Handy 'How To' Articles for a Variety of CSS Features 
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Add To Order Template from Product Pages — Order Templates are used (primarily) by B2B users to save frequently ordered products. For example, a monthly stationery order can be saved as a template for easy re-ordering. Order Templates can even be shared across companies, so that all users attached to the Customer Code have access.
Traditionally, to add a product to an Order Template, it would first be added to the cart. Once in the cart, the user could then add the product to an order template.
From version 3.88+, the Add to Template function can be implemented on the Product Detail page, allowing the user to add a product to a template and keep browsing. This saves on page loads and prevents the user being redirected to the cart before they're ready.
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Alternate Product Substitution — In conjunction with Best Practice Design, CSS offers an Alternate Product Substitution feature, whereby out of stock items in the cart can be substituted at the user's request.
This feature could also be used to showcase higher quality or higher margin products compared to those your customer has selected.
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Article List - Zoned layout — With BPD, your site's news article list can be presented in a variety of layouts. Similar to a product list, article summary tiles can be presented in a grid, list, or slider format. Users select a tile to drill down into the detailed article page view.
Using the standard layout, the fields on these article tiles can be customised to an extent, but for greater flexibility, a zoned layout allows you to include custom fields, filter content by layer, and rearrange widgets on the template.
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Article Page - Zoned layout — You probably already know that BPD websites come equipped with a clean, well-organised news article layout right out of the box.
But what if you've got additional content to display in your articles? Or what if you'd prefer a customised page layout, completely unique to your site?
That's where the zoned layout option comes in! By using a zoned article layout, you can present your article in the layout of your choice, with content arranged as you please.
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Attaching Documents to Orders — If you allow customisation or personalised items in your product offering, you may encounter scenarios where you require extra information from your ordering customer. Perhaps you need an image file or PDF from them before you can fill their order. In these instances, it's immensely helpful to offer a file upload facility in the shopping cart.
The Order Documents widget does just that - users can attach files to their order, which are then submitted with their cart. These files are stored on the server and can be accessed by administrators via a link on the Order Placed email.
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Authority To Leave — Offer users 'Authority To Leave' functionality at checkout. This feature allows users to grant authority and nominate a designated location for their order to be left, in the event they are unavailable at the time of delivery. Authority To Leave information is then mapped to the Delivery Instructions field on the PRONTO sales order at integration.
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Back In Stock Notifications — Customer Self Service features 'Notify Me' functionality, whereby users can elect to be emailed when unavailable products return to stock.
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Backorder Quantity Display — From time to time, your B2B customers may have products on backorder with you.
Browsing your site, they might be inclined to place another order for these items, forgetting that stock is already due to be delivered from you. While another order placed is good for business, a costly return when the customer realises they've over-ordered is not.
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BPD Questionnaires — Customer Self Service Questionnaires are a flexible way to create and present forms and collect user information. Some common uses include:
- Contact Us
- Returns
- Warranties
- Feedback
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Buy Now, Pay Later — Giving your customers another way to pay for purchases can make shopping easier and remove barriers to purchasing. It can also translate to increased sales for you.
BPD websites have the ability to offer interest-free Buy Now, Pay Later options to your customers, such as zipPay / zipMoney & Afterpay.
Along the same lines as old fashioned Lay-by, the customer pays for their purchase in installments over a period of time. The difference with Buy Now, Pay Later is that they get their goods now, rather than waiting until the purchase is paid off.
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Buy X, Get Y for just $Z Promo Code — Have you ever ordered pizza online and and been offered garlic bread for $1 when you buy 2 or more pizzas? Well that's essentially how this one works.
You can specify that when a customer orders product X (in the quantity you specify), they can also order product Y at a discounted price, using your promo code.
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Cart Preview on Hover — The Cart Summary link can produce a pop-up window previewing the contents and cost of of the user's shopping cart. This is useful for allowing the user a quick look at their shopping basket, without navigating them away from the products they're currently browsing.
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Click & Collect — Customer Self Service's Click & Collect functionality allows users to order products online and collect them at a store location convenient to them. Click & Collect can be a valuable sales driver, as it allows the customer to avoid shipping costs and receive their order on the same day in some cases.
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CMS Category Maintenance — The product categories on your website are initially integrated from your ERP, but if it suits your business processes, you can bypass PRONTO category integration and opt for complete online maintenance.
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CMS Product Maintenance — The products on your website are all integrated from your ERP, but did you know there's a host of product information that can also be maintained via the CMS, completely independent of ERP systems such as PRONTO?
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Contract Item Filtering in BPD — For sites on version 3.88+, Contract items can be highlighted via filtering on any product list page (where contract items are present). B2B users can choose to display only their contract items, only non-contract items, or all products in the list.
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Country Selection & Multi-currency Support — From version 3.82+, websites using BPD are able to implement country-based geocoding and multi-currency support. This enables the display of region-specific information (product prices in $USD, for example).
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Creating CMS Users — The Commerce Vision CMS features new layout templates, widgets, and web-based product and category maintenance for sites using Best Practice Design (BPD). It also links to all of the legacy administration pages, such as Settings, Menu Editor, and Preferences.
User maintenance in the CMS is split between 2 groups: Website users & CMS users. This article will guide you through creating a new CMS user for your website.
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Dashboard counters for outstanding tasks — The Outstanding Tasks Display widget allows you to display a quick indicator for your B2B users. At a glance, they can see how many orders are on hold, require approval, or are awaiting payment.
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Displaying Kit Components — Kit items are defined in the ERP by an Item Type 'K' and a Bill Of Materials (BOM). The BOM is the list of all the items which make up that kit. It's often beneficial to list the components of a kit on your website, especially if they are not detailed in the product description. A Kit Component Display widget is available to list the components / BOM on the product detail page. This guide details its implementation.
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Facebook Sign-In for BPD — Facebook Sign-In is a secure (OAuth 2.0) login method that aims to reduce friction and "login fatigue" for your users. Instead of signing in to your website with an email address and password, your customers can login using their Facebook account.
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Flyer Creator — Do your customers distribute products on your behalf? Would you like to give them a way to advertise those products on the fly? Perhaps Sales Reps would appreciate a 1-page flyer they can leave with their customers. Or they'd like to include marketing material in the cartons leaving their warehouse.
Allow us to introduce Flyer Creator! You can now give your customers the tools to produce simple product flyers directly from your website. Content is generated in seconds and output in PDF format.
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Footer Section Menus — The site footer is a popular location for resources such as Customer Service, FAQ, and Contact Us links. It can be helpful to users if similar links are grouped together under one heading. On BPD sites, using a Section Menu in the footer can achieve this.
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Google Sign-In for BPD — Google Sign-In is a secure (OAuth 2.0) login method that aims to reduce friction and "login fatigue" for your users. Instead of signing in to your website with an email address and password, your customers can login with their Google account — the same account they already use for Gmail, Docs, Google+, and other Google services.
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Guest Checkout — Guest Checkout functionality allows users to checkout without logging in or creating a user account. Most commonly used for a B2C audience, the feature allows the user to input all delivery and payment info at checkout. They can choose to create an account during this time, or remain a guest.
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Home Page Banners - BPD — Large banner images are a common feature of many home pages, allowing a hero image (or several) to catch the user's eye and direct them to a promotion, highlighted products, or call to action.
Loading several banners gives your users the option to scroll through, with each image linked to its own content.
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How To Add Custom Fields To Products and Categories — Information-rich product pages can help drive sales, but in some cases, not all data is captured by your ERP. Luckily, CSS websites can include custom fields as part of standard web product maintenance.
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Infinite / Endless Scrolling — Entering a search term on a website can often yield hundreds of results. For sites with an extensive product list or vast categories, infinite scrolling (or endless scrolling) can be used to load products automatically as the user reaches the end of the page. This saves the user navigating through paging, and can provide a more seamless browsing experience. This guide details its implementation.
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Keep Me Logged In — From version 3.78+, websites using Best Practice Design can be configured with 'Keep Me Logged In' functionality. This presents users with the option to remain logged in, overriding the usual session timeout period. A user who ticks this option won't need to log back in with their credentials next time they visit the site, unless they've exceeded the maximum period determined by you.
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Layers — Layers are used by all widgets to filter or restrict the widget's content to a particular audience. A layer can be based on conditions such as the user's authentication status (logged in vs. public), their role, and/or their customer code, just to name a few.
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Layout Creator — The Layout Creator in the CMS allows you to create custom layouts for various pages throughout your site. You can even create a custom Theme, if you choose.
The layout creator essentially lets you add rows to a layout, and then divide those rows up into columns. Each row can be made up of one column, or many.
The guide below will show you how to create your own page layouts quickly and easily; there's even a video demonstration at the end of the article.
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MailChimp eCommerce — MailChimp is a leading email marketing platform which enables businesses to send automated marketing messages and targeted campaigns. From version 3.80+, Commerce Vision CSS features seamless integration with MailChimp, pushing sales data to your member profiles for use in MailChimp's eCommerce functionality.
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Managing Product Reviews — Product Review functionality allows your customers to submit feedback about a product. These ratings and reviews are displayed on the product detail page, and can influence and inform other users during their own buying process. Displaying genuine user reviews is a great way to build trust with your current and potential customers.
As you can imagine, it's important for customer-submitted content to be vetted by an Administrator prior to display on the website. Holding product reviews for an Administrator to approve or reject allows the opportunity to filter out spam or other inappropriate content.
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Metadata visibility — Some products have a LOT of metadata. Sure, it's valuable information that needs to be displayed in some scenarios, but it might not make sense in others.
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Modal Window Login — Instead of a dedicated login page, your site's login functionality can be presented in a modal window. This gives the user a focused context for login, without navigating away from the page they were on.
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Most Popular Products — For customers using Baynote personalisation software, a Most Popular Products feature can be implemented in BPD which displays a targeted list of products and recommendations to users on your site.
The feature can be enabled in the CMS, and the widget added to various pages throughout the website. The widget then renders a list of products in a slider format, based on the data returned from Baynote.
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Online Gift Cards — CSS supports online Gift Cards via the implementation of the Gift Card widget.
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PayPal Express Checkout — With PayPal's Express checkout, users are able to complete their purchase in fewer steps. Customers can use the delivery and billing information they have stored with PayPal, rather than re-entering it all again on your website. This makes checkout quicker and easier, thereby increasing conversion rates.
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Personalisation How To — Everyone loves it when something is customised just for them. Now, you can tailor the content on your website to the individuals who use it. With your users' preferences in mind, you can display promotions, targeted messaging, and product suggestions.
Offering relevant content through personalisation builds loyalty, strengthens customer relationships, and can drive sales. This guide will walk you through Personalisation in the Commerce Vision CMS.
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Product Campaigns — Product Campaigns are a simple way to feature a group of products on a website. Campaign products might be sale items, top sellers, highlighted brands, or any other criteria you fancy.
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Product Category Quick View — To optimise speed in scenarios where live pricing calls are made to PRONTO, Quick View functionality can be enabled. With Quick View, product pricing and availability is not shown on initial page load. Instead, these calls are made to the server on demand when the user clicks 'Quick View'. That data is then cached for the user, thereby improving speed and performance.
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Product Compare Functionality — Product Compare functionality gives your customers the ability to compare the features of every product on your website.
The user selects up to 3 products to be compared, and the features are presented side-by-side in a pop-up window. The user can add the products to their cart here (assuming the product is available for purchase), or they can close the window and browse for further products to compare.
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Product Documents — Offer your customers more in-depth product information with a document download! You can now upload a variety of file types in the CMS, giving your customers the ability to download tech specs, shiny brochures, or safety data sheets. And all without cluttering up that sleek product detail page you've so carefully crafted.
This article will show you how.
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Product Quick View — Give your customers the ability to see product details instantly with a Quick View popup. As users shop your site, they can check product pricing and availability, then add the product to their cart, all without navigating away from the page they're browsing.
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Product Reviews — Commerce Vision BPD websites offer Product Review functionality via widgets.
Reviews are submitted by online users and feature a star rating, title, and summary text.
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Product Variants — Product Variants are best explained with a Colour / Size scenario.
Imagine that product CV149 is a High-vis Safety Vest. It's available in several different sizes and colours:
- 'CV149SMYY' might represent size small, colour yellow
- 'CV149MDYY' is size medium, colour yellow.
- In fact, when you list all the possible colour and size combinations, you might have upwards of 20 SKUs just for this one product.
But uploading and maintaining 20+ variations for dozens of products on your site isn't very efficient. The end result would probably overwhelm your customers, too. That's where Product Variants come in.
Instead of putting all 20+ variations on the web, you can display one product (the 'master') online, and then allow your customers to select from available variants (the 'child' products).
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Recently Viewed Products — The Recently Viewed Products widget can be used to display a list of products the user has previously browsed. The fields shown on these product tiles are customisable thanks to the zoned layout template.
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Sliding Filter for Product Features — The ability to display numeric product features as sliding filters is available from version 3.96+ (with additional options from version 4.00+). Similar to a price range filter, you can elect to display numeric features in a sliding range interface (for example, PSI rating, age range, or flow rate).
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Splitting Campaigns — Have you ever wanted to split the display of campaign products over different sections of the page? Perhaps you'd like to group one subset of products under a particular heading, then another few products under an alternate heading.
Well, now you can! From version 3.95+, the Campaign Slider widget has an option to split one campaign across multiple widgets. -
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Targeting Banners by Device — Good news! From version 3.84+, banners can be configured to display on all devices, or targeted specifically for desktop or mobile only.
Even better, from version 4.02+, you can also target banners to your tablet users. This can be done on the banner image itself, as well as on the Banner Slider Widget.
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Variant Tags — If you're using Style/Colour/Size functionality for product codes in your ERP, you might integrate your variant data (rather than maintain it online).
However, in the CMS you can still associate tags with your variants, allowing you to take advantage of image switching on your website.
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Warranty Claims — For businesses that handle warranty claims, the process has traditionally been manual and full of paperwork. But not anymore.
BPD websites now offer the ability to enter warranty claims, integrating them to your ERP as returns or credit requests.
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Widget-Based Email Templates — On implementation of a Best Practice Design (BPD) website, several email templates are configured for use out of the box. These include:
- Order Confirmation
- Order Shipped
- Password Recovery
- New User Registration