Tips and Tricks
Below are handy things to do when setting up your Spark Pay storefront. Please take a look, these are here only to help you get started using the product.
Capture your abandoned carts
Pay attention to your abandoned carts list and click on view session on each one to determine their click path to see if you can streamline it. Also setup the abandoned cart automatic emails which attempt to immediately recapture any abandoned sales. Use these tools to determine if your prices are too high or if something is missing. Ask questions to your customers in the email to garner their feedback.
Use built-in custom urls and url redirecting
You can supply any url you want to any page in your catalog using custom urls. This is great for SEO purposes and allows you to keyword stuff your url's and gives you full control. URL redirecting is built in. It allows you to put in old urls and redirect/rewrite them to a new url. This is great for moving over existing sites to our platform and highly recommended. Read more here
Site Merges are your friend
It's like a mail merge, we replace it with content and functionality. Put these anywhere on your site in html areas, descriptions and much more. Some are applicable across the board, and some only on the specific page. Such as - Tips and Tricks When Getting Started #201903050 can be used to put the page title in your content area as well. Read more here
Use LiveDesign to Edit Front End
LiveDesign is a way to interact with your front end directly and edit it while you browse. It is a way to jump right where you need to edit and see those changes reflected immediately. You can go into LiveDesign by clicking LiveDesign on the Admin Toolbar that is at the top of the site when logged in. Or you can click Preview Site from the store menu in the administration console. Read more here
Turn on our "set it and forget it" product feeds
Sites like Yahoo! Shopping, Froogle and Shopzilla get millions of customers a day. Why not have your entire catalog show up on these sites and get those sales? Usually this is difficult to keep up-to-date. With Spark Pay you supply your username and password, and we will update your feeds every night. You simply maintain your catalog, we take care of the rest.
Custom Layouts when you need complete control
Sometimes you need complete control over the layout of your site. Sometimes you need it for certain pieces, like a product list. Custom layouts let you put raw html and our "Site Merges" in any form or layout you like. It's a powerful way to gain complete control of the look of your website. All this while maintaining the advanced catalog, pricing and other pieces of the system Read more here
Snap-ins make the site
These are controls that do specific things on your site. All pages can have a snapin put on them and each one houses their own piece of functionality. Some examples are category lists, link lists, sale items and more. Read more here
Think Inheritance Overrides
We try to give the most flexibility possible. In many places you have global settings that can get overridden by store based settings. They can then be further overwritten by your categories and products.
Store level overrides help you differentiate
Use these overrides to differentiate your stores from each other. You can make each one look, act and feel completely different with different text and content. This is great for your customers, your SEO and for maintaining it all.
Use external files to manage content
We also have the ability to include content from external files using the ##EXTERNALCONTENT ## merge. After referencing the content, you can update it with 3rd party software such as dreamweaver, expressions, frontpage and more. Read more here
Using Store Text to change areas
The store text module allows you to change key labels and text across your site. These are areas that would normally be system text dictated by the software. Words like "Address" or "Price" can change to be anything. Other important areas are the text that shows when a cart is empty, shipping rules and more, all are overrideable. This module is also where multilanguage facilities start. They can be used to change out the language of your store between languages.
Think Modular, we did
When working in Spark Pay online , we have separated features into logical blocks. Try to think about the function of something and how it is useful in many spots. We have also split store based settings from global settings since we offer multiple storefronts. When thinking about where to change an area of your store, think about where it would be reusable.
Take orders without gateways
At times customers do not want to setup gateways and merchant accounts, or they may already have a manual credit card machine. If you like you can still take credit card orders without running through a gateway service and manually enter them. You can even use services such as PayPal, Google and other express payment services.
Build Add To Cart Links for Blogs, Emails and Static Sites
Frequently, customers need to sell products from static sites, emails, blogs or newsletters. You also need a way to take them to the product or cart. You can use our Add To Cart Link Generator to build buttons that you can paste in these spots to have the items automatically show up in the cart. Read more here
Use AdCodes to track your traffic and sales
Want to know how many people clicked on your newsletter links, your pay per click ads or your link partners? AdCodes are the answer... use these to track traffic, sales and even give discounts for certain adcodes. Read more here
We hope these tips and tricks help you to get started with Spark Pay online stores, and allow you to realize your full potential. If you have any questions, you can count on us to be there when you need us.