, alright.
Click on Same as Billing, click to Confirm.
| | 02:03 | Alright and recheck the shipping, USPS.
And we look through the order, everything
| | 02:09 | looks good, let's go ahead and click Continue.
| | 02:11 | Now you notice that we have the
information already entered in here.
| | 02:15 | Since in the Admin the store is still
in test mode, it'll have this information
| | 02:19 | in here for us, so that we can easily
test. So let's go ahead and place this
| | 02:23 | order and there you go.
| | 02:26 | Now that everything looks great and
it's working as expected, and we have
| | 02:29 | placed the test order.
| | 02:30 | Next we'll see what needs to be done
to track inventory and manage our new
| | 02:34 | orders and customers.
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| Managing inventory| 00:00 | Managing store inventory for all but
the largest or custom developed online
| | 00:04 | stores is a pretty simple, but manual process.
| | 00:08 | We can setup our store to just ignore
inventory altogether and that allows
| | 00:11 | orders regardless of inventory, which
may be the case if you don't personally
| | 00:15 | warehouse or fulfill orders.
| | 00:17 | We can also set our store to track
stock counts and do one of two things.
| | 00:21 | Once a stock count of a particular item
reaches zero, we can display an out of
| | 00:25 | stock message or hide this SKU
altogether until the inventory is refreshed. So
| | 00:30 | let's go ahead and see how
this is managed in the Admin.
| | 00:33 | So, in the Admin, the first thing we
want to do is click Site Setup, and go to
| | 00:38 | Product Display at the bottom here.
| | 00:40 | Now let's go ahead and scroll down and
here's the check box that allows backorders.
| | 00:45 | If this is checked, then we'll allow
backorders, otherwise we'll allow customers
| | 00:49 | to buy more than what we have in our
inventory count and I'll show you where
| | 00:53 | that goes in a moment.
| | 00:54 | This may be the case if there really
is no inventory. Let say its intangible
| | 00:58 | product or something they can download,
like a PDF or that sort of thing. Or if
| | 01:02 | you don't personally stock or
warehouse the products and you're having a drop
| | 01:06 | ship from somewhere else where the
manufacture always has it in stock, then you
| | 01:10 | really wouldn't worry about inventory.
| | 01:12 | If you have a specific amount of
product, you may not want allow them to
| | 01:15 | backorder it, because then
customers get upset because they don't get
| | 01:18 | there shipment very soon.
| | 01:20 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to uncheck that, so we don't want to
| | 01:23 | allow backorders and we save that change.
| | 01:26 | Now let's see where else we track
inventory. Let's go up to Products, let's go
| | 01:30 | ahead and click on Big Yo!
| | 01:32 | We scroll down, first thing we will want
to look at is the Out of Stock Message.
| | 01:36 | What this will do is, if the item is
out of stock, then this message will show
| | 01:41 | instead of the buy button.
| | 01:42 | Now if we leave this blank that disables
this function and when the items out of
| | 01:47 | stock it'll just disappear from the
web altogether until we restock it. But
| | 01:52 | let's go ahead and leave the Sorry, Out
of Stock message that way your customers
| | 01:55 | are going to know that you sell the
product, it's just temporarily out of stock.
| | 01:59 | Finally, we go over and look at
SKUs and this is where we keep track of
| | 02:04 | our stock right here.
| | 02:05 | So we will want to keep an eye on that.
If an item is out of stock then you can
| | 02:08 | come and reenter the stock count once
you have an inventory of that item again,
| | 02:13 | you may ask, isn't there
an automated way to do this?
| | 02:16 | Well, the answer is yes.
| | 02:17 | But the first thing you would need to do is be
prepared to add a lot of money to the equation.
| | 02:22 | Larger online retailers such as Amazon.com
or large retailers that have both
| | 02:26 | physical and online stores have fully
integrated systems that track inventory
| | 02:31 | and make adjustments to a central database.
| | 02:34 | This sort of system is far beyond
the scope and the budget of what we're
| | 02:37 | talking about here.
| | 02:38 | For our purposes the online inventory
and physical inventories will pretty much
| | 02:42 | have to be synced up manually, but
with a little attention to detail and a
| | 02:46 | regular workflow it's not difficult to do.
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| Managing orders| 00:00 | Now we get to the good part where your
Store setup and able to accept orders.
| | 00:04 | Once you do, you are going to want
to check your orders and process them.
| | 00:08 | So let's look at the Admin
and see how this is done.
| | 00:11 | So here in the Admin homepage, the first
thing you want to look for is Recent Orders.
| | 00:15 | This shows a list of the most recent
orders and what you will be looking for is
| | 00:18 | ones that are Paid in Full but not Shipped.
| | 00:21 | So we have an order to process right here.
| | 00:23 | If you want to ship over wide range of
dates or for more than what's showing
| | 00:26 | here on the homepage, then go ahead
and click on Search Orders, and you can
| | 00:31 | search by Dates or Order Type.
| | 00:33 | But right now, since we just have the
one order to process we'll just go ahead and
| | 00:36 | click on that order and we're
taken to the Order page and there's the
| | 00:39 | information you need to ship out the
product, this is Ship To the address.
| | 00:43 | Here's your Order Details, whatever it is that
they ordered, the Payment Information
| | 00:48 | about what payment gateway used.
| | 00:50 | So let's say we've gone
ahead and shipped this order.
| | 00:53 | So we'll change this from Paid in Full to
Shipped and we'll go ahead and select the date.
| | 00:58 | Now if the shipper gave us a Tracking ID,
we can enter it right here and that way
| | 01:02 | we have the information for our own
records and also to share with the customer.
| | 01:06 | Here we can enter the Actual Shipping Cost.
| | 01:09 | If we're using the local shipping matrix
this is a pretty good idea because then
| | 01:13 | we can compare what we actually pay for
shipping, to what they were charged for
| | 01:16 | shipping and if there's a difference
there on enough orders it shows that we
| | 01:20 | definitely need to go in and tweak
our shipping matrix to make sure that our
| | 01:23 | shipping is more accurate.
| | 01:25 | So that's a good thing to keep in mind.
| | 01:26 | Okay, so we can enter any Notes that we
might want to, and after that, we just
| | 01:30 | save the order, and that's
it, the order is processed.
| | 01:33 | An important point to keep in mind
about online sales is, while the current
| | 01:39 | state of taking payments online is incredibly
efficient and accurate, it's not infallible.
| | 01:44 | Your order process is dependent on a
number of web services such as, the
| | 01:48 | reliability of your host system and
network, as well as communications between
| | 01:52 | your site and third-party
vendors such as your payment gateway.
| | 01:56 | The web isn't perfect and
communication glitches do occur.
| | 02:00 | There might be the odd time where an
order isn't completed properly, or perhaps
| | 02:04 | your bank shows a
transaction but your store doesn't.
| | 02:07 | These things very rarely
happen but they can happen. How?
| | 02:12 | Well let's take a quick
look at a normal transaction.
| | 02:15 | The order is placed, customer has
written to the database, the transaction is
| | 02:19 | then sent off to the payment gateway.
| | 02:21 | The payment gateway processes the order and
then sends back the confirmation to the website.
| | 02:25 | The order's taken and written to the
database and we're done, you have an order.
| | 02:30 | But what might happen is this.
| | 02:32 | On the very, very rare occasion, there
might be a network glitch just as the
| | 02:37 | payment gateway is trying to write
the information back to your website.
| | 02:39 | So as far as your website or your
store is concerned, the order was never
| | 02:44 | complete but the payment gateway
has charged to customer's Credit Card.
| | 02:47 | These are the kind of things that
you've to keep an eye out for, little things
| | 02:51 | that can happen because the
Web isn't a perfect place.
| | 02:54 | This is a very, very small percentage
of your business, but you don't want upset
| | 02:58 | customers because of something like this.
| | 03:00 | So we're ready to act on it,
if this sort of thing occurs.
| | 03:03 | Handling orders is the fun part.
| | 03:05 | It's manning the cash register of
your online store. It's making sales.
| | 03:10 | The key thing is, to integrate it
into a part of your regular workflow.
| | 03:14 | To deliver orders quickly to your
customers and to take time to balance or
| | 03:17 | reconcile any problems as soon as they occur.
| | 03:21 | Doing so, will keep your store
running smoothly and keep both you and
| | 03:24 | your customers happy.
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| Managing customers| 00:00 | An essential part of any
business is customer service.
| | 00:03 | It's not uncommon for a customer to
email or call and ask for information about
| | 00:07 | their account, purchases or order history.
| | 00:10 | You need to be ready to answer their
questions. Let's look at the Customer
| | 00:14 | Management features that allow you to do this.
| | 00:16 | First thing you want to do is
teach the customer to help themselves.
| | 00:20 | If a customer calls you or emails
you and ask for information about their
| | 00:24 | account, teach them to help themselves.
| | 00:26 | Cartweaver and many other eCommerce
applications have the functionality that
| | 00:30 | allows a customer to log in and see their
accounts themselves, so let's look at that first.
| | 00:35 | When the customer gets to your website
they can go and login. And there they have
| | 00:46 | access to their own account information.
| | 00:49 | A nice thing about this is, they can
come in and, if their email changes or they
| | 00:52 | move they can update
this information themselves.
| | 00:55 | Also they can take a look at
their order history to see what their
| | 00:58 | different orders were.
| | 00:59 | They can look at what items they've
purchased from you in the past, or even the
| | 01:03 | different items that may
have recently looked at.
| | 01:05 | So this is a really convenient
feature and it helps the customers help
| | 01:08 | themselves. And it really adds an
element of customer satisfaction. But when
| | 01:13 | a customer does call, you would want
to login to your Admin and then go to
| | 01:17 | the Customer section.
| | 01:18 | Here there will be a list of customers, but
you can also search by name or ID or do an
| | 01:23 | advanced search and use their address
or e-mail address or any information you have
| | 01:27 | that may help you find
that customer record quickly.
| | 01:30 | Once you find the customer simply click
on the pencil and you go their account.
| | 01:34 | You can see what their information is,
or you could update it for them, or answer
| | 01:38 | any questions they might have. You
can also look at their purchase history.
| | 01:41 | Customers are the key to your business
and being able to help them when they
| | 01:45 | call or email is essential.
| | 01:47 | Being familiar with the customer section
of your Admin will help you do this.
| | 01:51 | Another important element is
making your customers feel comfortable
| | 01:53 | doing business with you.
| | 01:54 | While it has little to do the technical
side of site development, there are a few
| | 01:59 | things to consider about setting your
customers' minds at ease when they're
| | 02:02 | purchasing from your store
and we'll address that next.
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|
|
11. Establishing Features for Customer SatisfactionPolicies and privacy statements| 00:00 | One of the hurdles online stores have
to overcome is that a customer can't just
| | 00:04 | walk in and talk to somebody if
they have questions or a problem.
| | 00:07 | For many, this contact insecurity is
a primary reason why they continue to do
| | 00:12 | most of their business in
store instead of online.
| | 00:16 | The more you can help ease their fears
and offer good service and communication,
| | 00:20 | the better your business will be.
| | 00:21 | Simply put, customer service and
helping your customer trust you is even more
| | 00:25 | important online then off. Let's look at
an example of some of things you can do
| | 00:29 | in your site to help with this.
| | 00:31 | First of all make your contact page
really easy to find and then on your contact
| | 00:36 | page allow the customers to contact you
either through a form, or through e-mail
| | 00:41 | and if you have multiple e-mails for
different things go ahead and provide them.
| | 00:45 | Also provide store information if
you do have a bricks and mortar store.
| | 00:49 | The more information you can impart on
this page about how to contact you, and
| | 00:53 | make it as easy as possible to contact
you, the better your customers will feel.
| | 00:57 | Another thing that is really important
is your policies and how you interact
| | 01:01 | with your customers. Here
in the footer you can see
| | 01:04 | we have terms, privacy policy and return policy.
| | 01:09 | These are important documents that can
share information with your customers.
| | 01:13 | These documents are kind of like warning
labels on a lot of products. Most people
| | 01:17 | don't read them, but for those who do
read them they're absolutely essential. And
| | 01:22 | legally you need to provide
this information to your customers.
| | 01:26 | So for terms simply just have a
document it doesn't have to be pretty,
| | 01:30 | doesn't have to be fancy, but it has to
clearly state what the terms of your business are.
| | 01:36 | Same with privacy policy. How are you
going to treat the customers' e-mail or
| | 01:40 | information that you gather. You
need to spell that out for them, so if
| | 01:43 | they want to read through this,
they'll know how you respect your customers
| | 01:46 | information. And also your return policy,
this is the essential for an online business.
| | 01:52 | What can your customers expect from
you if you're not satisfied with the
| | 01:55 | quality of a product or if something comes
damaged. What steps do they have to go through return it?
| | 02:00 | This is even more important for an
online store than it is for a physical store.
| | 02:05 | By keeping these things in mind, you let
your customers know, first of all, how to
| | 02:09 | contact you; how to interact with you
if they need to, and make it easy to do so.
| | 02:14 | And also let them know what your
policies are and then once you set those
| | 02:17 | policies, stand by them.
| | 02:19 | Doing this increases your customers
trust and comfort level, and doing so will
| | 02:23 | also increase your sales.
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|
|
12. SecuritySecuring data| 00:00 | Well, here we are, almost ready
to place our site on the server.
| | 00:04 | Before we do that however, there's a
very important topic we need to cover,
| | 00:08 | and that is Security.
| | 00:10 | Unlike our closed and safe secure local
environment, our live site and database
| | 00:15 | are going to live in the real world,
most likely on a shared host environment.
| | 00:19 | Sad to say, there are a lot of shady
characters that have nothing better to do
| | 00:23 | with their time than to search the
Web for sites with security holes.
| | 00:27 | This can range from simple mischief to
causing data corruption to identity theft.
| | 00:33 | As a site developer, you're obligated to do
your very best to prevent this from happening.
| | 00:38 | First, you have to think
about data access security.
| | 00:41 | Some simple rules to follow are to
be sure to have a good Username and
| | 00:46 | Password for your database.
| | 00:48 | Make it something that you'll easily
remember, but cannot be easily guessed or
| | 00:52 | store it in a safe place.
| | 00:54 | In the case of MySQL databases,
never use the default username of root.
| | 00:59 | This makes it too easy to crack into your data.
| | 01:02 | It only takes a few moments to
do it right. So take the time.
| | 01:06 | Take the time to have a database
security conversation with your host as well.
| | 01:11 | Make sure your host understands the
security concerns of an eCommerce site.
| | 01:16 | If you feel uneasy about the answers
or information that you're getting from
| | 01:19 | your host, now is a good time to change hosts.
| | 01:23 | For PHP, the vast majority of sites will
be using MySQL which is a very good choice.
| | 01:29 | There are many other choices and
most can be divided into two types:
| | 01:32 | file-based databases such as
FileMaker Pro, Microsoft Access; and database
| | 01:38 | servers such as MySQL, Microsoft
SQL Server, PostgreSQL and others.
| | 01:42 | Database servers are by
far and away the best bet.
| | 01:45 | File-based databases are too hard to
secure adequately and in most cases are
| | 01:51 | completely inadequate to the
demands of a web-based application.
| | 01:55 | Even with server-based database
system such as MySQL, you'll need to have a
| | 01:59 | conversation with your host, to make
sure all the latest security patches and
| | 02:03 | measures are in place.
| | 02:05 | A good way of looking at security,
especially if you're on a shared host, is
| | 02:09 | there is no way to secure your data.
| | 02:13 | Even with the best host, by the very
nature of a shared server environment,
| | 02:17 | people you don't know will
have access to your data.
| | 02:20 | You just have to trust that
they won't abuse this privilege.
| | 02:24 | So, rule number one:
| | 02:26 | never, ever, under any circumstances
store customer credit card data in your
| | 02:32 | database, or even in your site
in the form of session variables.
| | 02:36 | We'll talk about this a little
more later in the next video.
| | 02:39 | But you want to pass this data off to
your payment gateway immediately and then
| | 02:44 | get rid of it, be done
with it. Rule number two:
| | 02:48 | don't underestimate the
importance of rule number one, seriously.
| | 02:52 | If you have a client who insists that
you do this, be 100% willing to walk
| | 02:56 | away from the account.
| | 02:57 | Let the next developer be the one to get
sued when that database gets compromised.
| | 03:02 | And rule number three:
| | 03:05 | store as benign data as possible.
| | 03:07 | An easy way to look at it, is if you're
storing data about your company or your
| | 03:11 | customers, that you could just as easily
find in a local phonebook or is readily
| | 03:16 | available on Google, then you're just fine.
| | 03:19 | Data security, especially customer data,
is an important topic that has to be
| | 03:24 | looked at seriously.
| | 03:26 | Fortunately, with just a few
precautions and some due diligence, it's possible
| | 03:30 | to offer a safe data environment
for your store and your customers.
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| Securing a site| 00:00 | Now that your data is safe and secure, let's
turn our attention to securing the site itself.
| | 00:05 | Seriously bad things can happen if one
of the darker elements of the Web should
| | 00:09 | gain access to your site.
| | 00:11 | This could run from simple mischief
like deleting files, or redirecting to some
| | 00:15 | undesirable site, to serious code hacks
that might reroute your customers' credit
| | 00:20 | card data into the hands of waiting thieves.
| | 00:23 | Once again, a little diligence
here goes a long way to provide a safe
| | 00:27 | environment for both you and your customers.
| | 00:30 | The first thing we will look at is FTP access.
| | 00:33 | Let's go ahead and go over to Dreamweaver,
and I will describe what we are looking for.
| | 00:38 | Let's double-click on the site we've
been working on and go up to Servers
| | 00:44 | and then click Plus (+) to bring up the
dialog box that shows us the FTP information.
| | 00:49 | And we will be doing this whole process a
little later but here is what I want to show you.
| | 00:53 | Your host will provide you with an FTP
address, and then your FTP account will
| | 00:57 | have a Username and Password.
| | 00:59 | It's vitally important that this
Username and Password be hard to guess.
| | 01:03 | Maybe it would be something easy for
you to remember but make sure it's hard to
| | 01:06 | guess, or make it something totally
cryptic and then save it in a safe place if
| | 01:11 | you should forget it.
| | 01:12 | The important thing is, if anyone
should guess this information, they'll have
| | 01:17 | the exact same FTP access to your
site as you do, and they can open your
| | 01:21 | files and edit them as they wish and upload
it, and cause untold damage to your website.
| | 01:27 | The other thing you should do is
frequently change this Username and Password.
| | 01:31 | Make sure you mark it on your calendar
or do something to remind yourself so you
| | 01:34 | do it on a regular basis, because that
way, if someone does gain access to this
| | 01:39 | information, they won't continue to have it.
| | 01:42 | Doing this makes sure that no one will
gain access to your site, and it secures
| | 01:45 | your files, and the functions that they perform.
| | 01:49 | The next thing we will talk
about is the SQL Injection Attack.
| | 01:52 | On a Dynamic Server, as we can see here
in the URL, many times a URL will pass
| | 01:57 | variables that the database or the
application will do something with.
| | 02:02 | That's the way they work.
| | 02:03 | A SQL Injection Attack is someone
can actually insert SQL code into that
| | 02:08 | variable and run a script or
a command on your database.
| | 02:12 | Here, we have seen that the command to
DROP TABLE named Products has been included.
| | 02:18 | If a hacker should happen to guess the
name of the table in your database, and
| | 02:22 | run this script and your site allows
it to happen, you could go into work the
| | 02:26 | next day and find all your products
are gone off of your website, and your
| | 02:30 | site is throwing errors.
| | 02:32 | So how do you prevent this?
| | 02:34 | To prevent this, first be sure that
your cart application properly filters URL
| | 02:38 | variables to keep this from happening.
| | 02:41 | And if you or another developer makes
any modifications to your application, be
| | 02:45 | sure that you don't inadvertently
introduce this vulnerability yourself.
| | 02:49 | For more information on this, because
it's a rather large topic, you might want
| | 02:54 | to just do a simple Google
search on SQL Injection Attack.
| | 02:57 | A lot of information is available out
there that you can find out exactly what
| | 03:01 | those are and what your site should be
doing to prevent it, and then make sure
| | 03:05 | your cart application adheres
to those basic coding principles.
| | 03:09 | Next, we'll look at an SSL certificate.
| | 03:11 | First of all, what is it?
| | 03:13 | Well, SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer.
| | 03:17 | It's an encryption system designed to
protect your data when it's passed across the Web.
| | 03:21 | In other words, your personal
information and details like credit card
| | 03:24 | information, and such is scrambled at
the server, passed off to your browser,
| | 03:30 | and then decoded and put
back together on your end.
| | 03:33 | What this does is it prevents anybody
from intercepting this information in
| | 03:37 | transit and then using it. What does it cost?
| | 03:41 | It used to be very expensive,
hundreds of dollars a year or more, but it's
| | 03:45 | come way, way down.
| | 03:46 | It can be had for as little as $10 a year.
| | 03:49 | So that's hardly even an
issue. How does it work?
| | 03:53 | Let's go ahead and see an example.
| | 03:55 | Here we have a site that sells SSL
certificates and we use this as an example to
| | 04:01 | show how an SSL works.
| | 04:04 | Okay, so let's say we are going
to go ahead and buy something.
| | 04:06 | What I want you to pay attention
to is up here in the address bar;
| | 04:10 | right now it just says WWW and then the URL.
| | 04:14 | Let's go ahead and click on Buy and we say OK.
| | 04:16 | Now, this looks good.
| | 04:17 | I am going to buy that.
| | 04:19 | So I will add it to my cart.
| | 04:21 | Now, notice up here, in the address
bar, it changed and there is an HTTPS.
| | 04:28 | The HTTPS tells the server to invoke
the SSL, and that is, so the server knows
| | 04:34 | from this point forward, the server
is supposed to encrypt the data when it
| | 04:37 | sends it off to your browser.
| | 04:39 | If you click on the little lock,
you can see that the certificate
| | 04:42 | information will show.
| | 04:44 | So how do you put an SSL
certificate on your site?
| | 04:48 | Basically, after acquiring the SSL from
the vendor, you're given access to your
| | 04:53 | SSL encryption file.
| | 04:55 | You take this file and you send it to
your host, and the host installs it for you.
| | 04:59 | It's that simple.
| | 05:01 | Try to resist the temptation to open
this file, especially like in Word or
| | 05:05 | something like that.
| | 05:06 | If you have to look at it, just
make copy of it and open it in Notepad.
| | 05:10 | But the actual file itself,
send that off to your host intact.
| | 05:15 | The reason you don't want to open this,
is if you change it in any way, it
| | 05:19 | will corrupt the script.
| | 05:21 | It won't match up with what it's supposed
to be, and then you'll have to redo this.
| | 05:26 | That would render the SSL invalid or inactive.
| | 05:29 | So resist the temptation to open it and
mess with it any way, just send it off
| | 05:33 | to your host, and let them install it.
| | 05:35 | When they install it, make sure that
they install it on the root directory of
| | 05:39 | your site and not up in some other folder.
| | 05:41 | Even if you place your store up in
another folder, let's say a folder named
| | 05:46 | Store, make sure the SSL is installed
into the root directory of your site.
| | 05:51 | The reason for this is your
entire site will then be protected.
| | 05:55 | One final word on SSLs:
| | 05:57 | don't use a shared SSL.
| | 05:59 | Back when SSLs were expensive, a lot of
hosts offered a service to share their
| | 06:04 | own SSL with their users, which was a
good thing, but for an eCommerce site,
| | 06:08 | that's a real problem.
| | 06:09 | Let's go back to this site for a moment,
and again, click on the green lock.
| | 06:16 | When the SSL certificate information
appears, you will notice the host name is there.
| | 06:22 | That's because the host is the owner of the SSL.
| | 06:26 | If you're not the owner of the SSL,
your information won't appear there.
| | 06:29 | It will be the information of your host.
| | 06:31 | If your customers see a discrepancy
between that and your URL, or your store
| | 06:36 | name, they may think that this
is not a valid site, and leave.
| | 06:40 | Really, how many orders are you
willing to lose to save 10 bucks a year?
| | 06:45 | So the key is, go ahead, get your
own SSL, get it off to your host, get
| | 06:49 | installed in the root directory of
your site, and then you are protected and
| | 06:52 | you are ready to go.
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| Understanding PCI compliance| 00:00 | Let's take a minute to
talk about PCI compliance.
| | 00:03 | It's no secret that identity theft has
become a huge concern for anyone doing
| | 00:07 | business on the Web.
| | 00:08 | Unfortunately, there are far too many
careless online merchants who improperly
| | 00:13 | handle sensitive customer data and
countless unscrupulous individuals who are
| | 00:18 | eager to take advantage of the situation.
| | 00:21 | PCI Data Security Standards or Payment
Card Industry Security Standards are a
| | 00:27 | way that the industry is
trying to deal with this situation.
| | 00:30 | So, what is PCI really?
| | 00:32 | Well, the first thing I would recommend
is you get familiar with this site that
| | 00:37 | you go to pcicomplianceguide.org.
| | 00:41 | The sole purpose for this site is to
convey what's going on with PCI, what it's
| | 00:46 | about, and how you can go
about becoming PCI certified.
| | 00:51 | What does that mean?
| | 00:52 | That means that your site is tested by
a certifier and if it's passed, then you
| | 00:57 | can put the fact that you're PCI
compliant on your site and that may help
| | 01:01 | customers feel at ease.
| | 01:02 | The next thing we want to do is let's
go ahead to this page, the PCI Basics page,
| | 01:10 | and it basically lays out what it means
to be PCI compliant and what you need to
| | 01:15 | be concerned with as far as
getting your site ready to be passed.
| | 01:19 | So, let's go ahead and look at the various
requirements and see what can be done about it.
| | 01:24 | First, Build and Maintain a Secure
Network and we see in the Requirements 1
| | 01:29 | and 2 here that the Firewall and configuration
of the protecting data and that sort of thing.
| | 01:35 | That's up your host and so you need to
have a frank discussion with your host
| | 01:40 | about the fact that you're looking to
become PCI compliant with your site and
| | 01:44 | make sure that they're knowledgeable on
this subject and know how to work with
| | 01:48 | you and make sure that they have
created an environment that can pass.
| | 01:52 | Next, Requirement 2 says Do not use
vendor-supplied default or system passwords.
| | 01:58 | Well, that's absolutely true.
| | 02:01 | In your database, your FTP, your
administrator on your site all that should be
| | 02:06 | changed from anything that's vendor
supplied and not only should it be changed
| | 02:11 | when you first install it, but it
should be changed frequently or at least on a
| | 02:15 | regular basis to keep it from
being guessed or passed around.
| | 02:20 | Next, Protect Cardholder Data.
| | 02:23 | Now, we've already talked
about how important that is.
| | 02:26 | The best way to protect that is don't have it.
| | 02:28 | So, make sure that it's
not stored in the database.
| | 02:31 | Whatever card software you choose,
make sure that this is not stored and it
| | 02:36 | simply passed off to a payment
gateway and then gotten rid of.
| | 02:40 | Also, Requirement 4 mentions,
Encrypt your transmission.
| | 02:44 | Well, we've talked about that as well.
| | 02:46 | Make sure you have an SSL
Certificate purchased and installed in the root
| | 02:50 | directory of your site so that all
transmissions of cardholder data across
| | 02:54 | the Web are encrypted.
| | 02:57 | So Maintain a Vulnerability Management System.
| | 03:00 | Those points are both
pretty much handled by your host.
| | 03:03 | Again, it's so crucial to have
a good host in this situation.
| | 03:08 | Then Implement Strong Access Control Measures.
| | 03:11 | Well, if you don't store credit
card data, then it offloads a lot of
| | 03:16 | that responsibility.
| | 03:17 | You should still protect the
information in your database because it is phone
| | 03:21 | numbers and addresses.
| | 03:22 | So, make sure that you follow
the guidelines here in 7, 8, and 9.
| | 03:26 | But the main thing is restricting physical
access to card data and that sort of thing.
| | 03:31 | If we don't store it, we don't
have to worry about protecting it.
| | 03:35 | Then monitoring test networks.
| | 03:37 | Again, that's up to your host.
| | 03:39 | Finally, Maintain an Information and
Security Policy. That is important.
| | 03:43 | Set a policy and make a policy
statement available on your website, so your
| | 03:47 | customers know how you respect their
rights and how you're going to deal with
| | 03:51 | any information they give you.
| | 03:52 | So, the next thing we'll want to look
at is here, the PCI Security Standards
| | 03:59 | Council, and they have a
list of Scanning Vendors.
| | 04:02 | What a Scanning Vendor is, is these
are companies that are certified by the
| | 04:07 | Council to scan and test sites and
then hand out certification to the sites
| | 04:13 | that passed the test.
| | 04:15 | As you can see, there're a lot of
them, pages and pages of the them.
| | 04:18 | The thing is right now this
is kind of a moving target.
| | 04:21 | The security scans that they use are
scanning for basically the same things but
| | 04:25 | the way they do it and what their
requirements are can vary widely.
| | 04:29 | Some have no problem passing a site on a
shared host that's well secured and has
| | 04:34 | good security in place. Others, refuse
to pass anything but a totally locked
| | 04:39 | down dedicated server and then
there's various stages inbetween.
| | 04:44 | So how do you know which one to pick?
| | 04:47 | Well, the important thing would be to ask around.
| | 04:49 | Whatever your shopping card application
that you're using, go to their forums,
| | 04:54 | ask around. Say who's gotten certified,
what companies they use, what kind of
| | 04:58 | trouble or situations they ran into.
| | 05:01 | Doing a little bit of homework ahead of
time like this can save you a lot of pain
| | 05:05 | and headaches and expense because
certification tests aren't free.
| | 05:10 | So, make sure you do your homework before
you go down that road. Should you do it?
| | 05:13 | Is it required? Well, no.
| | 05:15 | PCI compliance isn't
required right now by everyone.
| | 05:20 | It is required by some merchant accounts
and it's being required by some payment
| | 05:24 | gateways but that's only
going to increase over time.
| | 05:28 | The subject of PCI isn't going anywhere.
| | 05:31 | So, it's a good thing to learn about it,
make your decisions on how to deal with
| | 05:35 | it, and go ahead and go through the process.
| | 05:37 | Just do your homework first.
| | 05:39 | After becoming PCI compliant and have
it certified, that's one more thing you
| | 05:44 | can tell your customers that you've
done to show that you care about the data
| | 05:48 | that you get from them and that you
care about their privacy and safety.
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| Choosing a payment gateway with security in mind| 00:00 | Now we have come to the part where we
are going to choose our payment gateway.
| | 00:03 | And a payment gateway isn't
just how you get your money.
| | 00:06 | It also lends to the security of your site.
| | 00:09 | There are a lot of companies to choose
from that offer this kind of service.
| | 00:13 | But there is basically three
components to payment processing and that is:
| | 00:17 | Merchant account; the Payment gateway
itself; and the Interface between your
| | 00:21 | site and the gateway.
| | 00:24 | Let's talk briefly about a Merchant account.
| | 00:26 | First of all, you want to make sure that
you choose a merchant account that's an
| | 00:30 | Internet-friendly business account.
| | 00:33 | That doesn't mean that you
have to change business banks.
| | 00:36 | It's very common to have a different
bank for your merchant account than your
| | 00:39 | business account, which is fine because
the merchant account is simply going to
| | 00:43 | deposit the funds into
your business account anyway.
| | 00:46 | So don't let that worry you.
| | 00:48 | Choose a merchant account based on
its ability or its understanding of
| | 00:52 | Internet transactions.
| | 00:54 | Next don't get trapped.
| | 00:56 | Don't choose a merchant account that insists
that you use their payment gateway interface.
| | 01:01 | If you'd want to change banks later, then
you have to change the code in your site.
| | 01:05 | Most good merchant banks
work with the various vendors.
| | 01:09 | So make sure your works with
vendor that you choose. Next, Rates.
| | 01:14 | Now that you've found or narrowed down
your choices of good quality merchant
| | 01:18 | account banks, now you can look at rates.
| | 01:21 | And Rates vary a lot, so do your homework.
| | 01:24 | It's amazing how much the
rates can vary from bank to bank.
| | 01:28 | As long as it's a good quality bank
and offers good service, then you can go
| | 01:32 | for the lowest rates. Finally be a hero.
| | 01:35 | What do I mean by that?
| | 01:37 | If you're designing an eCommerce site
for your client, they are going to be
| | 01:40 | looking to you for advice on this.
| | 01:43 | Sure you are Web developer and this
really isn't your area, but if you offer
| | 01:47 | good information and get them off to
a good start in this area, definitely
| | 01:51 | makes you the hero.
| | 01:52 | It's good for them. It's good for you.
| | 01:54 | Next it's the gateway itself.
| | 01:57 | Now there are a lot of vendors out
there, lot of choices so take a look at
| | 02:01 | various ones and try to choose wisely.
| | 02:03 | But really, technically, all the
gateways fall into pretty much two groups.
| | 02:09 | And that's real-time processors or
payment gateways, or non real time processors.
| | 02:15 | First of all, let's look at real-time.
| | 02:17 | Let's see what actually
happens in a real-time transaction.
| | 02:22 | First of all, the customer enters the
information in your site, and then your
| | 02:26 | site passes it of to the payment
gateway, under SSL encryption, the gateway
| | 02:30 | processes the transaction and then
sends back the information about whether the
| | 02:35 | transaction was successful or not, to your site.
| | 02:37 | Your site uses this information to
continue on to the checkout process.
| | 02:42 | All this happens instantly and in-line.
| | 02:45 | It provides a very good user
experience because it's totally seamless.
| | 02:48 | A few good examples of real-time
gateways would be Authorize.Net, PayPal PayFlow
| | 02:53 | Pro, LinkPoint and there are
many others to choose from.
| | 02:57 | Personally, I always had very
good success using Authorize.Net.
| | 03:01 | Next is the non-real time payment processor.
| | 03:04 | When we look at the checkout flow using a
processor, it works quite a bit differently.
| | 03:09 | First of all the customer, when they
get ready to enter their information, is
| | 03:13 | passed out to the processor.
| | 03:15 | They enter the information on the
processor computer and they come back to
| | 03:18 | your site, but whether the
transaction was successful or not, is not passed
| | 03:23 | back at that same time.
| | 03:24 | It's not instantaneous or in-line.
| | 03:26 | It comes to you later.
| | 03:28 | It could come in just a few moments
or even it could come the next day,
| | 03:32 | depending on the processor.
| | 03:33 | The problem is, as you continue on
with the transaction and have to process the
| | 03:37 | transaction, not knowing
if the credit card was good.
| | 03:40 | That information comes back later.
| | 03:42 | For example, with PayPal Standard, that
information is sent back to a page that
| | 03:46 | you tell them to send it to.
| | 03:48 | And then it's processed and
added to your database later.
| | 03:51 | But you still have to go back later
to see if the payment was good and then
| | 03:54 | update the order and then act accordingly.
| | 03:57 | It's uncomfortable to have to contact to
your customer who thinks they have made
| | 04:00 | the purchase, and tell them
that their credit card wasn't good.
| | 04:04 | So, why would anyone use a
payment processor if this is the case?
| | 04:09 | Well, first of all there is convenience.
| | 04:11 | It's usually very easy to
sign up for a processor.
| | 04:14 | You don't have to have a merchant account
or pass credit checks or that sort of thing.
| | 04:17 | So for some, that
convenience makes it worthwhile.
| | 04:20 | Then this price, not so much ongoing
price because usually a payment processor
| | 04:24 | charges a little more than a gateway.
| | 04:27 | But it's a price of entry.
| | 04:29 | Many of these accounts are free.
| | 04:30 | You can sign up for them and there's no
setup cost at all. And then finally, Security.
| | 04:35 | Security may be one reason to
look at this type of account.
| | 04:39 | The reason is as PCI compliance
becomes more and more important and identity
| | 04:44 | theft becomes more of an issue, then the
fact that you're passing off a customer
| | 04:48 | to process their transaction at the
processor's site and not yours, and then
| | 04:53 | they come back when they're done,
means you never possess or touch that
| | 04:57 | information, which means,
you're not in the loop.
| | 05:00 | You don't have to worry about PCI compliance.
| | 05:03 | As long as your payment
processor is PCI compliant, you are good.
| | 05:08 | So as identity theft and PCI compliance
becomes more critical, offloading this
| | 05:12 | transaction off to the payment
processor server becomes more attractive.
| | 05:16 | So that is something worth looking at.
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|
|
13. Deploying a Site to the ServerSelecting a host| 00:00 | So now we've come to the time where
we're ready to move our site to our host.
| | 00:04 | The first thing we need to do is select a host.
| | 00:06 | When selecting a host for an
eCommerce site, keep in mind, your site is
| | 00:10 | now mission-critical. It's making sales.
| | 00:12 | It's generating income.
| | 00:14 | So host reliability and response time to
technical issues is vital. Don't be cheap.
| | 00:20 | If the first thing you think about when
selecting a host is who is the cheapest,
| | 00:23 | you're already in big trouble.
| | 00:24 | What you need to do first of
all, is check for platform support.
| | 00:28 | Make sure that your host supports
the platform you're going to be using.
| | 00:31 | In our case, PHP, and MySQL, but it could
be ColdFusion and SQL Server or whatever.
| | 00:36 | Just make sure that the host you're
looking at supports what you're using.
| | 00:39 | A point to consider is, just because
you're with a host doesn't mean you have
| | 00:42 | to stay with a host.
| | 00:44 | If the host doesn't support your
platform of choice, then go to a host that does.
| | 00:48 | Don't let the host choose the platform for you.
| | 00:51 | Choose the platform that suits you best and
then find a host that works. Next, ask around.
| | 00:56 | Go on various different Web development
forums and see who other people are using.
| | 01:00 | For example, the shopping cart
application that you're using, such as in our
| | 01:04 | case Cartweaver, go to the Cartweaver
forums and ask around, see what people are using.
| | 01:08 | You'll find out very quickly who the
good ones are and who the bad ones are.
| | 01:12 | People are usually very
willing to share that information.
| | 01:15 | When you bring it down to a short list
of hosts that you're looking at, take
| | 01:18 | some time to spy on them.
| | 01:20 | What do I mean by that?
| | 01:21 | Find out if they have forums, go on
their forums. Listen in, see what's going
| | 01:25 | on. What's the mood of their users?
Are their users happy with them? How are
| | 01:29 | they treating their users?
| | 01:30 | You can find out a lot just
by looking at their own forums.
| | 01:34 | Next, call them, see what their tech
support is like. See what their response
| | 01:37 | time is and how knowledgeable they sound.
| | 01:40 | This kind of a dry-run is important,
because that's what you may need to do if
| | 01:44 | they have a problem with your site.
| | 01:45 | This gives you an
opportunity to test them ahead of time.
| | 01:48 | Again, don't be afraid to change hosts.
| | 01:50 | Just because you're with a host
doesn't mean you should stay with them.
| | 01:53 | If what you have now is a simple HTML
site, and you've been fine with the host
| | 01:57 | you're on, hosting a dynamic site with
all the interactions between databases
| | 02:01 | and payment gateways and so forth is
a completely different matter and many
| | 02:05 | hosts aren't up to that task.
| | 02:07 | So if the host you are on isn't spoken
of well, or doesn't seem like he is going
| | 02:11 | to be able to handle a more
complex site, now is the time to change.
| | 02:15 | When it comes to your store location,
just like in the physical world, it's
| | 02:18 | location, location, location.
| | 02:20 | In the physical world, it's where
your store is actually located for
| | 02:23 | customers to get to.
| | 02:25 | Online, it's being hosted by reliable,
knowledgeable, secure host that make sure
| | 02:29 | that your store maintains the best
uptime possible and the quickest response
| | 02:33 | times to any problems that occur.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Preparing the host and setting up the database| 00:00 | Now, we're ready to move
your site to the host server.
| | 00:03 | If we methodically go through a
checklist of items, the process can be
| | 00:06 | pretty quick and painless.
| | 00:07 | First, we need to create our online database.
| | 00:10 | There are two ways to go about this.
| | 00:12 | You can create the database by running
a SQL script that comes with most cart
| | 00:15 | applications in your host MySQL Admin.
| | 00:18 | In this case, it's phpMyAdmin, or you
can use a more robust admin like Navicat
| | 00:23 | which we will demonstrate in the next video.
| | 00:25 | For this one, we're
going to be using phpMyAdmin.
| | 00:28 | So the first thing you need to
do is have the database created.
| | 00:31 | In most cases, the host does this
for you and then gives you your access
| | 00:35 | information and access to phpMyAdmin.
| | 00:38 | Once that's done, we need
to prepare our SQL script.
| | 00:42 | To do this, we need to open a
straight text editor like Notepad or BBEdit.
| | 00:46 | We don't want to use Word or any
other application that might interject
| | 00:50 | characters into this document.
| | 00:52 | Once we have that open, we'll go ahead
and take the SQL script for Cartweaver,
| | 00:57 | we drag and we just drop it
into the Notepad and it opens it.
| | 01:00 | Now we go to Edit > Select All,
back to Edit, and hit Copy.
| | 01:05 | Now, we go to our phpMyAdmin.
| | 01:07 | We'll find the database that they
have created for us, go to it, then we'll
| | 01:13 | open the SQL tab, click in the field, and
now we'll paste the SQL script that we copied.
| | 01:20 | Once that's done, go ahead and click Go, and give
it some time to run, and that's it! We're done!
| | 01:27 | Everything is copied over, and ready to go.
| | 01:29 | Now, a point to keep in mind here is
we've actually created a new database.
| | 01:33 | So all the product information, and
everything that might be in your local
| | 01:36 | test system isn't there.
| | 01:38 | So, if you're going to be doing it this
way, I recommend that when you do your
| | 01:41 | local test system, don't enter all
your products, just a few to test, because
| | 01:46 | you're just going to have to do it over
again when you move over to the server.
| | 01:49 | If you don't want to do it this way,
there is more robust solutions that
| | 01:52 | allows you to copy things over, and
we'll demo that in the next video when we
| | 01:56 | look at Navicat.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Uploading the database and configuring the site| 00:00 | phpMyAdmin is a very good MySQL
administration tool but it has the one
| | 00:04 | disadvantage of being a Web app and you
can't use it to connect both your local
| | 00:10 | database and then connect remotely
to another database on a Web server.
| | 00:14 | So let's look at a solution
that actually allows us to do that.
| | 00:17 | There are a number of third
party MySQL administrators.
| | 00:21 | Some are more open source, some are free but
my favorite that I use all the time is Navicat.
| | 00:26 | Navicat is very powerful MySQL administrator.
| | 00:28 | It's actually a program
you install on your system.
| | 00:31 | The good thing is it supports Windows
and Mac and supports MySQL and they even
| | 00:36 | have other versions for other databases.
| | 00:39 | Now, some of these administrators for
MySQL are free or open source and Navicat
| | 00:43 | has an open source version as well.
| | 00:45 | In this demonstration we're going to be using
the commercial version for a very good reason.
| | 00:50 | Some of the most powerful features
like what I am going to be showing you,
| | 00:52 | dragging and dropping is
enabled in the commercial version.
| | 00:55 | And just doing this process once,
sometimes is worth the cost of the program itself.
| | 01:01 | But it's important to be able to have
the ability to connect both to your local
| | 01:05 | databases and reach across and make
remote connections and not have to depend on
| | 01:10 | phpMyAdmin running on the server.
| | 01:12 | So, let's go ahead and look at Navicat.
| | 01:15 | Okay, so we've downloaded
and installed Navicat, which is
| | 01:17 | pretty straightforward.
| | 01:18 | So, let's go ahead and boot it up.
| | 01:20 | It's a very simple interface.
| | 01:22 | The first thing we'll want to do is
make a connection to our local database.
| | 01:26 | So, we click on the Tab here for
a new connection and we see it's
| | 01:30 | already pre-populated.
| | 01:31 | Navicat pretty well knows how
to find MySQL on your system.
| | 01:34 | As long as you have the basic default
install that XAMPP uses, they'll have
| | 01:39 | no problem finding it.
| | 01:40 | Let's go ahead and test the connection to see if it
found it, and it did, so that's good. So, we click OK.
| | 01:46 | We click here and here is our local system.
| | 01:49 | Okay, so the next thing we'll want
to do is create a remote connection to
| | 01:53 | our database online.
| | 01:54 | So, go ahead and click Connection
again and we enter a Connection Name.
| | 01:59 | Now, the host would have given us
the address for the remote database.
| | 02:05 | So, we'll enter that here, and then
we'll use the Username and Password that are
| | 02:10 | provided for the database online.
| | 02:11 | Okay, then let's Test Connection.
| | 02:17 | And there we have a successful connection.
| | 02:21 | So, we know it's ready to go,
so we say OK and we click OK.
| | 02:25 | So, let's go ahead and connect to that database.
| | 02:27 | Okay, we click on the database, open it up,
look in Tables, and we see that it's empty.
| | 02:35 | So, now we've connected to our local
database and we're ready to populate the
| | 02:39 | database on our server.
| | 02:41 | Now there are two ways we can do this.
| | 02:43 | If we want to start fresh, just like we
did in phpMyAdmin, it's pretty simple.
| | 02:48 | You select the database, you
click on Query, click on New Query.
| | 02:53 | Then we have Query Builder here, then
click Load and go ahead and go to our
| | 03:00 | Desktop or wherever you might you're
your SQL script stored, click Open, and
| | 03:05 | we see it populates it.
| | 03:06 | So, you don't have to worry about
cutting and pasting and everything.
| | 03:09 | You can just open it up into the
Query Editor and then next you Run.
| | 03:14 | During this process, you'll have to be patient.
| | 03:16 | It's rather large SQL script and
is creating the database remotely.
| | 03:19 | So, it could take a while.
| | 03:21 | Just resist the temptation to think
something is wrong and just let it run.
| | 03:26 | Okay, so here we are.
| | 03:27 | It switches over to results and
there it says Affected rows:1.
| | 03:30 | Don't pay any attention to that because
basically that SQL script is just one big long row.
| | 03:35 | But it's all done that means it's run.
| | 03:37 | So, let's go ahead and close out this
box and it will ask you if you want to
| | 03:41 | save that query but we'll say No.
| | 03:44 | Now, let's go ahead and click
on the Table and there it is.
| | 03:47 | There's our entire database
installed and ready to go.
| | 03:50 | Now, let's look at one of more
interesting features in Navicat or one of the
| | 03:53 | more powerful features.
| | 03:54 | And instead of running the script
to create a brand-new database on the
| | 03:57 | server, let's look at copying a local
database that we've already populated
| | 04:02 | over to the server.
| | 04:03 | So, to do that, first of all, on the
database on the server, let's go ahead and
| | 04:06 | select the Tables, we'll
Delete. All right! There we go.
| | 04:13 | Now, let's go up to our
localhost and find our local database.
| | 04:18 | We can see there it is.
| | 04:19 | Now, this is a database that has
everything in it that we've populated and so we
| | 04:23 | want to just drag that across.
| | 04:25 | So, here's how that works.
| | 04:26 | You just select all your tables, makes
sure this is open and you drag it over to
| | 04:33 | your remote database and drop it in
Tables, and it gives you the option to copy
| | 04:37 | over the structure and
data or just the structure.
| | 04:40 | You'll want to copy both
the structure and the data.
| | 04:45 | Now the Transfer window opens up.
| | 04:46 | So, let's go ahead and click Start and say OK.
| | 04:51 | And again, we're copying over a fairly
large database, so go ahead and just give
| | 04:54 | it time to run, maybe go and grab a
cup of coffee or whatever then come back.
| | 04:59 | Now, we see this copy over
and finished successfully.
| | 05:02 | So, let's go ahead and close
that and we don't need to save that.
| | 05:06 | And now let's go ahead and click on the
remote database and there they are, all
| | 05:10 | the tables are in there.
| | 05:12 | Being able to drag and drop
across like that saves us so much time.
| | 05:16 | We can actually set up the database
that we want to use locally with the
| | 05:19 | products and everything and then copy
the whole thing over to the server without
| | 05:22 | having to redo it again.
| | 05:24 | So, it gives us a closed environment to
test our products and work on them and
| | 05:28 | then not have to redo our
work but just copy it over.
| | 05:31 | This feature alone speaks
highly for this program.
| | 05:34 | One thing that we won't demo here but
something you can do is do the reverse of this.
| | 05:38 | You can reach up and drag down a copy of
your database and make a local copy of it.
| | 05:43 | This is a great way to backup
your database. And that's it.
| | 05:47 | Our database is all set up and we're
ready to start configuring our site.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Testing and troubleshooting| 00:00 | Well, we're finally ready to upload our
site to the server and actually test it
| | 00:04 | and look at it on the server itself.
| | 00:07 | In order to do that, in
Dreamweaver, we're going to check the data
| | 00:09 | source information.
| | 00:10 | We're going to create a remote host,
then we'll connect to the server and upload
| | 00:14 | the site, and then we'll log into the
Admin and do a last couple of checks.
| | 00:18 | If we get to the Admin,
we know we're doing okay.
| | 00:21 | So let's go to Dreamweaver.
| | 00:23 | The first thing we want to do is
check our data source information. In
| | 00:27 | Cartweaver here, it's under cw4 and then cw
-config, and then it's the cw-config file.
| | 00:33 | Whatever shopping cart application
you're using, make sure you know where this
| | 00:36 | file is, because you may have to update it.
| | 00:39 | Let's see what I'm talking about.
| | 00:40 | So we'll scroll down here.
| | 00:43 | Remember early on, I said, if we can
use the same username and password for our
| | 00:47 | database locally as we do it for the host,
how much of a timesaver it can be and
| | 00:52 | it'll keep us from having headaches later on.
| | 00:55 | Here is what I was talking about.
| | 00:57 | This information is the
connection to our database locally.
| | 01:00 | Then we set up our user and our
preferences or our permissions locally.
| | 01:05 | If we use the same information that
the host has provided us online, then we
| | 01:09 | can just leave this file alone and upload
everything and it's going to work in both places.
| | 01:15 | If we didn't have that information
before, I'd even recommend going back to the
| | 01:19 | database locally and creating a
new user and then changing this again,
| | 01:23 | so it will work both locally and on the server.
| | 01:26 | So you don't have to try to remember to
do this whenever you go back and forth.
| | 01:30 | That being the case, either leave these
the same, and that is, the hostname, the
| | 01:35 | user, and the password, or change them
to whatever is appropriate for the server
| | 01:39 | you're uploading to.
| | 01:41 | Once that's done, and you save it.
Let's go ahead and create a connection.
| | 01:45 | So, we're on the site we've been working on.
| | 01:47 | So just go ahead and double-click on
the button here, bring up your server
| | 01:51 | configuration, click on Servers, and
then click the Plus (+) sign, so that we
| | 01:57 | can add a new server.
| | 01:58 | What we're going to be doing now is
adding a connection to the remote host.
| | 02:03 | So let's go ahead and enter a name.
| | 02:06 | And this name doesn't have
anything to do with security,
| | 02:08 | it's just in the list,
what we're going to call it.
| | 02:11 | So let's call it Our Host;
| | 02:14 | so "Our Host Server."
| | 02:16 | We will be connecting with FTP.
| | 02:18 | Then your host should have given you FTP
information, so let's go in and enter that now.
| | 02:23 | You put your IP address or your FTP address
depending on what your host has given you.
| | 02:28 | Then let's go ahead and enter the
Username and Password, and click Test.
| | 02:36 | Now, we have a successful
connection. That's great!
| | 02:38 | So click OK, click OK, and make
sure that it has Remote checked.
| | 02:44 | If it isn't, sometimes Dreamweaver
decides which one it thinks you want.
| | 02:47 | Make sure Remote is checked, because that's
what we're using it for. Then you hit Save.
| | 02:52 | Let's close this file out, and then
let's go ahead and connect, and there is
| | 02:58 | our site on the server.
| | 03:00 | So we're ready to upload.
| | 03:01 | So let's go ahead and do that. And that's it!
| | 03:08 | The site is uploaded to the system.
| | 03:11 | So there are just a couple of more things
we need to check to see how we're doing.
| | 03:14 | First of all, now that the site is there,
we're going to want to browse to the Admin;
| | 03:19 | one, to see if it's working; and two, to
check one final setting before we're ready to go.
| | 03:24 | So let's do that and there we go!
| | 03:27 | The fact that we can see this is good news.
| | 03:29 | It means the site is uploaded all
right and it's working that way.
| | 03:33 | Now, let's see if there is a
connection to the database.
| | 03:35 | Let's go ahead and enter our username and
password, then click Log In, and there we go!
| | 03:42 | So we know the site is working and it's
talking to the database. That's good news.
| | 03:47 | Now the one thing that we want to
update before we get going any further is
| | 03:51 | we want to go to Global Settings and then
update the Site URL and the Secure Site URL.
| | 03:58 | This right now is blank.
| | 03:59 | The reason it's blank is because
right now, we don't have an SSL installed.
| | 04:04 | This should be whatever
your website actually is.
| | 04:07 | After we install an SSL and we're ready
to go with that, we'll enter basically
| | 04:12 | the same thing here only
with the HTTPS designation.
| | 04:17 | What that does is when a user clicks to
go to cart, it'll automatically invoke
| | 04:22 | the SSL, and that way,
everything will be secure.
| | 04:24 | So we'll come back and make sure that
we do that after we install the SSL.
| | 04:29 | But right now, we have our host name
entered here and that's what we needed to check.
| | 04:35 | Other than that, your site is up! It's there!
| | 04:38 | It's time to test, and
time to get ready to go live.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Purchasing and installing the SSL| 00:00 | Now that we have the site set up and
we're about ready to go live, this is a
| | 00:04 | good time to purchase the
SSL, and have it installed.
| | 00:07 | So let's talk about SSL vendors for a moment.
| | 00:10 | Here's a good example, and there's a lot
of these sites that sell multiple SSLs,
| | 00:15 | and it's one of the reasons why
the pricing has come down so far.
| | 00:18 | So as long as it's a reputable SSL, like
GeoTrust is certainly well-known, so is
| | 00:24 | COMODO, it doesn't really matter
because the technology works the same.
| | 00:28 | So let's go ahead and click on this one,
and we see we can purchase it for a
| | 00:34 | number of years if we wish.
| | 00:35 | You might as well do that, go ahead
and purchase it for multiple years.
| | 00:39 | That way, you don't have to worry about
having to renew it coming around quite so soon.
| | 00:43 | Once it's installed, you'll be provided
with the SSL Certificate File and you'll
| | 00:48 | also be able to put the logo
of the SSL in your site as well.
| | 00:52 | And that's a good thing.
| | 00:53 | I'd recommend doing it.
| | 00:54 | It's just one more thing to show your
customers that you've taken the extra
| | 00:57 | steps to make sure that their data is secure.
| | 01:00 | So you go ahead and add that to
cart and you say, okay, Checkout.
| | 01:05 | Now, the thing to think about when
you're going through the checkout process,
| | 01:09 | when you get to the point where you
give them your address and information;
| | 01:12 | make sure the information you give
them is accurate about your business, but
| | 01:16 | also the information
there is about your website.
| | 01:19 | If it's some corporate name that has
nothing to do with the website, there maybe
| | 01:24 | an issue where the customer is clicking
on the little green lock remember or the
| | 01:28 | little gold lock in some browsers,
and seeing somebody else's name there.
| | 01:32 | I'd caution against this.
| | 01:34 | Make sure the name is what they can
see because when they click on that, what
| | 01:38 | pops up is the information
that you've provided this time.
| | 01:41 | You also want to make sure that
the address is correct because for a
| | 01:46 | certificate to be issued.
| | 01:47 | It has to be a legal actual
corporate or a company address. Okay.
| | 01:52 | Then you go through the purchase process,
and once that's done, you'll receive a
| | 01:57 | CRT file or a certificate file.
| | 01:59 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 02:01 | So here we see our
certificate file that we've downloaded.
| | 02:04 | And like I said before, it's best
just to leave this alone and just send it
| | 02:08 | right off to your host.
| | 02:10 | But just in case there's any curiosity,
I'll go ahead and open this one up, so
| | 02:14 | you can see what's inside, and that's it!
| | 02:17 | It's just basic encryption code.
| | 02:19 | But it's an identifier that
identifies your site with the information that
| | 02:22 | you've registered with the company
that issued this certificate, and if those
| | 02:26 | two match up, then you can
encrypt and unencrypt on both ends.
| | 02:30 | But again, main thing is just sent this
off to your host, have your host install
| | 02:34 | this again in the root directory of your site.
| | 02:37 | That way, you'll protect
everything in your site.
| | 02:39 | So now, once we've downloaded it, then
given it to our host, and they notified
| | 02:43 | us that it's installed, we
have one more thing to do.
| | 02:46 | So we have to go back to the Admin.
| | 02:48 | Let's go ahead and log
into your admin for your site.
| | 02:52 | Go to Site Setup, go to Global Settings,
and now that we have a secure site set
| | 02:57 | up, let's go ahead and
enter the full information here. There.
| | 03:00 | What we've done now is your site now
knows what your HTTPS or SSL address is.
| | 03:14 | When a user gets ready to click and
go to the order form, the site will
| | 03:18 | automatically invoke that SSL and
that way, everything from the order form
| | 03:22 | forward will be encrypted and secure.
| | 03:24 | So let's go ahead and update that
and save that change, and that's it!
| | 03:28 | You've got your SSL. It's installed.
| | 03:31 | You went into the Admin.
| | 03:32 | It's set up correctly.
| | 03:33 | You're ready to do business
on the Web safely and securely.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up and testing the payment gateway| 00:00 | Now that we have the site up on the
server, and the SSL's installed and
| | 00:03 | everything looks good.
| | 00:04 | It's time to make the connection
to a payment gateway and test this.
| | 00:09 | First of all, take time to
learn about your gateway systems.
| | 00:12 | There's a wide array of gateway
providers and although the way they do things is
| | 00:17 | similar, each one has their own
little things they you need to learn.
| | 00:21 | So, whether you choose like PayPal or
Authorize.Net, LinkPoint, another big one
| | 00:27 | in Europe is WorldPay and
there're many, many others.
| | 00:31 | Whatever one you decide on, make sure
you take a few moments to learn how their
| | 00:35 | system works, what they require.
| | 00:37 | All of them are going to provide you
with something, either a transaction key or
| | 00:42 | a username and password, that sort of
thing, and that's what you're going to need
| | 00:46 | to enter into your file
that connects to their system.
| | 00:48 | So, take a minute to learn this from
whatever one you choose, so you'll have
| | 00:52 | what you need when it
comes time to set up your site.
| | 00:55 | With the so many gateways out
there, it truly is impossible for any
| | 00:59 | off-the-shelf cart
system to support all of them.
| | 01:03 | It's inevitable that you're going to
find ones that aren't. So, first of all take
| | 01:06 | a look at what gateway providers
your cart system actually supports
| | 01:10 | out-of-the-box, and that may help you in
your decision of which ones to choose.
| | 01:15 | We'll talk about non-supported
gateways here in a moment.
| | 01:18 | So, first of all let's take a look at a
couple of supported gateways that, once
| | 01:22 | you sign-up for an
account, what's your next step?
| | 01:25 | Well, we're going to Dreamweaver, and
all cart systems handle this in different
| | 01:29 | ways but it's very similar. But in
Cartweaver what you would do is go ahead and
| | 01:33 | click on cwapp then the auth folder.
| | 01:36 | Right now, we just have two auth
files in there but there can be many more.
| | 01:40 | But let's go ahead and look at this one and
see Authorize.net file and see how it works.
| | 01:46 | Now for the designers aren't used to
looking at code, this is one time you're
| | 01:50 | going to have to look at a little bit of
code, but it's well-documented and it's
| | 01:54 | easy to tell what to do.
| | 01:55 | So, let's go ahead and scroll down
and right here, where you're given
| | 02:00 | instructions, go ahead and you'll be
entering the information that Authorize.net
| | 02:05 | provides you,
YourUsername and YourTransactionKey.
| | 02:08 | TransactionKey with Authorize.net is
something they give you to enter in your
| | 02:13 | code and it's not your password.
| | 02:15 | So, you're not exposing your password to
your Web developer, you are just having
| | 02:19 | the transaction key.
| | 02:20 | So, it keeps your login to their site
secure but also allows your application to
| | 02:25 | interact with their gateway.
| | 02:27 | So, you would change this information here.
| | 02:29 | Another thing to think about is
where the line says testmode set to True.
| | 02:34 | We'd want to leave it at that.
| | 02:35 | Most of your gateways have
this kind of functionality.
| | 02:38 | For example, if PayPal is called
sandbox with authorizeNet its testmode and once
| | 02:44 | you have the testmode set up and you
set this True what you can do is run test
| | 02:49 | transactions through their system
without actually spending money. It won't
| | 02:53 | actually charge your card but you know
by the response you get back if you've
| | 02:58 | actually had a successful transaction.
| | 03:01 | Once you've run a couple of those tests
then you're ready to do the real thing.
| | 03:05 | So, let's look at the PayPal one real quick.
| | 03:07 | And again, with PayPal basically your
user account e-mail as your password or
| | 03:13 | your account mail and then
what currency code that you need.
| | 03:17 | And that's about it, you Save that
and then with both of these files once
| | 03:21 | you've entered the information you
just go ahead and select them and then
| | 03:26 | upload them to the server.
| | 03:29 | You're ready to go.
| | 03:31 | Let's just take for a moment and
talk about non-supported gateways.
| | 03:34 | What if you are using a gateway that isn't
supported by your shopping cart application?
| | 03:39 | What do you do?
| | 03:40 | Well, fortunately the two that I
showed there is PayPal, which is a
| | 03:44 | non-real-time payment provider, the
PayPal Standard account. And then Authorize
| | 03:49 | Net, it's a real-time payment gateway.
| | 03:53 | As we talked about earlier, most
payment processors and gateways fit into
| | 03:56 | that same category.
| | 03:57 | They work very similar.
| | 03:59 | So, if you need to interact with a
gateway that isn't supported by a shopping
| | 04:03 | cart, it'll probably support one of
these two. And your developer, or you if
| | 04:08 | you're the developer, can use one of
these files as the starting point.
| | 04:12 | Other than that, most of the
gateways will provide a sample of code and
| | 04:16 | information. But truthfully, I'd be hard-
pressed to recommend anything more highly
| | 04:21 | than the Authorize.net. They have one of
the best fraud protection suites in the
| | 04:24 | business. And PayPal, again,
is a very well known name.
| | 04:28 | So, they're worth looking at.
| | 04:29 | So, now we have our account and our payment
gateway and we've set up our files. So what's next?
| | 04:35 | Well, the next thing we need to do is
go into the Admin and set up our account.
| | 04:40 | So let's go ahead and log back into the
Admin and go to Site Setup and then go
| | 04:46 | to Payment Settings.
| | 04:48 | Here's available payment gateways.
| | 04:50 | So, let's say we're using Authorize.net.
| | 04:53 | So, go ahead and click on that and
let's say we're also using PayPal because
| | 04:57 | Cardweaver allows the use of multiple carts.
| | 05:00 | That's becoming more and more common.
| | 05:01 | It's something worth looking into
because some people may want to use their
| | 05:05 | credit card or they may want to
purchase with their PayPal account.
| | 05:08 | So, it's very common to have
both and make those available.
| | 05:11 | So, that's what we're going to do.
| | 05:12 | Let's go ahead and make both of them
available, since we already uploaded those
| | 05:15 | files with changes, and then we'll Save Changes.
| | 05:20 | Now those are enabled and
we're ready to go. So what's next?
| | 05:23 | Now we go and place a test order.
| | 05:27 | So, here we're on our site.
| | 05:29 | You'll notice these pencils here.
| | 05:30 | That's because we're logged
into the Admin, if you remember.
| | 05:33 | So, don't worry about that,
your users won't see it.
| | 05:36 | So, let's just ignore those for right now.
| | 05:38 | But let's go ahead and add an item
to our cart. And let me say I've been
| | 05:45 | doing some testing.
| | 05:46 | I don't want to do that many.
| | 05:47 | So, just update that to 1.
| | 05:50 | Okay, we're ready to go.
| | 05:52 | So, let's go ahead and check out and
to save time I will login as a user that
| | 05:57 | we've already entered.
| | 05:59 | You can see when we login like that it
will pre-populate the form for the user,
| | 06:04 | so that's a real time saver.
| | 06:05 | It's a nice feature.
| | 06:06 | So, let's go ahead and continue to confirm.
| | 06:08 | We have our Shipping Details. That's good.
| | 06:12 | Everything looks right, so let's go ahead and
Submit Payment and here we go. We're ready to go.
| | 06:19 | We enter information.
| | 06:20 | Right now the test data that
we entered before is there.
| | 06:23 | Since, we're not actually connected to
a payment gateway right now with this
| | 06:27 | test system, we're going to go
ahead and submit it this way.
| | 06:30 | You'd actually want to
enter some credit card data.
| | 06:32 | Again, the card isn't charged but it'll
will run through and go through the
| | 06:35 | verification process.
| | 06:38 | After that, you click
Place Order and there we go;
| | 06:41 | a full transaction.
| | 06:43 | Once that happens, when you go to your
Order Confirmation with it in test mode, you
| | 06:47 | know for a fact that it reached out to
the gateway interacted with it, got the
| | 06:52 | information back from the
gateway and you're ready to proceed.
| | 06:55 | So, now you're all set up. So, what's next?
| | 06:58 | It's time to open the doors. maybe only
little bit. We'll talk about that later.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Preparing the database to go live| 00:00 | All right. It's time to sweep the aisles and wash the
windows, so we can let some customers in.
| | 00:05 | For our website, this means
cleaning up our database a bit.
| | 00:09 | You don't want to move forward with all
those test orders, and test customers in
| | 00:12 | there cluttering things up.
| | 00:14 | So let's get rid of them.
| | 00:16 | How to do this varies from cart to cart.
| | 00:18 | So find out what options are available to you.
| | 00:20 | There are several different ways to do it.
| | 00:23 | One, it can be automated, for example
the cart that we're using, Cartweaver has
| | 00:27 | an automated system to do this.
| | 00:29 | Two, it could be a script, some carts
have a script that you run just like a
| | 00:34 | normal SQL script that
cleans this information up.
| | 00:36 | Another way would be manually
through the Admin, and another way would be
| | 00:40 | directly in the database.
| | 00:41 | But seriously, unless you really know
your way around a database, don't do this.
| | 00:48 | It's really easy to accidentally
mess up the referential integrity of the
| | 00:51 | database and cause yourself way more headaches.
| | 00:55 | It's probably better just to leave the old
data in there than it is to do it this way.
| | 00:59 | So let's just briefly
look at our various options.
| | 01:03 | First of all, let's look at the
automated system in Cartweaver.
| | 01:06 | So here we are back in the Admin, so
go ahead and click Site Setup and the
| | 01:10 | first thing you want go to is Developer
Settings, and we want to take the site
| | 01:15 | now out of Test mode because we did our
test transactions in Authorize.Net over
| | 01:19 | their payment gateway, everything
worked, so we're done with that, so we take
| | 01:23 | it out of Test mode.
| | 01:25 | And for right now, we want to
enable the ability to delete test data.
| | 01:28 | So let's go ahead and check
that and then save changes.
| | 01:32 | So right now, we see the fact that
there is all these orders and all these
| | 01:36 | customers, well we go down here to
Site Setup, and then we go to Delete Test
| | 01:42 | Data, and we can select what
information we want to delete.
| | 01:46 | Well, we want to keep our products and our
options and everything that we've set up there;
| | 01:49 | we don't want to delete that.
| | 01:51 | But we do want to delete
the Customers and the Orders.
| | 01:55 | In fact there is only two customers
in the database, and if they don't have
| | 01:58 | orders associated with them, they won't
show up. And leaving them in there since
| | 02:02 | they're test customers may
actually make testing easier later on.
| | 02:06 | So we will leave them in there as well.
| | 02:08 | But if you have a lot of test
orders that you have put in, and a lot of
| | 02:12 | different test customers and it's
really messy, you could go ahead and
| | 02:15 | delete those as well.
| | 02:16 | So right now for this purpose, I am
just going to delete the test orders.
| | 02:21 | And it gives us a little warning.
| | 02:22 | It's important to know that
once they're deleted. It's gone.
| | 02:25 | So it's good to have some warning
dialog boxes pop up to let you know.
| | 02:29 | Then we will say OK and we're
ready to go, so start cleanup.
| | 02:34 | Again, the warning says, deletions
cannot be undone, and make sure that you've
| | 02:39 | only selected what you want to erase.
| | 02:41 | Now, it's also a really good idea, which
I've already done offline, before you do
| | 02:46 | this, do pull down a copy of your
database. Do back it up, just in case
| | 02:51 | something goes wrong. Because anytime
you're bulk deleting data, that's always a
| | 02:55 | good idea no matter what, to first back up.
| | 02:58 | So click Start and that's it!
| | 03:02 | Now, having done that, we go back to
the Orders and we see they're gone.
| | 03:06 | It's all cleaned up.
| | 03:07 | That's the fastest, easiest way
to clean up all your test data.
| | 03:11 | What if your system
doesn't have a feature like this?
| | 03:14 | What else can you do?
| | 03:15 | Well, there are a couple of different options.
| | 03:17 | One, often times a cart provider will give
you the script that cleans up the database.
| | 03:22 | If that's the case, what you'll want to
do is come over to your SQL Admin, and
| | 03:27 | do just what we've done before.
| | 03:28 | You would go ahead and select your
database, and you'd go ahead and select the
| | 03:33 | SQL, and you'd paste the SQL script
that they provide in here, or if you know
| | 03:38 | SQL and you write your own script, you
can put it in here, and then you go ahead
| | 03:42 | and click Go and that would execute
the commands and clean up the files.
| | 03:45 | Now, let's say you don't have
either one of those options.
| | 03:49 | What do I mean by
deleting a test order manually?
| | 03:52 | Let's go take a look.
| | 03:54 | Okay, here we are back in the store.
| | 03:56 | If you remember, we
deleted all the orders already.
| | 03:59 | So let's go ahead and quickly place an
order so we have something to deal with.
| | 04:05 | We have our username, and that's why I
left that in there, just makes it easier
| | 04:07 | for quick tests like this.
| | 04:10 | Although, it has to be correct,
let's try that, there we go!
| | 04:16 | So let's quickly go through the checkout
process, and check out. Okay, that's done!
| | 04:26 | That being done now, we can go back to
the Admin, refresh our Orders page, maybe
| | 04:32 | I have to log back in, and there is an order.
| | 04:36 | Again, if there is only one order in
the database, it'll show up like this, if
| | 04:39 | there's multiple orders, it will
be a list like we've seen before.
| | 04:43 | Okay, let's do something.
| | 04:44 | Let's go take a look at the customer,
we've got susie shopper there, and
| | 04:49 | let's try to delete her.
| | 04:51 | Can't. Again, if she has
orders placed, you can't delete her.
| | 04:55 | But what if you want to delete the customer?
| | 04:58 | You have to go from the
right direction, and work up.
| | 05:00 | I will show you what that means.
| | 05:02 | So we go to Orders, and then
we would delete this test order.
| | 05:07 | Since it isn't processed,
we haven't set it to shipped.
| | 05:10 | If you set it shipped, you're not
going to be able to delete it because the
| | 05:14 | system won't allow you to delete
something that's already taken place. Like you
| | 05:19 | ship the product so that order is
permanent. But since you haven't shipped, you
| | 05:23 | can go ahead and delete this order.
| | 05:27 | Now, let's go back to Customers
and now, we can delete this customer.
| | 05:33 | Again, just for testing purposes I am
going to leave her in here, but the same
| | 05:37 | way with our other test customer.
| | 05:39 | Since there's no orders associated
with him, I have the option to deleting.
| | 05:44 | So what you're going to want to do, is
find out how your database in your system
| | 05:47 | works. Most of them support referential
integrity like this. So you'll want to
| | 05:52 | delete the orders first and work your
way up, and then delete the customers.
| | 05:57 | Finally, like I said, the last alternative
would be to log directly into the database.
| | 06:02 | But again, I highly caution you against it.
| | 06:05 | It's a really easy way to end up
having to re-upload your entire database
| | 06:09 | because you're not exactly
sure what link you've broken.
| | 06:12 | So I would highly recommend either:
automated if your system supplies that type
| | 06:17 | of service or that type of functionality;
running a script, or getting somebody
| | 06:22 | or writing the script; or
manually doing it through the Admin.
| | 06:26 | Main thing is, clean up all the junk
data, so once you start to sell, you can
| | 06:29 | start fresh and move forward from there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Soft-launching the store| 00:00 | Now we have arrived at the
moment we've been waiting for.
| | 00:03 | Opening your new store for business.
There is just a couple more things you need
| | 00:07 | to do, and then you're
ready to really open the doors.
| | 00:10 | This is a time to proceed with caution.
| | 00:12 | Remember the developers creed:
nothing breaks an application like a user.
| | 00:17 | No matter how much you test, there is
always a few things that you've missed that
| | 00:21 | real user will find in about
five minutes. So what you do?
| | 00:26 | We do a soft launch.
| | 00:27 | So, the first thing we need to do is
go ahead and set our payment gateways to
| | 00:30 | live, so we can actually
accept true transactions.
| | 00:33 | So let's do that and again let's say
we're using Authorize.net. So we'll scroll
| | 00:39 | down here and we'll set this to False
like that, and then you would save this.
| | 00:47 | I'm not going to do it right now,
because I don't want to send that to my
| | 00:49 | server, but you'll say that as
false and then uploaded to the server.
| | 00:58 | Then in the case of Authorize.net and
some gateways, you now have to go out and
| | 01:01 | log in to their actual Admin and
change to the setting on their end as well.
| | 01:06 | So, if you need to do that, go ahead
and do that and come back and now know
| | 01:10 | that your site is live.
| | 01:11 | If somebody finds your site
they can actually place an order.
| | 01:14 | So, the next thing you do is invite
over a limited group of loyal customers or
| | 01:19 | even friends and family.
| | 01:21 | People who are willing to help and
also enjoy your products and are likely to
| | 01:25 | buy something. Keep the amount of people
you invite small. You want to make sure
| | 01:30 | if any problems arise, you can take
care of them quickly and just be dealing
| | 01:34 | with a few people. Once
that's done you're ready to go.
| | 01:37 | So finally, now that all the work is
done the site is up and tested, and you've
| | 01:42 | tweaked in little problems that have
surfaced, you're ready to really start
| | 01:46 | promoting your store.
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14. Promoting the StoreUsing Google Analytics| 00:00 | This course is by no means meant to be
an in-depth class on Google Analytics,
| | 00:05 | search engine optimization, or social
media marketing, but we'll touch on the
| | 00:08 | topics enough to hopefully help you
see the power and importance of using
| | 00:12 | Google and social media tools available
to promote your site. Let's first look
| | 00:18 | at Google Analytics.
| | 00:19 | What is Google Analytics?
| | 00:21 | Well, simply it's a site
traffic and usage reporting engine.
| | 00:25 | Now you may say, my host provides me with
one of those, why would I use Google Analytics?
| | 00:30 | Well, let's take a look at it and
kind of talk about that as we go through.
| | 00:34 | So here we are in Google Analytics,
so let's go ahead and sign in and we're
| | 00:39 | taken to the homepage.
| | 00:41 | Now if you've been to Google
Analytics before, you may say well that looks a
| | 00:44 | little different, well here is why.
| | 00:47 | This is the new version here is the
link to the old version and then here
| | 00:52 | we're in the new version.
| | 00:53 | We're going to go ahead and look at
the new version, because obviously that's
| | 00:57 | the direction Google analytics is going.
| | 00:59 | So what we want to do is go ahead and
look at our dashboard. And your dashboard
| | 01:04 | gives you a quick overview of what's
going on with your various sites. You
| | 01:09 | can come over and click and look at
different sites and see what's going on.
| | 01:16 | Now this gives us a wealth of
information about the traffic of our site, who's
| | 01:20 | visiting the site even where they are from and
one of things to watch for is the Bounce Rate.
| | 01:26 | What Bounce Rate means is how many
people come into the site look at one
| | 01:30 | page and then leave.
| | 01:32 | Now for a blog site that's not really
a problem, because a lot of people come
| | 01:36 | to the one page and that's the
content they're looking for. But for an
| | 01:39 | eCommerce site like your shopping cart
site, you want people to go in and click
| | 01:43 | around and see multiple pages.
| | 01:45 | So a high Bounce Rate is a bad thing.
That means you need to tweak your home page
| | 01:50 | to invite people into the site better
or write better content for your product
| | 01:54 | so they look around. That's one of the
things that you will want to look at.
| | 01:58 | And the Bounce Rate is something that a
lot of search engine tools don't use and
| | 02:02 | Google Analytics does report
on it, so that's a good thing.
| | 02:06 | Another reason to use Google Analytics,
even if you do use another reporting
| | 02:10 | tool, is the fact that having Google
Analytics on your site pretty much
| | 02:14 | guarantees Google knows where your
site is. And that's a good thing, so that's
| | 02:18 | definitely a side benefit.
| | 02:20 | So, you can go up to the My Site look
and look at profiles or Reports. There is
| | 02:25 | a lot of reports here, a lot of information.
| | 02:29 | For more information see Google
Analytics Essential Training on the lynda.com
| | 02:34 | Online Training Library.
| | 02:36 | Basically, Google Analytics provides a
wealth of information about the traffic to
| | 02:40 | your site, how it's being used,
even where the users are from.
| | 02:45 | All good information to help you
in your efforts to market your site.
| | 02:48 | It's also a sure way to know that
Google knows your site is there. Which brings
| | 02:52 | up the point of SEO or Search Engine
Optimization and we'll touch on that next.
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| Best practices for search engine optimization| 00:00 | Search Engine Optimization
is a fairly involved topic.
| | 00:03 | So I'll won't to attempt to
cover everything in this video.
| | 00:06 | What I will focus on is how to look at
your store content with Search Engine
| | 00:10 | Optimization in mind, and to
provide some good spider food.
| | 00:15 | What is spider food?
| | 00:16 | Well, let's talk about
spiders and indexing for a moment.
| | 00:18 | Search engine spiders are programs or
bots that crawl the web, and basically
| | 00:23 | read content, then using that
information, the search engine indexes or ranks
| | 00:27 | your site compared to other
sites with similar content.
| | 00:30 | So what do the spiders
look at, and in what order?
| | 00:34 | Well, let's go to
Dreamweaver and take a quick look.
| | 00:37 | So in this little site that we are building,
the first thing we will look at is here;
| | 00:42 | the Title tag.
| | 00:44 | Now, what is the Title
tag and how does it fit in?
| | 00:46 | Well, if we go out, and look at this
page in the browser, we will see, on the
| | 00:52 | tab, it shows up the name and
also at the very top of the browser.
| | 00:58 | That's what the browser uses,
appropriately, to title your page.
| | 01:02 | Well, Google and many other
search engines rank that very high.
| | 01:06 | They figure if you're going to title
your page something, that must be important.
| | 01:10 | So make sure that it is,
make sure it's relevant.
| | 01:13 | Don't just put Homepage.
| | 01:15 | Next, we look at down in the Format
section here. Go ahead and click on the
| | 01:20 | Format tab, and see the Heading tags there?
| | 01:23 | Well, the spiders give weight or
priority to content on your page pretty much in
| | 01:28 | order of those tags.
| | 01:30 | From Heading 1 all the way down to Heading 6.
| | 01:33 | After that, they look at paragraph content.
| | 01:36 | Again, the search engines figure that if you
put something in a title, it must be important.
| | 01:41 | So again, make sure that the titles in
your website are important and make sense
| | 01:47 | for the product category.
| | 01:49 | Now we've looked at it from a
developer standpoint, let's look at it from the
| | 01:53 | point of adding content to your store.
| | 01:56 | So let's go ahead and jump out to
the store that we've been building.
| | 01:59 | Let's look at the content of the
store now from a search engine standpoint.
| | 02:04 | When you enter your products, what
shows up in your Product menu here are your
| | 02:08 | categories and subcategories that
you've entered in your database.
| | 02:12 | So the way they are written is important.
| | 02:14 | For example, Laptop Computers;
| | 02:16 | you wouldn't want to just say laptops,
because that could mean anything.
| | 02:20 | Laptop Computers is more specific.
| | 02:22 | It's better spider food.
| | 02:24 | So think about that when you're
creating your content and your categories
| | 02:28 | and your subcategories.
| | 02:30 | Next, in order of importance,
would be your H tags or title tags.
| | 02:34 | Well, in your Product Descriptions, the
name of your products are listed in H tags.
| | 02:39 | So you would want to make sure you name
your product something that makes sense.
| | 02:43 | You wouldn't want to just have the brand name;
| | 02:45 | you'd want to have something descriptive.
Even if you do include the brand name,
| | 02:49 | also say, for example, video camera.
| | 02:52 | Then the next thing to look at is the content.
| | 02:55 | So first of all, let's go over to
your Admin for a minute, and log in.
| | 03:01 | Okay, now that we're logged in,
let's go back to our site and Refresh.
| | 03:07 | As we've mentioned before,
see the little pencil.
| | 03:09 | That makes it easier to edit products as we go.
| | 03:11 | So let's look at the product on the
front end from a search engine standpoint.
| | 03:15 | Let's go ahead and look at the
details so we get the full description.
| | 03:19 | So we'd want to make sure the
title is good and the content.
| | 03:23 | Well, you can see right now
we are just using Greek text.
| | 03:26 | So let's do something about that.
| | 03:27 | Let's go ahead and Edit that product.
| | 03:30 | Again, there is the Display Name.
| | 03:32 | You want to make sure that's descriptive.
| | 03:33 | That's looking pretty good.
| | 03:34 | We will leave that as it is.
| | 03:36 | Now, we go to Descriptions.
| | 03:38 | Obviously, this Greek text isn't going to
do us much good in search engine ranking.
| | 03:42 | So let's replace that.
| | 03:44 | We will add-in some
descriptive text that makes sense.
| | 03:50 | First of all, you notice that we
say Digital Video Camera, HD Video.
| | 03:56 | The thing to think about is you want
to use Descriptive text that will help
| | 04:00 | categorize your product.
| | 04:02 | Now, let's go ahead and
add in a long description.
| | 04:10 | Again, when we create content for the
long description, we want to make sure we
| | 04:15 | use content that people are apt to search on.
| | 04:17 | That way, our products will be indexed properly.
| | 04:19 | For example, we use digital HD video,
1080P video, zoom capabilities, and we use
| | 04:28 | the brand name, again, if we didn't
use it in title, in case people are
| | 04:32 | searching on the brand name.
| | 04:33 | We want to not only describe the item
well, but use the proper terms that people
| | 04:38 | are apt to be searching on, so that when
the search engines index this, it index
| | 04:43 | this properly and
categorize this where we want to be.
| | 04:45 | Let's save this and now let's
go back out to the main site.
| | 04:52 | So let's go ahead and hit F5 and we
can see the information has been replaced
| | 04:58 | with actual information about this product.
| | 05:01 | If we go to the Homepage, we will see
the short description has been replaced
| | 05:07 | with the actual information.
| | 05:09 | That's a good process to go through
your store to add in content and also take
| | 05:13 | time to look at the content
from a search engine viewpoint.
| | 05:18 | One other topic we want to talk
about just briefly is so-called search
| | 05:21 | engine friendly URLs.
| | 05:23 | There was a time back when Yahoo!
| | 05:26 | was more of a directory and not an
indexing engine, where search engine friendly
| | 05:30 | URLs were very important.
| | 05:32 | But now, search engine technology has grown
to the point where it's not that important.
| | 05:37 | In fact, it's not important at all.
| | 05:38 | What do I mean by search engine friendly
URLs, and what's the difference between
| | 05:42 | that, and a dynamically delivered URL?
| | 05:45 | Well, let's just quickly look out
in amazon.com and let's just go ahead
| | 05:50 | and click on something.
| | 05:53 | In the address bar after the domain
name, is a long list of variables that's
| | 05:57 | passed to the database.
| | 05:59 | In a so-called search engine friendly URL,
this would be replaced with an actual
| | 06:05 | name or actual description.
| | 06:07 | But again, as far as search engine
optimization is not important, Google and
| | 06:12 | other algorithms have gotten smart
enough where they have no problem following
| | 06:16 | dynamically delivered at URLs.
| | 06:19 | So any expense or time spent on this
would be much better spent refining the
| | 06:24 | content of your site, so that it
describes the content well and gives the
| | 06:28 | spiders something really to index.
| | 06:31 | I do recommend that you learn a lot
more about Search Engine Optimization
| | 06:34 | and there are excellent courses available on
the topic in the lynda.com Training Library
| | 06:40 | But following guidelines that we've
just talked about, will go a long way just
| | 06:44 | to help you search engine optimize your
store which will drive more traffic to
| | 06:48 | your store and more sales.
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| Creating a Google Sitemap| 00:00 | A key element to getting your store
scene and properly indexed by Google is
| | 00:04 | creating and adding a Google
validated XML sitemap to your site. Let's look
| | 00:09 | at what this is and how to create one and
get it registered and validated by Google.
| | 00:13 | First of all what is an XML sitemap?
| | 00:15 | Well, it's an XML file that lists the
pages of your site in a way that the
| | 00:19 | search engine spiders can quickly digest.
| | 00:22 | It's a sure way to expose all the
content of your site to Google quickly.
| | 00:26 | So first of all let's create one for
your site, we're going to open an example
| | 00:30 | sitemap file these are available in your
course materials and there is the code.
| | 00:35 | Now the important thing to see here is
where it lists YourStoreURL and then down
| | 00:40 | here another URL for your other page.
| | 00:43 | There is basically one of these URL
lines separated out, so you can see it for
| | 00:49 | every page of your site, you add
those lines to this document and then the
| | 00:53 | spider comes and quickly crawls through all
those links and checks every one of those links.
| | 00:58 | That's why it's an excellent way to expose
all your content quickly to search engines.
| | 01:02 | So, you want to go in and
add the appropriate pages here.
| | 01:06 | But with a dynamic website for example
there may just be one results page or
| | 01:11 | search results for your
products all go to the results page.
| | 01:14 | So you wouldn't want to just list the
Results page once, because it wouldn't
| | 01:18 | expose all your products.
| | 01:20 | How do we get around that? Let's take a look.
| | 01:22 | First of all, let's scroll to the
bottom of the file here, so we can add a new
| | 01:25 | listing and we can see here that we
have a products page, well that's good, but
| | 01:31 | let's look at how to expose more your
products. Let's go out to the website
| | 01:35 | we've been building for a
moment and let's look at the URL.
| | 01:38 | We can see the URL above and it has
a product list page, and then it has
| | 01:43 | the question mark (?)
| | 01:44 | and a category and the category
ID and the secondary category ID.
| | 01:48 | These are the variables that open the
page as we see it and that's different
| | 01:52 | with every grouping or
every page search that we have.
| | 01:56 | So, what we can do is for each one of
our categories, we can browse to the
| | 02:01 | category listing and then
copy the question mark (?)
| | 02:04 | and then everything after it and on
some sites this can be really long.
| | 02:08 | Then let's go back to our XML file in
Dreamweaver and we'll put it here right
| | 02:13 | after the PHP, so that variable is there.
| | 02:17 | Okay, so we've got that one. Let's go
ahead and pasted in another one and we'll
| | 02:24 | delete that variable out.
| | 02:28 | Now let's go to another page and here
we're in the Lawn Mowers category. So
| | 02:33 | let's copy that again including the
question mark then let's go back to our XML
| | 02:37 | document and add that in.
| | 02:40 | By doing this and listing all your
product categories, you'll make sure that
| | 02:44 | search engine spiders follow these links
directly to those categories and expose
| | 02:48 | all your product and not missing any.
| | 02:50 | Some shopping cart applications actually
do this for you or provide a tool to do
| | 02:55 | this for you. Cartweaver for example does.
| | 02:58 | If it doesn't then you'll have to do
it like this manually, but either way
| | 03:02 | it's definitely worth the effort to
make sure you're exposing all the data on
| | 03:06 | your site, all the products and
therefore all the product descriptions, to
| | 03:09 | search engines, because that can
really help increase the exposure and the
| | 03:12 | ranking of your site.
| | 03:14 | After you created your XML sitemap, you're
going to want to register it with Google.
| | 03:18 | So, how you do that?
| | 03:19 | Let's just briefly look at Google.
| | 03:22 | The Google sitemap service is part of
the Webmaster tools, so I would recommend
| | 03:26 | signing up for Webmaster tools account
if you haven't already. And then go ahead
| | 03:30 | and login and then when you come into
the site, you'll see listed the sites that
| | 03:38 |
| | 03:39 | you have added your webmaster account.
| | 03:41 | If you need to add a site just go ahead
and click here and you can add the site.
| | 03:45 | Let's go ahead and look at the site.
And this gives a lot of information about
| | 03:48 | your site. But what we're looking at
here is right there the sitemap listing.
| | 03:52 | You'll see this particular site has one
registered and the Status is good. And if
| | 03:57 | you click on that it'll give you
information about when the last time it was
| | 04:00 | spidered and if its approved or not.
| | 04:02 | Checking this you know that Google is
accessing your site and indexing it.
| | 04:07 | It's an important step to go through.
| | 04:10 | A Google validated XML sitemap is an
important feature to add your site to
| | 04:14 | ensure that Google not only knows
your site is on the Web, but that it has
| | 04:18 | its best chance of thoroughly and
properly indexing it and exposing the
| | 04:22 | content of all your products.
| | 04:23 | All this will help get your store
better ranking and bring in more
| | 04:26 | potential customers.
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| Linking to social networks| 00:00 | Let's take a moment and talk about social media.
| | 00:02 | Social media is just too big to be
ignored when it comes to promoting your site.
| | 00:07 | Participating and giving you and your
store a presence on the social network is
| | 00:11 | an effective way to promote your
business to an ever-growing audience.
| | 00:15 | First of all you want to create a presence.
| | 00:17 | Join and participate, sign up for
Facebook, on Twitter, maybe start a blog.
| | 00:22 | Start to participate in the
community of social networking.
| | 00:26 | Once you do that, you can begin to
drive traffic to your site and also drive
| | 00:29 | traffic from your site to
your social networking presence.
| | 00:32 | Remember, it's an opportunity to
interact with your customers and that's
| | 00:36 | extremely important.
| | 00:38 | Once you have a presence online,
don't be afraid to show it off.
| | 00:41 | You can do this by adding
icons to your site in Dreamweaver.
| | 00:44 | Let's go ahead and look at that.
| | 00:46 | You can develop this and work it into
your site aesthetically. But the point is,
| | 00:50 | don't be afraid to drive
traffic to your social media presence.
| | 00:53 | I highly recommend that you
learn more about social media.
| | 00:56 | There are excellent courses on the
lynda.com Training Library on the topic.
| | 01:00 | Social media, or as I prefer to call it
social networking, is literally changing
| | 01:04 | the way mankind communicates. It's not a fad.
| | 01:08 | It's not going away.
| | 01:09 | And learning more about it and
using it to better communicate with your
| | 01:12 | customers is a huge opportunity.
| | 01:14 | You've gone through all the time and
effort to develop and build your site and
| | 01:18 | put it online. Don't miss out on
one of the best ways to promote it.
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ConclusionWrap-up| 00:00 | Thank you for watching Building an
eCommerce site with Dreamweaver and PHP.
| | 00:04 | I hope you enjoyed the course and that
what you learned will help you develop
| | 00:08 | eCommerce sites for both you and your clients.
| | 00:11 | If you would like some more information
about some of the topics that we covered
| | 00:13 | in this course, you may want to look
at Dreamweaver CS5 with PHP and MySQL.
| | 00:18 | This course dives much deeper into the
development of actual PHP and MySQL databases.
| | 00:24 | Another one you might want to look
at is Social Media Marketing with
| | 00:27 | Facebook and Twitter.
| | 00:28 | So you can promote your new eCommerce
Web site, or you might want to look at
| | 00:33 | Analyzing Your Web Site to Improve SEO.
| | 00:37 | Another good resource is the Adobe
Dreamweaver Forum, especially the Dreamweaver
| | 00:40 | Application Development Forum.
| | 00:43 | That forum focuses more on this type
of topic where websites are interacting
| | 00:46 | with databases and it's a good resource.
| | 00:49 | Finally, since we use Cartweaver as an
example, you might want to stop by the
| | 00:53 | Cartweaver Community Forums.
| | 00:55 | The forms are dedicated to talking about
developing eCommerce sites and there's
| | 00:58 | a lot of good information to get there.
| | 01:00 | So I hope you enjoyed
this course, and thank you.
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