i-Bikeshop.com

iBikeshop Features - Products

Managing your product portfolio is potentially the most time consuming task in maintaining your own site. i-BikeShop has a series of tools to enable this to be carried out with the minimum of fuss and effort, and in a way which even the most novice of users can quickly get to grips with.

The Products system is broken down into 4 sections to avoid unnecessary duplication of data:

Master categories

are the "showrooms" of your site. Each i-BikeShop system has facilities for an unlimited number of master categories to be defined.

Each master category has a title, description, an image and up to 31 "custom value headings". Additionally, you can specify the order in which master categories are listed within your main showroom area.

A "custom value heading" provides the opportunity for you to create specification entries for the products you add into that master category. For example, a bicycle has a number of component parts, frame, forks, rear mech, front mech etc. Each of these is created as a custom value heading such that you can enter the actual part within the product record itself. The custom value headings are unique to that particular showroom. Using custom value headings adds greater value for your visitors if the use the comparison feature of the site.

Bike Shops employing the system are immediately given 2 pre-defined master categories complete with their relevant custom value headings. You can edit the properties of a master category at any time or delete it, however if there are products contained within it, the deletion will be terminated and a report generated that tells you which products are affected.

Sub-Categories

are the "types" of product within each showroom. Each i-BikeShop system has facilities for an unlimited number of sub-categories to be defined.

Each sub-category has a title and a description and is owned by the relevant master category defined by you. You can move a sub-category into a new or different master category at any point and that move will automatically take all the products stored within it to the new master category. You can edit a sub-category's properties at any time and delete them however if there are products contained within it, the deletion will be terminated and a report generated that tells you which products are affected.

Brands/Manufacturers

are pretty obvious. Each i-BikeShop system has facilities for an unlimited number of brands to be defined.

Each brand record has the facility for name, description, logo (logo's are automatically resized and resampled for the web when they are uploaded), an extended description, a URL and additionally can be associated with any existing master categories. Associating a brand to a master category makes the brand logo and description be displayed within the main page for that master category even when no products from that brand are present within the database. This enables you to list all your stocked brands without the need to add products from them.

All aspects of the brand can be edited, including the uploading of new logos, You can delete a brand however if there are products assigned to it, the deletion will be terminated and a report generated that tells you which products are affected.

Any brand can be disabled with just one tickbox. Disabling a brand automatically disables that brands products in the site removing them from public view: great if you stop dealing with a particular brand or if you don;t want to display a brand until you have loaded all of its products into the site.

Products Settings

carry the data unique to each product record. Each i-BikeShop system has facilities for an unlimited number of product records to be defined.

Each product record is initially assigned to a master category, then a subcategory and finally a brand. Once these associations are created, each record has the following data entries:
The above elements are common to many many products and as such are pre-defined headings for you to fill in.

In addition to the above, each product will have a sequence of "custom values", the headings for which are defined within the master category selection. Where there is no custom value heading created, no data entry field is presented to you. When a visitor views the product record, any of the custom values and headings which are either empty or unspecified will simply not appear.

All aspects of a product record are fully editable, including the updating of images and moving them into new categories etc. You can also delete products.

Cloning.

Many products are very similar, simply having a different name, colour size etc. To accelerate the admin process, i-BikeShop has a "clone" tool. Cloning uses the data from one product record to create a new one from. If you modify any of the data for the original record, the clone will be created with those changes, but without the original record being touched.

Quick Admin Features.

i-BikeShop has the facility to perform some admin functions en-masse. By viewing either an entire brand or and entire sub-category's contents at once, you can individually specify the product status for each of the listed products, click a button and have those modified status settings effective immediately. This is particularly useful when model year changes take effect, for example, turning off all 2006 product from that brand in one process.

Offers

There are no specific "offer admin" functions.

To place an item on offer, all that is required is to tick a box and provide a price that the item should be offered for.

Removing an item from offer requires simply the tick being removed.

At the point of creations, offers can be scheduled for later start and scheduled to end at a preset date/time. Where a scheduled end date is provided, products display a countdown timer to alert customers that the offer will soon expire.

All this editing takes place within the Product Admin area.


Page Updated: Friday 6 July 2012

For more information you can contact us on: info@i-bikeshop.com

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