Gettingstarted

From E-commerce knowledge - Shopfitter

[edit] Getting Started

Shopfitter 4 is very straightforward to use once you become familiar with it, however, like many things getting started is the most difficult bit.

Firstly, Shopfitter 4 starts up with a demo site to give you an idea of how a completed webshop looks once it's built.

You'll need to create a new shop to start your own e-commerce website...

Create your own ecommerce site

Preparation - there's no substitute for thinking about what you need, here's a brief guide

Most functions are accessible from the pop up start panel, in addition you can click on the top left yellow Shopfitter trolley icon to open it.

• In 'Create New' click 'Web Shop'
• Shop manager opens -> click 'Create' from bottom menu
• Follow on-screen instructions in the shop wizard - see Newsite

If you want to see a few different themes, please have a play with the demo shopfitter site, just click the theme tab

Select a theme to style your shop from the thumbnail views - a larger image will appear showing the selected theme, more themes will be added in future updates and if wanted a bespoke theme can be designed for you - please just contact shopfitter.

Now select the 'publish tab' to see the site press the big 'publish button', this will generate the shop on your machine, once shopfitter has finished publishing press the preview button to check your shop - it will open in your default web browser, you always have to publish this way to see the whole shop as it will look once uploaded using FTP to your web hosting.

This is the best way to check that the site is working - you will be able to test it as if it was a live shop - please try to buy something or use the search function, you will not be able to get past the checkout page because this demo shop is not registered with the shopfitter secure server and you will see "This shop is temporarily available".

Always create a new shop, please never use the demo shop as your own, because when we update shopfitter the demo shop is also updated and you will lose anything done to it.

Import your Shopfitter 3 site

Shopfitter 3 and 4 will both run on the same computer at the same time, so you can be confident that you can maintain your existing webshop while you update to SF4 - for a step by step guide to getting your SF3 site opening in Shopfitter 4 visit the Update to Shopfitter 4 page.