Order Logging and Reporting with the Database
PDG Commerce provides immediate e-mail confirmations to both the
purchasing customer and the Web store merchant. In addition, Commerce
will record all order information within the back-end database, as well as creating
a text log file and exporable comma-delimted (.csv) log file. Log files may be
retrieved via FTP, or the merchant can view the log files directly from within their
Commerce Administration panel (requires SSL connection).
Using the Commerce Administration panel, users may choose to view orders
based on the following criteria:
- Orders within a specific time period*
- Specific invoice number*
- Specific registered user*
- Sales by product- with a graphical display and the one-line product description
- Total sales- with a graphical display and total value amounts
*The above listing of invoices can be set up to display one order at a time (perfect
for printing), or all applicable orders on a single page.
For printing, all invoice listings and sales reports have the ability to display your own HTML header
at the top of the page.
Commercial Database Options
PDG Commerce provides numerous database options for merchants to choose from.
Customers hosted on a Windows platform may choose any ODBC compliant database, such
as Microsoft Access and SQL Server. Merchants hosted on a UNIX operating system can
utilize a mySQL database. Connectivity to a commercial database system
allows merchants to collect and store customer information, utilize "shared" options
to ease administration (allows the program to maintain less redundant information). Utilizing a
commercial database also makes it far easier to link other applications (fulfillment, accounting,
shipping, Point of Sale, etc.) to your Commerce database.
On-Line Credit Card and Check Authorization
PDG Commerce has includes built in support for multiple transaction gateways
to allow real-time authorization of credit cards and checks.
Supported On-Line Payment Services:
Upsell/Cross-Selling Feature
An extremely powerful marketing tool, PDG Commerce's ability to suggestively
sell alternate and complementary products; e.g. if a customer selects the "standard"
version of a product, you can recommend that they also consider the "pro" version or
if your customer chooses a pair of pants, you can suggest that they also consider a belt and
socks. Simply specify related product skus and optional text in a product’s definition in your Merchant
Administrator, and PDG Commerce will up-sell or recommend related products to your customers
automatically.
Enhanced Product Search
In addition to keyword searches, PDG Commerce supports Boolean operators
(AND, OR and NOT), quoted strings, and allows for searches within a specific
product category. PDG Commerce also supports searches within a specific price
range — as well as searches greater than, less than, or equal to a particular price.
Search results can be ordered by product SKU, description, or by the product ID
(assigned by Commerce- most recently entered products would be displayed
first).
Gift Certificates
PDG Commerce has gift certificates now. You can create gift certificates in your Merchant Administrator, or
set up gift certificates as products and allow customers to purchase them. When a customer purchases a gift
certificate, PDG Commerce can ask the customer for information regarding the recipient, and email the gift
certificate. When the recipient logs into your web store, or creates a new account on your web store, that
gift certificate is automatically associated with them. They can then use the gift certificate to make purchases.
Additionally, gift certificates retain their unused balance between vists.
Discount Coupon Code
PDG Commerce supports 'Discount Coupon Codes.' You can create special customer categories with appropriate
discounts, and then give out customer category code as a 'Discount Coupon Code' to your customers. When customers
visit your web store, they simply provide the coupon code and will automatically receive all discounts and
benefits of that customer category. There is no need for the customer to log in or create an account to
utilize the coupon.
Multiple Ship-To Addresses Per Customer and Per Order
PDG Commerce allows your customers to place orders that are to be shipped to multiple addresses. This
makes online holiday shopping simple for your customers. They will simply specify the various ship-to addresses
as they place the order. Additionally, these ship-to addresses are stored in the database, and so
customers can modify and delete them as needed, and reuse them with a quick click on future orders.
Customers can also utilize this feature to create different shipping addresses for themselves, such as a
"Home" address and a "Work" address.
Registered Users
Commerce allows you to offer your customers the option of creating an
account with your web store. Registered users can store their address information
(excellent for sites with a high volume of repeat customers), view previous order
information, and accumulate bonus points to be redeemed with future purchases.
Customer Categories
Commerce users may group customers together within Customer Categories. The
merchant can then extend special pricing (i.e. wholesale/retail, member/non-member)
and different shopping privileges (i.e. customer may view product information, but
not pricing) for each Customer Category.
Registered User management
Registered users may log in and update their account information at any time-
without requiring assistance from the merchant.
Customer Categories Pricing
Similar to Pricing Categories in PDG Shopping Cart,
this feature allows the merchant to maintain different prices based on the
user’s Customer Category. For example a merchant can have both wholesale and
retail Customer Categories and may set different prices for all products within
the web store. When a retail customer shops at the site, Commerce would
automatically display the pricing for the retail Customer Category. Merchants may
specify a global discount; either a percentage (based on product base price or
price with options) or a dollar amount can be applied globally, on certain product
categories, or on each individual item within the web store.
Multiple Level Customer Access
Different privileges can be set up for different users or customer categories. These
include the ability to view pricing, ability to checkout, and access to customer
registration. If you sell only to wholesalers, you may choose to disable the ability
for retail or anonymous users to view pricing or to checkout, while allowing registered
users to go through the entire ordering process.
Frequent Shopper Points Tracking
Just like airlines reward repeat customers with "frequent flyer miles", PDG
Commerce can track points assigned to products and provide a summary of an
order's total frequent shopper points. This allows customers to accumulate credit
or points toward some future reward or incentive. PDG Commerce also offers the
ability to display the total points earned for Registered Users.
Discounting
Now you can run sales and promotions just like regular retail stores. PDG
Commerce allows you to establish quantity discounts by product, by product
category, transaction subtotal, or any combination of the above. Merchants may
set these discounts to apply to all users, or make them specific to an individual
Customer Category. The Product Category discount allows merchants to give a flat
rate or percentage discount based on the number of items purchased from a given
Product Category.
Discounting with Options
Users may specify whether Category Discounting and Item Quantity percentage discounts are calculated based
on the default item price or the price with selected options.
Administrative Accounts
You can now create accounts that can be used to access the Merchant Administrator. You can decide what access each
account is granted. For example, you can create an account for your Merchant Administrator that can add and
modify product information, but cannot access order information.
Store Builder
PDG Commerce's Store Builder feature is for merchants who want a quick and
maintenance-free integration that will not require changes to Web pages as products are added and
removed from their store. You can get your web store up and running
by dynamically generating web store pages based upon product category. The Store Builder
generates customized store pages "on the fly", each designed to conform with the
look-and-feel of your web site. In addition to your product catalog, you an also have pages with contact
information and any other information you would like.
Store Builder Skins
Now you can quickly downloads or create "Skins", which are packages that can contain templates,
graphical buttons, and/or style sheets. With Skins, you can quickly change the entire look and layout of
your webstore. Once installed, you can change between Skins with a single click. Skins are the perfect
answer for your webstore if you want to have a standard layout, and yet also offer special themed layouts
for specific holidays and events.
QuickBooks Integration
PDG Commerce comes with Accounting Accelerator, a Quickbooks integration utility. Using this utility, you can
automatically import PDG Commerce CSV files into Quickbooks. The integration will add and verify your
customer’s information in Quickbooks, enter any necessary product information, and import the
transactions as either Invoices and/or Sales Receipts.
Importing and Exporting Product Information
You can import and/or export product information directly from the Merchant Administrator. When importing,
you can choose to completely update your current product database, just import new products, or modify
existing product definitions.
Froogle Data Feed
You can create a Froogle data feed from your product database within your Merchant Administrator. Simply
submit this data file to Froogle and your catalog will be available to anyone searching the Froogle site.
Yahoo Stores Data Feed
You can create a Yahoo Stores data feed from your product database within your Merchant Administrator. Simply
submit this data file to Yahoo Stores and your catalog will be available to anyone searching the Yahoo's
ecommerce area.
Affiliate Tracking
Want to offer an incentive for other Web stores to sell your products and
services? Now you can with PDG Commerce's affiliate tracking capability. When a
customer visits your Web store by clicking a link on an affiliate's site, PDG
Commerce tracks the customer from start to finish and lets you know from which
affiliate they were referred. PDG Commerce contains built-in reporting options, which
allow the merchant to track their affiliate sales (report shows the invoice
numbers and transaction totals for each affiliate link over a specific date
range).
IP Tracking
The IP number of a customer's computer will be logged in the Commerce database,
as well as in your text, comma-delimited (CSV), and XML order files.
IP Blacklist
Block annoying visitors from viewing your catalog or checking out. With this feature, specify any IP address or
range of IP addresses, and those computers will not be able to view your catalog or purchase items from your
site.
Order and Email Encryption
Want to add an extra layer of security to your site? PDG Software supports GPG
third party encryption products so that you can encrypt your vendor emails and
order log files. You can then decrypt them using commercial PGP desktop applications.
Please click here to access documentation
that explains these compatibilities.
User Defined Fields
If you have additional information that you would like to display for your
customers, PDG Commerce allows you to add your own fields to the templates and
have this information passed from the Commerce database. As an added benefit,
you may designate any number of user-defined fields as a searchable field.
Minimum and maximum quantity per order for a Product
This feature allows merchants to specify both a minimum number, and a
maximum number, of items that must be ordered for each product. Perfect for
limited quantity products (e.g. offer limited to 2 per customer) or for products
that require a certain production number (e.g. customer must order minimum of 8).
XML Logging
For additional flexibility, PDG Commerce can log orders in an XML format. This allows you to import those
orders into any other third party application that can read XML files.
Sales Tax
PDG Commerce allows merchants to set up multiple tax rules to accommodate customers in numerous
jurisdictions (counties, city, ZIP code, state/province, and country). Users may specify the tax
percentage, a taxable price for each product, the sales tax label (e.g. "Georgia Sales Tax"),
and whether shipping and handling charges should be taxed to accommodate tax requirements that
may vary from state to state.
Customized Zones for Sales Tax and Shipping
You can specify 'Zones' for your sales tax and shipping rules, in addition to setting these rules up by country,
state, province, and postal code. You define each of your Zones as groups of countries, states, provinces, or
postal codes, and then specify your sales tax and shipping rules to them. For example, you can create a "North
America" zone that includes Canada, Mexico, and all of the United States excepting Hawaii.
Softgoods / Digital Products Support
Do you sell downloadable electronic files such as documentation, software, or
music files? Do you need to send transaction data to your own script for
generating licenses after completion of an order? PDG Commerce’s softgoods
feature was designed just for you! Merchants can control how long user
downloads are available and how many times the customer may download. For merchants
who must generate a license key based on information collected during the
transaction, Commerce allows you to send information (i.e. sku number,
customer e-mail, name, invoice number, etc.) to your own custom script. The
generated license key is then displayed on the final page of the transaction and in your
customer's confirmation e-mail.
Compatibility with the UPS OnLine® Tools and USPS Web
Tools
PDG Software is a designated UPS OnLine® Tools Product Solution Provider.
All PDG Software products include UPS OnLine® Tracking and UPS OnLine® Rates & Service
Selection Tools. PDG Commerce can be set up to have dialogues with the UPS web site that provide your
customers with real-time shipping costs. Real-time rate quotes can be provided for individual services.
Or your customers can choose to perform a rate compare, which
will show all rates available between you and your customer’s ‘ship to’ address and
allows the customer to see a list of UPS services and their associated real-time cost, and then choose their
desired service.
Your customers can
also track their shipments directly from your Web site or from the UPS
Web site.
PDG Commerce offers you the ability to utilize US Postal System's Web Tools- which provides
rate quotes for USPS shipping services. Real-time rate quotes can be provided for individual services,
or you can offer your customers the option of viewing a comparison of all available services. Shipping
costs are calculated based on weight of items ordered, dimensions of items ordered, and the destination
shipping address.
With either service, you may specify additional packaging/handling fees, which
will be added to the quoted amount (all charges appear as a single line item with
the “shipping and handling” label specified by the merchant).
UPS Ship API
PDG Software is proud to offer the latest UPS OnLine® tool, the UPS Ship API. With this service, you can obtain
accurate rates for shipments with a variety of options, including non-standard package dimensions, different
package pick-up options, Saturday delivery, and more. You can schedule your shipments from your Merchant
Administrator, and print shipping labels there too.
Worldship Importing
For UPS customers using WorldShip, PDG Software provides a Microsoft Access based utility to automatically import
orders into your Worldship. Now you can have orders placed from your website seemlessly entered into your
existing Worldship process.
Web Development Components
PDG Software offers free components that make it that much easier to integrate
PDG Commerce into your Macromedia
Dreamweaver®/Dreamweaver UltraDev® or
Microsoft FrontPage® web site.
HTML Emails
Your PDG Commerce emails can be in HTML, with embedded images that can be included with the email. The HTML
Email templates work just like the other PDG Shopping Cart
templates. You can control the complete look of your customer and vendor notification emails, including
complete control of any table layout as well as what specific information is included in each email.
File and CGI Includes
Just like a Server Side Include, these tags allow you to insert other HTML, ASP,
Cold Fusion, CGI, or PHP data into your dynamically generated pages. You can
easily add your own custom header and footer code into all Commerce
templates to allow for rapid web store development and updates. When you need to
make a change to a link within your site’s header, change it on your ‘header.html’
page and all of your template-based pages immediately reflect the change.
Multiple Product PreAdd and Add
Simultaneously show and add multiple items to your basket, using one click on a
single page. A quantity box is displayed next to each item on the page and the user
may add all desired items to their basket by clicking on an “add all items” button.
Multiple Option Add
Simultaneously add multiple product options — customers can add different
variations of the same product without leaving the product page — e.g., your
customer could order two of the same shirts in both yellow and red without
having to add them individually to their basket.
Shared Option Definitions
Are all of your products available in small, medium, and large? Now there is no
need to maintain an option list for each product. All products may share a single
option listing, and as often as you change your options you may specify whether the
change should apply to all products sharing the option, or to an individual
product.
Real-Time Price Recalculation
Do you have products whose prices change based on some option being chosen
by the customer? If so, PDG Commerce can display this price change in
real-time, as soon as the option is chosen.
Enhanced Template tags for Web Store Customization
Additional tags allow for greater customization of Commerce’s dynamically
generated pages.
Multi-Platform Compatibility
PDG Commerce is available for Microsoft Windows NT/2000/2003, as well as
multiple versions of UNIX:
Supported Platforms
- Microsoft 2003/2000/NT
- Linux (RedHat, Mandrake, Slackware)
- OS X
- Solaris (Sun)
- FreeBSD
- Digital Unix/Tru64
Improved Navigation in the PDG Administrator
Commerce gives users the option of using a ‘framed’ navigation bar to
simplify the administration of your web store. The new administration panel also
gives users the ability to go to a specify product or category by simple typing in
the SKU number or category code (e.g. you no longer have to load the entire listing of
products).
PDG Commerce Administration Demo
A fully functional demo of the PDG Commerce administration panel is available
here.
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