AbakucShop Checklist

The checklist below is designed to raise awareness of some of the issues with building an online store. Reading and understanding them before you begin building your online store will save you time and frustration later on.

1. Email address
�  You need an email address so that customers can contact you, and the store can email you orders from your customers.

2. Products
�  What categories are you going to need?
EG. If you have a clothes store, can all the t-shirts go in with the jeans, or would you be better off creating a "t-shirts" category and a "jeans" category. It's usually best to arrange your online store in the same way you arrange products in you existing business.

�  Can the products be better arranged using options?
EG Instead of selling a blue t-shirt, a red t-shirt and a yellow t-shirt, you could sell a t-shirt with an option called colour and the choices of red, blue and yellow. (more information on options is in the help manual)

�  Do you have images to go with your products?
(This is optional, but a product picture will make your product more attractive to the shopper)

�  Are the products for sale online, or do you just want to create a searchable online catalogue?
(If none of the products are for sale, then you don't need to worry about Locations, Shipping, Billing and Taxes.)

3. Shipping
It's best to have a think about how you currently charge customers for the delivery of their purchases, then set about duplicating these costs in the store. Abakuc Shop can bill shipping in the following ways:
�  Cost per item. (The same for each item, plus different costs for some items)
�  Cost based on total order value (EG, freight is 5% of total order cost up to £500, then free for orders over £500)
�  Cost based on total order weight
Note: You can set up an unlimited number of different shipping methods so you can charge higher rates for customers that are further away.

4. Billing
�  How do your customers pay for their goods?
You can duplicate these payment methods in your store. For example it is easy to set up account payments for special customers by using groups.

�  Do you want to use 'real time' credit card transactions?
If yes:
   � Do you have an email client (a program for reading and sending email) that can handle personal digital certificates?
   � Do you have a personal digital certificate?
   � Do you have a merchant account for the payments to go into?
   � Do you have an account with a "realtime" payment gateway such as e-way or Direct One?
More information on this can be found in the help manual

5. Taxes
�  Are all your quoted prices tax exclusive?
If so, add a tax to you store, this will be calculated and added when customers checkout.

�  Are all your quoted prices tax inclusive?
If so, don't add a tax to you store.