| Frequently Asked Questions |
Answers:
Yes,
all you have to do is to upload your shop and start selling. This
is possible with the default payment system or with any real time payment
service provider. To the
Top
ShopFactory
includes a sophisticated publishing feature, which allows you to easily
publish your shop on the net. All it takes is to click on some buttons
and to enter the location and password of your Internet site - which might
be the space provided by your Internet Access Provider, or a virtual or
real server. To the Top
No,
ShopFactory can create all the pages you need for a complete e-commerce
enabled web site. If you want to use a ShopFactory shop as your main site,
you should rename the shop entrance file in Publish Setup to index.html
(just select this name from the drop down list). This will ensure
your shop comes up automatically, when a customer comes to your site.To
the Top
No,
once you have registered, that's it. Unlike most other shopping cart systems
we do not require any other fees from you, nor do we prevent you from building
as many shops as you like. However if you build shops for others as a service,
you will need to register the Developer version of ShopFactory.To
the Top
Yes
- no limit, no extra costs. However if you build shops for others as a
service, you will need to register the Developer version of ShopFactory.
Please see the License
Terms for all the details.To
the Top
No,
only if you want to accept credit cards. There are many other payment methods
such as Cash on Delivery or Check payments which do not require you to
have a merchant account. In the US it is possible to accept Credti Cards
and Checks over the Internet - See AuthorizeNet
and EcheckNet services. To
the Top
Of
course you can. Shopfactory can publish your shop not only on the internet,
but also on your local computer. This means you can publish your shop into
a FrontPage web, to make it part of the site. The best way to do this is
to publish into a new folder in your web, just like the image or personal
folders. Then link from your site to the entrance file of your shop (by
default this is called enter.html) and your are done. The shop will link
back to your site via the home button. You can also design your own front
page for the shop, or the contact and about pages. More details on this
can be found in the help file. To
the Top
Yes,
no problem. just pick any existing button set and replace the buttons with
your own. If your buttons are bigger or if you use JPG images instead of
GIF images, you also need to edit the definitions file for the button set
with Notepad or WordPad, for example. To
the Top
You
forgot to adjust the button height in the definitions.txt file of the button
folder. Simply double click on the definitions.txt file to open it and
adjust the button height. Make sure to remove the # at the beginning of
the line. To the Top
ShopFactory
shops support SSL, PGP, and with some payment systems even SET - the major
encryption and security protocols and tools on the Internet. This is as
secure as it gets. To the
Top
Yes,
but only in a round about way. A future upgrade will make this easier.
Save your shop with a different name. Select the different template. Preview
your shop. Now you have the two shops on your local computer. Upload your
main shop. Next use a separate ftp publishing program such as ws_ftp to
only upload the department page for the department which requires the different
style. In your online shop this page will overwrite the earlier department
page and will display the different look. You shop files are located in
the shopfactory\runtime\filename\ folder on your hard disk. To
the Top
The
easiest way is to select our free SSL gateway with PGP support. All you
need is a PGP public key which you register it with our server. You
will find more information in the Help file - just do a search for PGP.
Of course you don't need PGP at all, if you use a real time payment service
such as AuthorizeNet or SkipJack. .
To the Top
Please
get in touch with us and we will try to help. Most likely you will have
to send us the file so that we can recover it for a small fee. To
the Top
Yes,
of course. That is what the developer version is all about. It comes with
all the details you need to do this. So that you can create any kind of
shop you like. To the Top
Some
HTML editors place " double quotes
around HTML commands to make them work. ShopFactory supports HTML command
only when they use single quotes ' . Just
replace the double quotes with single quotes and it will work. To
the Top
Yes,
an order confirmation without the payment details is sent to the customer
if you use the default payment of ShopFactory. Most real time payment systems
also support this feature, but you may have to set this up in your account
settings with the service provider. To
the Top
Yes,
this is possible. And version 4 includes a print out feature, which allows
customers to print out their order and send it to you with all the details
you require. To the Top
ShopFactory
from version 4 on uploads only the files which have changed since you last
published your shop. Only a few HTML files are always uploaded - but this
will only take a minute or so. To
the Top
Yes,
you can change all the words Shopfactory places in your shop - or even
create your own language file. You will find more information about this
in the Help file under International Languages. To
the Top
You
can only change the fonts and text size for the whole shop - not for separate
departments. However you can of course use different text sizes and styles
in your Indexes and departments. To
the Top
ShopFactory
supports up to three different local taxes and a tax for shipping. This
makes it a solution for virtually any country in the world. To
the Top
If you have CGI execution rights on your own server and are familiar with setting up CGI programs, you can easily use your own server and secure certificate with ShopFactory. To the Top
Yes,
this can be done with drag and drop ease from version 4 onwards. Please
see help for more details. To
the Top
Just
click on the product, keep the mouse button pressed and drag it on top
of the new department.
Yes.
The easiest way to do this is to copy the product. Click on the product
with the right mouse button, select Copy. Click on the target department
with the right mouse button and select paste. To
the Top
Yes,
from Shopfactory 4 onwards this is possible. Just enter the addresses in
the company details wizard. Of course you can still use the same address
for orders and contact details. To
the Top
Yes,
easily. In Payment options you have two fields, which you can use for different
payment systems, such as Cash on Delivery.
It is also possible (although more
complex) to set up completely new payment methods or locally used
credit cards, if required, and to define the fields you need for that card. To
the Top
Please
let us know which payment system you want to use and its URL, and we will
try to help or quote you on integration costs. To
the Top
ShopFactory
shops do not support this feature, as research has shown that it is strongly
disliked by customers. Instead we bring up a small dialog box to let the
customer know that the product has been added to the shopping basket. To
the Top
This
is a decision you have to make yourself, based on the costs of setting
up the real time payment system and the order volume you expect. It may
pay to start by approving orders yourself and then to switch to a real
time payment system, as the volume goes up. To
the Top
No,
ShopFactory comes with two small cgi programs which you can install on
your server to do your own order processing. We recommend this if you have
a high order volume. To
the Top
This
is a special account supplied by merchant banks which allows a merchant
to accept credit cards. Without such an account you can not accept payments
by credit cards. Depending on the country you live in, this may be easy
or very difficult to obtain. See Merchant
Credit Card Accounts. Of course you can still accept many other
payment methods if you do not have or can not get a merchant account.
To the Top
Yes, but
each shop must be in a separate directory on your server.To
the Top
Minor
upgrades are free, for example from version 3.2 to 3.3. however major upgrades,
for example from version 3.x to version 4 will incur an upgrade fee, which
however will be heavily discounted for registered users. To
the Top
Yes,
just deselect it in the Shop Properties Wizard. To
the Top
Yes,
although it does not store the address on a database on your system, but
on the customer's computer. The result however is the same: customers whose
browser support this feature (over 80%) do not have to enter address details
again when revisiting your shop. For security reasons payment details such
as credit card numbers are not remembered. To
the Top
This
feature is great for customers who leave your shop only to come back later
to continue shopping, or for customers who continuously buy the same products
- for example groceries in a supermarket. You can adjust how long
the shopping basket is remembered, and by setting it to 0 in the Shop Properties
Wizard switch it off altogether. the default is seven days. To
the Top
Yes,
in the USA and Puerto Rico you can use the UPS shipping calculator to have
shipping costs calculated in your shop based on the UPS rates. All you
have to do when selecting this function, is to enter the weights for your
products.
In other countries you can use the
ShopFactory shipping wizard to enter shipping rates for automatic shipping
cost calculation, or generate shipping cost tables with a spreadsheet. To
the Top
Check
if you have set up the payment system correctly. For some payment systems
all you have to do is to select the payment system in Company details Wizard
and to enter your correct Login or User ID. Other payment systems require
you to also provide some additional information in a definitions.txt file.
See help for more information. To
the Top
Yes,
you can on a per product basis charge shipping or handling costs. You have
three shipping methods available for this feature. To
the Top
This
only happens in preview, not when your shop is published on the net. Unfortunately
this depends on the browser you are using, and there is little we can do
about it. To the Top
Simply
enter your home page URL in the company details wizard. To
the Top
The
most likely cause is, that you web browser is not properly installed. Please
double click on any html file on your desktop or in any of the folders
on your hard disk. This should immediately launch your web browser, and
you should be able to see the HTML file in the browser. If this is not
happening, your browser is not installed properly. The best solution
is to reinstall or upgrade your browser.
However you can still manually launch
your browser to preview your shop:
Open your browser, and browse for
your shop entrance file - it will be in the
ShopFactory\runtime\name
of_file folder on your hard disk (by default in program files
on Drive C)
Select the enter.html file - and it
will bring up your shop.
If you now make a change in your shop,
you will still need to press the preview button, so the preview files can
be rebuilt. But afterwards you switch to your browser and click on the
refresh button, to look at the changes you made. To
the Top
Yes.
Unlike virtually any other solution, ShopFactory shops have been optimized
to allow full indexing of all your department pages and product descriptions
by search engines. This means the highest possible exposure you can get
for your shop - something a plain database shop can never achieve.
Each department page will automatically
be called into the shop when accessed by a client who found it with a search
Engine such as Alta Vista - meaning you will never lose a customer because
he does not know where the page belongs.
ShopFactory also automatically adds
Meta Tags to your shops, to the front page and to each department, to further
improve the chances of your shop being found in search engines. Simply
provide a description you find most adequate for your shop with as many
key words as possible, and also provide the key words in the Shop Properties
Wizard. To the Top
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