| Many of our current customers have converted an existing store to SearchFit.
Some of the benefits of converting your store to SearchFit include having
all static product pages that are easily scrolled by search engines, an
easy to optimize site and more flexibility with your design. The good news
is that we have made converting your to SearchFit as painless as possible.
The main steps involved, including adding your product information, design
templates and adjusting settings are described below.
While you are building your new, SearchFit site, you will be able to
publish and view changes on a temporary address. If you would like assistance
during any step of the process, we have an in-house development team that
can help.
| Shopping Cart Conversion Steps |
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- Adding Product to SearchFit
- Adding your Design
- Adding your Informational Pages
- Adjust your Settings
| Adding Product To SearchFit |
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Weather you store your product information in your own database, or you
are using another shopping cart, there is almost always a way to export
your product data. If you are able to export your product data into a comma
separated value or tab seperated format, then you can import that data into
SearchFit. The fastest way to add your product information to SearchFit
is to use the product import feature.
If you need to use your own database with your new, SearchFit store,
this is possible with the use of SearchFit’s Web Services feature. For
example, SearchFit is able to connect to your external database and display
product prices and stock levels. This powerful feature allows you to display
dynamic data on static pages.
Once you have exported your product information, you will be able to
make modifications using a spread sheet application, such as Microsoft
Excel. It’s possible to store your product information on several spreadsheets;
however, it is less complicated to list everything on one sheet. Your
spreadsheet will display one product per row and have multiple columns
to contain the different types of data per product. For example, if you
have 50 products, you will have 50 rows of product information. You will
have enough columns of information to contain all the different kinds
of information that you would like to display per product such as: name,
price, options, images, descriptions, etc.
“Foreign Id” columns should be added to your spreadsheet for all the
levels of your product structure. This will permit you to update your
site content by altering your spreadsheet and importing it as necessary.
Having foreign id’s will let SearchFit know what products and categories
to update even if the product and category names have changed. For example,
you will have several columns on your spreadsheet for foreign Id’s. Each
level of your product structure will have a corresponding foreign id.
On your spreadsheet will be a column for product foreign id, category
type foreign id, category foreign id and subcategory foreign id.
We are able to do all this for you. Let
us know if you would like us to format and import your product data.
Product images are added to your SearchFit site when importing. During
the import process, SearchFit can collect these images from your existing
site, from a folder hosted on an external server, or you can store the
images in a folder within SearchFit’s Control Panel. Whichever option
you choose, the path to the image should be specified on the Control Panel
import screen. During the import process, SearchFit will collect the images
and resave them to a new, permanent location within your hosting space.
Once you have prepared your spreadsheet and product image files, the
next step is to use the SearchFit Control Panel’s Import Area. In this
area, you specify the contents of each of the columns on your spreadsheet.
For example, you could specify that “Product Name” is in “column X”. Configuring
this area takes just minutes. When you are finished, press the Import
button. SearchFit will rapidly import all of your product information.
When complete, you will status display by spreadsheet row and by category
structure. This lets you know if the import was successful or not. If
there is an error on your sheet (such as an incorrect image path), then
you will be able to easily pin point it.
Through importing, SearchFit creates your product/menu structure and
all of your product related pages. Congratulations!
The layout of your product pages is template driven. There is a “Category
Template” that defines the outer area of the page. Each product uses a
product template for its brief and detailed displays. For example, on
one of your category pages, you may list multiple products. Each one of
those products will be contained in a “box” and have information like
the price, description and buttons like “buy now” and “add to cart”. The
layout and graphics of this “box” containing the information, images and
buttons per product is determined by your product template.
For an explanation of how the SearchFit template system works, please
see our SearchFit QuickStart Guide.
| Adding Your Design |
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Aside from adding products, another large phase of your site development
is adding your design. SearchFit has a very flexible template system. The
templates are HTML based. A SearchFit design template is an HTML document
that is modified by SearchFit keywords. These keywords are added to instruct
SearchFit where to automatically place items on a per page basis, such as:
The page’s inner content, search boxes, headings, metatags, menus, etc.
Since a SearchFit template closely resembles a standard HTML website template,
any design is possible, including the use of CSS, Flash and JavaScript.
You can use your existing design in SearchFit! Any developer that knows
HTML well should be able to successfully create templates and pages within
SearchFit.
| Adding Your Informational Pages |
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The rest of your pages, such as your home page, “about us” page, “contact”
page, etc can be easily added to your SearchFit site in the “Custom Links”
area. Simply copy and paste the HTML for a given page into a field within
the Custom Links area and the page will be stored within the SearchFit Control
Panel. Images, JavaScript Files and .SWF’s related to these pages are all
stored in a in Control Panel as well.
| Adjust Setting |
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Another step in brining your existing site into SearchFit is adjusting the
SearchFit cart settings. This is a very deep system that allows you to change
shipping methods, payment methods, taxes, languages, currencies and much
more. Please see our SearchFit
Manual for a detailed description. |
