Navigating the Back End of an E-Commerce Shop - a peek at SupaDupa

If you're researching e-commerce platforms, it's usually pretty easy to find a table showing pricing and features. However, it can be more difficult to get a good grasp of the usability. Reading reviews can certainly help, but you might not b
e able to see what it's like to work on the backend of the shop until you sign up. Many sites offer a limited risk-free trial, but you have to sign up first. And it takes time to set up and try out any one platform.

A few people on the Artfire forums have been asking what it is like to work with the platform I use, SupaDupa, so I decided to post some screenshots here along with a review. This is a view of what their highest tier of service would look like. Some of the lower tier plans do not offer as many photos, options, etc. 

Welcome Page (aka "Dashboard")

This is the first thing you see once you log on. There are 3 things shown on the page:

1. A bar graph showing your total sales volume for the past 30 days. On the side, it lists the number of products sold, number of orders, and how much those sales generated in revenue. 
2. A line graph showing sales revenue since launch. I've blurred out the number of products sold, total number of orders, and the total revenue it's generated.
3. Recent Activity - which lists both when you get new sales and when you add new products.

You can mouse over parts of the two graphs for additional information, which is useful for finding the total intake-to-date for the line graph for any particular date. 

Navigation

SD recently re-organized their navigation so that everything is accessible via an expanding sidebar. Some categories, like Marketing and Settings have submenus for more options. The area you're currently viewing is highlighted with a hint of color on the far left side to distinguish it from areas you are mousing over. 

Orders Page

This page is fairly straight-forward. There is an option at the top to see a list of who has opted into your mailing list during previous orders. 

It's right next to a button that allows you to download order history. At the moment, when you download, it downloads everything rather than a set time period (such as a given tax year), so if you need a data subset, you do need to do a little bit of work to parse out the data. 

Below that, you have an option to search through previous orders, and it's right next to a button that lets you filter the displayed orders by status (fulfilled, new, payment pending, partially fulfilled, cancelled, and any order status). 

From there, it lists the orders, organized by order #. You see the customer's name, their country, #of items, when it was received (with both the date and how many days ago that was), the amount, status, and a color dot to help with visual scanning.  

Products

This is a view of the products page. The button to add a new product is very obvious - it's the big green button at the top of the page. If you look on the page, you'll see options to import products, to enter search terms to look for products you've already made, and to enable predictive search in your shop. 

The existing products are listed with the most recently created products at the top. Each product shows a small thumbnail, the product title, and the first few words of the product description (which is probably the same text as what would show up as a preview in a google search, so it can be helpful for previewing how your items would display on a search engine). 

SD allows you to add up to 15 variations for a given product (technically, you can squeeze in a few more if you save the product and then add more later on a subsequent edit, but they limit it on the first save so your customer doesn't get a completely overwhelming drop down menu). The products page gives a small summary of the variations for each product, the quantity for each variation, and the total stock quantity for the item. You can pick your own labels for the variations, so you could create them by sizes, colors, fragrances, or any other term you want to use. 

Out of stock or backordered/oversold items show up highlighted in deep pink, so they are easily visible with a quick visual scan. Although you can delete products from the products summary page, you have to go into the specific product listing in order to change quantities or to delete a single, specific variation.

Clicking on a specific product will allow you to edit the Product's Listing Page.

Batch Edit - since I originally wrote this post, SD added a new feature, which allows you to change the quantities for many different products and their variations at once. It's accessible from the main list of products as a button next to the Import products button. Once you select Batch editing, you can search for products. The site automatically displays all the products that met your search or collection criteria and displays all the information found in the product variations section of the listing page below, so you can change lots of information all at once. For example, you could implement a sale more easily, or raise prices, or hide a ton of products, or add a new color combination option for a certain line of related products, or quickly change inventory quantities on hand for multiple listings in a fraction of the time it would take to open individual product listing pages.

Product Listing Page

The entire page wouldn't fit in one screenshot, so I created a vertical panorama of the entire page. 

The green Save changes button sticks to the top of the screen even if you scroll down, which is a nice feature. (It wasn't always set up this way, and it was kind of a pain.) The same sticky bar at the top contains buttons for duplicate the product, post it to facebook, and to view of preview of it. 

Each product page contains a small thumbnail of the product, so it's easy to make sure you're working on the correct product. (Also if you duplicate a page, you know you've done it successfully because the thumbnail disappears until you add new photos.) 

Product Type
One of the first things SD asks for is the product type - they want to know whether it's jewelry, a vintage product, art/photography, clothing, accessories, furniture, shoes, supplies, paper goods, electronics, food, beverages, or other. Some of the options that show up in the variations area change depending on what type of product you choose. I'm not sure whether SD uses this information to assist with calculating taxes or for optimizing SEO. (SD is UK-based, by the way, which shows up in how they spell things.)

Title

The next thing they want is the product title - pick this title carefully because once you save, it will become a part of the product's URL and you won't be able to change it (save for duplicating the product and then deleting the old one). 

Product Descriptions

The description area can be expanded in size if you need or want to see more of it at once. You can also add basic HTML to the description, such as formatting and hyperlinks. I've encountered one seller on this platform who managed to embed a YouTube video, but she might have played around with the CSS for the site to do it, which you wouldn't be able to do from this particular screen.

EDITED TO ADD: as of the beginning of Feb. 2015, SD staff has indicated that embedded videos will be possible for individual pages sometime later this year. 

Personalized  Question

Each product has a personalization option, which is my FAVORITE feature on SD. If you enable it, you can prompt your customer for specific pieces of information during checkout. I have created one prompt for this particular product asking for a name to embroider on a Christmas ornament. I have some products where I ask more than one question for name, a second for font style, and a third concerning color options. You can create the prompts yourself, so you don't need to pick from a list of canned options. In my case, I also use them to provide additional information - for example, I may list the available font and color options so my customer doesn't have to rely entirely on memory or I'll note what I will send by default in the event the field is left blank by my customer.

Under the personalization area, you can note if the item is tax-exempt or if it always gets free-shipping (which would provide free shipping even to international destinations if you allow international shipping, BTW). 

Product Variations
Each variation has a product code, price, stock quantity, and then up to 3 options (such as size, material, and color) to describe the product.

You can choose to input a weight, which can help calculate shipping depending on your settings.

If you fill in a discount price, then the product will show as on sale (the original price will have a slash through it).

The two toggle sliders are for oversell and visibility. The oversell option will allow you to sell beyond what you physically have in stock. Some other sellers are wary of using it because while they may be able to make additional items, they don't want to allow what is essentially an unlimited quantity either. You can choose which specific variations are visible in your shop. You can use this for seasonal offerings, to remove something that is out of stock, or as a tool to help set things up before you launch a new season's product line. If you turn off the visibility for ALL of the variations, the product will be completely invisible in your shop and it will appear with a Hidden tag on the shop's list of products.

Place a Product into Collections
Supa Dupa allows you to place items into "collections", which are essentially categories. Unlike some sites, it is possible to place a product into more than one collection. However, the collection becomes a part of the product's URL (except for the home collection), so you want to carefully consider where you want to place your item.

If you move it to a new collection later, you will end up with a new URL, which could result in broken links and broken bookmarks for your customers. (SD doesn't let you customize a redirect if you move the item into a new collection.)

If you place the product into more than one collection, you will end up with several URLs that have the exact same content which could result in a duplicate content penalty from google. (Yes, it's the same product database-wise, but google will view it as duplicate content all the same.)  The Home collection (what appears on the main or front page of the website) doesn't generate a new URL, so you can move products in and out at will to promote a specific holiday, event, or concept without having to worry about broken links later. I use my home collection to show items that are not placed in a specific collection (no, you don't have to place an item into a collection), seasonal items, new items, and/or my best sellers.

Product Photos
Depending on your plan, SD allows you to have up to 12 photos, which is more than what a lot of other sites will give you. Unfortunately, you can't caption them at the moment. SD does, however, retain any metadata you add to the photo to describe it in your image editing program which can help it show up in searches. (In GIMP version 2.8, go to File -> properties to add metadata to photos. In Photoshop, go to File -> File Info.)

Photos don't need to be in any specific size or format, but it might affect the appearance of your storefront if the first photos are all in different proportions depending on what site template you choose. 

Collections
The gift-tag icon on the side is the link to where you can manage your shop's collections.

Like the products page, you can use the big buttons at the top to save changes or create new collections. You can search, rearrange the order of the list, opt to show the collection in your site's navigation, or designate the collection as draft. The page displays the number of products in each collection. You can delete any of the collections except for the Home page collection and All Products. (You can, however, opt to not show them in your site's navigation. People will still be able to get back to the home page by clicking on your logo.)

If you rearrange the order of the list, it will also rearrange the order they appear in your site's navigation (if you've elected to have them show in the site's navigation).

Clicking on any one collection will open another page allowing you to edit it.

Products are being organized by thumbnail in this collection.
The left sidebar allows you to search and pick which products to include.

Editing A Specific Collection
You have a lot of options for determining how to display your products on a given collection.
You can organize them by working with a list or you can work with them by rearranging a grid of thumbnails. From there, you can tell the site to organize them according to a certain method:

Products in this collection are being organized as a list. The left sidebar is
being used to edit collection name, description, and collection-specific banners.

• Alphabetically (A to Z or Z to A)
• Price (Low to high or High to low)
• Age (Newest first or Oldest first) 
• Manually, where you can drag and drop them into your own order. 

The side bar serves two functions, if you click on the magnifying glass, you can search for products to add to the collection. If you click on the gear, you can edit the collection name, description and add banners.  If you load two or more banners, they the site will animate them so your visitors will see all of them in rotation. (This option may change a bit depending on what template you choose for your site.)

Since each collection can have it's own description, you can leverage it for SEO purposes. (This is one feature I really like. For example, I note in the section description for my aprons that all of my aprons have stain-resistant fabric, are full-length, and have an adjustable neck. Furthermore, a lot of my offerings allow you to request embroidery colors to match your kitchen's home decor, and they are all embroidered in the USA.)

Site Design

The icon that looks like a stack of papers
let you pick a template.

Speaking of templates, you can pick from over 40 of them under the design section of the site. A lot of them look really similar, but there are some subtle differences. Some allow for sidebar navigation, some have the navigation across the top. Some display your products in columns like pinterest, while others display your products as a grid. There are one or two templates that use a black or dark grey background rather than a white background.

As a rule, they all look good and do a good job of highlighting your products. Some allow for more customization than others. I personally use the template Spoonful with some custom modifications (Extra Spoonful).

Modifying a Template
SupaDupa makes it really, really easy to modify the templates. The screenshot I took does not capture all of the elements by any means.

However, the modify template area (pencil icon) is where you can make some important changes. For example, it's where you can load the logo for your site or site-wide banners. (I only use the logo option on my site, but I could load banners if I wanted to. Actually, I have one loaded, but I elected to turn it off.) You can also dictate how quickly or slowly you want each banner to fade into a new one if you have more than one banner loaded.

The pencil icon lets you modify specific parts of the template.
The wrench icon allows you to make coding changes to the
CSS of the site, which is only recommended for advanced users.

You can change the appearance for almost any element within the site. I mean really, any element. The list for elements you can edit the color of includes "Basket item border", "Basket subtotal price", "Footer links", "Generic form input text" (which would be relevant on the contact page), "Generic link hover", "Pages title", "Sales price", or "Nav basket bubble hover background". Frankly, the list is so long, it can be hard to find specific elements.

If you make changes to the fonts, you can change their font face (e.g. Helvetica), it's style (normal, bold, italic, etc.), size, the amount of space allotted for the line (which affects vertical spacing), alignment (left, right, center, justify), and whether you want it to appear in all caps, all lowercase, or the normal mixture of caps and lowercase.

If you really know your stuff, you can go further and make coding changes to the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). You can get to the advanced settings where you can edit the CSS by clicking on the wrench. If you want to add custom text to the cart page, you will need to go into that portion of the site. However, for most other bits of information that you might want to add, you only need to work with the info pages.

Marketing
Now, I've skipped over the marketing area in my tour in terms of screenshots, but it gives you a place to create/manage coupons and an area called "You on the Web."

The You on the Web area lets you link your SD shop to a facebook account so you can post products to your feed. You can enable google webmaster tools or you can enter a pinterest verification code. You can also provide links for your customers to follow so they can find you in other places, namely:

• facebook
• twitter
• google +
• another website
• an outside blog
• pinterest
• instagram
• svpply

I personally don't fill out the other areas because once people are in my shop, I want them to stay. That and I'm notoriously lazy when it comes to social media. (Hey, nobody's perfect, but I also don't think there's enough time in the day to be active on ALL of these channels without hiring additional help. If you're looking at hiring, then you've got to look at the ROI and whether it's worth the time.)

Shop Wide Settings

At the moment, if you go to the gear section of the side menu, you can adjust a lot of the nitty gritty of the site. There are a lot of submenus, so I'm going to note what can be found where.

Settings - lets you define store name, slogan, and a short description, which appears on every single page of your site. (With my template, it appears on the left hand side.) You can also add a physical address, phone number, time zone, pounds versus metric weights, currency, order number prefix, your paypal info, and add your google codes for analytics and adwords. You can also enable outside payment processors (like BrainTree or Stripe) and place a small badge advertising SD as your site's host. 

I make changes to the description part of my site when I need to make announcements. For example, if there will be a delay in shipping due to weather/holidays/vacations/being present at a fair. I'll also use it to announce ordering deadlines around the holidays. Making occasional updates or changes seems to help with SEO because google likes pages with recent content changes. 

Domains - when you sign up, SD gives you an automatic subdomain (such as polkadotorchid.mysupadupa.com). However, it's really easy to add a custom domain (like polkadotorchid.com). SD actually lets you add multiple domains, but you have to pick which one you want to have display in the address bar by default. 

Users - you can allow multiple people access to the account - each with their own login information. 

Info Pages - one of the features I love about SupaDupa is that you can create custom information pages. They are a great place to provide additional information. It's possible to add photos and videos if you know just a tiny amount of code.

Some are created by default for you and cannot be deleted (About, Privacy, Returns, and Contact). Supa Dupa automatically creates a page called "Terms & Conditions" for you as well, but you can remove it. Beyond that, you can add anything else you want in order to support your site. The reason I love them so much is because you could use them for any of the following:

• Testimonials
• A Guide to Materials - if you sell jewelry, some people don't know the difference between Argentium silver and regular sterling silver. Or the difference between gold plated and gold filled. You can cover this information in a FAQs, or you could make a special page if you feel it would add to your business site. 
• Assembly - sell products that require assembly? Or need some sort of instructions to use? Or perhaps they come with a manual that may need replacing? Give your customers an easy way to get that information.  
• Blog - Some SD users have managed to use an info page along with iframes in order to get an outside blog to feed onto the site. This is a tutorial for another time, but it is possible to do. (SD allows you to link to an outside blog by default, but the work around I'm talking about would allow allow the blog to be visible on the site without leaving your shop.)
• Custom Orders - and information on how to hire you for special commissions. 
• Feedback. There are a number of services out there that facilitate collecting feedback. You could incorporate this idea into a feedback page. 
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Gift Guides (assuming you don't want to create a special collection)
• Gift Wrap options or any other special customer service options you provide.
• Giving Back - if your business donates a portion of the proceeds on any products to a charity or otherwise tries to reach out to help the local community, it makes sense to have a page talking about it. 
• How you Source Your Products - are you committed to using organic or fair trade supplies? Want to remind people that everything is Made in the USA by hand rather than in a sweatshop in a third world country?
• Location  - This could go under the contact page, but depending on what you do, you might want to have it on its own page. For example, if you have a brick & mortar store, you might want to include a map and directions so people can better find you. If you do fairs or expos, you could list your schedule.
• Portfolio of previous work
• Product Care - washing instructions, polishing, seasoning, making sure things don't tarnish... 
• Shipping - some sellers have opted to create a page showing their policies and a table giving people an idea of how much they charge for shipping to specific locations.
• Sign up for our newsletter. - SD allows people to sign up as a part of the checkout process, but some people have gone a step further and added code for people to sign up before they buy something. You could create a special page, but you could also add it to the site's About page.
• Sizing - if you want to post a specific sizing chart so people can check their measurements to ensure they're ordering the proper size. 
• Special Sales - If you are running a special sale, you could create an information page displaying the necessary coupon codes. If the page is hidden from main navigation, you could make the link to it available selectively. For example, you could give it out to people on your newsletter. You could even add and delete the pages as necessary to make it harder for people to find it who aren't on your newsletter. 
• Work Process (assuming you don't want to put this under the about page)
• Workshops - Teach workshops or classes as a part of your business? You could include that information on your site. You might not want to have it as a part of the site's main navigation, but you could link to it from the About page or from a location page, etc. 
• Press Releases, Awards, Giveaways, Images of your customers using your stuff, or any other news-worthy bits or other shop announcements

You can elect to show individual pages in the main navigation or not, so in theory, you can use them as subpages if needed to support another page. For example, if you create a page showing previous work, you could create a subpage that gives more detail about a specific project and then link to it from the main gallery of former projects. 

I personally use the info pages to create a place for FAQs, Testimonials, and Caring for Embroidery. I'm working on editing a page showing a lot more of what's possible for customization. For example, I want to put up photos of recommended color schemes, but I'm still pulling things together, so it's not visible at the moment. 

The one thing I don't like about the info pages is that while you can insert code for images or to embed videos, SD doesn't have a clear setup to host non-product images. You can get around this by having an outside host (such as photobucket) or if your plan allows you enough products, you could designate a specific product to hold images. (Create a dummy product, load it up with images for the info pages - this could be up to 12 depending on your plan, go to the new product and note the image URLs, then hide the dummy product and copy the image URLs as needed on the info pages. Yes, this is convoluted, but it works just fine because you can still access the image via URL even if the product is completely hidden.)

Shipping- When SupaDupa first rolled out, they had two shipping options - to calculate shipping as a percentage of order total or to calculate it based on weight. However, a lot of users were coming into SD from places like Etsy and eBay where there's a cost to ship one item, and then a cost for each additional item. These users felt overwhelmed with the idea of weighing all of their items and filling in a table with what charge would work for what weight. So.. SD changed their system to something they call "presets", which basically lets you set up a shipping weight for a single item and then a cost for two similar items. You can set up both a normal shipping speed and an expedited option. More about their shipping is available on their blog here.

I personally LOVED the old weight-based shipping because I sell items that weigh more than one pound as well as some that weigh less than an ounce. And I've had people order 24 or more items before at a time. It proved to be incredibly accurate for large orders, which was really, really nice. One thing I HATE about the "with another like item" method is that you can end up overcharging your customer if they make a huge order... or severely undercharging them depending on what you define for that additional item. I can afford to absorb shipping discrepancies for domestic orders, but international shipping is another animal entirely. (I once had a customer place an order for 6 items that, in total, would cost $6-$7 to ship via Priority Mail within the US - but $48 to send abroad.) 

Sadly, weight-based and price-based shipping is no longer supported. I've been grandfathered into weight-based shipping, but new signups can't access it. (Ideally, I'd love to be able to charge by weight up to a certain order size, at which point domestic shipping would be free.)

Shipping Labels - SupaDupa does have a method for being able to purchase USPS shipping labels. I have a stamps.com account for creating shipping labels, so I don't use it. A lot of other sellers I've talked to have noted that it's a bit cheaper to purchase labels through PayPal. 

Tax - you can indicate whether you want to charge tax, charge tax on shipping, and/or use the VAT system. You can opt to have your sales tax number show up on receipts and invoices. You can also choose what tax rate to set and for which locations.  

I need to do some research to see whether opting into the use VAT system would allow North American sellers to collect the proper amount of tax for digital downloads to European clients in accordance with some of the new EU regulations coming into effect soon. (SD does not allow for automatic digital downloads at this time, by the way, but you could sell a digital product and then opt to deliver it via email directly or send a link that would allow a client to obtain it through a 3rd party download management system.)

________

There are a lot of other e-commerce platforms out there. Do your research and figure out the best one for your individual business. The thing I like the best about SD is how they handle personalized products (based off of what I've been able to see, a similar setup can be much more expensive with some other platforms if you need this specific feature). Beyond that, SupaDupa is easy to set up and use, the appearance is really clean (I've gotten lots of compliments on how nice my shop looks), and staff has been pretty quick to jump on bugs from what I've been able to get from other sellers on the Supa2 facebook group. (Bugs have been really rare in my experience, BTW.) There are a few additional features I would like to see (like image captions and subcategories), but at this point, my shop on SupaDupa has been performing better than my shop on Artfire. 

I hope the chance to take a look at the backend of the shop will give you a point of comparison while you do the research for your business. If you end up deciding that supadupa is a good match for your business, it's easy to sign up.