DCSproduction, Website Design in San Jose, SF Bay Area » Custom Online Stores

Networking Cable retailing site improvements

Alex Hu — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:16:32 +0000

Based on the suggestion from an earlier post : Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for large quantity of products in your online store. DCS client, eShopPC.com, asked for improvement of shopper’s user experience.

The improvement objectives are
1) shoppers want to see all available items with least clicking or scrolling
2) store manager want to systematically upload hundreds or thousands of item to the site

DCS offered solutions in
1) condensed table-style layout at the category level. Display hundreds of items with thumbnail images and specification in one page.
2) base on product’s nature, store manager may choose different display format to present a category
3) upload products in bulk with spreadsheet-like list

Table-style product list

Generic product list

B2B Online Supplier Stores

Alex Hu — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 04:43:23 +0000

We are used to seeing vending machines in the cafeteria or in the hallway of office buildings. It is the vendor’s privilege to set up these cash collectors, providing a convenient buying process with the right items and selling them to ready-to-buy shoppers within seconds time.

From that idea, in terms of a business-to-business (B2B) model, we suggest setting up a supplier store for your corporation clients. With internet access and user authentication feature, the internal store can be interpreted as a broader sense, and not limited to a office LAN, or WAN. And, thanks to internet, the supplier store can readily serve the corporation with branch offices and franchising networks nationwide.

Since 2008, DCS has delivered internet-based B2B online supplier stores for 3 of their clients, providing items or services. Each client needs only one store admin back-end. Their corporate-labeled supplier stores can be unlimited. From the admin back-end, our client is able to set up a new store in minutes, as long as they are accepted as the supplier–exclusive or not–of the business corporate.

DCS was founded in 2001 and began using X-cart as its e-Commerce engine since 2004. We choose to use X-cart–in particular, the x-cart GOLD version–as the base to initiate development. Because X-cart PRO is designed for the Shopping Mall business model, it is more limiting than convenient for the idea of B2B supplier store.

Requirement of Corporate Supplier Store	DCS Customization from X-cart GOLD	X-cart PRO
Private labeling	Displays the corporate logo, business name, and contact info in each supplier store and all pages in that store	Uniform page header and footer at any category or item page
Display specific categories	Whether the shopper is logged in or not, the store front only displays categories and supplied items for the corporate account	Categories are mixed before a shopper logs in
Sole provider	Sole provider	PRO has multiple providers in a store. It’s an overkill feature in this application.
Payment status & reconcile report	Purchase Order (P.O.) is extremely important in a corporate supplier store. It’s necessary both for you and the corporate accounting office to access and generate the real-time report of all POs regarding its shipping and payment status.	n/a

In the cases that we delivered, we have experienced different demands, such as:

Case 1: A sign store offers the supplier store solutions to real estate franchises. One of their supplier stores provides brand marketing signs and accessories to 50+ branch offices and over 1500 agents.

Case 2: A brand marketing brokerage. Their customers are nationwide chain stores. The supplier store provides the branded store furniture and wall decoration to customer’s offices and store located nationwide.

Case 3: A Dry Clean service provider. They offer pickup services from their corporate office buildings. They also offer a variety of ordering process and payment options based on the customer’s location or company.

Our DCS development team is ready to adapt to any demands that cater to your specific condition. Please feel free to contact us

by phone: 408-929-4888

or online

http://www.dcsproduction.com/contact

Video Instruction of X-cart Managment

Alex Hu — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:02:35 +0000

DCS designed online store based on x-cart ecommerce cart system to many of our customers. We provide training and continuous support to clients thru. service plan.

X-cart is an all-in-one online store solution. It covers product introduction, cart, shipping, tax, payment, order & customer management,… It’s pretty difficulty to ask x-cart users to remember all features and operation in a few training session. Here comes a convenience idea: We have collect all x-cart user instructional video from YouTube in this page. These video are created by independent developers in USA, or Qualiteam, the X-cart developer. All the copyright and credit goes to these contributors.

You may select the interested topic and click on the links. To get the best viewing quality, please make sure that you are watch YouTube video at 720p or at least 480p, also Full-screen mode. See the following image for the adjustment on the video control bar. High Quality Video:

Part 1: Quick Summary
Video created by independent developers in USA with English narration

How-To: X-Cart – Part 1 (English narration)
– Gernal knowledge for Store owners regarding users, categories, item, homepage featued, manufacturer, orders, Newsletter, Statistics, Shipping, Tax, Destination Zone, Product Rating, Country & States, Gift Certificates
High Quality Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rYt_GhNzto&hd=1

How-To: X-Cart – Part 3 (English narration)
– Advanced knowledge for Store owners
Search for Product, Modify products in batch, Shipping Markup, Discount, Coupon,
High Quality Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4yyvgdL-pA&hd=1

How-To: X-Cart – Part 2 A (English narration)
– Knowledge for Webmasters
Admin Summary, database backup, Membership levels, Credit Card Type, titles, Templates, Webmaster Mode, Files, General Settings, Language, Modules,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMQSYHt_PSQ&hd=1

Part 2: Detail Description of each individual features

X-Cart Product Management Walkthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3KbemVluKI&hd=1

X-Cart Categories Walkthough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NufFSeOpkE&hd=1

X-cart Generate Product Thumbnail Images
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYZAarjWkUw&hd=1

X-cart Orders Processing Walkthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYwMg2YFpjk&hd=1

X-cart Users Management Walkthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRXeYLKwRho&hd=1

X-cart Product with Options or Variants walkthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCst2fulGTs&hd=1

Adding Coupons for X-CART
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0_duOZd7qY&hd=1

Create a Special Offer in X-Cart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SiGMEbd7QE&hd=1

================================================

X-cart user instruction with background music
Video Created by Qualiteam (the X-cart developer)

X-Cart v4.4. Product Catalog. part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKa0mrp5sWk&hd=1

X-Cart v4.4.x. Product Catalog part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-I2vQ-JrE&hd=1

X-Cart v4.4. Customers experience. Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UuuE-BmJg0&hd=1

Merchandising and Inventory management in X-Cart v4.4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASpguY5F47A&hd=1

X-Cart v4.4. Customers experience. Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q53ARhmN29E&hd=1

X-Cart administration back-end features overview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jhJjEF7Gko&hd=1

Orders management in X-Cart v4.4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yALJMShktUw&hd=1

X-Cart v4.4 Tax system overview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig7PgOMdCl4&hd=1

What’s new in X-Cart v4.4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENW06jOTDYs&hd=1

Users management in X-Cart v4.4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNPEQ7sXf9Q&hd=1

How to make a product with options/variants in X-Cart v4.4.x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGlpQN-EihU&hd=1

X-Cart v4.4.x Real-time shipping calculation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7nVysLsoT4&hd=1

Custom-defined shipping estimation in X-Cart v4.4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU-xFQY-6bA&hd=1

How to offer free shipping in X-Cart v4.4.x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVx2dTnHr8&hd=1

Customers Memberships and Wholesale pricing in X-Cart v4.4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQxfWxFj82o&hd=1

Statistics in X-Cart v4.4.x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwC2CSsIbfY&hd=1

10+ reasons of upgrading to X-cart 4.4.x

Alex Hu — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 05:48:50 +0000

X-cart is a solid ecommerce platform, which has sophisticated shopping cart, well integrated with payment systems and shipping options. DCS has used it to developed over 30 online stores since 2004.

On top of its solid foundation, many store owner would like to enhance the user experience by install many 3-party addons. After years of reversion, x-cart launched 4.4.x with many valuable built-in features. Their richness and versatile features make us believe its and noteworthy revision. As a senior x-cart developer, I can list at least 10 reasons to suggest store owners for an upgrade if you have an older version x-cart or if you are note using x-cart as your online store engine.

1. 100% PCI-DSS compatible

PCI DSS is a worldwide information security standard assembled by the major credit card vendors, including American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, Inc. X-cart store owners may adjust certain parameters in admin console when try to comply with PCI-DSS standards

2. User login with email address

You must be tired of doing customer support when your store shoppers call you for missing user name and password. The most fashion solution on this issue is to use the email address to replace the user name.

3. Multiple pictures of an item

Visualize more pictures of an item on the item page when mouse over the small thumbnail images in below the large one.

4. One page checking out

Used to be in 3 pages. Due to larger monitor and higher resolution monitors is getting popular, it’s now been well-layout into one single page. All key blocks, such as billing address, shipping address, shipping options, payments, order total, shipping charge, tax, and discount coupons, have be integrated in 3 columns.

5. Product Feature Comparison

This feature used to be only seen in large-scale online store, now you have have the Feature Comparison in your own store. When your shoppers is expecting to shop by the item’s specification. It’s is an instrumental tool for them.

6. Auto-generated sitemap

A sitemap is not just helping your store shoppers to locate the items and pages in your website. More importantly, it’s a killer app for search engine optimization. Once you have the sitemap in place, the search engine crawler will use it to fully go through all your pages, i.e. all your pages will be indexed by search engine databases.

7. Registered user has a Address Book

Another nice to have, and only seem from major online store feature. If you are selling gift-related items, address book will allow your shopper to save not just one address, but the shopper’s friends and families addresses.

8. Magnifier of product pictures

With this tool, there is no quality loss when magnifying. Customers can freely zoom in and out on any area of an image, as well as drag the image around in the viewer work area to examine every detail of the item displayed.

9. Configurable products

It allows you to create and sell composite products or systems that can consist of many interchangeable or optional components (like computer systems, home cinemas, etc). It can also be used for creating sets of products (for example, suits, accessories sets, etc).

10. Special Offers

It provides you extreme flexibility in defining bonuses/discounts and setting up conditions under which they will be made available to your
customers. such as buy over $100, get a free CD from music department; buy 3 get the 4th one free; and buy this item get 20 bonus points.

11. Return Merchandise Authorization: RMA

is created to facilitate the procedure of returning the products, which may be very annoying if you do not have a tool to deal with it.

PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which is a worldwide information security standard assembled by the major credit card vendors, including American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, Inc.

12. Survey

13. My Account : new design

April 1st, 2011 California Tax rates for x-cart

Alex Hu — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 09:09:39 +0000

Refer to the updated rate list posted at (California) State Board of Equalization website.
Please click on this link:
http://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/pdf/Pending_Rates-04-11.pdf

And, a documentation posted at UCLA school site

http://map.ais.ucla.edu/portal/site/UCLA/menuitem.789d0eb6c76e7ef0d66b02ddf848344a/?vgnextoid=61f9a8bcb84ee210VgnVCM100000e1d76180RCRD

I have posted the updates files for X-cart store. You are welcome to download it form our online demo store.

Please visit this page and download both the Tax Rates and the Destination Zone file. when you are importing these file, you should start with the Destination Zone file, and Tax Rate file as 2nd step.

http://www.dcsproduction.com/store/home.php?cat=9

In case you either change your mind, or experience any trouble when upload these files, Please back up your existing destination file and tax rates file by (export) first.

DCS does not has any problem when importing the files and use the updated rate in this demo store. Still, it’s SOLELY AT YOUR RISK AND AT YOUR DISCRETION. DCS DOES NOT accept any liability for your use of the files.

Your online store shopper is also your designer

Alex Hu — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:54:59 +0000

DCS Online Canvas: Get Personal with Your Shoppers & Their Orders

Headsup : DCS introduces the turnkey solution for online stores selling personalized items. The design tool: Online Canvas. Online Canvas gives the power of design and expression to any shopper. Online Canvas can be quickly implemented on online stores of printings, signs, apparel, awards, buttons, key chains, mugs, and any personal gift or collectible item.

Key Features:

A borderless design Space. The limit is the width and resolution of your screen. i.e. your full screen space is your Canvas.
Scale, stretch, flip, rotate, or move any design object ( e.g. TEXT, CLIPART, IMAGE) without searching for tools or buttons.
Save the design history, and compare them before you check out
Save & Share the design with just an email. You or your partners may continue to work from where was left
Ready to be integrated with most of online stores

Are you interested, contact us for a demo. (408) 929-4888

Allow Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Yahoo, Gmail users register or login your Online Store

Alex Hu — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:21:19 +0000

Sign in for your customers through social networks

Benefits

Increase registration conversion rates by letting consumers use existing accounts on many social networks.
Improve the probability of eventual purchase and increased purchase amount by facilitating login prior to purchase.
Create word of mouth marketing when your customers share activities such as coupon availability, surveys, product reviews or purchases across their social networks with links back to your online store.
Build a more accurate and extensive understanding of the customer profile information (name, email address, gender, age, language, zip code, friends lists, address books, and personal interests).

Are you interested, contact us for a demo.
(408) 929-4888

Introduction Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze-xMaoU1qY

Free and powerful online store features

Alex Hu — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:55:16 +0000

DCS is a X-Cart eCommerce stores value-added developer with almost 50 stores up and running in the past 6 years. We want to make sure that all your eCommerce investment is worthy and profitable.

The x-cart software developer recently announce a list of free (built-in) online store modules in additional to its very powerful ecommerce platform.

Here is the list

X-Magnifier adds the ability to pan and magnify large-sized and high quality images (user manual);
X-Survey allows you to create and deploy easily customizable online surveys and internet polls (user manual);
X-Feature Comparison helps your customer to choose the right product from your online store (user manual);
X-Gift Registry is a tool for creating and maintaining gift registries for various events like baby, birthday, wedding, graduation, holiday, etc; (user manual)
X-SpecialOffers allows you to promote sales by introducing special offers; (user manual)
X-Affiliate is full-featured affiliate software which brings advantages of “Affiliate marketing” to the promotion campaign of your store; (user manual)
X-Configurator simplifies the process of creating and tracking made-to-order products with many interchangeable or optional components. (user manual)
Sitemap allows you to add a sitemap page to your site. (user manual)

DCS is glad to support existing and new customer in installation. For more detail, please check these links

Product Image Magnifier

Magnify your product image to its high detail

Product Feature Comparison

Compare features in 2 similar items

side by side product feature comparison

Special Offers in your Store

Show Special Offers link or banner

Shopper see the Special Offers

Special offer items is spararated with regualar items in Cart

Special offered items is clearly listed in the Payment Detail page

Facebook and X-cart store interactive marketing

Alex Hu — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:38:17 +0000

Create a Landing Page on Facebook

Link back from X-cart to Facebook

Add a Facebook LIKE button to the X-cart product page

Add a Facebook Badge on the Store Header or Footer

X-cart Facebook tab demo (link back to X-cart store)

http://www.facebook.com/xcart?v=app_145951035417763&ref=ts

Transfer your ECwid (online version of X-cart) onto Facebook

http://www.ecwid.com/blog/how-to/how-to-integrate-your-shopping-cart-with-facebook.html

Example: (put your ECwid-powered online store in a frame and show it as a Facebook app)

http://apps.facebook.com/hairdesignertv_store/

http://apps.facebook.com/aweeclick

Automatically post the new product onto Facebook

http://www.mercuryminds.com/product/xcart-facebook-automation-module.html

RSS feed from any online store to Facebook

http://www.sortprice.com/facebook_store.html

Example:

http://www.facebook.com/TigerDirect

WeNeedSigns 2010 version

Alex Hu — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:11:59 +0000

DCS proudly announces that a major client, WeNeedSigns.com, launched its 2010 version website on September 1st, 2010.

Below are several new site features. The DCS team is currently working on a few enhanced features to be released before wintertime.

1. Corporate Service Block: meets the increasing demand of franchise brand signs

2. Mousing-over to preview an image provides more detailed information

3. Intuitive sign-making system; see preview instantly

4. Large sign preview available at any stage of the ordering process

5. Clear statement at the Shopping Cart

6. Easy re-ordering process.

Background Introduction:

WeNeedSigns.com was first introduced in 2008. It began the novel idea of an online sign store with full-blown online designing and ordering features. Shoppers choose their template first, then create with their own design with an online drawing board.

Over the same period of time, DCS worked on a parallel project for the sign vendor of the Alain Pinel Real Estate company. Designed for 1500+ agents from 30+ offices, it used a less flexible online sign ordering system. Still, it delivered what our client expected in terms of productivity and profitability.

By early June 2010, the DCS team started developing the new version of WeNeedSigns.com. Our goal: to leverage the existing assets and to bring in higher quality user experience in an Online Custom Sign Order system.

DCSproduction, Website Design in San Jose, SF Bay Area » Custom Online Stores

Networking Cable retailing site improvements

B2B Online Supplier Stores

Video Instruction of X-cart Managment

Part 1: Quick Summary Video created by independent developers in USA with English narration

Part 2: Detail Description of each individual features

X-cart user instruction with background music Video Created by Qualiteam (the X-cart developer)

10+ reasons of upgrading to X-cart 4.4.x

1. 100% PCI-DSS compatible

2. User login with email address

3. Multiple pictures of an item

4. One page checking out

5. Product Feature Comparison

6. Auto-generated sitemap

7. Registered user has a Address Book

8. Magnifier of product pictures

9. Configurable products

10. Special Offers

11. Return Merchandise Authorization: RMA

12. Survey

13. My Account : new design

April 1st, 2011 California Tax rates for x-cart

Your online store shopper is also your designer

DCS Online Canvas: Get Personal with Your Shoppers & Their Orders

Are you interested, contact us for a demo. (408) 929-4888

Allow Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Yahoo, Gmail users register or login your Online Store

Sign in for your customers through social networks

Are you interested, contact us for a demo. (408) 929-4888

Free and powerful online store features

Product Image Magnifier

Product Feature Comparison

Compare features in 2 similar items

Special Offers in your Store

Facebook and X-cart store interactive marketing

Create a Landing Page on Facebook

Link back from X-cart to Facebook

Add a Facebook Badge on the Store Header or Footer

X-cart Facebook tab demo (link back to X-cart store)

Transfer your ECwid (online version of X-cart) onto Facebook

Automatically post the new product onto Facebook

RSS feed from any online store to Facebook

WeNeedSigns 2010 version

Part 1: Quick Summary
Video created by independent developers in USA with English narration

X-cart user instruction with background music
Video Created by Qualiteam (the X-cart developer)

Are you interested, contact us for a demo.
(408) 929-4888