Shop-Script 5 Features

Powerful design editor

Shop-Script 5 offers flexible tools for editing the storefront design. The theme editor allows you to use all powerful features of the Smarty template engine, which, together with JavaScript and CSS, you can use to implement virtually any imaginable operating logic for your storefront. Unlike the previous version (WebAsyst Shop-Script), Shop-Script 5 does not support the drag-and-drop option for individual storefront elements, and this is exactly what makes the design setup more flexible and unconstrained by the limited capabilities of the drag-and-drop feature.

New style of human-readable URLs

The URLs of category and product pages are easy reading as shown below:
/burton/: category
/burton/2013/: category
/burton/2013/custom-x/: product
/burton/2013/custom-x/lookbook/: product's informational subpage
/about/: common informational page

Clean HTML layout

The HTML layout of basic design themes does not utilize tables, which was one of the main drawbacks of the previous version, WebAsyst Shop-Script. The new version makes design themes of Shop-Script 5 suitable for any customization and easily adapted to fast indexing by search engines.

Mobile storefront version

By connecting an extra set of CSS rules for mobile devices, it is relatively easy to adjust your storefront to use on mobile multi-touch devices and smartphones. Basic design themes for Shop-Script 5 already include such CSS stylesheets, adapting the storefront to mobile devices powered by iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

Multiple storefronts

Shop-Script 5 allows creating multiple storefronts (frontends) for one online store and publishing them on different domain names, subdomains, or at different URLs within one domain name. All such storefronts will be connected to the same database of products and orders. For each storefront you can set up an individual design and product set, which will be available for viewing and ordering by visitors. With this feature you can create several absolutely different online stores with only one instance of Shop-Script 5.

Storefronts for social media

The ability to create several storefronts is available right away "out of the box" so that you can set up storefronts optimized for social networks Facebook and Twitter. The basic distribution of Shop-Script 5 includes special design themes, which will make your online store appear absolutely identical to the social networks' design. All you need to do is simply to connect your storefront as an IFRAME application.

Accessing the data of other Webasyst applications

In design templates and in product descriptions you can use Webasyst's internal API in order to access the data provided by other applications. For example, by using the {$wa->photos->photos(‘tag/custom-x’)} structure you can obtain the array of photos tagged "custom-x" from the Photos app and display them within the product description using {foreach}…{/foreach}. The list of photos on the product page will be automatically updated as you upload new images in the Photos app.

Complex websites

The Webasyst framework provides tools for creating websites powered by several applications including Shop-Script. The address space of a website can be flexibly distributed among the installed applications by means of the built-in routing management mechanism.

Checkout setup

The checkout process in your storefront can be set up differently in the backend of Shop-Script 5 depending on where and how your online store is used.

If you deliver orders all over the world, you can use the "classic" checkout scheme: shipping address entry → shipping method selection → payment option selection → order confirmation. If your store operates only within a large city, where most orders are delivered by a courier, then you can modify the checkout scheme a little differently: shipping method selection → address entry (if not pickup) → order confirmation.

In Shop-Script 5 you can also set up list of extra registration fields, which will be offered to the customer during checkout, and add them to the registration form; e.g., date of birth.

Personal accounts

Each customer in your online store receives access to a password-protected page, where they can view their order history and track each order's status.

Authorization via social media

A customer can sign in in the storefront using an account in social networks Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (you can also easily develop additional authorization adapters using our online documentation) in order to quickly access his or her online account without having to enter contact information during checkout. Shop-Script 5 will automatically retrieve data from the social network whose adapter is used for each specific login.

The administrative backend is similar to that of other applications based on the Webasyst framework. Easy access to other installed applications makes your Webasyst backend one integrated environment and not simply an online store management panel. Additional applications are installed in one mouse click like the software, which is installed on a PC or in your smartphone.

The backend can be shared by multiple users, each of them having own login name, password, and access rights. Access rights can be set up both for entire applications and for individual functions available in the store's backend. In Shop-Script 5 access rights can be granted for each of the main screens (sections) and for individual product types.

Integration with the Contacts app

Shop-Script 5 is tightly integrated with the Contacts application, which allows you to manage customers, clients, users, and partners in one single environment and use benefit from the rich functionality of the Contacts and other integrated applications; e.g., Mailer, used for emailing newsletters and special offers (Mailer application is currently under development).

Integration with the Site app

Due to the system-level integration with the Site application, in Shop-Script 5 you can use all features provided by this application, which allow creating complex websites: nested info pages, routing management, multi-site support, integration with Google Analytics, Sitemaps file generation, robots.txt file editing, favicons management, etc.

Product suggestions

In Shop-Script 5 product suggestions are available in the form of the following two mechanisms:

• Upselling: automated selection of similar products based on their descriptions (and feature values). You can set up the range of feature values for each product, which should be used for selecting similar products from the database. This can significantly boost your sales; e.g., if you pay your customers' attention to more functional and more expensive products.
• Cross-selling: displaying of recommended products, which can be purchased together with those added to the customer's shopping cart. Recommended items can be set up manually for each product, or they can be selected automatically, based on which other products have been ordered by other customers together with the currently viewed item.

Discount

The discount system has become more complete as compared with WebAsyst Shop-Script:

• discounts by user groups,
• discount coupons: common, for certain product types, time-limited, personal.
• discounts for ordering certain product sets: the discount is applied if there are several products in the order, which have been specially selected by the store administrator.

Services

In Shop-Script 5 services are a separate entity, separate from products, and can be used to efficiently increase the average order price. Services allow you to add some extra information to the ordered product and thus change its price. Examples of services:
— Extended warranty (e.g., +1 year: +10% to product price, +2 years: +20% to product price)
— Gift wrap (e.g., +$5 for one product type, +$10 for another product type)
— Pre-installed software
— Increased disk space
— Installation/setup
— Credit purchase

The range of services and their prices can be flexibly set up for individual products or product types.

Affiliate program

The functionality of the affiliate program has been significantly enhanced, as compared with previous version (WebAsyst Shop-Script), and is based on the principle of adding bonus points, which can be set up for the following events:

• registration in the storefronts,
• ordering (points are added for a customer with each his order),
• ordering by the customer attracted by means of a partner code (referral program),
• writing a review for a product.

The accumulated points can be used as payment for new orders; bonus points decrease the order amount (like a discount).

Follow-ups

Email messages which are automatically sent to customers after some time period (adjustable in the backend) upon the order confirmation. In such messages you may offer your customers to leave a review on the purchased product, tell the customer about the number of accumulated bonus points, create and offer a personal discount coupon.

Order status notifications

Order notifications are sent to customers by email and as SMS (to enable SMS sending, you need to set up the appropriate module) both upon order confirmation, and upon execution of various actions with orders: acceptance, transfer to courier company, shipping, etc.

Notification templates are editable via the web interface, like storefront templates.

Product purchase options

Each product can have several purchase options — SKUs (Stock-Keeping Unit); and for each option you can track the stock level individually.

Multi-stock support

Shop-Script 5 is capable of tracking products' stock levels across several warehouses; e.g., "Online", "Local", "Supplier". When shipping an order, you can choose the stock from which the ordered items should be written off.

Product reviews

Compared to WebAsyst Shop-Script, additional functionality has been added to the new version: product rating, response to review.

Subpages

Product subpages allow publishing arbitrary text content for each product. For example, documentation, photo gallery, detailed descriptions, questions & answers, etc.; for example:
/apple/ipad-mini/: main product page
/apple/ipad-mini/reviews/
/apple/ipad-mini/compare/
/apple/ipad-mini/gallery/: in the source code of such subpages you can use Smarty tools and Webasyst's internal API to access the data provided by other applications (e.g., photos from the Photos app).

Photo gallery

Inside each product in Shop-Script 5 there is its own "mini application", similar to the Photos app, with the ability of bulk uploading, online resizing, editing, and fast product labeling; e.g., "Best seller", "New", "Discount".

Product categories

Categories form a hierarchical tree and can be one of the following types:
— static (manual): you can manually specify, which products should belong to the specific category,
— dynamic: you can define special product filtering conditions to fill a category; e.g., you may want to add only products with rating above 4 or products of the selected manufacturer to a category.