Online Shops

Your products are displayed on your virtual shop and customers can buy instantly from your shop and pay you online by credit card or other means. Your shop is fully automated and you do not have to have a “shopkeeper to look after it. It looks after itself and is open 24 hours a day 365 days a year. It never closes.

The beauty of an online shop is that while you are sleeping or holidaying or away on business your shop is working hard for you selling your product and instantly banking the proceeds into your bank account.

What do I need to sell Products Online?

At a minimum, these are the requirements to open an online store.

  • Professional Website with E-commerce Store/Shopping Cart capabilities.
  • Products. Either your own merchandise or goods provided by another source such as Drop Shipping
  • Merchants Account/Ability to accept and process credit cards online or manually.
  • SSL Certificate to encrypt and securely collect payment information from your website.
  • Reliable E-Commerce website hosting on a fast server with good uptime.

With our E-commerce Store development, we create the design, develop the store programming and can help you through every step of the process to get you up and running in as little as 6-8 weeks.

Features in our Online Shop Software

We use very powerful comprehensive shop software when developing your shop website because we are interested only in utilising the best for our clients. There are 100's of shopping cart programs around, all with different strengths and weaknesses.

iLookDesign uses Zen Cart™ because we believe it is superior to most other programs in ease-of-use, features and price. The program is built by programmers and designers who understand the online selling process from start to finish. Zen Cart™ has included all the necessary tools required to build a successful online store and the software is constantly being improved and upgraded to meet user’s requirements.

Below is a list of the major features included in our shop software - Zen Cart™.

Easy Installation

  • checks the database and server for requirements before installing
  • installs using a built-in installation tool
  • pre-populates the basic store information
  • optional demo products

Customer Status Modes

  • unrestricted shopping
  • must register to view prices
  • must register to view prices and merchandise
  • showroom only

Categories and Products

  • unlimited category depth
  • physical merchandise
  • downloadable virtual products
  • products can reside in multiple categories
  • product options as dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes, and text input

Promotions, Sales and Discounts

  • individual special prices
  • global sale reductions
  • category-wide sale prices
  • discount coupons
  • customer group discounts
  • quantity discounts
  • one-time charges
  • minimum and maximum purchases per product
  • prices by attributes

Fully Customizable Catalog Templates

  • XHTML 1.0 compliant - nearly table-less layout
  • change the colours, fonts and many graphics using Cascading Stylesheets
  • add, move, remove side boxes via the Admin Tool
  • template overrides that do not get overwritten during upgrades
  • override functionality without having to learn PHP
  • create as many different looks as you would like and choose them from the admin

Global E-Commerce Ready

  • multiple language support
  • multiple tax support
  • multiple shipping methods
  • multiple currency support
  • multiple payment methods

Catalog Status Modes

  • showcase mode without prices
  • showcase mode with prices
  • normal shopping mode
  • down for maintenance mode

Customer Retention Tools

  • periodic newsletter in plain text or HTML
  • order status emails and records in the customer account
  • referral tools
  • gift certificates

Powerful Administration Tool

  • configure your minimum and maximum values, image sizes and customer details
  • choose which layout settings to use for the spotlight listings
  • pick which details to show on your product details page
  • edit your policies pages with HTML (if desired)
  • add, delete, move, link or copy your products
  • create and manage your product attributes
  • manage product reviews, featured products, specials and storewide sales
  • shipping and payment module installation and management
  • price and taxation control
  • banner advertising controls
  • newsletter creation and sending
  • content management tool, easily add new content pages