Building a Web Shop with Velocity

~ Branding and Look and Feel
 

The branding of your idea is of course very important and it is a message that is to be handled consistently with the ideas of your offering in the market, your idea on colors and presentation, communication style and such.

Your shop needs the image that you desire and naturally there are so many examples of approaches.

Atol Solutions uses a suite of templates that can be selected from for the jumpstart at minimal investment cost, naturally we have our preferred templates that are proven and tested, but you can choose for other types as well, which we will then prove and harden for operations. All templates can be adjusted for look-and-feel and design for interfacing with your clients and visitors.

Naturally you need to think about your logo and marketing expressions and promotion of your products. In all those steps we are available for consultation or to create this

Essentially, to give you needed flexibility to promote and market your shop and offerings.

Functionality you need to think of are; private (club) sales including events, invitations; flexible coupons (pricing rules) with ability to restrict to stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories. For example: discounts in (%, fixed mount, free shipping, buy x, get y free); catalog promotional pricing by percentage or fixed amount with ability to restrict to stores, categories, products; free shipping option; multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts; bundled products; customer group specific pricing and group specific tier pricing; landing page for campaigns you want to run.

Enable M-Commerce with mobile-optimized versions of your site to attract and convert customers on the go. Automatically detect mobile browsers and show the mobile-optimized version of your site and provide either the full site catalog or a smaller selection of products tailored for the mobile customers. Mobile transactions will grow exponentially over the next 5 years, and the tool enables retailers and manufacturers to provide customers with a fully mobile, multi-channel experience, especially Iphone.

Naturally your shop needs to be tailored for search engines like Google to maximize your visits and attracting new customers through search engine friendly(SEF) URL structure and SEO tools.
 

Increase customer satisfaction with self-service functions. Customers can access feature-rich accounts to view order statuses and receive tracking information directly on the site, as well as submit requests via contact us. Authorized people are able to view customer account information, including not only the order history, but also items in customers' shopping carts and wish lists, to effectively answer questions and complete orders for customers via a Call Center dashboard.

Functionality is to include: Contact Us form; feature-rich customer accounts; order history with status updates; order tracking from account; forgot password email from front-end and administration panel; order and account update emails; customizable order emails; create and edit orders in the back-office.
 

Allowing for product catalogs to be set up to support your business and the up-sell, cross-sell and related items increase average order values, includes functionalities like: multiple images per product; product image zoom-in capability; product reviews; related products; stock availability; multi-tier pricing up-sell; product option selection; grouped products view; add to wish list; send to a friend with Email.

Manage the fully dynamic catalog via the intuitive back-office interface. The flexible catalog system includes various options for the display of items, while products can also be imported and exported for batch updates offline and·allowing for integration via web services with existing back-office systems to make the management of your online channel even more efficient.

Catalog management includes functions like inventory management with back-ordered items, minimum and maximum quantities; batch import and export of catalog; google base Integration; simple, configurable (e.g. size, color, etc.), bundled and grouped products; virtual products; downloadable/digital Products; customer personalized products - upload text for embroidery, monogramming, etc.; tax rates per location, customer group and product type; attribute sets for quick product creation of different item types; create store-specific attributes on the fly; media manager with automatic image resizing and watermarking; advanced pricing rules and support for special prices (see marketing tools); search results rewrites and redirects.

~ Order Management
 

Your company needs to view orders, create invoice/receipt and shipment records for Sales Orders and issue credit memos (refunds). Customers can re-order previous orders from their account, while authorized personnel are able to view full order histories and create orders in the back-end.

Functionality to include: View, edit, create and fulfill orders;·create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfillment; print invoices and packing slips; all center (phone) order creation and it to include ability to create new customer, or select existing customer and view shopping cart, wish list, last ordered items, and compared products list, as well as select addresses, give discounts and assign custom prices; create re-orders for customers from administration panel; Email notifications of orders.
 

Payment requirements for your shop the tool needs to be integrated with a variety of major payment gateways out of the box (credit cards), as well as alternative payment methods from PayPal, Amazon and Google and Ideal.

Customers may also be allowed to pay via check/money order, or purchase order and additional payment extensions payment requirements may include: customer store credits; Configurable to authorize and charge, or authorize only and charge on creation of invoices;·integration with Amazon payments (checkout by Amazon and Amazon "simple pay") or Paypal, gift certificates/cards (physical and virtual). Accept checks/money/purchase Order.

Shipping requirements include tailoring to the way you ship. Display real-time carrier rates, with support for account specific rates, flat or table rates to your customers. free shipping discounts can be created for order amounts, or as part of specific marketing promotions, and the ability for customers to ship items in an order to multiple addresses is sure to increase sales of gift purchases.

Functionality to include: Integrated for real-time shipping rates from UPS, UPS XML (account rates), FedEx (account rates), USPS and DHL; shipping to multiple addresses in one order; On-site order tracking from customer accounts; multiple shipments per order; ability to specify allowed destination countries per method; flat rate shipping per order or item; free shipping.
Check-out requirement includes: guest checkout, an intuitive and efficient one-page checkout process and the ability to integrate with a variety of payment gateways and alternative payment methods makes the checkout process a breeze for your customers. Allow customers to ship items to multiple addresses, input gift messages and more, all in a secure checkout process.

Functionality to include: one-page checkout; SSL security support for orders on both front-end and back-end; shipping to multiple addresses in one order; Checkout without account/guest checkout; shopping cart with tax and shipping estimates; checkout with account to use address book; option to create account at beginning of checkout; accept gift messages per order and per item;·saved shopping carts with configurable expiration time.

~ Global Reach?

Your platform is to allow for the expansion of business or simply offering multiple versions of your site to meet the specific needs of customers, and is available in·60 languages and supports multiple currencies, taxes and payment methods. The solution allows for full internationalization of your online channel. Functionality to include: multi-lingual;·support for multiple currencies, tax rates, WEEE/DEEE in EU; localization; configurable list of allowed countries for: site registration; shipping destination and billing addresses with ability to specify per shipping method; billing addresses with ability to specify per payment method.