Invotec Announces New Integration for E-Commerce

SIMMS Inventory Management ERP System integration creates an effortless link between online shopping carts and offline processes.

Invotec are pleased to announce the availability of a new SIMMS StoreFront e-commerce platform solution integrating our new SIMMS StoreFront shopping cart platform, SIMMS Inventory Management and Accounting Software as well as CRM Unleashed systems. These enable online merchants to integrate many of their important offline systems with their online operations. Streamline processes and reduce the costs associated with growing online sales channels.

To be successful online, retailers must replace existing disconnected shopping cart software with new e-commerce platforms that integrate with other critical back office systems. SIMMS StoreFront is leading the market by offering integrations that allow merchants to synchronize their online and offline processes.

SIMMS Storefront Feature summary

An effective e-commerce shopping cart must provide a wide range of features to allow you to effectively manage your online business. If a feature you need is not on the list below, please contact us by phone 1300 468 683 Australia or +61 3 9532 5165 outside Australia or email support@invotec.com.au.

FEATURE

General Features

• Store management by an admin control panel on web site
• Provides complete web site solution, including shopping cart, content management, customer management etc...
• Unlimited products
• Unlimited number of Content/HTML (topic) pages

Product Categorization Features

• Unlimited Number Categories & Departments 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 coats 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 where prices not shown to general site customers

PayPal Features

• PayPal Website Payments PRO
• PayPal Express Checkout
• PayPal (Regular traditional method)

Shipping Features

• Calculate Shipping By Order Total
• Calculate Shipping By Order Weight
• Calculate Shipping By Order Weight & Post/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 long distance)
• 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

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 total control over all store site strings used (e.g. for SKU, Product, Color, Size, shopping cart, etc). Every string used in the storefront can be edited using an Excel file, 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 dramatically increases 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
• Supports swatch color image changing
• Supports three image 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 and content access
• Products which may be downloaded are supported, with automatic e-mail to customer with download instructions
• Text options on products (e.g. request initials for monogrammed products, request text name for customization, etc)
• Support for sizes & colors. All color/size site "prompts" can be customized in admin site, so those two options could be renamed to have completely different meaning.
• Vary price by size/color option
• Sort products in any order desired (you can force Related Web Sites 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 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 File name Override for pictures (medium pics)
• Support for sale prices
• Vary product prices for each customer level
• Product Descriptions can include HTML formatting. Having complete control over each product description is important and no two products are alike. The administration site can be used to enter product descriptions, or link to external product description HTML files. Additionally, each product can have an online 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 and more specification as to what items can be added, whether they are required, etc... Kit Items cannot be ordered separately. It should be noted that some of our competitors are charging nearly $1200 for adding a "build kit" feature on their storefronts. We do not charge extra.
• Support for Packs. A pack is a product with a fixed price that can hold up to other arbitrary products. It can be added to the cart and purchased when the pack is full. Pack items are products themselves, which could be ordered separately
• Password Protected Products: Only allow registered customers to view certain portions of your store, and expand the capability of customer levels.
• Disable buy buttons for specific products
• Set Site to Wholesale Only where prices are 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 (eg 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 or % 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 limited number of times, etc.
• Coupons can have minimum order amount requirement 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, etc. (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 customised 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. It is possible to have 100+ skins for a single store
• 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
• 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 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 (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. 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. Easily Integrated into the storefront for storeowners and easy to use for customers.

Payment Gateways Supported

• MANUAL Gateway (just collects order & payment information for offline processing)
• Authorize.net Gateway
• 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 uses a very outdated COM interface technology. It is supported, but will almost always take some "fiddling" to get working)
• 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 also 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
• Supports partial refund and ad-hoc charges
• Support for recurring orders/payments (auto-ship products)
• Support for CVV2 (credit card security code) entry and checking (fraud prevention)
• Reports address verification codes 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)
• Not required to have account signup on checkout (optional)
• Forces billing address to be the same as shipping address
• Sets a minimum order total threshold before proceeding 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)
• Supports General Site Disclaimer Message (Agree Before Entering)
• Sets a minimum order total threshold before proceeding to checkout
• Sets minimum order product quantities before allowing checkout
• Order options supported (e.g. gift wrapping, ship in unmarked box, etc). Also, each order option can have a price attached. 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 imperative for enhancing brand loyalty
• Recent Products Page
• Best-Seller Products Page
• Shopping cart can persist over visits
• Shopping cart can be told to age in specified number of days
• Built-in support for the most common display formats: grid, table expanded, table condensed, simple form, right variant bars, plus, the product pages can be completely customized by altering the output code HTML
• Catalogue Only Sites by turning buy buttons off
• Support for Informational Catalogue Only Sites. A simple adjustment setting lets you remove all "buy" buttons from the site, in effect turning it into an informational site, but 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
• Customer can enter order notes with special instructions
• Each cart item can also have notes entered by the customer
• Shopping "cart" can be renamed, such Shopping Bag or Trolley
• Can require customer to agree to Terms and Conditions block (user defined) before proceeding with payment
• Support for subscription products. Each product can add a specified number of 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 Post/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'
• Hide product prices 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, etc..)
• Customers can be tracked to customer levels
• Customer levels can have special product pricing, be offered percent discounts, free shipping, tax exception, etc.
• Products visible on the site can be filtered by customer level

Operational Features

• Manage your online store via the easy 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)
• Configure products, prices, taxes, shipping, news items, etc all from the administration site
• No 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, etc. Search for order by almost any customer record criteria to assist with customer support calls
• Administration customer, order, traffic, reports
• Tax Reports by Month/State
• Affiliate Revenue Reports by Month/State
• Total Customers by Date/Trend
• Customer to Purchase Stats, for example, % of visitors that convert
• 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 only send to 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). This is important for return customers, who later wanted to order a product, but forgot which one they wanted
• All their prior orders can be viewed by customers
• Administrator can edit customer profiles, delete customers, update their address books, billing information, etc.
• 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
• Administrator can moderate comments
• Profanity checking provided on comment entry

Security Features

• Supports SSL Encryption for secure ordering. Cart automatically switches into secure mode. 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
• 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: Your own store receipts can have a customized format and layout by using a simple HTML template
• When new order arrives, an E-mail notification sent to store Administrator
• Cell-Phone SMS Messages sent to store Administrator when new order arrives. Never miss big next-day shipping order. 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 at 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)