shopping cart software

To download the full Version 5 Manual, please go to http://manual.volusion.com

Websites are essentially collections of text, presented in a specific manner to anyone accessing that site from the Internet with web browsing software. Websites contain text - even online stores. Whether to explain return policies, provide a list of contact information or simply to say something about the online business itself, online merchants will need to edit the text that is displayed within their store's website.

This could involve a lot of hard work editing and keeping track of various HTML files. However, Volusion has done one better and provides an easy way for merchants to manage text within their online store.

Merchants can manage text information displayed on their Volusion store by using the Website Text functions within the Volusion Administration Page.

Getting Started:

The Website Text functions within the Volusion Admin Page can be found by clicking on the Design tab and then clicking on the Website Text link within the Design tab's blue menu bar.

From the Website Text page, users can view, add or modify articles within their Volusion store's database. These articles can be displayed in different portions of the Volusion store and can contain text, images or HTML.

By default, each Volusion store is configured with 126 different website articles. These articles cover everything from displaying information to visitors on the store's checkout page, displaying help information, return policies, marketing blurbs about the business itself and more.

Part I - Editing Articles in Easy Mode:

Merchants are encouraged to modify text within their store's pre-generated website text articles to customize their store to their needs.

Each pre-generated article within the Volusion Website Text page has its own, specific purpose. There are 2 specific articles merchants will want to edit - the "Home Page Article" and the "About Us Articlec".

The "Home Page Article" displays text or HTML within the central portion of the Volusion storefront home page. This article is a prominent area that visitors see as soon as they arrive at the online store. Using HTML, this can often be used to display an eye-catching image in the central field of the store homepage.

The About Us article contains any text that is displayed to visitors when they click on the About Us link, located on in the Volusion storefront.

As these articles are either prominently displayed or contain store-specific information to visitors, Volusion merchants will want to modify these articles to specifically fit their store needs. Follow these steps to edit these articles:

• Log into the Volusion Administration Page and click on the Design tab.
• Click on the Website Text link in the blue menu bar.
• Near the upper-right portion of the Website Text page, click the Easy Mode tab.
• Within Easy Mode, there are 2 different fields to edit - one for each of the aforementioned articles.
• Simply enter text, HTML or use the built-in text editing functions to create the text to display to visitors through these articles.
• When finished, click the Save Changes button to post changes to these articles to the Volusion storefront.

Once changes to either article are saved, the portions of the storefront each correspond to will be updated with any text or HTML that is entered.

Part II - Creating a New Article:

The "Home Page Article" and "About Us Article" are only two of the many articles to modify within the Website Text page. Within the initial Advanced Mode of this page, users have the ability to create a completely custom article. Here's how:

• Within the Website Text page, click the "List All Records" link near the top left of the page.
• Click the Add button to begin creating a new article
• Assign a category to the new article, enter the article title, body and any other settings needed.
• Click the Save Changes button when finished.
• Once the article is saved, users can click the "View Live Article Page" link near the top of the newly created article to view the article as it will appear within the Volusion storefront.

Each website article will have the following settings:

Details
ID	This field contains an automatically-assigned number to identify each website article by.
PageName **	Specific articles will be embedded within certain pages within the Volusion storefront. If this is the case, the page name itself will be listed here. Note that this value cannot be modified.
SpotKey **	In some cases, multiple articles are displayed within a single page on the Volusion storefront. If this is the case, each article is assigned a "SpotKey" to determine which area of the page the article will appear in (e.g. "Above the Shopping Cart" or "Below the Shopping Cart").
CategoryID *	Each article must be assigned to an article category. The category the article is assigned to can be chosen from this drop-down field.
ArticleTitle	Users can define the title of the article here.
ArticleCaption	An optional article caption can be entered here. This caption will display below the article's title.
ArticleBody	The actual article contents can be entered here. The "ArticleBody" can contain text or HTML.
Search Engine Optimization
Meta Tag Title	Enter a title in this field for the article's meta tag title. Users will want to set this field as it will assist in having the article referenced by various web search engines.
Meta Tag Description	In this field, enter a brief description of the article which will be referenced by search engines. This will assist in the article being better referenced and found by search engines such as Google and Yahoo!
Met Tag Keywords	Here, enter keywords to reference the article by. These keywords will be indexed by website search engines. Values entered here can then be used to better search for the article via search engines such as Google or Yahoo!
Custom Metatags Override	This field overrides all meta data settings for the article. This field is designed specifically for merchants with knowledge of SEO techniques and functions. It is recommended for use only by advanced users.

* This field is required for each Website Text article.

** These fields are only available for certain Website Text articles.

Once an article is created, it can be linked to portions of the Volusion storefront in a variety of ways. The most common method to displaying an article to customers is through the use of product categories within the Volusion storefront's navigation area.

See the Tips and Special Settings section for further information on how to configure these settings.

Part III - Article Categories:

An additional feature within the Website Text portion of Volusion is the ability to configure categories to organize the store's articles. As noted in Part II of this chapter, each article must be assigned to a specific category.

Each Volusion store comes pre-programmed with a series of website categories that merchants can use. Additionally, merchants can create their own custom Website Text categories through the following steps:

• Log into the Volusion Administration Page and click on the Design tab.
• Click on the Website Text link in the blue menu bar.
• Click on the View All link near the top left of the page.
• In the Website Text's View All page, click on the Article Categories tab.
• In the Article Categories page, click the Add button.
• Enter values for the CategoryName and CategoryOrder.
• Next, choose 1 of 3 options for the Category Type.
• Click the Add New button to complete the category's configuration.

Once a new article category has been created, Website Text articles can be assigned to the category.

Note that when assigning the CategoryType, any category assigned to the type, Help can be displayed within the Volusion Admin Page by clicking on the Help tab within the main Website Text page. Please see Part IV of this chapter for more information.

Part IV - Help Text:

The Help area is a special, reserved portion of the Website Text page within Volusion V5. This portion of the page will contain all Website Text categories that are configured as CategoryType: Help, along with all articles contained within those categories. This special page allows users to easily organize all help articles they may have configured within their Volusion store.

This portion of the Website Text page contains what is essentially the FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions to be displayed within the Volusion storefront. This can range from topics on return policies, shipping restrictions or any notices that merchants would want/need to make their customers aware of.

Help articles can be viewed from the Admin Page just as any other article or by visiting the special Help tab within the Website Text page. Help articles can be created or edited in similar fashion to regular articles. The only exception in this case is that any article set to be a Help article must be assigned to a category configured as a Help category.

Note that all active Help articles can be viewed by visitors to the Volusion storefront by clicking on the default Help link that will be displayed within the Volusion storefront header (or footer - depending on the store template being used).

Tips and Special Settings:

Note on Viewing All Records:

When users initially log into the Website Text page, they will be presented with a series of website articles, ordered by the categories they are assigned to. Note that this table view of articles will only display select articles to the user. To view a list of all articles contained within the Volusion system, users must click the View All link near the top of the page.

Displaying Custom Articles:

As stated in Part II of this chapter, displaying new categories within the Volusion storefront is often accomplished by linking an article to a category, displayed within the Volusion storefront's navigation bar. The following example will demonstrate how this can be done:

Example:

An online store has a very specific policy for processing returns. This policy is detailed within an article the merchant created using steps outlined in Part II of this chapter. The merchant now needs to link this article to their Volusion storefront. The merchant does the following:

• In the Admin Page, click the Design tab and click the Website Text link.
• Click the "List All Records" link and find the article containing the store return policy.
• Click the ID of the article to display its settings.
• In the article's settings, click the "View Live Article Page" link to display the article as it will appear within the Volusion storefront.
• Highlight the URL of the article page within the web browser's address window and copy it.
• In the Volusion Admin Page, click on the Inventory tab and click the Categories link in the green menu bar.
• Click the View All tab in the Category page and click Add.
• Set the CategoryID to Main Category.
• Set the CategoryName to "Return Policy".
• Click the Advanced heading to expand the category's advanced settings.
• Paste the URL of the return policy article into the Alternate URL field.
• Click Save Changes when finished.

Once this is done, the newly created category will be displayed within the navigation menu on the Volusion storefront. When clicking on the category link, instead of directing visitors to the actual category page, the Alternate URL setting will redirect users to the article page.

Dealing with Spotkeys:

Spotkeys and the PageName settings they are associated with are specifically coded within certain articles within the Volusion system. The Spotkey or PageName settings cannot be modified within the Volusion system. New articles cannot have Spotkeys assigned to them, nor can users remove these settings from exiting articles. These articles however can be repurposed if needed by simply modifying that article's caption, body or other settings.

Redirecting URLs to Articles:

Articles created within the Volusion Website Text page by default, when viewed from the storefront, will have a dynamic URL, containing an ASP suffix and appended with the article's ID.

Example: http://www.superwidgets.com/Articles.asp?ID=135.

Some mercahnts may wish to somehow modify the URL setting for some articles, making them friendlier in appearance to users. Website text URLs cannot be rewritten in Volusion V5 however there is an easy way to create a friendly URL that will redirect to the article page. This can be useful in that it can provide an easy to remember URL to customers to direct them to a specific article, if needed.

Example:

Article ID 101 explains some import/export rules to their overseas customers. This URL is often given to customers but customers find the URL either intimidating or difficult to remember. In this case, the merchant decides to create a 301 redirect to the article. The redirect URL will be given to customers - which will be much easier for them to remember:

• Log into the Volusion Admin Page and clicks on the Settings tab.
• Click on the Maintenance link in the gray menu bar.
• Click the "Manage 301 Redirects" link within the Maintenance page and create a 301 redirect for their article.
• In the Source Path column, enter /exports.
• In the Target Path column, enter /Articles.asp?=101.
• When finished, click Save Changes to create the redirect.

Once this is done, instead of giving customers the following URL:

http://www.superwidgets.com/Articles.asp?=101

Customer can simply go to the following URL instead:

http://www.superwidgets.com/export

Each URL will of course redirect to the merchant's website article ID 101.

Summary:

The Website Text functions within Volusion Version 5 provide a versatile way to create select text elements to display within the Volusion store. Aside from providing products or services at competitive prices, online merchants will also need to provide some basic information to their customers from their online store's website. The Website Text page allows merchants to manage this without having to chase after numerous HTML files or crawl through line-after-line of code to update text on their site. This is just one more feature Volusion provides to merchants to better sell online.

Tags: design, website text, articles