eCommerce Stores

You can create multiple stores to support different affiliates or branches, seasonal or member’s only motifs, or different types of products (such as virtual and durable goods), as well as to test variant upsell messages to determine your most successful messages. You can also create online stores that do not have products for sale, but instead handle memberships to your organization, collect donations, offer virtual products only (without incurring shipping costs), and so on. In addition, if your Luminate Online system is synchronized with a remote system, you can cross-reference your stores with corresponding eCommerce campaigns that you create on other online development platforms. This feature allows you to maintain data synchronization between your Luminate Online eCommerce and stores on other platforms.

Store Configuration: Although you can configure global variables that apply to all of your stores, you can also set individual differences for each store, such as their own merchant accounts, shipping charges, and options, home landing page, and so on. Default pages such as product catalalog and detail, shopping cart contents, shipping and billing, and confirmation pages, provide a starting point. You can customize the pages and edit the common elements (like your store branding), messaging (like asking shoppers for a direct donation to your mission or cause), and buttons (like Checkout and Cancel) that display on the pages. You can even have a store home page that features special products and contains dynamic information in addition to statements about your organization's mission or cause to keep the page current and relevant instead of displaying the product catalog immediately.

Sales Tax: If you have a Sales Tax Online account on the salestax.com Web site and the sales tax site option has been enabled on your store site, you can collect sales tax on purchases from your eCommerce stores and keep track of your sales tax liability. By default, sales tax collection is based on where the product is delivered, but you can change this to the location based on where the purchaser resides. In addition, you can set up specific states for tax collection. See also Knowledgebase article 72745.

Note: You will enter your Sales Tax Online serial number and merchant ID (which you should have received when you created your account on the salestax.com Web) as part of the configuration process, so you should have it handy before configuring the store.

Bill-Me-Later: If deferred billing (Bill Me Later) feature is is enabled for your site, you can enable the feature for a store to present a shopper with the Bill Me Later checkbox when they are purchasing their products. When shoppers select the Bill Me Later option, an additional page display at checkout for them to enter the billing address.

Note: Your organization is responsible for sending bills to shoppers who select this option, and this billing information is available in both the Order Details and the Fulfillment reports.

Product Configuration: You can create products before you configure your store and then select them for association with the store. For more information about products, refer to Managing eCommerce Products.

Featured Products: If the Featured Products option is enabled for eCommerce on your site, you can enable the Featured Products area to display on your store home and catalog pages to present the three or four highest priority products in the product category that the shopper is viewing. You can also enable the section on custom pages you have created. For details, refer to Configuring the Standard Pages.

Quick Giving Products: You can select products that have no additional options to display on a single page. Using this page bypasses the category navigation and allows shoppers to quickly select their products, which is especially useful for shoppers who know what they want to purchase. For details, refer to Configuring the Quick Giving Page.

Card Fulfillment: If products in your store can be purchased in a charitable context (such as meals for people in another country, bricks for a school, or vegetable plants for a community garden) in honor of another person, you can configure special fulfillment cards in the eCommerce store to announce the product purchase to the honored person.

Note: When you enable Card Fulfillment, the store cannot have shippable products. The store will only send cards. If you need to ship products, create a separate store to offer the shippable products, and do not enable Card Fulfillment in that store.

You can create and offer:

• Mailed Cards that your organization will send, via postal mail, to the person in whose honor the purchase was made after the transaction is complete. Although they can be in any format, organizations typically use pre-printed folded embossed paper cards that consist of a front containing artwork and text, inside content containing text (and possibly more artwork), and a back, which might also contain text and artwork as content.

Shoppers who select Mailed Card as the Card Type (after placing a product with charitable context in their shopping card) will be shown a page of the available Mailed Card options. Each option will display with the name and description of the card provided when the option was created along with a thumbnail image of the front of the card and a preview image of any inside content.

After checkout, the online receipt will contain a message that the card was mailed to the person along with the address provided by the shopper.

• Printable Cards that a shopper can print and deliver to the person on whose behalf the product was purchased after the transaction is completed. Each card must be prepared ahead in a PDF files that contains all of the card content. This includes, if provided, a label for the occasion (since typically the product is often purchased to celebrate an event, such as a birthday) and the artwork plus any other text. For folded cards, other text and artwork content for the inside and back of the card will also be included.

Shoppers who select Printable Card as the Card Type (after placing a product with charitable context in their shopping cart) will be shown a page containing a list of occasion labels and a list of the artwork images available for selection. After the shopper selects an occasion and one of the artwork images, a preview image displays that shows how these items look on the card along with a description that was entered when the card option was created. The description is a good place to enter instructions or additional information (such as content not displayed in the preview).

To print the card, the shopper can click a link to the PDF file containing the card content on the online receipt after the purchase or in the purchase confirmation autoresponder email sent to the shopper. (Note: If the cards must be folded, you should post instructions for folding them somewhere on your site to help shoppers who print them.)

• eCards that are automatically emailed to the email address the shopper provides for the person on whose behalf the product was purchased after the transaction is completed. These eCards must be prepared ahead as eCard layouts in the Stationery application (available from Email on the navigation bar). For assistance, refer to Managing Stationery.

Shoppers who select eCard as the Card Type (after placing a product with charitable context in their shopping cart) will be shown the page of available eCard options. Each option will display with the name of the card, a thumbnail image (which is typically the artwork contained in the card) and a description entered when the card option was created. The description is a good place to put additional content or instructions about the card.

After checkout, the online receipt will contain a message that the card was mailed to the person along with the address provided by the shopper.

Note: Do not confuse these fulfillment eCards with other types of eCards that can be sent as gift enclosures with a purchased product or to let someone know about the store or its products. The fulfillment eCards are meant to announce to a person that a product with a charitable context (not a product that they will receive) has been purchased in their honor.

Shoppers may also select not to send a card with their purchase of a product of this type.

Shipping Charges: You can implement shipping charges for each store using either a flat rate for an order or a tiered schedule that takes into account the number of items in the order or the total price of the order. This per-order shipping is separate from any shipping charges that apply for shipping to an additional address or any additional shipping charges that apply for specific items. Separate tiered schedules can be set up for standard and express shipping.

Upsell Messages: To strengthen sales and generate more income, upsell messages will help entice your shoppers to purchase additional items to get to a specific item. Often, these upsell messages include offering premiums, which are products given away at certain purchase levels. You can also assign Interests to products featured in your store to create cross-selling merchandise messaging that informs shoppers of other products they may want to purchase.

Premiums: You can offer free gifts (premiums) to shoppers when the total purchase reaches a certain level and create discounts with different eligibility requirements for your shoppers.

Groups: To help track trends and provide product analysis, you can create shopper and large purchaser user groups to which you can target email and eCard campaigns. You can also enable your administrators to follow up with shoppers who make large purchase amounts or tribute purchases.

Reports: An order from your store is a eCommerce transaction that you can track in the Transaction Manager application reports. Orders can include multiple products with shipping split between multiple addresses.