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eCommerce: Getting Started (Third Party Store)

To determine which eCommerce solution you are on, see How do I know if I am using Native eCommerce or Third Party eCommerce?

Introduction

Drive online sales for your customers with powerful, full-featured, fully responsive online stores. You’ll create fantastic shopping experiences that enable your clients to enjoy rich online sales with the following features:

  • flexible product pages
  • auto-synced catalogs
  • secure checkout
  • multi-channel sales
  • coupon and gift card options
  • delivery and pickup scheduling
  • and so much more

Follow the steps below to get started with your eCommerce store.

Note

In addition to having more products, each E-Store plan has more features and functionality. For more information, see Store Plans (Third Party Store).

Store Overview

Stores are broken into two pieces: the store design, and the E-Store Control Panel. The store design includes widgets that allow you to display your products on your site so customers can add products to their cart and checkout. The E-Store Control Panel allows you to configure the content that will be available in the store widgets (for example, products and categories, product options and variations, shipping locations and cost, available payment methods, and so on).

Note

Your store cannot contain more than one product or category with the same name.

Edit Store Design

The following widgets are available once you’ve added a store to your site and allow you to customize the design of your store. To see the store widgets and add them to your site, in the side panel, click Widgets and search for Store. Alternatively, click Sell Online, and then click Add Store Widget.

  • Main Store (this is added automatically when you add the store to your site)
  • Cart
  • Search
  • Categories
Warning

You must include the Main Store widget on some page in your site in order for the store to function. Otherwise, customers will receive a 404 error when they click a product. Note that the Main Store widget is added by default when you add a store.

All of the store widgets allow for customizable design. For more information, see Customize Store Design (Third Party Store)

Add a Store

To add a store to your site:

  1. In the side panel, click Sell Online.
  2. Select a store plan you want to add (Standard Store, Advanced Store, Unlimited Store), and click Upgrade.
  3. Click Upgrade your store.

Alternatively, you can create a site with a pre-built store by selecting a template from the Online Store template category.

Store Control Panel

The Store Control Panel includes everything that is configured in the backend operations of your store. To access the E-Store Control Panel, in the side panel, click Sell Online, and then click Manage Store.

Add and Edit Products

Add all products in the E-Store Control Panel to create your catalog of products. All products added to the catalog will appear in the products menu. For more information, see Add and Edit Products in the Store (Third Party Store). Additionally, you can upload products using a CSV file to the store to more quickly set up your products menu. For more information, see Import Products to Your Store (Third Party Store).

Note

Special characters are not supported for product names and may cause issues with the product's URL.

Location Settings

For your store to work, you need to provide units of currency and weight for your products. The default is the U.S. dollar and kilogram, but you may wish to change these to better suit your location.

To configure your location settings:

  1. Go to the E-Store Control Panel, click Settings, and then click General.
  2. Click Regional Settings.

Payment

You need a way to get paid. By default, PayPal and Stripe are the simplest ways to let your customers pay you, but we allow for a huge variety of other payment methods.

To configure payment options:

  1. Go to the E-Store Control Panel, and click Payment.
  2. Click the PayPal, Square, or Stripe options to select a payment method, or click Add Manual Payment Method to use a different method.

For more information, see About Payment Options (Third Party Store), Online Payments (Third Party Store), and Offline Payments (Third Party Store).

Sales Channels

To make the most of your eCommerce store, integrate your store with numerous sales channels to market and sell your products.

To configure sales channels:

  1. In the side panel, click Sell Online, and then click Manage Store to access the E-Store Control Panel.
  2. Under Sales Channels, click Overview or any of the other options, as applicable.

For more information, see the following:

Shipping

If you are selling physical goods, set up shipping for your store to make sure your customers cover the cost of shipping. If you are not selling physical goods, disable shipping for those products.

To configure shipping:

  1. Go to the E-Store Control Panel, and click Shipping.
  2. To add shipping and pickup methods, click +Add Shipping Method or +Add In-store Pickup.

For more information, see the following:

Additional Resources

Your store is ready to go! See the following resources for more information on additional features you may want to include:

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