The Administration Panel (or the admin panel for short) is the primary tool for you to work with your online store. Here you can manage products and orders, offer discounts, interact with your customers, change the look of your store and do much more.
The admin panel is responsive: it adapts to the screen size of the device you view it from. That way, you can manage your store from mobile devices.
To find the admin panel, open your online store and scrol to the bottom of the page and select Sellers' Zone > Login as Seller
Enter the the email you used in registering and your password then click the Sign in button.
The first thing you’ll notice is the Dashboard, where you can check sales statistics, view recent orders and product changes. The Dashboard also provides information from the database, such as the number of active products and registered customers.
You can also choose the period of time, for which the information on the dashboard is displayed. Click on the period in the right upper corner of the page and choose the required period of time from the drop-down menu. Optionally, click Custom Range to define your own period and press Apply.
The panel below the top bar serves to manage the operations of your store:
You can add and edit products using different methods.
If you plan to have several products with identical properties, you don’t need to create each of them manually. Instead of specifying the product properties each time that you add a new product, you can:
You can edit the properties of a group of products.
CS-Cart has a special page where you can update some properties all products at once. For example, you can increase the prices of all products by 10%, or increase the list price to display discount labels on all products.
To update all products:
You can import (upload) products from a CSV file. CSV is a popular spreadsheet format. A line in a CSV file is one line of the table.
CSV files can be edited in spreadsheet editors such as LibreOffice Calc, OpenOffice Calc, Microsoft Excel. We recommend using LibreOffice (a free office suite) to edit CSV files.
To demonstrate the full process, let’s export one of the products to a CSV file first.
To define the wholesale prices for the product:
Hello!
Adam is a business owner. He sells fedoras in his small shop in the city center. To make shopping easier and to drive more customers, Adam opens an online store, as well. Soon, though, he encounters a problem: his brick-and-mortar store is selling well but his online store isn’t bringing in new customers or income.
Adam’s actually got a fairly simple problem: he hasn’t presented his fedoras well! He quickly took product photos on his smartphone and copied poor descriptions from the manufacturer website. To drive more visitors to the online store and convert them into paying customers, Adam has to put effort into presenting his products in the right way.
While in brick-and-mortar stores people can see the actual products with their eyes and hold them with their hands, in online stores they see products as images. And, of course, in brick-and-mortar stores people can talk to the seller and find out about the features and benefits of the product—in online stores, they have to trust product descriptions.
In this post we’re going to talk about two key things you be doing when showcasing your products in your online storefront: product images and product descriptions.
In brick-and-mortar stores, customers can hold and try products before buying. When customers can see a product in real life and hold it in their hands, it weighs the scales in the seller’s favor.
In online stores, people obviously cannot try your products in the same way—which is why you need to take your online shoppers as close as possible to that feeling of seeing and holding your product, just like in a physical store. Professional product photos taken from different angles will help you.
The easiest way to get professional photos is to hire a pro photographer with a studio. Hiring a photographer may be expensive but you get results in the fastest and the easiest way. However, if you’ve got budgetary considerations, then it’s still possible to take cool product photos yourself.
Just be sure to remember three things: 1) use a neutral color background, 2) place the product on a stand, and 3) make sure the product is well-lit and doesn’t drop weird shadows. You don’t need tons of expensive equipment to take nice product photos but you need a few accessories:
Look at these well-lit, detailed photos. Don’t they make your mouth water already? :-)
Having attractive product photos is only half the battle. Product descriptions are important, as well: from a description a customer understands whether the product can solve his problem or not. That’s why product descriptions should not simply describe, they have to tell a customer what his or her problem the product can solve and how. For example, a laptop lets a customer work anywhere, not only at home or in the office; a fedora can become a finishing touch for a retro party costume.
Although any product solves some problem, different products need different approaches in writing descriptions. Here are eight guidelines on how to compose good product descriptions that sell:
Check out this coffee description: it’s short and well-structured, activates the customer’s imagination, and entertains with a short story:
Hope our advice will come in handy and you’ll be able to drive more customers thanks to cool product images and great product descriptions!