E-commerce Tools

Graphic Alliance’s E-commerce Module (GA:EM) is an online web-service that may be used by any site to provide a flexible and sophisticated suite of online shopping tools. It is set up as a SOAP service and can be integrated into existing systems or operated via add-on extensions to the CMS. The functionality covered by GA:EM falls into three distinct areas:

• Product Catalogue management
• Customer management
• Order management

After having logged into the system, users are greeted with a dashboard of information. After specifying the Date Range of choice, the screen displays information such as:
 

• Sales growth: chart showing total sales either monthly, weekly, or day-to-day
• Category sales: % of products sold, value of each category
• New orders: link to list of all the latest orders to be fulfilled
• Overdue orders: placed orders to be moved into picking queue
• Picking queue: orders to be picked and shipped immediately
• Top sellers: most popular items and number of sales for each

In this section customer orders are managed from initial placement through to fulfilment and delivery. Different screens show different parts of the order management process. When a New Order is placed, administrators move these into the Picking Queue. Once items are picked and packed, the order moves into the Shipping Queue and finally the Completed Orders screen. Prospective customers, who have registered their details but did not click ‘Buy’ at checkout are listed in the Incomplete Orders screen. Transactions rejected by the bank or cancelled by the customer during the payment processing stage are listed in Failed / Cancelled Orders.

A complete, searchable list of all online customers can be found in the Customer Management area. The listing illustrates the number of orders made by each customer, their respective total spend on the site, and whether they are an active customer. Click on the magnifying glass icon (far right) and a full profile of the customer appears with data captured, billing details, delivery address and full order history.

In this area the ordering and hierarchy of products can be managed easily. Administrators can add/ edit/remove product categories from the front-end pages. At this point it is also possible to add new product categories, and change the order that different categories appear throughout the site. The listing also includes a handy reference to the number of products included within that category.

After having managed the different categories of products, this area enables administrators to micro-manage the products in the pre-defined categories. The product list displays the entire list of different products including variations (e.g. size, colour, style). The list is not only keyword searchable but also there are options for filtering the list (e.g. by category, type, brand, price, stock level, and status). Products can be easily added into the catalogue on this screen and different collections can be created and managed. If you click ‘View’ a different display appears which visually groups the products that are directly related (e.g. size, colour, and style variations).

On selecting an item from the Product List, an editing suite enables changes to the item’s attributes (e.g. description for keyword optimisation (SEO), product code, price, etc). The ‘Group’ function enables admin staff to associate different versions of the same product (e.g. size, colour, style). Different versions can have shared attributes (i.e. change one, change all) or individual attributes (i.e. different photos for each colour as required). It is also possible to relate with other products (‘Complete This Look’) and group with other popular products (‘Previous Customers Also Bought…’). Finally it is possible to add/change/remove product imagery and turn on the ‘zoom’ functionality.

A dedicated section of the system is given to creating new special offer schemes and managing existing initiatives.

The master administrators can grant staff access to different singular pages or the entire e-commerce system.

The e-commerce system also records invaluable ongoing data including an up-to-the-minute listing of the Most Viewed Products, all the Top Search Terms that draw visitors to the site, and Top Referring Sites.