Plaza shopping basket system

Plaza™ is a transactional shopping basket system with flexible SSL secure payment options and comprehensive web-based content management. Plaza™is implemented on a bespoke basis for each web site, ensuring it is configured to sell your products and service in a highly effective way.

Unlike "out of the box" shopping basket software, a Plaza™ implementation provides complete freedom to specify how your products and services are displayed on your website. Providing an improved user experience and more streamlined interface increases your sales conversion rate and encourages repeat custom.

Any authorised member of your staff can administer your shop online securely using a simple web-based interface. This controls everything including: products on sale, categorisations and sub categorisations, price, descriptions and images, order fulfilment, discount structures, shipping costs, delivery management and email marketing.

Plaza™provides automated administrative tasks including client-messaging, client-order tracking, invoice printing and commission handling. With one click in the admin you have content controls for featured products and special offers to be shown on your homepage, or latest news and press releases.

Plaza™includes advanced features usually only found on system costing much more, such as "remember-me" customer details to recognise repeat visitors using cookie technology and client username / password login for customers.

We believe our system to be one of the most comprehensive and cost-effective shopping basket systems available, delivering a far quicker and easier buying process for the customer than most other systems available.

Complete ecommerce website solutions start from just £ 2500+VAT. Contact us for a talk-through demonstration online via phone or we are happy to come and discuss your requirements in person.

Plaza functionality overview

• A completely bespoke website (original design, graphics, buttons, navigation, look and feel, all completely unique to clientname)
• Plaza™ is Which? WebTrader compatible
• The clientname website homepage will feature dynamic components such as:
• Newsletter signup (name/email/mobile number/type of email[text,html,richmedia] if required)
• “Featured products” – selectable items from the database which can easily be allocated in the admin section to appear on the homepage, with a unique text description
• News – ability to display textual news on the homepage, enterable in the admin system, with allocation for date, and news “timeout” so it wont appear after a certain date

Complete secure online shopping

• Quick, easy to use 3 step ordering from viewing shopping basket to confirmation or order screen
• Comprehensive shopping basket system on the front-end with–
  • Add/remove
  • Multi-region VAT handling
  • Multi-country delivery charge handling
  • Automated confirmation email to client with all details
  • SSL secure payment environment
  • Optional online credit card processing for all major cards
    • Stolen card recognition
    • Optional AVS credit-card address checking
    • Name/Expiry/Issue no. checking
  • Dual-entry of email with validation checking
  • Mandatory fields for data and data type recognition with automatic error messages & validation
• “Remember me” – a function which can be toggled on or off by the users (remembers a users details excluding credit card, if they have shopped before, hence saving users having to re-type information)
• Terms and Conditions required tick box for T&Cs in an onscreen scrollable window
• Newsletter signup – tick box to signup user email address to newsletter sub-database
• Optional PostCoderWEB™ auto addressing – a user simply enters theyre postcode and theyre address is completed automatically, decreasing order time for users and increasing the accuracy of address data

Product/Item display

• Ability to see product and product information, and add X quantity to basket, without having to change to another page
• Multiple bespoke search and navigation options for users
  • Drop-down navigation
  • Key word free-text search
  • By category
  • Narrowing dropdowns – a set of drop downs by which the category selection is narrowed (e.g. Select VEHICLE TYPE, then VEHICLE MANUFACTERER, then VEHICLE SIZE, then VEHICLE PRICE > then display vehicles available in the product display area).
• Multiple information fields available to chose from – name | short description | inc.vat price | ex.vat price | product id | options/choices | stock status (see stock control) | weight
• Optional product popup – click on name or product image to show enlarged image, long description and any other information
  • Product features support – extra bullet point info that can be added in the admin to each product and displayed in the popup window as bullet points
  • Ordering from popup – users can add X quantity to basket from product popup window

Admin System

• Reports
  • Basic reports
  • Optional bespoke reports displaying virtually any data and information in any way required
  • All reports have “PRINTER FRIENDLY” version for printing from the web without screen furniture
• Client add/edit/remove
  • Edit all client details
  • Search clients by A-Z last name
  • Search clients using free text field by names, company, order ID
  • Optional bespoke free text search options to search any field criteria required
• Content Management
  • Easy point and click management of all site items in database including image upload
    • Flexible options/choices management (you can specify any configuration – e.g. Size, Colour, which can then in turn have an individual price and/or itemID)
  • Source management – add/edit/removal of “Source” fields that a user chooses when ordering
  • Featured product – easy selection & removal of featured products from homepage
  • News management – allocation of news items to homepage including date to release / remove
• Context sensitive help system onscreen throughout
• Discount Management – extremely powerful discount allocations in virtually any combination
  • Allocated by total order value, individual number ordered, total weight
  • Configurable either globally or on an individual item
  • Configurable to then provide either percentage discount on order, a free X (specified by itemID) or X amount (currency value) discount off total order price
• Message management – ability to easily change all site messages that are automatically sent to users by email
• Automated production of invoices for print (printer friendly version) and via email
  • Receipt/delivery note production for client
• Advanced order process management and card details handling
  • Credit card details encrypted in database
  • Secure environment to view card details and card handling
  • SSL used when credit card data displayed on screen
  • Complete manual credit card ordering handling
    • Automated emails for card refusal
• Add/remove/split orders
  • Auto-generation of new order codes
  • Auto-generation of client emails with new order codes and how the order has been processed
• “Online Newsletter” function
  • First name, lastname, Email, Email type (HTML / text / rich media email preference tick box), mobile
  • Ability to send our email or HTML email to all users in Database
  • Optional bespoke drown-down to chose any group of users by specific criteria

Other Optional Functionality

• Optional multi-shop functionality – modular design allows multiple shops with different front-end “look and feel” to operate utilising the same shopping basket, order process, and administration system
• Optional interactive animated “avatar” to accompanying user experience on the site
  • Announcement of users arrival (“Hello John Smith, welcome back to our website”)
  • Animated movement, expressions and bespoke animation to your requirements
  • Optional interactive feedback as users completes form and order items on screen

An Urban Horizon developed website incorporating Plaza™ adheres to Which? WebTrader standards. The standards, until February 2003, incorporated a code of practise by which traders could sign up and provide some independent reassurance to users of the standard of practises used in the administration and provision of the website and the products/services being sold. Which? Made a decision in early 2003 to discontinue the code of practise, for financial reasons, although over 3000 sites have signed up. Plaza continues to adhere to the high standards required by the WebTrader code, although as of February 2003 the official WebTrader service will no longer be operated or marketed by Which?.

In online court cases and legal wrangling, terms and conditions that appear on the same page as the confirmation tick box “I have read the terms and conditions” have been stated as being more sturdy legally than those linked to on a separate page ( 6 th November 2002)