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Creating Your Storefront Using the Quick-Access Buttons

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Last Updated: February 26, 2009 2:31 PM

When you first set up Quick Shopping Cart, a sequence of quick-access buttons display on the Quick Shopping Cart Home Page.

These buttons provide easy access to help you set up the framework of your storefront.

NOTE: Once you publish your store, the quick-access buttons disappear as these are features that, once set up, don't change frequently. You can access features that were previously available through quick-access buttons by using Quick Shopping Cart's menus.

Using the quick-access buttons, you can modify options in several categories.

Storefront Information

Use Storefront Information to provide basic information about your business. This information displays on the storefront, as well as in the various reports and administrative features of Quick Shopping Cart.

Only the Company Name is required. All other information is optional.

Images

You can upload images (logo, favicon, welcome, and invoice) that display on the correlating section of your site. To add an image, click Upload and browse to the image on your computer. Selecting a new image removes the existing one. If you have an image selected and want to remove it without replacing it, click Clear Image.

You can access the Storefront Information page using the menus: from the Storefront menu, select Information.

For more information on using images, see About Images.
For more information on favicons, see Creating a Favicon.

Templates

Templates is where you determine the look for your store. You must select a template. At this stage, you cannot build your own look by importing or editing an HTML design.

The current template is shown in the Your Template area. To preview a template, click the template thumbnail. Click Change My Template to browse and select a different template. The Templates tab displays. In the Store section, click Change Template to activate the Template Selector.

From the Templates menu, scroll through the templates available in the Category you previously selected during setup or click Filter to limit the displayed templates. You can filter the results by Category or by Templates that work with specific products. Click on the product(s) that you want to use with your template. For example, if you want to match your Web site to your shopping cart, highlight those products to display templates that work with both of them. Change the color scheme of your template by clicking one of the color swatches next to the thumbnail of the template. After you decide on a template, click OK.

Once selected, you can change templates at any time by going to the Template tab.

For more information on template customization, see:
Changing the Color Scheme of Your Storefront.
Customizing Fonts and Colors.

Taxes

Taxes is where you configure how to collect tax payments in your store. In most cases, this option only needs to be set one time. When a shopper purchases an item, he or she is presented with a charge labeled Taxes: as a line item in the order. If you select No Tax, then the sub-total does not include a charge for tax.

Ask your lawyer or accountant to verify the rules for collecting taxes based on online sales, since each state may have unique rules.

Select a tax option, and then click Next to save the tax settings and move to the next step. If you select VAT, you need to establish the VAT percentage on a product-by-product basis in the product editor page. If you select Flat Tax or State-based Tax, you need to set the Tax rate as a percentage. However, it is not necessary to include the "%" symbol when setting the Tax rate.

For more information on setting tax options, see Configuring Tax Options.

Shipping

Shipping is where you configure the shipping options available to your customers. In most cases, this option only needs to be set one time. When the shopper purchases an item, he or she is presented with the shipping options you define on this page, and a charge labeled Shipping is included as a line item in the order.

If you do not select a shipping option, then the sub-total does not include a shipping charge. The Custom option lets you charge shipping based on fixed or weight-based prices that you determine. Use this option when you want to collect a shipping fee but want to be able to arrange the exact shipping method yourself. If you select the Fixed or Weight-based option, you cannot use any other carrier. To offer more than one shipping option, you can select both U.S. Postal Service and UPS.

It is important to accurately define the weight and dimensions of each product in the product catalog because those settings are used to determine the precise shipping fee to charge your customers.

Click Enable next to the shipping option(s) you want to offer, and then go to the next configuration page to define a handling fee, specific shipping options, and prices.

Payment

Payment is where you configure the payment methods available to your customers. In most cases, this option only needs to be set one time. When a shopper purchases an item, he or she is presented with the payment options you define on this page.

To accept credit cards through your store, you must have an SSL certificate attached to your account. If your account is not secure (meaning you do not have an SSL certificate), you cannot select any of the payment gateway or POS credit card options.

Click Enable next to the payment methods you want to offer. You may need to enter account setup or configuration information for options that require additional information, and then click Save. Otherwise, click Next to save the payment settings and move to the next step.

NOTE: You can select only one option from each section. When you enable a given payment method, all other payment methods within that same section are disabled.

Products

In this section, you can add products and build your product catalog. This page enables you to detail each product and define how it is presented it in the store.

Part Number, Title, and Short and Full Description information are required. Other options are set to a default of No and you can leave the list price at $0.00 if you want.

Once created, you can edit products at any time by going to the Catalog menu and selecting Products.

Images

You can upload a picture of the product on this page, or you can use the default No Image Shown picture. Change the image by uploading a new image, or remove the image by selecting Default.

Click Save Product to save the new product and add another. Using the Wizard, click Next to save the product and move to the next step.

For more information on using images, see About Images.

Publish

Publish is where you preview and publish your store.

When you publish your store, it becomes available on the World Wide Web. However, it can take between 24-48 hours for the updated Web pages to be completely distributed over the Internet. Technically, this is simply a result of Domain Name Server (DNS) propagation and the amount of time it takes for any Web page to be made fully accessible on the Internet.

Click Preview Site to view a sample of your store before publishing. Click Start Publish to upload and publish your store. A status indicator displays the publishing progress. Once the publishing process is complete, click the link to your storefront shown on the bottom of the page to view your site.

For more information on this process, see Publishing Your Storefront.