Redalto.design - excellence in e-business

Ecommerce Store Solutions

An e-commerce enabled website allows customers to conduct transations with your business via the web. By providing your product catalogue online and facilitating automated checkout process, you are effectively extending your trading hours and addressable target market.

• Features
• Screen Shots
• Benefits
• Pricing

Redalto Applications

 

Online Product Catalogue

An Online Catalogue allows you to display multiple products and product lines (categories) on your website using an online product database. The presentation of Products and Categories can be completely customised based on your business processes or marketing needs.

An online catalogue can include, but are not limited to, the following features:

• Products viewable through multi-level categories with thumbnail and drill-down product detail
• Include drill down pages to show product details and specifications
• Define unlimited products and categories
• Add, Edit, Remove products and categories directly to the live database
• Ability to add description text and pricing and other product attributes
• Allowance for unlimited number of product uploads

 

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Shopping Cart

Using a Shopping Cart a customer is able to view products selected for purchase, including the quantity and total price.

Adding a product from the catalogue into a Shopping Cart allows the customer to continue shopping, and return to their cart at any time to view previously selected items. Importantly the Shopping Cart facilitiates multiple product purchases and calculates a running total so the customer can see total cost of all products intended to be purchased.

Main features of a shopping cart include:

• To ability to store products and review total purchases at any time during the shopping process
• View a mini shopping cart on all shopping pages displaying a running total of costs
• Allow customer to update quantities or remove items from the cart
• As a final step, the customer can either discard shopping cart or proceed to Checkout

 

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Check-Out System & Payment Processing

Check-out System

A check-out provides an intermediary process between the Shopping Cart and the Payment Processing service. It is the step in the ecommerce process where the order is finalised and all customer contact billing and shipping details are captured. At this stage, additional information is also captured to calcuate the total order costs:

• Define shipping options based on weigh t, price, and/or destination and calculate costs
• Calculate and present Tax in accordance with local, state or country laws

Payment Options & Gateways

At the final step of the checkout process, the customer will need to choose how to pay for the order. The customer will typically be presented with a number of payment options:

1. Cheque or Postal Order (Traditional Payments)
2. Direct Bank Deposit (Traditional Payments)
3. Credit Card
4. PayPal

Depending on which payments option is selected, there will be a different set of instructions given to the customer.

Traditional Payments

If Cheque or Direct Bank deposit is chosen, generally the customer will receive instructions that shipment will not be made until payment is received, and further instructions on how to make payment (eg, bank account details) are presented at the finalisation of the order.

Credit Card Processing

Credit Card details can be captured online. Usually it is sufficient to capture credit card details for later processing (either using an EFTPOS terminal or other manual process). To do this we can setup a secure encrypted link and processing facility that protects the customer from fraud. If payment needs to be processed in real-time, please refer to the section below.

Real-time Payment Processing

To process credit card payments in real-time, the checkout needs to connect to a financial institution that offers a payment gateway. The payment gateway will provide the facility to; authorise the credit card, check payment limits, process payment, and issue an authorisation/receipt number once payment is successful.

Generally there are 2 options for processing payments in real-time:

1. Setup an online merchant account with a bank
2. Setup a PayPal or other online payment processing service

Redalto can integrate checkouts with any online payment processing service. However, the amount of work can depend on the individual payment processing gateway.

Order Finalisation

When an order is submitted, the customer will receive a confirmation email with a customised message from the customer, including a receipt number if real-time payment was processed. The customer will also be brought back into the website and presented with a 'Thank You' screen.

 

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Multi-Currency Support (Conversion)

For websites that target a global customer base, customers may also choose to define multiple prices for each product in a number of different currencies. This then allows the website visitor to select their home currency, which in turn converts the Product Catalogue and Shopping Cart prices site-wide.

 

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Up-selling & Related Products

Also know as: “Cross-selling” , “Recommended Products”, or “Suggested Products”.

Providing a list of ‘recommended’ or ‘related’ products on your website can not only be beneficial to the shopping experience of your customers, but it can also help sell more products.

The primary objective of this module is to place products in front of customers that are related to the product they are actively looking for, but might not otherwise have considered buying from your website. For example, a customer who is looking for shoes may not realise you also sell matching handbags (or accessories for an MP3 player) .

How does this work?

In the product admin area of your website, you define for each product, which which other products are related.

When a customer is looking at a product in your catalogue, or has added a product into their shopping cart, a “Related Products” box underneath the product will display the products you have defined as being related to the product being considered for purchase.

This Related Products box can display products as either a list of text links, or a list of thumbnails.

 

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Pre-order / Back-order Products

This module allows the business to define pre-ordering / back-ordering of products by customers.

Pre-order is a feature which allows customers to register interest in a product that has not yet arrived in stock.

Back-order is a feature allowing customers to keep ordering products that are temporarily out of stock. When all products have been sold, the product remains on display in the catalogue, but the status changes from ‘In stock’ to ‘on back-order - new stock arriving soon’.

Configurable options with the pre/back order module:

• Set an item status as available for Pre-order or Back-ordered **
• Set an expected arrival date, or enter custom arrival date text
• Add an optional message on the preorder/backordered product (example: Reserve this exclusive product today)
• Checkbox for "no charge on order" (allow an order to be added to the cart at no charge)

In the admin section, the status of all orders are shown as either; New, Pre-ordered, Back-ordered, thereby facilitating easy tracking and management of these types of orders.

** The back-order status is only manually defined where the business does not have an inventory management system. An inventory system would automatically toggle the status when inventory hits zero.

 

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Inventory Management

Inventory management helps with keeping track of how many units of a product are currently available for sale via the website.

Managing inventory levels:

• As products are sold, the inventory is automatically reduced by the amount sold
• Cancelled orders automatically returns the units back into the avialable inventory
• As new stock arrives in the store, the website administrator simply updates the inventory schedules (either by individual product or by batch upload)
• When stock for an item hits zero, on the front-end website the product is automatically removed unless a “display out of stock” or “allow backorder” option is ticked.
• For pre-order /back-order status products, enter the quantity expected in (allows customers only to buy up to the total amount on preorder/backorder) and date expected

Inventory reports:

• A list/registry of inventory changes by date are viewable in the back-end system (item, units added/deducted, date, etc)
• The inventory system can be sorted by number of 'products in stock' for better management of stock levels
  

The Inventory Managements module is a useful Ecommerce add-on module for businesses who have a high turn-over of stock.

 

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Gift Certificates

Facilitating Gift Certificates on your website is a great way to increase sales and improve the marketability of your website.

Gift Certificates allows your customers to easily buy a gift for friends & family online without having to choose the actual gift (for those fussy recipients). For the business this means more sales, and less ‘sales returns’ or ‘product exchanges’ (when the wrong gift is bought).

How does this work.

Gift Certificates is a separate online module:

• The web administrator defines Gift Certificates denominations which are then displayed in a special ‘Gift Certificates’ section of the website
• Customer can then peruse and add one or more Gift Certificates to the shopping cart
• During the check-our process, each gift card will require a name and address to be assigned to the gift certificate
• The same ‘add-on’s are available as with standard products such as; gift wrapping, greeting cards and special messages (if implemented)

How to redeem a Gift Certificates:

• As well as the Name + Address of the recipient, each Gift Certificates will have a special numeric code (randomly assigned)
• These coded Gift Certificates are treated like currency in the check-out process.
• When purchasing a gift online, the buyer simply chooses “pay using Gift Certificates” and enters the code, name + address
• If the total ordered is less than the Gift Certificate value, this value will be deducted from the certificate value
• If the total ordered is greater than the Gift Certificate value, the user will be requested to select an alternate payment option (“Please select ‘Pay by Phone’”) so that the balance/remainder can be handled manually by a sales consultant.
• The recipient can check the balance of the gift certificate by going to a special section of the website where typing in the code + name will show the current value
• The web administrator will be able to view a list of issued gift certificates with the option to cancel or adjust the value

 

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Gift Wrapping & Message Card

The Gift Wrapping option allows your web customers to have their purchases (as the title suggests) ‘gift wrapped’. This option is displayed in the shipping section/page. Each product can be individually selected for wrapping by use of a check box “Wrap?” next to each item.

How does this work?

Step 1: Do you require gift wrapping? ( Y/N)
Step 2: Please select wrapping option (eg, Paper, Box & Ribbon)
Step 3: Select the individual items to gift wrap.
Step 4: Display in payment & order confirmation the price & items to be wrapped

Card & Message

An additional step can be introduced whereby a Card can be selected with an option to write a greeting message.

 

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Wish Lists (Birthday & Wedding Registry)

Wishlists are a useful end-user tool that allows your customers to pre-select their own gifts and publish their 'wish list' online and share this with their friends and family. Friends and family can then easily purchase this gift secure in the knowledge they are buying exactly what is recipient wanted. Wish Lists can be used for general purposes, or for specific events such as Birthdays or as a Wedding Registry.

How does this work?

• A person can add an item either to shopping cart or to a ‘wish list’ direct from the online catalogue
• At any time, a customer can save the ‘wish list’ by selecting 'save' in the wish list box
• Saving a wish list requires User Registration
• The wish list is stored indefinitely in a customer database, or until site administrator deletes wish list
• On the front page, people can search for a wish list by customer name
• Search results show Name + City + Birthdate (MM/DD) (no private contact details)
• Navigating into Homepage > Search Registry, allows customers to go to a Wish List and buy a toy
• Buying a gift will remove the item from the Wish List ensuring the recipient doesn't receive 2 of the same item
• When buying through the Wish List, the Shipping option is only to the person who has registered the Wish List
• At order finalisation, the gift can be wrapped and include a message card as per the normal ordering process
• When recipient logs into his/her Wish List, they can view which items have been bought, and which person (first/lastname) has bought the gift.

Click here to view an example of a Birthday Registry Wish List.

 

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Customer and Order Management System

After submission of an order, the orders details are stored in an online database. This allows for fast and efficient retrieval, either from your shop network, or any other computer that is connected to the internet. The Customer and Order Management System includes the following functionality:

Order Management System

• View orders and order details online
• Tracking and processing of orders. By updating the status of each order in the order management system, you can keep track of where each order is in the delivery process
• Orders which are finalised and shipped can be tagged as completed, which triggers an email to the customer communicating this status.
• Shipped orders can remain in the database indefinitely for historic reference

Customer Management System

• Customers who have placed an order will remain in the Customer Management System
• The database will keep all customer contact and order records for handy retrieval of information
• Customers can have ‘notes’ added to their records for internal reference and tracking of customer history

Standard Sales & Customer Reports

The Sales & Order Management System provides a number of standard reports:

• Number of customers
• Number of orders
• Number of products sold

Order Status Portal (Customer Login)

In order to assist with providing timely and accurate information to the customer, businesses can allow their customers to login into an 'Order Status' portal. This will show the customer what they have ordered and where in the delivery process their order is situated.

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