Lots of Features...
We realise that the features list is fairly long, so make yourself a cup of tea and get comfy.
An effective e-commerce system must provide a wide range of features to allow you to effectively manage your online business. If you don't see a feature that you need on this list, that’s fine - we can customise the system to any level. But we think these features will keep you going for a while.
Product Catalog Features
- Up to 2,000 Categories, Departments or Manufacturers
- Categories and Departments can also be fully nested to any level desired (e.g. sub-categories, sub-departments)
- Supports cross-matrix of products by category and department e.g. a product can be mapped to the shoe category, in the women's department
- Products can be mapped to more than one category or department
- Paged browsing for categories and sections: Keeps page size small, and optimises user experience.
- Category, Department, and Manufacturer "names" can be renamed (e.g. "Brochures", "Products", "Car Parts", whatever you need that is appropriate for your unique store site products).
Product Display features
- Designed for up to 100,000 products
- Ability to disable buy buttons for specific products
- Automatic image resizing
- Supports multiple images per product (icon, medium, and large)
- Support for swatch colour image changing
- Automatic image watermarking for protection
- Image galleries
- Donation products (e.g. customer enters price)
- Restrict product quantities to preset values (e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, ...)
- Enforce product minimum order quantities (i.e. must order at least 10, etc).
- Recurring products can have varying intervals (days, weeks, months, years)
- Subscription based products & content access
- Downloadable products supported, with automatic e-mail to customer with download instructions
- Text options on products (e.g. require initials for monogrammed products, require text name for product customisation, etc)
- Support for sizes & colours. All colour/size site "prompts" can be customised in admin site, so you could rename those two options to have completely different meaning.
- Two attributes per product (e.g. size and colour)
- Stock by attribute (e.g. size and colour)
- Price can vary by size/colour option chosen
- Prices can vary by customer or customer level (group)
- Sort products in any order
- Second tree-form dynamic site map (optimised for users)
- Support for simple products (e.g. a book) or products with variants
- Setup variants within each product
- Each variant can have a different price
- Each variant can have different attributes (e.g. size, colour, etc)
- Each variant can require a text option input (e.g. monogram)
- Each variant can have a separate SKU modifier, and price, description, etc
- Tell store to locate product pictures by ID (icon, medium, large)
- Tell store to locate product pictures by SKU (icon, medium, large)
- Support for sale prices
- Vary product prices for each customer level (e.g. wholesale/retail)
- Product descriptions can include HTML formatting: Having complete control over each product description is important, and no two products are alike. You can use the administration site to enter product descriptions, or even link to fully custom external product description HTML files. Additionally, each product can have an inline or pop-up "specifications" window, providing more detail to the customer, without distracting them from making a purchase
- Support for kits (build to order products). Kits can have dynamic pricing and component selection (e.g. build your own PC) and more specification as to which items can be added, whether they are required, etc... Kit items cannot be ordered separately
- Support for packs. A pack is a product with a fixed price that can hold up to N other arbitrary products. When the pack is full, it can be added to the basket and purchased. Pack items are products themselves, which could be ordered separately
- Disable buy buttons by product
Product Ratings & Reviews
- Customers can review & rate products (if enabled)
- Administrator can moderate product review comments
- Profanity checking provided on product review comment entry
- User Polls (find out what your customers are thinking)
Customer Accounts / Checkout Process
- Customer levels supported, which you can define (e.g. wholesale, retail, or gold, silver, platinum, etc..)
- Customers can be tracked to customer levels
- Customer levels can have special product pricing, can offer percent discounts, free shipping, tax exception, etc.
- Products visible on the site can be filtered by customer level
- Customer can view Order History
- Customer has address book
- Customer one click re-order any prior order
- Multiple billing/shipping addresses per customer (similar to Amazon.com style checkout)
- Recurring orders (e.g. for auto ship products, subscription sites, monthly service type products, etc)
- Skip account creation on checkout (Anonymous Checkout)
- "One Page" checkout
- "Remember Me" option for returning users
- Order History pages: Customers can get their prior order histories, check order status, etc all online
Coupon & Discount Features
- Order based coupons (apply to entire order)
- Product specific coupons (apply to only specified product)
- Coupon discounts by amount or percent
- Coupons can offer free shipping
- Coupons have expiration date
- Coupons can be marked as use once per customer, use once by only one customer, use N times, etc.
- Coupons requires minimum order amount before they are valid (e.g. save £10 if you order £100 or more, etc)
- Coupons can be excluded from sale products
- Customer specific coupons
- Quantity discounts on products (tiered Pricing)
Shipping
- Advanced shipping calculations – including international
- Allow "Free shipping over £X for site
- Multiple ship-to addresses per order (a customer on one order can ship some items to address A, and other items to address B)
- Mark customer levels/profiles as free shipping (or tax exempt)
Tax / VAT
- Apply tax by country
- Tax can be applied to shipping costs
- Individual products can be marked taxable or tax-exempt
- Customer levels can be tax-exempt (e.g. wholesale)
- Tax Classes supported by product (e.g. goods, services, alcohol, etc)
Gift Registry & Wishlist
- Gift Registry Can Be Anonymous (gift registry owner name and address is hidden)
- Gift Card Support (E-mail and Physical Gift Cards supported)
- Customer Add To Wish List Supported (Persists over Customer Visits also)
Multiple Payment Methods Supported
- Credit Cards: Accept Credit Cards in Real Time: Cards can be processed & verified in real-time, or you can delay processing until a later time
- Check By Mail
- e-Checks (Authorize.net and Itransact gateways)
- MyECheck (added in ML v7.0.2.5)
- C.O.D.
- Purchase Order
- PayPal
- PayPal Express Checkout
- Request For Quote
- MicroPay (this is also referred to as a Purse). Customer can put money in an account, and then purchase against it, or add to their balance
- Gift Cards
Multiple Payment Gateways Supported
- US and UK payment gateways supported
- Google Checkout
- HSBC
- Paypal
- ProtX
- Several US based providers
Upsell features
- Related Products: Entice additional sales by listing related products/accessories on each product page
- Show Upsell Products Directly On Basket Page
- Product prices can be set to "Call for Price'
- Product prices can be hidden until product added to basket
- Products can require that other products are added to the basket (e.g. Product X requires Product Y)
Affiliate Tracking
- Affiliate sign-up/account pages provided in store and admin site
- Customers can be tracked to affiliates
- Orders can be tracked to affiliates
- Products visible on the site can be filtered by affiliate source id
- Real-Time skin changing based on URL/invocation/affiliate id
Wholesale Features
- Supports Wholesale Only Sites (Prices not shown to general site customers)
- Set Site to Wholesale Only (Prices not shown to general site customers)
Transaction Features
- Integrates with your own merchant account (click here for information on obtaining a merchant account if you do not have one)
- Store can be set to authorise only, or auth-capture credit card mode. You can then capture payment at shipment if desired
- Void & Refund supported
- Partial Refund and Add-Hoc Charges Supported
- Mark Transactions As Fraud
- Ban Fraud Users from Site
- Support for recurring orders/payments (auto-ship products)
- Support for CV2 (credit card security code) entry and checking (fraud prevention)
- Address Verification codes reported to administrator with order
- Credit card numbers never displayed on site, but remembered for user in an encrypted state shown as ****1111 on site). Storage can be disabled by both store admin and customers if the choose.
- Disable storing of credit cards if desired (we recommend that you don't store credit cards on your site...it is almost never needed anymore)
- Don't require account signup on checkout (e.g. skip registration on checkout or anon checkout)
- Hide all references to "shipping" (e.g. useful for software, or download sites)
- Force billing address to be the same as shipping address
- Set a minimum order total threshold for proceed to checkout (e.g. must purchase over £100)
- Automatically create drop-ship and special order/purchase order to vendor
- Multi-level pricing list
Stock Control / Inventory
- Stock/Inventory Tracking
- Limit orders to quantity on hand stock, or allow customers to place orders for items out of stock (admin configurable)
- Manage stock by variant or attribute (e.g. size, colour, etc)
- Show stock on hand status on product page to customer (optional)
Multilanguage and Multicurrency
- Customer can select store language at run-time.
- Customer can select store currency to view.
- Store developer/admin has full control over all store site strings used (e.g. prompt used for SKU, Product, Colour, Size, shopping basket, etc). Every string used in the storefront can be edited.
Global Site Features
- Mini-Basket (optional small box on every page showing basket summary contents and checkout link)
- Mini-Basket display, so add to basket action leaves user on same page, and updates mini-basket display in left or right column of page
- Customer Subscriptions for protected content
- Password Protected HTML Pages (password protected topics)
- General Site Disclaimer Message (Agree Before Entering) supported
- Can set minimum order product quantities before allowing checkout
- Order options supported (e.g. gift wrapping, ship in unmarked box, etc). Additionally, each order option can have a price associated with it. User can optionally select order options during checkout.
- Product & Site Photo Galleries: Create photo galleries of products, activities or other important corporate or store fun events. Showing prospective customers more than just a "store facade" is vital in creating brand loyalty
- Recent Products Page
- Best-Seller Products Page
- Shopping basket can persist over visits
- Shopping basket can be told to age in N days
- Built in support for the most common display formats: grid, table expanded, table condensed, simple form, right variant bars, and we can completely customise the product pages by altering the output code HTML (Professional Edition only)
- Catalog Only Sites (e.g. turn buy buttons off)
- Support for Informational Catalog Only Sites: A configuration setting removes all "buy" buttons from the site, in effect turning your site into an informational site, still complete with categories, subcategories, sections, product info, product photos, etc
- Store News Items Supported (editable via Admin Site): Add real-time news announcements, and items to the site. Inform customers about important new items, or promotions
- Password protected content pages
- Each basket item can also have notes entered by the customer
- Shopping "basket" can be renamed (e.g. Shopping Bag, Shopping Cart)
- Can require customer to agree to Terms and Conditions block (user defined) before proceeding with payment
- Support for subscription products. Each product can add N months to a customer subscription. Administration control panel allows override of subscription expiration date
- External Product Specifications/Details Supported (e.g. product "specs" can be stored in external PDF or HTML file, and linked into product page)
- Hide products, categories departments (publish or un-publish capability)
- Integrated Product Search
- Advanced Product Search Page (by category, section, manufacturer, price range, SKU, etc)
- E-Mail Product To A Friend: Product pages can be e-mailed to friends by site visitors
Product Feeds
- Google Base Feed (formerly called Froogle) Supported with automatic generation and FTP upload to your Froogle account
- We can implement other product feeds (e.g. ShopZilla, shopper.com, etc) (Professional only)
Product Catalog Import
- From XML file
- From Excel file
- Web Services Automation Interface (WSI). Allows automated import, export, data updates and synchronisation.
- Event Notification callbacks to external Web Service which you register, on storefront events (e.g. new order created, customer created, etc).
Search Engine Marketing
- Every product, category, and department page can have their own custom search engine meta tags (title, keywords, description, no script blocks, etc)...
- Static Product & Category Pages: Designed to allow search engines to fully crawl and index every product & category page in your store. This can have a dramatic increase in site traffic from search engines.
- Google Xml Site Maps Supported: a direct Google search engine submission method sanctioned by Google
- Yahoo! Xml Site Maps Supported: a direct Yahoo! search engine submission method sanctioned by Yahoo!
- Fully dynamic page titles, and search engine meta-tags
- Google Analytics (Urchin) Site Metrics & E-Commerce Tracking Compatible
Order Notifications & Alerts
- Order receipts automatically e-mailed to customer
- Distributor Pick Lists automatically e-mailed to Distributors for Drop Shipping
- Customisable Receipt Formats: Customise the format and layout of your store receipts by using a simple HTML template
- E-mail notification sent to store Administrator when new order arrives
- Mobile phone SMS Messages sent to store Administrator when new order arrives. Stop wondering how your site is doing while you are at the gym, at lunch or on holiday...don't miss that big order with next-day shipping specified! You can even customise notifications with an order amount threshold, if you only want to be notified when an order exceeds a certain amount
- "Order Has Shipped" e-mail notifications sent to customers with tracking numbers
- "Order Has Download Items" e-mail notifications sent to customers for orders with download components. This e-mail can be sent on time of payment clearance or delayed
- Delayed Downloads (gives you time to verify buyer payment/fraud metrics before releasing download files)
Miscellaneous Management Features
- Full content management
- Phone Order Entry Module
- Order & Customer & Product Export to Xml
- Customer e-mail lists to XML (i.e. produce list of all registered customer e-mails for your mailing manager)
- Customer Service Web Administration: Comprehensive administrative reports, including revenue trends & graphs, visitor trends & graphs, customer order percentages, affiliate revenue reports, tax reports, etc. You can also search for order by almost any customer record criteria to assist with customer support calls
- Customer & Order Reports, Compatible with Google Analystics -w- E-Commerce ROI Conversion tracking:
- Easily integrate with your Google Analytics account
- Tax Reports by Month/State
- Total Customers by Date/Trend
- Customer to Purchase Stats (% of visitors that convert, etc)
- Built In Customer Mailing Manager: Send e-mails or HTML newsletters to registered customers.
- Administrators can edit customer profiles, delete customers, update their address books, billing information, etc.
- Administrator can edit/enter service notes visible by customer regarding order status, special notes, etc
- Order notes can be entered by customer with special instructions