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Volusion Winter '09 and V5 allow merchants the ability to customize the order processing page to add special questions for customers to answer when completing orders.

This article will explain how to use the Volusion Custom Fields functions to provide a short question/answer form to store customers. This will allow merchants to collect data from customers based on questions such as, "How did you find us", "What products are you interested in" or "How was your shopping experience with us?" and more.

Setting Up Custom Fields:

To configure custom questions using Volusion's Custom Fields functions, do the following:

• Log into the Volusion Admin Page and click on the Settings tab.
• Click on the Custom Fields link in the menu bar.   (Version 5 )
• Click on the ID number of a custom field entry to edit it.   (Version 5 )
• There are 2 types of custom fields that can be created: Customer-based fields, which provide questions asked once when customer register with the store or Order-based fields which pose questions to customers on every order they make.
• In the custom field's settings, set Alias to something related to the question (e.g., "HowFound" if the question is "How did you find us?")
• Enter a value for the Question field (e.g., the prompt that the customer reads, such as "How did you hear of us?")
• Optionally, users can enter additional text into the Question_SubText field to provide customers an instructional propmt for the custom field.
• Now, select the Input Type:
  • Dropdown - to provide a specific list of possible responses
  • Textbox - to provide an area customers can type responses into
  • Checkbox - to provide options for users to click on (such as "I agree to these terms:")
• Enter a value for the Input_MaxLength field to define the maximum allowed length for use with the Textbox option.
• Enter a numeric value into the Placement_Order field to define the order the custom field will appear within the order page.
• Check the Is_required option to force customers to enter some value into the custom field.
• Enable the Is_public? option to display the custom field to customers.
• Click the Show_On_Invoices option to display the content customers enter into the custom fields on their order invoices (note this option only applies to order-based custom fields).

Once finished, click the Save Changes button to finalize setting to the custom field.   (Version 5 )

Drop-down Options:

Note that if the input type Dropdown is chosen for a custom field, a list of possible options for the drop-down menu must be provided. To do this, click on the view dropdown on the Custom Fields table and choose Custom Fields Dropdown Values near the top of the page.

Next, click the Add button to begin creating a drop-down field value. For each drop-down value you wish to configure, enter the following:   (Version 5 )

• From the Custom_Fields_ID menu, select the custom field you wish to apply the drop-down option to.
• Enter a value into the Title and Value fields. Note that the Title field will be label for the option as it will be presented to your customers.
• Enter a numeric value into the Placement_Order field to define in which order the drop down option will appear in the custom field menu on the store front.

Finally, click Save to create the value. Repeat this process to create additional drop-down values.   (Version 5 )

Summary:

Once this process is finished, the newly-created custom field will display the merchant's pre-configured question to customers on the Volusion storefront and will allow customers to enter a response.   (Version 5 )

Note that there can be a maximum total of 15 custom fields within the Volusion store. This can be 15 custom order fields, 15 custom customer fields or any combination thereof.

Merchants can use this function of Volusion to collect data from customers or allow customers to enter specific requests in regards to their order - beyond the scope of Volusion's product options functions by creating either Customer-based or Order-based custom fields.