ECT Hosted Store > Using the Parameters page in the ECT Hosted Store
The parameters page is where you can set values and choices for your store. These can be changed at any time and if you swap themes the values will remain so you won't have to go back and make the same changes again. Most of the switches are self-explanatory but we will go over the major points below.
The choices here are all related to design display options so for example if you want the brand name to appear on the product / and or detail pages you can sect that choice to display in the admin design page and then give it a label here, the same logic applies to the SKU and Date Added fields. The display after the label will depend on what you have entered for the manufacturer / sku in the product admin page.
If you want user definable custom fields to display you can enter the labels to accompany them here. The fields are populated in the admin products page and their display is defined in the Page Elements section for the products, detail, cross selling and quick buy interfaces. They will be enabled once you choose to display them in the Page Elements section of the admin design page. Custom fields are used typically used for displaying special information about a product, that might be its dimensions, shipping weight or whatever you want it to be.
Please note these labels for the sku, manufacturer, date added and custom fields will accept HTML so if you want to make a label bold for example use
<strong>Custom Label: </strong>
If you wanted to change the color to red add something like this
<span style="color:#ff0000">ISBN: </span>
There is also the option to use the MagicToolbox image effects on the product and detail pages. We have included trial versions here for you to view and test out as they do require an additional license purchase. You can read all about MagicToolbox and view our demos on our dedicated MagicToolbox help page.
The shipping methods to be used on the store are defined in the main admin settings page and then fine tuned in the shipping admin page. The parameters here can be used once those shipping methods have been set up like defining shipping insurance or adding a value to the initial package weight. A neat feature in this section is if you want to allow customers to pick up the package from your location and therefore override shipping costs - you can set the text to display, any costs involved as well as removing any handling charges.
In this section you can add extra fields to the billing / shipping screen on checkout as well as defining whether these fields should be obligatory or not. Their uses are completely up to you but can be used to collect extra information like the company name, tax number, customer codes or whatever.
Tax values are set in the admin countries and / or admin states page and these parameters allow you to fine tune those main settings. You can choose if you want to add tax to shipping / handling as well as defining how tax should be displayed. One important override here is the ability to set tax per product - if you choose this option the tax rate will be set in the product admin page rather than taking the values from the admin countries / states pages.
This is a very important section as it governs the display elements in the shopping cart and checkout screens.
You can choose to show a shipping estimate in the first cart screen - the lowest shipping cost available depending on the methods you have chosen will be displayed. If there are other methods available these can be viewed and selected on checkout.
If you want to force customer to view and accept your company's terms and conditions that can be turned on here. The content of the terms and conditions is set in the admin design page.
Another important option here is if you want to employ a minimum order amount or quantity. If this value isn't met the customer will receive a message in the cart to purchase more. It is also possible to include text on the product and detail pages warning customers there is a minimum quantity policy for specific products. That can be displayed via the Page Elements for the product and detail pages in the admin design page. If you need to set minimum quantity per product rather than a global setting this can be defined in the product admin page, selecting Minimum Quantity from the Quick Entry drop down.
This is where you can turn on the customer account feature. Creating an account means that customers can view their order history and maintain saved addresses making subsequent check outs more streamlined. They can also set up wish lists / gift registries as well as redeeming loyalty points if enabled. From a store owner's point of view it means that customers with an account can be given wholesale pricing, free shipping, tax exclusion or percentage discounts.
These are optional store pages that you can enable and add to your menus. The set up is discussed in the admin design page.
These are some important options in this section. If you have a Google Analytics account and want to track users on your site, enter your Google Analytics ID. This will turn on the feature so that the Google tracking code is added automatically to all your pages.
If you want to display social media icons on the product detail page, this is where you can define which ones and in which order they should be shown. The feature itself and the location of the icons on the page are defined in the admin design page.
For users employing the stock management feature you can choose how to handle out of stock products and if you want to display stock levels on the product pages. The positioning of the stock level message is handled in the admin design page under Page Elements.
You can also turn on the wish list / gift registry feature for logged in users and enable the loyalty point system.
Many search engine friendly features have been added by default, things like structured data, rich snippets, alt information for product images for example are already included. The code is also light weight and pages fast loading. For individual page tweaks you can add titles and meta description tags to your pages here. Alternatively you can add the titles / meta description content on a page by page basis in the product and category admin pages.
If you choose to use the global setting here for the category / product pages you might want to use something like this as the title
Online sales of %categoryname% from XYZ company
...and this for the meta description tag (assuming you have entered a category description in the category admin page).
XYX Company | %categorydescription%
For the detail page that might be the following for the title
Buy %productname% (%productid%) online at XYZ store
..and this for the meta description tag
Purchase %productname% from XYZ Store. %productdescription%
As we said before though you can enter your own titles and meta description details on a category by category / product/ by product basis in the corresponding admin pages.
Remember the titles should really be a maximum of 60 characters in length or it will be truncated in the search engine listings, the meta description tag a maximum of around 300 characters and both should read well, avoiding keyword stuffing.
