Knowledgebase

How do I control Home Specials and Related Items?
 

This article contains the following sections:

You can customize your store to display certain products on your home page and as related items on your product pages. This tutorial will show you all of your options for Home Specials and Related Items.

Number of Products and Columns for Home Specials
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To edit the number of products and the number of columns your home specials will display on your home page, log into your Online Store Manager and use the left hand navigation menu to:

  1. Go to Settings >General >Store Settings
  2. Next, click on the "Display Options" tab at the top
  3. Under "Home Page" set your desired default sorting for homepage items with the "Home Page Product Sorting" drop down.
  4. Use the drop down menu labeled "Product Columns" to select the number of columns you'd like to use for home page items.
  5. Go to the "Number of Home Page Specials" field and set the total number of items that you would like to display on the Home Page.
  6. Click Save at the top right to commit your changes.

Home Special Product Display
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You have 3 choices for which products you would like to display on your home page – you can pick the same, static products to display every time, you can let Shift4Shop randomly choose which items will display from a group of products you choose, or you can let Shift4Shop randomly choose from all products in your store.

Random Product Display (All Products)
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If you would like Shift4Shop to randomly choose products from your store, log into the Online Store Manager and use the left hand navigation menu to:

  1. Go to Modules
  2. Check the "Enable Random Home Specials" checkbox.
  3. Check the All Prod. Checkbox.
  4. Click Save at the top right.

The store will now take items from your store's catalog and randomly assign them to the home page to display as "Home Specials"

Note
Random Home Specials are not physically marked as Home Specials but are rather taken from a random sampling of your store's products in order to be assigned to the home page.

This is important to note because there are certain features used with Shift4Shop that display Home Page items via RSS (for example, the Facebook Store App), and these functions use only products that are physically marked as Home Special at the product level.

It is also important to note that - for reasons of site speed and performance - the sampling is taken from the last 100 products in your store's product list. It bases this on the date created for the product.

Random Product Display (From Your Choice)
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Special Note
"Random" in this case does not necessarily mean that you will see random listings each time the page is refreshed. For performance reasons, the product display is typically cached on the store itself. So randomization occurs whenever the store's cache is cleared. The store's cache is cleared automatically at regular intervals.

If you would like Shift4Shop to randomly choose products from a group you choose to display on your Home Page:

  1. Go to Modules and search for "Home Specials" at the top to locate the module
  2. Check the "Enable Random Home Specials" checkbox.
  3. Uncheck the All Prod. Checkbox.
  4. Click Save at the top right.

Now, the store will assign a random sampling of home special items to your store's Home Page. However, you will still need to physically mark products as Home Specials in order to complete this effect.

  1. Go to Products >Product List
  2. Click Edit for the products you would like to display randomly on your Home page and look at its Information Tab
  3. Check the Home Special checkbox in the Options section.
  4. Click Save.

Repeat this process for all Home Special products you would like to display on the Home Page randomly.

Note
The Home Featured Products will rotate only from the latest 50 items on your store. This age of the item will be based either on the product's Date Created field or by the product's catalogid.

You can manually adjust which items are used for the rotation by updating the Date Created field and setting the desired to a more recent date over other items.

This can be done either through a product CSV import or by going to the product's "Advanced" tab and setting the "Date Available" calendar to the desired time frame.

Static Product Display
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If you would like to choose the same static group of products to display on your Home page every time:

  1. Go to Modules
  2. Uncheck the "Enable Random Home Specials" checkbox.
  3. Uncheck the All Prod. Checkbox.
  4. Click Save at the top right.

By unchecking Random Home Specials, the store will no longer randomize the products shown on the home page. Furthermore, by unchecking "All Products" the store will only show home page items that are physically marked as Home Specials. Now let's set up the products individually.

  1. Go to Products >Product List
  2. Click Edit for the products you would like to display on your Home page and look at its Information Tab
  3. Check the Home Special checkbox in the Options section.
  4. Click Save.

Repeat this process for all Home Special products you would like to display on the Home Page.

Sorting Your Home Products
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You can also specify the way the Home Special items are sorted on the home page.

While still logged into the Shift4Shop Online Store Manager:

  1. Go to Settings >General >Store Settings
  2. Click on the "Display Options" tab found along the top
  3. In the Home Page section, look for and set the "Home Page Sorting" dropdown as needed.

This selector lets you set the default sorting for the home page based on product information features such as the name of the products, pricing, stock levels and even the Extra Fields (1 through 5) set on the products.

Note
The selector itself has an option labeled "Order By" at the top of the list. Normally, this option is used when you want to give the site visitor the option of selecting the sorting option they'd like to see on the page. However, this selection does not work on the home page because the sorting on the home page cannot be changed by the shopper/site visitor (as with the category and browse by manufacturer pages).

Therefore, on the home page sorting, please select one of the other sorting options.

  1. After you've made your Home Page Product Sorting selection, click "Save" at the top right to commit your change.

Additional Information
The sorting you select will work regardless of whether your items are physically marked as Home Specials or if they are Randomly assigned as Home Specials. For example, if you use Random Home Specials and sort based on Price from Low to High, Randomized items will still be listed in this order.

Number of Products and Columns for Related Products
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To edit the number of products and the number of columns your related products will display in your product listing pages:

  1. Go to Settings >General >Store Settings
  2. Next, click on the "Product Display" tab at the top
  3. Under "Products" use the drop down menu labeled "Product Columns / Related Products " to select the number of columns you'd like to use for related items.
  4. Click Save at the top right to commit your changes.

Related Product Display
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There are three ways to display your related products on your Product Listing pages – you can have Shift4Shop randomly choose to display any items from your store, you can have Shift4Shop randomly choose to display any items within the same category as the product, or you can choose the same, static products to display every time.

Random Product Display (All Products)
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If you would like Shift4Shop to randomly choose products from your entire store:

  1. Go to Modules and search for "Related Products " at the top to locate the module
  2. Check the "Randomize Related Products" checkbox.
  3. Check the "Randomize From All Categories" Checkbox.
  4. Click Save at the top right.

The store will now take items from your store's entire catalog and randomly assign them to the other product listings as "Related Items "

Random Product Display (Same Category)
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If you would like Shift4Shop to randomly choose product from the same category as the selected item:

  1. Go to Modules and search for "Related Products " at the top to locate the module
  2. Check the "Randomize Related Products" checkbox.
  3. Uncheck the "Randomize From All Categories" Checkbox.
  4. Click Save at the top right.

Now, the store will still randomly display related items on product listings, but rather than a sampling from your whole entire catalog, the random items will be taken from a sampling of products within the same category.

Additional Information
Please note that related products set manually on each product will take precedence over these randomization settings.

Static Product Display
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If you would like to choose the same products to display each time:

  1. Go to Modules and search for "Related Products " at the top to locate the module
  2. Uncheck the "Enable Random Related Products" checkbox.
  3. Uncheck the All Prod. Checkbox.
  4. Click Save at the top right.

The store will now only display Related items on products that physically are marked with their own respective related items. Now, the next step is to set your related items per product.

  1. Go to Products >Product List
  2. Select your product and proceed to its "Related" tab.
  3. Click +Add New at the top right of the page
  4. Select the product from the pop-up window by clicking on the Product's name or using the "Action >Select" button at the far right of its listing.
  5. Repeat for as many products as you would like to add and click on the "Close" button when done.
  6. Click on the "Save" button at the top right to complete the process.

Your related items will now show up on the product's listing page.

Related Items for View Cart Page
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You can choose to enable related items on the View Cart page. It will choose random items from your entire store to display.

  1. Go to Settings >General >Store Settings
  2. Click on the "Checkout" tab at the top
  3. Click the Items on View Cart checkbox.
  4. Click Save to commit your changes.

Related items for the items in the cart will then display on the view cart page.

Related Items Type
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By going into the product categories you have set up, you can choose how you would like the related products to display for all of the items within a specific category.

  1. Go to Products >Categories
  2. Click on the name of the Category you would like to choose the Related Products type for.
  3. Look to the right of the page and click on the "+Product Display" icon
  4. Choose the Type in the "Display Type/Related Items" field.
  5. Click Save to commit your changes.

Here are examples of Related Product Types:

  • Link
    Provides a link that takes the shopper to the related product's page
  • Checkbox
    Provides the shopper a checkbox that adds the item to their order when they click on the main product's Add to Cart button
  • Qty Box
    Provides the same add to cart action as the Checkbox, but also allows the shopper to input a quantity amount of the related item to add to the order.


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