E-Store Features

More than just a budget Shopping Cart!

E-store is short for electronic store. There is a wide range of e-store and shopping cart software on the market offering varying levels of functionality. Most shopping carts and e-shops only offer the catalogue and order page. With an option to accept payments through paypal. If you want credit card processing, you would have to organise a payment gateway through a third party usually at an exhorbitant price, and then most likely you would need the services of a web programmer to integrate the two. Most of the time you would have to settle for the one size fits all approach to layout and design of a budget e-store which is usually pretty plain and most often doesn’t look very professional. It certainly wouldn’t reflect the look and design of your company image.

Fairfax eCommerce supplies an all inclusive e-commerce solution. It incorporates a payment gateway that utilises the look and feel of your website which is designed to suit your business’ corporate image   The only thing you need to organise is the content for your website and a merchant bank account to accept the payments.

Our e-stores are entirely customisable and we can develop custom functionality to suit every type of ecommerce need.

The Fairfax eCommerce Content Management System

The heart of our software is our comprehensive custom Content Management System (CMS). The CMS is the control centre of your e-store and through the CMS you will be able to edit the content on your e-store with ease. Your e-store CMS is used to:

• Create, delete and edit products and categories in your catalogue
• Edit product and category descriptions and change the prices of your products.
• Adjust the postage/delivery rates assigned to your products
• Create, delete and edit special offers associated with your e-store
• Manage your orders and invoices
• Manage your customer accounts
• Manage staff access

The CMS is a complete website editing solution. Designed to work in modules, the Fairfax eCommerce CMS provides management for many other website features such as:

• Web page content editing
• Announcements and News aricles
• Custom Functionality (upon request)

Editable Website Content

Our powerful internet based electronic catalogue is the main component of your e-store. The catalogue is completely customisable so you can create it however you wish. Your catalogue can be as simple or as complex as required. It may simply be a list of your products, however, it can also be multi layered so you can create multiple categories each containing multiple subcategories which in turn may have any number of products or subcategories of their own. This allows you to create a catalogue that is easy for your customers to find exactly what they are looking for by having a simple and intuitive catalogue structure that is specific to your product line.

Both categories and products have two levels of description. The first level or ‘Brief Description’ is displayed with an image (if requred) in the category/product list. Each has a ‘more info’ link that would then display more in-depth information about that particular product or category on it’s own page. This is only utilised if you have the need to display more in-depth information. If you do not wish to have extra information then it can be disabled.

The product/category descriptions are edited using the CMS (see Editable Content), and the various products and catagories can be organised using drag and drop method, making maintaining your catalogue easy.

Custom Functionality

Developing custom functionality is a specialty of Fairfax eCommerce and one of the main design factors considered when we developed our customisable website system. Fairfax e-stores are modular in design and therefore completely customisable which allows for extremely powerful websites at a fraction of the cost of building them from scratch.

Some custom functionality currently in development includes an interactive educational website and a complete booking and payment solution for a small tour operator.

If you require a specific function that is not yet offered then just enquire about having our talented software engineers develop that functionailty to your specifications. You will be surprised how accessable our affordable custom websites actually are.

Credit Card Processing

Included with your e-store is a secure credit card processing page and payment gateway. The secure page is designed to reflect the look and feel of your whole e-store so customers feel assured that they are still dealing with the same company. This is a problem when using third party gateways, just as customers are ready to enter their bank details the page has a completely different look, reflecting the gateway company, not yours, and this can scare potential customers off at the last minute.

Another benefit is that third party payment gateways can cost more than your entire site after paying setup fees, annual fees and transaction fees. Then there is the cost of your time to research all the various gateways on offer to find the best price.

All of these costs, except transaction fees, are included in the cost of your e-store. Our transaction fees are also much less than all the third party payment gateways.

Postage and Handling

You are able to set the postage costs for each product according to your needs. By determining the mothods which you may need to charge for postage you can create postage rules which you then apply to particular products. At present the e-store uses a flat rate postage rule though if your needs are more specific then new rules will be developed to cater for your specific needs.

Special Offers and Discounts

You can create special discounts and apply them to particular products or you could grant a certain customer a discount on all of your products. The discount rules are very flexible and allow you to create specials at will and start and stop these specials in real time to reflect any marketing you may wish to conduct.

Order Management

The Fairfax eCommerce CMS includes an order management facility to help you keep track of your current orders. You are given notification of new orders and are able to update the status of orders. Any change in an orders status will be automatically reflected in the customer accounts page for your customers’ convenience.

Customer Online Accounts

Customers can edit their contact and delivery details and view any past purchases or outstanding invoices. However since this e-store system is not designed to be an archive customers will only be able to access invoices up to 1 year old.

Customer Accounts Management

The Content Management System also has functionality to view customer details, edit, add and delete customers.

Staff Accounts Management

You can create accounts with limited access for staff members. You may want to allow a staff member to view and fill invoices but not view or edit any of the other material. You could allow a staff member access to the catalogue to edit, add or delete products but not view the accounts. This allows flexibility of access rights to suit your needs.

Editable Content

Much of the content that appears on your website (your home page welcome message, for example) can be edited through the CMS. This information is edited through an innovative online editor, meaning that you are not required to know HTML to be able to create formatted content.

This allows you to make small changes to your content without having to go through the time and expense of having a web-designer do it for you. If you desire sophisticated content requiring the skills of a graphic designer or copy editor, these services can be provided at an extra cost.

Your own Look and Feel

The look and feel of your website can be custom designed to reflect your business identity. Or if you prefer, you can simply use our stock standard look and feel.

Customer Forum

We can integrate a forum into your website for your customers to have a place to discuss and/or enquire about your products and services. This can be a real benefit to an e-store as you develop a community of people that via your forum help to market your product. It can also be a valuable tool to promote new developments for your product and to collect quality customer feedback. A forum is an invaluable tool for keeping up to date with the needs and wants of your market.