Store is the section where sellers showcase their products. Here, buyers can view all the products offered by the seller, seller’s contact information and the store location. The seller can view his online store, after setting it up, by navigating through Seller Dashboard -> View My Store. It should look like this:
Sellers could setup their individual online stores by navigating through Seller Dashboard -> Settings
Store Banner: The store banner is a big representation of the online-store’s image that the sellers intend to portray to their would-be buyers. We recommend an image size of 625 x 300 pixels in either a PNG or a JPEG format. See example 1 below.
Store Profile Picture: We recommend sellers to use images of themselves or their company’s logo for easy identification by buyers. The recommended image size is 150 x 150 pixels.
Contact Information: To aid communication between the sellers and the buyers, we added the contact information form into the settings. Sellers can fill in their phone numbers, email addresses, physical store addresses and location maps.
Terms and Conditions: Sellers have the option of choosing to either enable or disable the terms & conditions options for their online stores. Sellers can also opt to write out their own terms and conditions.
Sellers are allowed to set any convenient payment methods for their online stores. Although, it is advisable to enter both PayPal’s email address and bank account details for flexibility of payment.
When you click on the shipping tab, you should be able to view a page like this:
- Enable shipping: This is the main available choice if you intend to use the shipping feature. If this shipping option is not selected, a shipping option will not be available for this store.
- Default shipping price: If you prefer not to add the shipping price each time you create a product, then this feature comes in quite handy. This will be the base shipping price and it will be used as a reference for the calculation of the shipping price.
- Per product additional price: If a buyer orders multiple products from your online store, the shipping price for the other product(s) can be defined here. By multiple products we mean, for example, a combined order of bananas and oranges and not a case of the purchase of more than 1 banana. This set price will be applicable if a buyer purchases oranges alongside bananas.
- Per quantity additional price: If a buyer orders multiple units of a product from your online store, then the shipping price can be defined here for each additional unit after the first. For example, a buyer orders 2 or more bananas, this price will be added for each additional banana after the first banana.
- Processing time: This option is used to display the time required for the processing of the order before the product shipping.
- Shipping policy: This is a simple text area. Here, a seller can write any additional information he/she has for the buyer as regards the shipping of the products ordered.
- Refund policy: This is simply a text area where sellers are to write instructions detailing steps buyers have to take in order to get refunds for their orders.
- Ship from: Sellers are mandated to select the base location where the product is to be shipped from.
- Ship to: In this field, sellers add the locations they intend to ship to. After selecting a country from the dropdown list, another dropdown list providing the states will become available.
- Cost: This is the default cost for the particular country selected. What this means is that, if the system cannot locate a particular state name entered by the user, then this price will be calculated.
- Add location: By clicking this button, you can add more locations.
Sellers could link all their social network page addresses to their online store by copying and pasting the link to the respective social network page. AfricShopping allows for a simple view and easy to link-up online stores for our sellers.