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E-Products allow you to sell products such as MP3's, e-Books, PDF, and just about any type of digital file. Unlike conventional products, links to the e-products are generally emailed to the client upon purchase and can be downloaded by them. The Shift4Shop shopping cart system can automate the whole process for you and give access to the e-products purchased immediately after the client has paid for them. Additionally, Shift4Shop can accommodate sending serial numbers to your customers along with the eproduct file.
Turn On the eProduct Module
To begin using eProducts, you will need to enable the eProduct Module in your Shift4Shop store. You may do this by taking the following steps.
- Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager and use the left hand navigation to go to Modules
- Use the search bar at the top to search for and open the eProducts module.
- Place a mark in the "Enable eProducts" checkbox
- Click "Save" at the top right to complete the process.
Note
While enabling the eProducts module, you will see a "settings" button that will contain the following settings for you to configure:
- Require login to download e-products:
Mark this checkbox if you'd like for your customer to log into their customer record on your store in order to download the eProduct.
- eProduct download expiration (days):
This field can be used to set the number of days that an eProduct link will be active for. The limit is based on the number of days after the date of purchase.
- Send download link only for orders in status:
Mark this checkbox and select an order status from its related drop down menu to make the download link display for the customer only after their order is in the selected status.*
*Having the eProduct download link generated after the order is in a specific status will also process the link generation in background processes (rather than at the time of purchase). This will help in situations where you might have a large volume of eProduct orders that could potentially slow down your store as the links are generated immediately upon purchase.
After you configure these settings, click "Save" on the settings window to finish setting them up.
Upload your eProduct file
The File Manager (in your Shift4Shop Online Store Manger interface) can only accept image files. If your eproduct is an image, then click on the File Manager button in the store manager and click the Upload Files link to choose your image file.
If your eproduct is anything other than an image or PDF file (such as .mp3, .doc, ppt, or E-book), you will need to move this file over via FTP.
Tip
To FTP to your site, review the Welcome Email you received when you started your account with Shift4Shop. Use the FTP username, password, and hostname to connect. Once you are in the FTP, move your files to the web/assets/images folder.
Special Note:
Please be sure that your eProduct file name does NOT contain any spaces in its name. For example, an eProduct for a multi-word file like "Low-Fat Cook Book.doc" should be named with either no spaces or hyphens/underscores. (i.e. "low-fat-cook-book.doc)
Creating a Product
Now, let's create a product in the store, using the Online Store Manager.
Note
If you already created a product, skip to step 4.
- Go to Products >Product List
- Click on the +Add New button to add anew product.
- Enter the Product Name, Description, and Price and save the page.
- Click on the eProducts Tab
Tip
Be sure to hit save before navigating away from the Information tab to make sure you don't lose your product info.
Letting Shift4Shop know that this is an e-product
Once you have clicked on the eProducts tab:
- Click on the Browse button to search for the file you uploaded to the File Manager (either via FTP or through the Store Admin).
- Click the Select button next to your eproduct file.
- Click Save.
Note
With Shift4Shop, you can specify up to 10 individual e-product file paths. This can be useful if your eproduct is large and you'd like to offer it as smaller file sizes to faciliate downloading. Alternately, you can also use this function to have multiple e-product files available for download. For example, different types of the same image file like bmp, jpg, gif, etc.
Serial Numbers
If this eproduct needs to issue serial numbers, please proceed with these instructions:
Note
Skip these steps if your eproduct does not need to issue serial numbers.
- Type any instructions you may have about the download file into the Special Instructions field. This will display on the web page the customer downloads their file from.
- Click Save.
- Click on the Manage Keys button.
- In the Serial Manger popup, click Add New.
- Type the serial numbers you would like to distribute. Add one serial number per line.
- Once you have added all of your serial numbers, click Add.
- Close out the Serial Manager Popup.
- Check the Assign Key Checkbox.
- Check the Re-Use Keys checkbox if you would like to reuse the serial numbers after they have all been distributed. Leave it unchecked if you want each serial number to be issued only once.*
- Click Save.
*Important
Be aware that the system will check for the number of available serial numbers before generating the download links for the customer. If the system does not have enough available serial numbers to generate a download link, you will receive an email notification to let you know. You will then need to enter more serial numbers to complete the process for any orders that failed to generate a link.
Once an order is placed
After the purchase, the customer will receive a receipt with a link to download their file in the New Order Notification Email. The page contains the product name, a link to download it, and the expiration date. Additionally, the serial number will display on this page, if one is issued.
Furthermore, while the e-product download is still active and not expired, your shoppers will be able to access the download link at any time via their respective "My Account" pages.
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