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I am about to talk about computer stuff. Proceed with caution unless you already expected that.
It did occur to me that I didn't really allow you to compare apples with apples. What is the difference between my products and the rest? Well, glad you asked because now I can show you. Let's talk about a 25 dollar so called e-commerce solution. Ever paid for a downloaded one of these? Yeah, I have too. Waste of money. The look and feel is only a very small part of what you need. Sure, it is the part that represents you and people do make the call on what they see. Working on those unzipped, html templates in almost impossible. Securing them for commerce is even worse. Altering the products or categories takes an enormous amount of computer savvy. It is actually very counter productive in my opinion. Your 25 bucks will escalate, a lot. At the end, you still don't have what you want. A website that shows off a few pictures is very different to one that sells products.
Here at TC, I have taken the long view. What does it take to operate day to day. What if you want to change things? How can you make it an effective device to manage products? I want to quickly review a clients history and details. Oh yes, I can do that for you and in quick time too. Actually, I don't have to do anything. You can do it in quickly all by yourself. You'll see shortly.
When you look at Hayabusa.com.au, what do you see? A normal website, right? I see something very different. I see a massively powerful interface that gives me everything I need to operate effectively. What I will do now is show you a few captures and explain what they do. I will keep it light because not everything is all that interesting at first sight. Too some people, it will be exactly what is needed, to others, it's boring nerd talk.
...and remember that this is a speciality of mine. I will happily sit here and key in the whole site for you. Everything. In fact, if you don't feel like it, you don't have to do anything besides provide the information. You can purchase any service that you want. At the end of the day, you want a site that doesn't let you down. It can be operated with every little knowledge, just common sense. I am so confident of our products that I can put my hand on my heart and say that there isn't a better product or range of services anywhere in the whole world.
anyway, on with the show.
The dashboard is what you see as a site owner. It displays all the daily information.
Its shows quite a lot of information and you can customise it so that it shows just info that you think is important. This is the panels that I want to see when operating this site (yes, I covered the details with the blue blocks, this is real time data from today). I want to know what is getting the most hits. I want to see the tasks that I want done today and I want to see the new developments that I might want to utilise. The site itself has dozens of pages that contain all sorts of tools. I will make it easier by just talking about the page control tabs. I don't want to take too much of your time but if you want to know more, simply ask me with the hotline. I am more than happy to talk about any aspect.
The Orders Page
See the second line? Clicking on these sub tabs open up all sorts of information.
Under the Orders heading you can look at the dashboard (which is the big capture above). All the orders that you see and the specifics are available.
If you get a Phone Order in, you can process it here in real time.
Recurring billing is for businesses that have subscriptions or on going charges. Enter the data and the site will take care of the billing.
If you get a Return, process it here. This helps you keep track of returns, refunds and things of that nature.
Point of sale, yes, it has one. You can use this interface at the counter. This is really fantastic. The checkout counter can compare the product they swiped with an image. It also provides all the information that the customer might want. Any information that has been entered can be seen right at the counter.
Abandoned Carts. Shoppers will come in and then not process. There is a number of reasons for this but you can analyse trends and adapt your practices to capture that sale.
Do you want to develop reports for your sales and accountant? Well, that's what this part does. The Reports Tab. It can generate all sorts of reports. Bar graphs, growth figures, taxes, payments received and so much more.
The ROI tracks all the returns you received from search engines, newsletters and other advertising campaigns.
The Affiliates tab shows you how they are going. Their percentages, commissions and total earnings.
The Search tabs offers information on what people search for in your site. This information is used to formulate better ways of doing business. If items receive many search hits but you don't have it available, might be worth adding it.
The Inventory
This little ripper comes up all the time. This is the real work centre of your new site.
Categories. It is exactly as it sounds. This controls your product headings on your front page. It is really easy to operate. Drag and drop for the most part. You don't need to search dumb code or do any programming. Just tell it what you want and your wish is it's command.
Products contains all the information on every specific product. This includes photographs, tech details, movies, metadata (which search engines use to find it), what categories the product is listed in, the weights for shipping and so much more.
Product Options. This controls the options that are available with your products. Drop downs and other sorts of buttons that helps refine an order are available here. You would have seen heaps of them in the bike sections.
Import and Exporting is for bulk data for review elsewhere. Your new store is capable of API, Quickbooks and Yahoo Store interaction. You can also take out and bring in Excel spreadsheets that can be altered outside.
Vendors contains information on the companies that you do business with.
Purchase Orders help you build POs for the vendors. Formulate and send. Easy.
Want to track and manage your inventory? Receiving does that beautifully. It relates directly to your vendor purchase order. You can also create product keys, how great is that?
Warehouses help you determine your distribution points for shipping. Even if they are in different countries.
Marketing
This one is east to understand. This whole area is dedicated to increasing sales and analysing your efforts. Probably the only one that isn't clear is SEO. SEO is how you are seen in search engines. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimised. There is no better way to market your on-line store. This page instructs you how to take advantage of the software to get your ranking high in the search engines.
Customers
For the most part, this contains information about your clientele. Lets look at CRMs first. A CRM is a ticket that a client creates (or your staff) used to keep track of on-going tasks. Very powerful stuff. No doubt you have received these from the big companies over the years. Your new site is probably better at it then they are.
Your Customer tab helps you admin their details. It contains customer's passwords, addresses, emails and that sort of information. You can also assign discount levels and permissions for access. Not everyone sees the same thing.
Reviews. Yeah, fairly self explanatory. It isn't without it's own charms. You can filter out naughty words too (God forbid that you should have too but there is a few crazy folks cruising the net).
Administrators helps you regulate the people who work for you. Not everyone needs access to sensitive data, control that here.
Admin History. Who id operating outside of their job description? Well, look it up. Actually, this is really good to see who is working and who isn't. (Insert evil laugh). Hey, its your business. Want to keep it?
Knowledge base. This is really good. You can put your hard earned lessons out there for your clients to draw upon and then apply that to a category. Pretty cool actually.
Design
How do things look? Control that from here. Upoad your logos, work on your CSS is you feel the need. You also write in your legals and terms that you use in your business. See the tabs called LiveEdit? Yeah, this is where the big boys play. Generally you don't need to be in there. We have this software because of its ability to be used without knowing programming. But, what if you do? Go hard. We don't want to restrict anyone from reaching their potential.
Settings
This is where your company specifics are located. It contains info that is displayed throughout your site such as who you are, where you are, the domain and time zone.
The Shipping tab controls where you ship from and where you ship too. Your new software has been made to contain all sorts of carrier information, this includes Aussie Post. Of course, FedEx, UPS and all the rest are here. They went out of their way to make these fancy databases for you to use, now you can do it in real time.
Taxes. Not everywhere has the same taxes. You can add them here and assign a value.
How is your Security? Your policies are assigned here. You can also add credit card payment methods and gateways.
You can also specify all sorts of Currencies and Assign Variables to your firewall.
Configuration Variables. This helps you enable or disable features in your site. I do it with imagery. I think that since I had to make my pictures so they the competition can do likewise. But yeah, you can assign areas that only members can see and so forth.
Custom fields are exactly that. Make your own if you feel the need.
and finally, the Maintenance tab. You can close your site temporaily to do some tech work or reassign inventory control grids. You can also manage your redirects and rebuild your product index.
And there you go. Whats the difference between my products and that crappy downloaded file? A fair bit actually. Hopefully, you started reading this thinking is was expenisive and now you should see that it is a bargain. Is it relevant to you? Not all of it most likely. Some parts will be more important to some businesses. Big or small, if want to be successful or already have a sucessful business that needs to get online proper, you are in exactly the right place.
and I haven't even started talking about what TC is prepared to do for you once you have the software. Think this page is long? That one would be twice this.
Want to know what I think is the best of all? None, and I mean none of this is pie in the sky or trying to pull the old wool. I don't have too. Every feature is operating, right now, new developments are released every week and ongoing. Anybody can say whatever they like out there but remember when I said that nobody else is doing it too this level? I meant it. Just a bike business? yeah right, but it is a hat I happily wear.
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