SIMMS E-Store Everything You Need For E-Commerce Success

FEATURE

♦ General Features

Store management done by admin control panel on web site

Provides complete website solution, including shopping cart, content management, customer management and so on...

Unlimited Products

Unlimited number of Content/HTML (topic) pages

♦ Product Categorization Features

Unlimited Number Categories & Departments: We do not limit the number of items in the database.

Categories and Departments can also be fully nested to any level desired (e.g. sub-categories, sub-departments)

Supports cross-matrix of products by category and department. E.g. a product can be mapped to the shoe category, in the women's department

Products can be mapped to more than one category or department

Paged browsing for categories and sections: Keeps page size small, and optimizes user experience. Customers also have the option to "view all" on any page

Category, Department, and Manufacturer "names" can be renamed (e.g. "Brochures", "Products", "Car Parts", whatever you need that is appropriate for your unique store site products).

Disable buy buttons for specific products

Set Site to Wholesale Only (Prices not shown to general site customers)

♦ PayPal Features

PayPal Website Payments PRO

PayPal Express Checkout

PayPal (Regular old-style method)

♦ Shipping Features

Calculate Shipping By Order Total

Calculate Shipping By Order Weight

Calculate Shipping By Order Weight & Zip code Zone

Calculate Shipping By Order Total & Zip code Zone

Calculate Shipping By Fixed Item Shipping Costs

Calculate Shipping By Fixed Percent of Order Total

Specify All Orders As Free Shipping

Use Real Time Rates

♦ FedEx

♦ UPS

♦ DHL

♦ USPS

Admin defined shipping methods (e.g. Ground, Next Day, 2nd Day, Priority, etc)

Real Time Shipping carriers can vary based on Domestic or International shipping address

Filter Real Time Rates Allowed By Users

Add Shipping & Handling Extra Fee To Orders

Shipping Methods Verified Against User Addresses During Checkout (this avoids those customers who always choose ground shipping for instance, but live in Hawaii!)

Shipping Tracking #'s e-mailed to Customers

Support for Download Products

Integration with UPS WorldShip (coming soon)

Multiple ship-to addresses per order (a customer on one order can ship some items to address A, and other items to address B)

♦ Product Import Features

Import Products From Xml File

Import Products From Excel File

♦ Gift Registry Features

Gift Registry Supported

Gift Registry Can Be Anonymous (gift registry owner name and address is hidden)

Gift Card Support (coming soon)

♦ Wish List Features

Customer Add To Wish List Supported (Persists over Customer Visits also)

♦ Multi-Lingual Features

Store site can support dynamic run-time language switching (Multi-Lingual). Customer can select store language at run-time

Store developer/admin has full control over all store site strings used (e.g. prompt used for SKU, Product, Color, Size, shopping cart, etc). Basically, every string used in the storefront can be edited using an Excel file, and then uploaded via the store admin site.

♦ Search Engine Features

EVERY product, category, and department page can have their own custom search engine meta tags (title, keywords, description, no script blocks, etc)...

Static Product & Category Pages: Designed to allow search engines to fully crawl and index EVERY product & category page in  your store. This can have a dramatic increase in site traffic from search engines.

Google Xml Site Maps Supported: a direct Google search engine submission method sanctioned by Google

Yahoo! Xml Site Maps Supported: a direct Yahoo! search engine submission method sanctioned by Yahoo!

Fully dynamic page titles, and search engine meta-tags

♦ Product Capabilities & Features

Supports multiple images per product

Support for swatch color image changing

Support for 3 images sizes: icon, medium, large

Automatic image watermarking for protection

Image Galleries Supported

Restrict product quantities to preset values (e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, ..).

Enforce product minimum order quantities (i.e. must order at least 10, etc).

Recurring products can have varying intervals (days, weeks, months, years)

Subscription based products & Content access

Downloadable products supported, with automatic e-mail to customer with download instructions

Text options on products (e.g. require initials for monogrammed products, require text name for product customization, etc)

Support for sizes & colors. All color/size site "prompts" can be customized in admin site, so you could rename those two options to have completely different meaning.

Price can vary by size/color option chosen

Sort products in any order desired (you can force popular products to the top of the pages)

Fully dynamic site map (optimized for search engines)

Second tree-form dynamic site map (optimized for users)

Support for simple products (e.g. a book) or products with variants

Unlimited number of variants per each product

Each variant can have a different price

Each variant can have different sizes & color options

Each variant can require a text option input (e.g. monogram)

Each variant can have a separate SKU modifier, and price, description, etc

Tell store to locate product pictures by ID (icon, medium, large)

Tell store to locate product pictures by SKU (icon, medium, large)

Tell store to use Image Filename Override for pictures (medium pics)

Support for sale prices

Vary product prices for each customer level

Product Descriptions can include HTML formatting: We know that having complete control over each product description is important, and no two products are alike. You can use the administration site to enter product descriptions, or even link to fully custom external product description HTML files. Additionally, each product can have an inline or pop-up "specifications" window, providing more detail to the customer, without distracting them from making a purchase

Support for Kits (build to order products). Kits can have dynamic pricing and component selection (e.g. build your own PC) and more specification as to what items can be added, whether they are required, and so on... Kit Items cannot be ordered separately

NOTE: We have noticed that some of our competitors are charging nearly $1200 for adding a "build kit" feature on their storefronts...shame on them!

Support for Packs. A pack is a product with a fixed price that can hold up to N other arbitrary products. When the pack is full, it can be added to the cart and purchased. Pack items are products themselves, which could be ordered separately

Password Protected Products: Only allow registered customers to view certain portions of your store, expands capability of Customer Levels even further

Disable buy buttons for specific products

Set Site to Wholesale Only (Prices not shown to general site customers)

♦ Inventory Features

Inventory Tracking: Out of stock items can still be ordered, but are shown back-ordered

Limit orders to quantity on hand inventory

Advanced inventory tracking (by product, variant, color, and size)

Show inventory on hand status on product page to customer (optional)

♦ Coupon Features

Order Based Coupons (apply to entire order)

Product Specific Coupons (apply to only specified product)

Coupon discounts by: $ discount, % discount

Coupons can offer free shipping

Coupons can offer tax exception

Coupons have expiration date

Coupons can be marked as use once per customer, use once by only one customer, use N times, and so on.

Coupons requires minimum order amount before it is valid

♦ Skinning & Page Layout Customization

Completely customize the layout & appearance of any category, section, manufacturer, or product page.

XmlPackage support: XML/XSL rendering engine (developer defined home page, category, section, manufacturer, and product page format layouts)

User defined skin replacement tokens, topic tokens, AppConfig tokens, and so on. (e.g. skin Regular Expression token parser)

Design skins in Dreamweaver or FrontPage

Web form controls can be used within skin template user control

Integrated support for ComponentArt horizontal menu, vertical menu, site map, and tree view navigational controls

Skin Based UI Customization: Store site styles and web design can be completely customized by external HTML skin template and style sheets. See some of our sample client sites to see how different each store can look

Change skins in real-time. You can conceivably have 100+ skins for a single store if you need to.

You can link to the cart "pages" from your existing site pages, or use the storefront to run your entire site

Add page header/footer HTML blocks to cart page, and all checkout and order confirmation pages, to provide special notes/text specific to your store or business

Use custom receipt formats & templates

Use custom "your order has shipped" e-mail formats and templates

Automatic e-mail notification to customer with receipt

Automatic e-mail notification to store admin of new order received

Notification to Cell Phone of new order received

Mini-Cart (optional small box on every page showing cart summary contents and checkout link)

♦ Customer Accounts

Customer can view Order History

Customer has address book

Customer can easily re-order any prior order

Multiple billing/shipping addresses per customer (similar to Amazon.com style checkout)

Recurring orders (e.g. for auto ship products, monthly subscription fees, monthly service type products, etc)

Skip account creation on checkout

♦ Payment Methods Supported (types of payment)

Credit Cards (Accept Credit Cards in Real Time: Cards can be processed & verified in real-time, or you can delay processing until a later time)

Check By Mail

e-Checks (Authorize.net and Itransact gateways)

C.O.D.

Purchase Order

PayPal

PayPal Express

Request For Quote

MicroPay (this is also referred to as a Purse). Customer can put money in an account, and then purchase against it, or add to their balance

Gift Cards (coming soon)

Support for Verified By Visa/MasterCard Secure initiatives. Now, you can have the same fraud protection available to all retail stores. Eliminate your fraud liability. Guaranteed Payments. Reduce chargebacks by up to 70%. These authentication initiatives make Internet commerce safe and secure, for both buyers and sellers. Integrates directly with your Authorize.net or Verisign payment gateway. Integration is seamless into the storefront for merchants, and easy to use for consumers.

NOTE: Support for these initiatives will be required by credit card companies of all shopping cart systems in 2005.

♦ Payment Gateways Supported

MANUAL Gateway (just collects order & payment information for offline processing)

Authorize.net Gateway (highly recommended!)

2Checkout Gateway

eProcesssingNetwork Gateway

Cybersource Gateway (requires some work to install on the server)

EFSNET Gateway

JetPay Gateway

ITransact Gateway

Linkpoint Select Gateway (this gateway can be EXTREMELY difficult to install and get working, as they use a very outdated COM interface technology, and their customer support is almost non-existent. It is supported, but will almost always take some "fiddling" to get working, although we have no idea why it is not the same for all clients)

NetBilling Gateway

Paymentech Gateway

PayFuse Gateway

PayJunction Gateway

PayPal Website Payments Pro Gateway

PayPal Express Checkout

PayPal (old style)

PlugNPay Gateway

Transaction Central (i.e. Merchant Anywhere) Gateway Supported (Recommended)

Verisign Payflo Pro Gateway (uses an old-style COM interface, but it is actually fairly easy to install and use)

Worldpay Junior

YourPay Gateway (This gateway is the same as Linkpoint and can be difficult to install, as they use a very outdated COM interface technology!)

♦ Transaction Features

Integrates with your own merchant account

Store can be set to authorize only, or auth-capture credit card mode. You can then capture payment at shipment if desired

Void & Refund supported

Partial Refund and Add-Hoc Charges Supported

Support for recurring orders/payments (auto-ship products)

Support for CVV2 (credit card security code) entry and checking (fraud prevention)

Address Verification codes reported to administrator with order

Credit card numbers never displayed on site, but remembered for user in an encrypted state (shown as ****1111 on site) (You can disable storing of credit card #'s in the db if desired)

Don't require account signup on checkout (optional)

Force billing address to be the same as shipping address

Set a minimum order total threshold for proceed to checkout

♦ Misc Features

Customer Subscriptions for protected content

Mini-Cart display, so add to cart action leaves user on same page, and updates mini-cart display in left or right column of page

Password Protected HTML Pages (password protected topics)

General Site Disclaimer Message (Agree Before Entering) supported

Can set a minimum order total threshold for proceed to checkout

Can set minimum order product quantities before allowing checkout

Order options supported (e.g. gift wrapping, ship in unmarked box, etc). Additionally, each order option can have a price associated with it. User can optionally select order options during checkout.

Order Export to Xml

Customer Record Export to Xml

Customer e-mail lists to XML (i.e. produce list of all registered customer e-mails for your mailing manager)

Product & Site Photo Galleries: Create  photo galleries of products, activities or other important corporate or store fun events. Showing prospective customers more than just a "store facade" is VITAL in creating brand loyalty

Recent Products Page

Best-Seller Products Page

Shopping cart can persist over visits

Shopping cart can be told to age in N days

Built in support for the most common display formats: grid, table expanded, table condensed, simple form, right variant bars, and you can completely customize the product pages by altering the output code HTML

Catalog Only Sites (e.g. turn buy buttons off)

Support for Informational Catalog Only Sites: A simple configuration setting removes all "buy" buttons from the site, in effect turning your site into an informational site, still complete with categories, subcategories, sections, product info, product photos, etc

Store News Items Supported (editable via Admin Site): Add real-time news announcements, and items to the site. Inform customers about important new items, or promotions

Password protected topic (html content) pages

Order notes can be entered by customer with special instructions

Each cart item can also have notes entered by the customer

Shopping "cart" can be renamed (e.g. Shopping Bag)

Can require customer to agree to Terms and Conditions block (user defined) before proceeding with payment

Support for subscription products. Each product can add N months to a customer subscription. Administration control panel allows override of subscription expiration date

External Product HTML description files supported (e.g. product descriptions can be stored in external HTML files)

External Product Specifications/Details Supported (e.g. product "specs" can be stored in external PDF or HTML file, and linked into product page)

Hide products, categories or departments (publish or un-publish capability)

Integrated Product Search

Advanced Product Search Page (by category, section, manufacturer, price range, SKU, etc)

QuickBooks Export (Products and Orders)

Quantity discounts on products

E-Mail Product To A Friend: Product pages can be e-mailed to friends by site visitors

♦ Tax Features

Apply Tax by State

Apply Tax by ZipCode

Apply Tax by Country

Tax can be applied to shipping costs

Individual Products can be marked Taxable or tax-exempt

Customer Levels can be tax-exempt (e.g. wholesale)

♦ Pricing Feed Support Features

Froogle Feed Supported -w- automatic generation and FTP upload to your Froogle account

Pricegrabber Feed Supported -w- automatic generation

♦ Upsell Product Features

Related Products: Entice additional sales by listing related products/accessories on each product page

Show Upsell Products Directly On Cart Page

Product prices can be set to "Call for Price'

Product prices can be hidden until product added to cart

Products can require that other products are added to the cart (e.g. Product X requires Product Y)

♦ Affiliate Tracking Features

Affiliate sign-up/account pages provided in store and admin site

Customers can be tracked to affiliates

Orders can be tracked to affiliates

Products visible on the site can be filtered by affiliate source id

Real-Time skin changing based on URL/invocation/affiliate id

♦ Customer Level Features

Unlimited number of customer levels (e.g. wholesale, retail, or gold, silver, platinum, and so on.).

Customers can be tracked to customer levels

Customer levels can have special product pricing, can offer percent discounts, free shipping, tax exception, and so on.

Products visible on the site can be filtered by customer level

♦ Operational Features

Manage your store via easy to use Administration control panel web site

Once installed, all operational store tasks can be performed via the web based control panel

Can be installed on any Windows NT server or Hosted Server (except GoDaddy and 1and1 servers)

Does not require any special components on the server (Gateway COM objects may be needed)

You can configure products, prices, taxes, shipping, news items, etc all from the administration site

You do not need to understand SQL databases, etc to use your storefront (just to install it)

Customer Service Web Administration: Comprehensive administrative reports, including revenue trends & graphs, visitor trends & graphs, customer order percentages, affiliate revenue reports, tax reports, and so on. You can also search for order by almost any customer record criteria to assist with customer support calls

Administration Customer, order, traffic, reports (yes, and graphical!):

1. Tax Reports by Month/State

2. Affiliate Revenue Reports by Month/State

3. Total Customers by Date/Trend

4. Customer to Purchase Stats (% of visitors that convert, etc)

5. Visitor Trends (actual customer trends). An example of one customer report is shown below::

Built In Customer Mailing Manager: Send e-mails or HTML newsletters to registered customers. Design your newsletter in FrontPage or DreamWeaver and send to registered customers, or send to only customer with orders

Customer can define multiple billing/shipping addresses and select during checkout

Remember me option for returning users

Order History Pages: Customers can get their prior order histories, check order status, etc all online

Shopping Cart items can persist over time (even months if desired). Great for return customers, who later wanted to order a product, but forgot which one they wanted

Customer can view all their prior orders

Administrators can edit customer profiles, delete customers, update their address books, billing information, and so on.

Administrator can edit/enter service notes visible by customer regarding order status, special notes, etc

♦ Product Ratings & Reviews

Customers can review & rate products (if enabled)

User Polls (find out what your customers are thinking!)

Administrator can moderate comments

Profanity checking provided on comment entry

♦ Security Features

Supports SSL Encryption for secure ordering. Cart automatically switches into secure mode appropriately. Supports any brand SSL certificate. (Contact your hosting company for certificates). Dedicated SSL certificate required.

IP Address Tracking: For safety and auditing, IP addresses are logged.

Database Encryption For Card Numbers, Passwords, and other sensitive data (You can also tell the cart not to store credit card numbers anywhere)

Secured password protected Store Administrator Control Panel

Can store encryption keys in Windows Registry or Machine.config file

Integrated .net security roles and support

Independent Security Audit Performed. Assessment included checks for:

• Secure Coding Practices and Encryption

• Validating Parameter length that could lead to a Buffer Overflow

• Various Buffer Overflows

• Cookie manipulation / Cookie Poisoning

• SQL Injections

• Cross Site Scripting

• Mis-Configured Servers

• Man In The Middle Attacks using a Web Proxy

• SSL Version Hacking

♦ Notification Features

Order receipts automatically e-mailed to customer

Customizable Receipt Formats: Customize the format and layout of your store receipts by using a simple HTML template

E-mail notification sent to store Administrator when new order arrives

Cell-Phone SMS Messages sent to store Administrator when new order arrives. Stop wondering  how your site is doing while you are at the gym, at  lunch or on vacation...don't miss that big next-day shipping order again! You can even customize notifications  with an order amount threshold, if you only want to be notified when an order exceeds a certain dollar amount

"Order Has Shipped" e-mail notifications sent to customers with tracking numbers

"Order Has Download Items" e-mail notifications sent to customers for orders with download components. This e-mail can be sent on time of payment clearance or delayed

Delayed Downloads (gives you time to verify buyer before sending download files)

♦ System Requirements

Databases Supported

Asp.net 1.1 Supported. Asp.net 2.0 will be supported within 30 days of release by Microsoft.

Asp.net 2.0 support (in testing now)

Windows XP, Windows Server 2000/IIS 5 or Windows Server 2003/IIS 6 Supported

MSDE Supported

FAST SQL option on queries (can increase query performance by 100%)

Support for SQL Server locale different than Web Server Locale (important for international sites on us hosted servers)

Support for non U.S. locales (e.g. en-GB, sv-SE, etc). Support for foreign date-time formats (non US locales)

Built in page and data caching (optional enabled)