AbleCommerce Features & Design Guide

This guide contains some of the items that you may want to consider when deciding on features to include and the site design.

A complete list of features for AbleCommerce 5.0 can be found at: http://www.ecommercesitesformanagersofmailorders.com/CompleteFeatureList.cfm. Or you can call or e-mail Web 2 Market if you have any questions.

Navigation Features:

Panels: AbleCommerce 5 allows for menu panels on the left and right side of the main content area. The default panels are: Search, Categories, My Basket, Specials (one randomly chosen sale item), What's Hot (the top selling items), What's New (one randomly chosen new item), and a custom navigation links panel. The custom navigation links panel can be different for the left and right sides of the page.
Product/Category Navigation: AbleCommerce 5 has several ways to navigate between products and categories. You can include Next/Previous Category and Next/Previous Product links at the top and bottom of the product and category listing pages. There is also the option to have a 'bread crumb trail' at the top of category and product pages that lists out the directory path to the page you are on. e.g. Top/Saddles/Western Saddles Third, are Category Tabs. These will display all the sub-categories for a current category. They are displayed at the top of an item listing.And finally, there is the Category Panel that can be placed on either the left or right side of the page (or both or neither).
http://www.sheets2love.com and http://www.bigdweb.com/ are good examples of the navigation features. They incorporate many of the items listed above.

Wishlist:

Your customers can keep track of items they want to buy in the future in wishlists. They can have multiple wishlists and can send wishlists to friends.

E-mail To Friend:

Your customers can automatically e-mail a link to the current product to friends along with a personal message.

Related Products:

AbleCommerce can automatically display links to related or suggested products. See http://www.celticseasalt.com/LIGHT_GREY_SHAKER_JAR_P796C8.cfm for an example.

Vendors and Affiliates:

Affiliates allow you to provide others with financial incentives to drive traffic and sales to your store. Each affiliate is given a unique ID. Affiliates can refer customers to a store. Those customers will be associated with the affiliate. Merchants can report on the number and amount of sales as well as the number of referred customers by affiliate.
All products in your catalog can have an associated vendor. You can then report on products as sold by vendor. You can also notify vendors when their products are ordered for drop-ship capabilities.

Coupons:

ESD - Electronic Software Delivery:

AbleCommerce 5.0 can now keep track of electronic files sold via download (programs, e-books, music, etc.). The sophisticated capabilities include an email manager, license manager, and file upload manager. It will automate tasks such as product installation readme's, download limits and time-outs, and emailing of software license keys.

Kitting - Selling of multiple products:

Kitting allows multiple products to be sold together in a package. Multiple components can be attached to each kit that allow very flexible configurations and customer options. Some examples of product kitting are gift baskets, computer systems, and items with add-ons or accessories.

Payment Methods:

AbleCommerce has built-in payment options for: American Express, Carte Blanche, Discover, Fax Order, Mastercard, Call Me, Diners Club, en Route, JCB, Visa, Purchase Orders (New in 5.0), PayPal (New in 5.0)

Customer Groups:

Membership groups allow for any number of pricing levels. An example might be WholeSale customers, or Retailers. Groups can have specialized pricing or payment methods.

Warehouses:

Configure the Warehouse (ship from) locations for your products. When you add a product into inventory, you can select the ship from location.When shipping is calculated, the ship from addresses are used to determine the available methods and rates. If an order contains products shipped from different warehouses, the order will be broken into multiple shipments grouped by the ship from location. Each shipment will be charged shipping fees separately. In this scenario, it is possible for different shipping methods to be used for each shipment.