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BOUT TIME SOFTWARE - [ PM-02 ] Product Manager


Bout Time Software

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Description

This forms the basis for most of the features we offer. As the primary purpose, The Product Manager allows you to manage all the products that appear on your website. You have the ability to add/edit/delete or mark inactive any product at any time.

You can also use it to manage stock levels, shopping cart ordering, product details, multiple pricing and a whole range of other valuable product details and features.

This is similar in some respects to CMS (Content Management Systems), except with our Product Manager, you have greater control over how your products are displayed, and you can choose a different display layout for each product if you wish. You can override the default photo gallery if you wish to incorporate something different, or you can override the whole page layout and use something completely new.

We give you the choice of what you want to do.

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Features
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If you are looking for a Content Management System that provides you complete control for how each product should be displayed on a per-product basis, then our Product Manager is what you need. You can choose to have the product information displayed using the standard layout, or you can choose to Override the Photo Gallery section of the page and incorporate anything you wish on that section of the page, or you can completely override the whole layout display and design your own page layout style. This can be done on a per product basic, so you could have each product using a unique layout. This is idea if each product has different characteristics which would be best represented using different page layout styles.

Our Product Manager also provides you the ability to have an infinite number of Categories and Sub Categories. Each one of these you can configure a unique welcome message, a thumbnail example and a brief description. You can also re-assign any products between any Category or Sub Category at any time.

Here is a list of what information can be displayed by default. The Product Manager handles the display layout, all you need to do is enter this information for each product:

  • Pricing. This can display just a single price, or it can be configured to display a NOW and WAS price for items you may have on special. The GST status of the product is also displayed.
  • Stock Levels. You can choose to display the quantity that you have in stock. Such as exact number, More/less than 5, More/less than 10, In stock or Out of stock etc.
  • Expression of Interest. This allows people to select products but instead of adding them to a shopping cart, it adds them to an expression of interest list, which can be sent using our Contact Us Form. That way people can ask questions about products without having to type in the product name / code or price.
  • Online Cart. A cart can be displayed allowing people to select a quantity of this item they are interested in. The cart contents can be emailed as a Request for a Quote or a Purchase Order Request.
  • Product Dimensions. If you enter the Width and/or Height and/or Depth then those dimensions will be displayed online. These dimensions are also used by our Freight Manager to generate shipping/delivery charges.
  • Available From. If you have numerous shops or outlets, then you can configure each product independently to say what outlet it is currently available from. This is idea if not all outlets carry all products. You can also include notes which can help alert people to what is available. For example if a product is available in numerous colours, you could add in the notes what colours are currently in stock at each outlet.
  • Multiple Information Sections. One major aspect is if you have a large amount of information, features, specifications, details, options and files available for download for each product, the web page may get quite busy or quite long. Our Product Manager allows you to group all that information into convenient tabs, which the website viewer can then click on to read. Once the page has loaded you can click on any of the Tabs with no further page loading required.
  • Display Other Products. At the bottom of the page you can configure up to 4 other products to be advertised at the base of each products page.
  • Advertising. You can utilize one of the 4 Other Product displays for advertising when integrated with our Advertising Manager. Requires our Advertising Manager, which is sold separately..
The Product Manager is automatically supplied with the following Key Components as standard.

  • Photo Gallery (PGAL-02). This allows you to have numerous photos of your product available in an easy to use thumbnail selection gallery. It's important to have as many photos as possible and as large as possible to ensure your potential customers can fully appreciate the product you have on offer.
  • File / Image Manager. This provides you the ability to manage all your files and images for each product individually. This allows you to simply and easily update or add new pictures, files , manuals or brochures at anytime. No need to add links or learn HTML, simply upload the file and the Product Manager does all the hard work. You can also upload as many pictures as you want for this product and they will be incorporated into the photo gallery on that products web page, however you can also assign the order in which those pictures appear and you can choose which pictures to be displayed. So if there are pictures that you have uploaded that you do not wish to use at that moment, you can disable them, without having to delete them.

    ** New Feature ** If you accidentally upload a file or a picture to the wrong product, now from within the Image Manager section you have the ability to Copy or to Move that file to another product. This uses a product code quick lookup feature, so as you start to type in the product code, for the product you wish to send this file to, you will be given a list of matching products to select from.

  • Product Search. This operates similar to a website search except it's designed specifically for products and allows users to search via a range of options. The search can display thumbnails for each product or simply a text list for super fast operation. The website viewer can select which they prefer.
  • Online Cart. Provides quick and easy way for your customers to submit a Quote Request or a Purchase Order Request by including an "Add to Cart" feature to each product. Please Note the Shopping Cart does *NOT* process payments online.
  • Generate Product Labels. ** NEW FEATURE **. Now you can automatically generate product labels to a PDF which you can then print and cut out and attach to your products. This will save you time and reduce the risk of errors if you use hand written labels. You can print multiple labels per product, or just one per product.
Please click on the Details Tab (Section) for more information on these included key components.
Key Aspects supported by the Product Manager

  • The ability to have multiple pricing levels for each Product (currently supports 6). This means you can show retail prices if you wish, but when a dealer logs in to the Purchase Order Request Form, they will see their buy prices instead. Idea for Retail, Wholesale or Dealer purchasing.
  • Comes with the option of an Online Cart. The online cart adds an "Add to Cart" option to each product. The Online Cart does not support multiple pricing, so it is only available for retail sales. The Cart integrates with our Freight Manager (sold separately) if you wish to have it automatically calculate freight charges. The Online Cart will allow your customers to submit a Quote Request or a Purchase Order Request. It does not process their order online and therefore does not process payments online.
  • Group Products into Categories. You can easily assign products to a Category, Sub Category and Manufacturer (brand). This makes sorting, searching and displaying much easier. You can have an infinite number of Categories and Sub Categories. Each one of these you can configure a unique welcome message, a thumbnail example and a brief description. You can also re-assign any products between any Category or Sub Category at any time.
  • Featured Products allows you to highlight key products at the top of the webpage for the selected category or sub category.
  • You can control which product pages are displayed online. Simply with a click of the mouse and without having to delete the whole record. This makes it ideal if you wish to temporarily remove products from the website without deleting them.
  • See at a glance the number of Hits. Each time a product page is viewed the Product Manager keeps track. So you can see at a glance (and sort by) how many hits each page has received. The Product Manager is smart enough to identify if it is a robot (or search engine / spider) hit or that from a real human. It *ONLY* records the hits from real humans, that way you know the hits are accurate and meaningful. There is no point in recording how many times Google has checked that page with its search engine robot. The more important hits are those from people that may have clicked on your website link from a search engine.
  • Provides the ability of displaying Quantity in Stock. Each product keeps track of how many items are in stock and you can configure how this information is displayed on the website..
  • Available From. You can also display a list of outlets that this product is available from. Ideal if you have numerous outlets where some choose not to stock specific products.
  • In Stock Notes. You can also include any notes about current items in stock. This is ideal for listing such things as what colours or sizes you currently have available for this product.
  • Expression of Interest. This allows people to select products but instead of adding them to a shopping cart, it adds them to an expression of interest list, which can be sent using our Contact Us Form. That way people can ask questions about products without having to type in the product name / code or price. This integrates with our Contact Us Form which is sold separately.
  • PDF Brochure Download. Each product page can have a link which will allow you to download a PDF Brochure of that product. It includes the information you entered into each of the Tabs, the price, product code and the Primary Picture.
  • Other Products Display. Each product can display up to 4 other products at the bottom of the page. These other products are displayed in thumbnail fashion. This is an idea option if the current product has other accessories available, or if the current product integrated well with other products. These other products can be displayed at the base of the page so that the website viewer can then click on those thumbnails to visit that product.
  • Generate Price Lists. From the Administration section you can generate pricelists using a range of selection criteria (such as only products in stock, only products online, only products from a selected category etc.. to name just a few). These price lists can include product picture and description, or you can have one product per line (as a summary list). These price lists are ideal if you have a customer requesting information and availability on just a selected range of products.
  • Stock and Reorder Reports. If you resell products then you can use the Product Manager to track stock levels. That way you can generate stock re-order reports where you can set a minimum quantity and it will include all products below that quantity and the re-order cost to reach the minimum quantity you selected. The management of stock integrates with our Online Cart and our Quote/Invoice Manager.
FILE IMAGE MANAGER

The File / Image Manager allows you to manage all the pictures and files required for each product. You can enter a description for each image and file that you upload. You can see a summary of all files uploaded (thumbnail) with the ability to delete.

IMAGE UPLOADING
When you upload images you can choose to apply enhancements, such as sharpness, brightness or contrast, plus each image is automatically resized to the required dimensions and a thumbnail is generated to ensure fast and efficient display on the website. You can now also assign a specific image to be the primary image. The primary image will be used as the main thumbnail on the Product Search page and when someone views the product this image will be the first one loaded in the photo gallery. You can also manage the display order for all the pictures that you upload. This allows you to organize how the pictures will be displayed in the photo gallery. Having this option means you can upload the pictures in any order and then sort it out later. You can also choose which pictures you wish to include in the display.

FILE UPLOADING
When a file is uploaded you don't need to do anything else. You can choose to add a description if you wish. On the web page the Product Manager will automatically display a download link and a relevant icon (based on the type of file, such as PDF, ZIP, XLS etc), plus the filesize and the date the file was uploaded will also be displayed so the website viewer has the maximum amount of information available to ensure that is the file they require. The description you entered will also be shown at this time.

PHOTO GALLERY

This application is used to display all the pictures that you uploaded using the File Image Manager. Each image will be shown as a thumbnail allowing website viewers to click on it to display that image.

Full Quality Image Option.You can now choose to upload photos and ask it to keep a full quality version of that photo. This means it will still generate a resized and optimized version of the photo for display in the photo gallery, but it will also keep the image exactly as you uploaded it and then provide an option for that image to be downloaded from the Download TAB section on the page. The downloading is handled by our Download Manager. Utilizing this feature allows you to provide a full quality version for those in need of additional detail, but still ensure the web page loads fast by displaying an optimized and resized version.



PRODUCT SEARCH

Website search features are good, but when it comes to locating a product sometimes you want something a bit more specific. The Product Manager comes with the Product Search. This will allow website viewers to search, not just for keywords, but will also allow display of all products that have been assigned to any category and/or sub category and/or from a specific manufacturer.

PRODUCT SORTING

When a Sub Category is viewed, the website viewer will have the opportunity to filter and sort the list of included products. The products can be filtered by manufacturer and can be sorted by a range of options, such as Product Name, Manufacturer, Price or Product Code. This hopefully ensures people can locate and identify the products they are after quickly and efficiently.

ONLINE CART

The Product Manager gives you the ability to display an Online Cart with each product which you have made available to Online Ordering. The Online Cart includes a Quantity box and an Add To Cart Button.

The Online Cart provides integration with the FREIGHT MANAGER (optional purchase) to offer quotes for freight, plus it includes an Order Manager which will allow you to review and manage all orders received.

Please Note. The Shopping Cart does not currently support processing payments online.



EXPRESSION OF INTEREST Option

There will be times where a customer may wish to ask questions about specific products. The traditional way to accomplish this would be to simply have them type in their request in a Contact Us Form. However the downside to this is they may not enter in the correct information about the product (such as product code) and that may delay you in being able to respond to their inquiry.

Our Expression of Interest feature integrates with our Contact Us Form. So when a customer is viewing a products web page they can click on the Expression of Interest button and that product will be added to the Expression of Interest List.

When the customer has selected all the items they wish to ask questions about, they can then view our Contact Us Form and will see that all the items they have in their Expression of Interest List are now automatically included in the description box of the Contact Form. This adds the product name, the product code and the current assigned retail price.

Auto Generation of Product Labels
If you sell products that need identification, or are not supplied with barcodes, then it may be difficult to identify or locate them at a later date. That may sound strange but a good example of this is a Nursery, where you may have numerous cuttings of numerous plant varieties. It is very difficult to identify the variety (species), just by looking at it and as some varieties change dramatically during development that adds to the complexity, so labels really need to be attached to each item straight away.

So to help you with this, the Product Manager now allows you to automatically generate Labels, which you can print out and then attach to the product. If you have created a product record for the product, then you can print a label for it.

This new feature generates a PDF for your convenience and places 4 products per line and 4 lines per page. It will be inevitable that you will need multiple labels for each variety, so you can configure just how many you need printed. You can select to just print 1,2 or 3 or you can select it to print 1 line, 2 lines, 3 lines or 4 lines (which would indicate a complete page).

By default the labels include space at the top for your attachment mechanism (such as hole punch or staple etc) the Sub Category name which the product has been assigned, the Primary Image (a photo) of the product, the Product Name and finally the Product Code.

These Product Labels could also be beneficial if you just wish to generate a sample sheet of what is available for your customers. What you can do with the PDF is totally up to you.

If you don't have a photo uploaded for any products yet that's ok the label will display your company logo in place of the product picture.

Product Display Features . There are two main display modes and you can choose to use either one for any product.

FIXED LAYOUT

This allows all the key features to be displayed in a fixed layout. This page you're looking at now is using this fixed layout. With this mode you automatically have the following features activated:
  • Photo Gallery
  • File Download Manager
  • Shopping Cart
  • Stock Level Display
  • Information Tabs ( Features, Specifications, Details, Options, Downloads )
Each Information Tab is only displayed if you assign information to it. You can also choose to turn off some of these features, or you can override key items such as the Photo Gallery.

Overriding the Photo Gallery provides you the option of displaying something else in that section of the page. Examples would be animations or movies or any other HTML formatted information.

One advantage worth pointing out is the Information Tabs. You're currently looking at one now (The Options Tab). Each tab contains unique information about the product and which one is displayed is controlled by what the website viewer clicks on. How this is managed is by using Javascript. Now if the website viewer has Javascript disabled, you would expect that they would now not be able to see the information each tab has to offer? Right ? Wrong. With our Product Manager if Javascript is disabled all the details from all Information Tabs is still displayed even though the Information Tabs themselves are no longer clickable. So everyone will see all the information available irrespective of how they have configured their web browser. This also helps ensure that all the information is scanned and indexed by search engines, because in general search engines can't use javascript.

CUSTOM LAYOUT

With this you can enter any HTML, CSS or Javascript code and display the product information in any way you choose. You can use some pre-defined codes to insert specific product information such as price, product name and product code, shopping cart etc.

Being able to use either format for any product will allow you to be flexible when required depending on what information you have to display.

Advertising Manager *Optional*

If you have business advertisements, then these can be incorporated into the Product Manager by utilizing one of the 4 Other Product display sections on the page. Each advertisement can be configured to display on a product page or not (Adds can not be configured for individual products though it is all products or no products). For more information on our Advertising Manager, please visit THIS LINK

Freight Manager *Optional*

The Freight Manager will allow the shopping cart to calculate and display freight costs. If your courier company charges you based on weight versus distance, then our Freight Manager will be the ideal solution for you.

The Freight Manager is supplied at an additional cost. For more information about the Freight Manager, please visit THIS LINK

Catalogue Manager / Generator *Optional*

The Product Manager also integrates with our Catalogue Manager / Generator Application. This allows you to create your own high quality catalogues in A4 or A3 size, double or single sided printing using products directly from the Product Manager. These catalogues are generated in PDF which you can send directly to the printing company of your choice. Being able to generate catalogues "in house" will not only save you heaps of money (by not having to pay someone to generate them for you), but it also provides you the flexibility of modifying the catalogues at anytime, saving you even more money. Plus you can simply choose to print any page from the catalogue at anytime, meaning you can then use this application to print only those pages containing the products that the customer is interested in.


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Last Modified on : 19th of January, 2022

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