With ePages, you are always in control of your online business. Use your ePages shop system’s extensive and graphically appealing back office to easily and conveniently manage your shop. A browser and an Internet connection are all you need to use it.
The ePages administration page for creating and maintaining online shops and business websites consists of eight straightforward administrative areas. They are the platform for managing orders and customers; creating and handling products; defining the shop’s and website’s design; creating resources for online rentals and bookings; executing marketing campaigns; and specifying important settings such as languages, payment methods and the calculation of tax.
All orders which have been received are displayed in the Orders administrative module. New entries are listed separately. Items displayed include the respective order number, when the order was entered, who the customer is, the amount of the purchase, the selected methods of payment and shipping, and the current status. Depending on an order’s current phase of processing, various status descriptions can be selected and subsequently communicated to the customer (e.g. change “status to ‘Ready to be shipped’”).
In the Orders area, settings for the shopping basket can also be carried out (e.g. minimum purchase amount, enabling the selection of tax jurisdiction, shopping-basket texts, mandatory fields for registration).
The Customers module contains all information concerning registered customers. New registrations are saved here automatically. New customers can also be entered manually (e.g. if an order is placed by telephone). In addition to detailed contact data, a respective customer’s information contains all their previous orders and their user data.
By means of the Customer groups option, customers can be classified in certain groups as per common characteristics. This is convenient if, for example, different prices should be displayed in the shop for commercial customers and private individuals, respectively.
An import/export function makes it possible to process large amounts of data via external documents.
The Products area contains all functions for creating and handling products. New products can be classified as a stand-alone product, as a bundle (several products are offered as one), as a new version (different version of an existing product) or as a promotional product.
Product details feature information about the manufacturer, prices, inventory levels and the product itself. In addition, images can be uploaded for different product views and slide shows.
In order to increase product sales, eBay as well as numerous product-comparison and price-comparison portals (e.g. Ciao, guenstiger.de) can be provided with products directly from the shop. In addition, the following items can be activated for the shop: manual and automatic cross selling (e.g. “Customers who bought this product ...”), product comparisons, product ratings and shopping lists.
A shop or a business website can be set up either in preview mode via front-end editing (categories and pages can be created and edited within a true-view mode of the shop/website) or in data-sheet mode (categories and pages are displayed as a list).
Descriptive texts, images and products can be used to arrange categories. The import/export function simplifies the management of large amounts of data.
Not only online shops but also websites without shopping baskets can be created with the ePages shop system. A module for the renting and reservation of products and services can substantially upgrade websites. Customers can thus book appointments on their hair salon’s website or reserve and pay online for grinding machines for parquet flooring.
In the Booking system administrative module, products and services are created as Resources and associated with everything website visitors will need to book them, such as:
- Prices
- Duration / appointment intervals
- Description
- Images
Fee-based bookings can be paid for directly on the website via major payment methods.
Naturally, a booking option can also be added to an online shop. A hair salon’s website which already handles appointments could, for example, also offer hair-care and styling products.
In the Design area, you can custom-design the look of your shop or website: Possibilities include:
- Choose a layout for your shop/website (selection of over 100 industry-specific design templates)
- Insert a logo
- Specify colours, fonts and font sizes
- Select a symbol set (for icons such as Shopping basket and Inventory level)
In addition to pages and categories, the Design area also makes it possible to position and design additional content elements such as navigation points in the main navigation menu, boxes for promotional products, search function, newsletter registration, customer account and shopping basket, and icons for selecting a language as well as for accepted methods of payment.
Holders of an ePages Enterprise license enjoy full access to the shop/website templates and CSS files. Your shop can thus accommodate any layout specifications.
To help you actively market your online shop or business website, the Marketing administrative module provides numerous options such as:
- Realise newsletter campaigns
- Generate coupons
- Permit customers to recommend products
- Register website or online shop with Google and send XML site map (is created automatically)
- Apply for seal of approval from Trusted Shops (ePages shops have already been precertified)
- Enter products into price-comparison and product portals
- Offer products via eBay
For more information about marketing, please visit the Marketing & Sales page
In the Settings module, basic information and data are stored, such as:
- Name, address and business hours of online shop or website
- Cache times (temporary storage of content to boost performance)
- Favicon (“favourite icon” e.g. for displaying a page in a list of bookmarks)
- Information for the HTML head script of the pages (e.g. metadata)
- Conditions for customer registration
- Delivery and payment methods
- Languages and currencies in the shop
- Countries of delivery and regions
- Tax model
- Automatic e-mail notification
- Automatic cross selling (e.g. “Customers who bought this product ...”), active or inactive
- Product comparison and shopping lists, active or inactive
- Minimum purchase amount
- eBay accounts
The Setup assistant can also be launched in the Settings area if this step was skipped during the first phase of setting up the shop or website.
