How to create an online store

This tutorial explains how you can create an e-commerce website thanks to the Store block.
Building your own online store is done in 5 easy steps:

1. Create a website and add a store
2. Add product categories
3. Insert product details
4. Activate the secured online payments
5. Optimize your store for search-engines
   

The Store block allows you to show and sell products on your website. You can find a demo of this block on the Online store page of our block demo website.

1. Create a website and add a store

The first step to build your own e-commerce website is to add, on new page, a Store block. Create a new page on your website, and drag/drop the icon on the top left of the page (for more details about how to create a website and add blocks, please check the guide on our website creation tool). Then, save your website to start the store configuration.

2. Create categories

When the Online Store block is selected, the properties, shown on the bottom left of the website creation page, are:

"Manage categories": this button opens a window which lets you add, delete and modify the product categories. You can select the categories which will be displayed in the selected store block (for example, only the clothes: t-shirts, socks, but not the shoes, which will be sold on another page). "Auto-size": if this box is checked, the block is resized automatically when its content changes. Otherwise, a vertical scrollbar can appear. "Payment providers": this button opens a window which allows you to configure the payment provides. For now, all the payments are done with PayPal: so, you can enter the PayPal account email address on which the sales will be credited. "Activate cart": when this box is checked, the visitors can add your products to a shopping cart, order them and pay directly from your website. Only the websites with the Pro package can activate the shopping cart. Nevertheless , websites with the Premium package can test this functionnality for free and without commitment for 1 month!

In order to create a first category, click on the "Manage categories" button, then choose a name in the bottom left input (do not choose a name too long, 15 characters maximum) and click on the "Add category" button. If no category is selected, all the products are displayed. So, select the categories you would like to appear in the selected block, by ticking the boxes under "Show in this block".

You can create as many categories as you want, and they can be modified at any time. When the categories are ready, the next step is to add products.

3. Add products

To add a product in your online store, click on the button.

The above form allows you to configure a product:

• Title: do not choose a title too long (idealy less than 12 characters). You can add details about the product in the description.
• Images: You can show up to 4 photos of your product. On your website, when visitors click on the thumbnails, the picture will be displayed on full-screen.
  
• Categories: select the categories of the product. For example, "shoes" and "men"
  
• Price: in euros only at the moment. Please contact us if you need another currency.
• Visibility: untick the box to hide the product. You will of course be able to show it again whenever your want.
• Stock: if the payments are activated, you can configure the number of items that can be bought by a customer.
  

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• Options : you can eventually configure options for your product (for example, sizes "S ; M ; L ; XL" or colors "White ; Blue ; Green ; Red"). A drop-down menu will allow visitors to choose one of these options before adding the product to their shopping cart.
• Description: add a full description of your product thanks to a powerful text editor.

You can create as many products as you need, but do not forget to keep your website organised and to sort the products into categories in order to help visitors find what they are looking for.

4. Activate the shopping cart and the secured payments

In the properties, click ot the "Payment providers" button, then in the window, enter your PayPal email address. If you do not have any account yet, you can create one on the page Open a Business Web Payment PayPal account. PayPal is a trusted and secured service to receive payment from the Internet.

Ttick the box "Activate cart". If you have a Pro website, the e-commerce functionnalité is included in your package.
If your website is Premium, a message invites you to test this functionnality for free and without commitment for 1 month!

The payments are directly credited in you PayPal account: we take no commission on sales.

User account management and shipping calculations

Once the order confirmed, the custumer is redirected to PayPal. He can then log into his PayPal account and pay.
Thanks to PayPal, the custumer account management is included. Custumers with a PayPal account will not have to create yet another account.
As soon as the payment is processed, you receive an email with the order details and the shipping address of your custumer.

You can also configure your PayPal account to automatically add shipping costs^(*): My account > Profile > Shipping Calculations. Several methods are available, flat amount or percentage, cost and price ranges... You can find all the details about the shipping costs directly on the Shipping Calculations page.
(*) You must have a Web Payment PayPal account to access this functionnality.

5. Optimize you online store ranking in search-engines

When your online store is ready, the last step is to find custumers.
SiteW helps you deal with the SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

• All the store pages (categories and products) have an address (URL) and a title using your product/category name. Thus, pages will have a better ranking in search engines.
• All the pages are listed in your sitemap.xml file. Thus, search engines can add them to their results easier and faster.
• To help you follow your SEO, the statistics page shows which categories and which products are the most consulted, and the keywords typed by visitors to find you website.
• When you change your website (Premium and Pro), SiteW contacts automatically the main search engines to help them update their results.

You can find tips to optimize your Google ranking in the guides: Better Google ranking and Follow your SEO.

Finally, if you have any question or improvment suggestion, feel free to contact us.