LOUcommerce: Admin Panel

Welcome to LOUcommerce! You will go over everything in the LOUcommerce admin panel during your onboarding. However, we will go over some settings and recommendations that can help you as you manage and maintain your online store for years to come.

When you log into the Admin panel for LOUcommerce, you will land on the Dashboard. Use the menu on the left to navigate to other areas. What you see for menu options will depend on your Role.

 

Dashboard

The main dashboard will give you some stats and a list of recent orders. An indicator next to ‘from last month’ will tell you whether that number is up, down, or the same as the previous month.

• Customers: Number of customers who accessed your site and either logged in or completed checkout.
• Orders: Total number of orders received.
• Sales: Total Sales Amount.
• Products active: Number of active products on the site.

 

Orders

You can view and search Orders from here. The page will display several pieces of information at a glance:

• Order #
• Customer
• Items
• Total
• Payment
• Delivery
• Status
• Created

From this page, you can view all orders for all time and export them to a CSV file. You can click on the order to drill down and see information about the order. Orders are searchable by Order #, Customer Name, Customer Email, and Status.

When you click to a view an Order, you can see all the typical information for the Order including Billed to Email address and Phone number, Billing Name and Address details, Shipping Name and Address details, Order number, Status, Date and Time placed, Payment Method, and Delivery Method. Listed below that are Order Details and Transaction information.

 

Customers

During onboarding you can determine whether you want to allow Customers to register and track history or stick with guest checkout only.

 

Products

These are your SKUs. When the site is marked as active, these automatically begin syncing with LOU Web.

 

All Products

• They will not come over as Active. Each time a SKU is synced from LOU Web to LOUcommerce, you must go into the SKU and activate it.
  • LOUcommerce uses My SKU as the unique identifier. Changing My SKU in LOU Web will result in a duplicate SKU being synced to LOUcommerce.
• Extended Descriptions from LOU Web are only synced the first time and will come over unformatted.
  • Changes made to the Descriptions in LOUcommerce will not impact LOU Web. Likewise, after the first sync, changes made in LOU Web will not impact LOUcommerce.
  • LOUcommerce has built-in AI to help create descriptions.
    • REMEMBER! Any time you are using an AI tool, be sure to carefully proofread and edit for accuracy and appropriateness.
  • Images sync every time LOUcommerce syncs SKUs from LOU Web.
    • LOUcommerce uses the name of the image as a unique identifier. If you change the name of the image in LOU Web, LOUcommerce will think it is a new image and download it again, resulting in duplicate images.
    • If you replace the image in LOU Web and keep the same name, LOUcommerce will download the new image and replace the previous image.
    • The primary image is used on thumbnails and lists. All additional images display on the product page in a carousel.
      • You can make real time changes to the primary and carousel images, including the order in which they appear.
    • Options:
      • Active: Active on site.
      • Hidden: Won’t show in listings and search, but still active and available with a link to that specific SKU product page.
      • Featured: Features SKU on lists and search.
      • Free Shipping: This SKU will not be included in shipping calculations.
    • Categories: These will automatically match LOU Web. You can change the Categories a SKU is in on LOUcommerce without impacting LOU Web or the Tax Code.
    • Inventory: Quantities On Hand – these are not real time numbers.
    • Sync with LOU: While SKUs sync periodically, this allows you to initiate a manual sync on demand.

 

Categories

All SKU Categories are pulled from LOU Web to LOUcommerce even if there are no SKUs toggled for e-commerce in the Category.

• Categories cannot be deleted from LOUcommerce.
• You can create site-only Categories that do not exist in LOU Web. These will not be synced to LOU Web.
  • These are intended strictly for Site navigation and do not impact LOU Web or Taxes.
  • You can delete Categories created in LOUcommerce.

 

Serial Numbers

This feature is not currently available.

 

Mass Update

This is where you can make changes to Active, Featured, Width, Length, Height, Weight, and Keywords. Make sure to click Save at the bottom of the page after making changes.

 

Coupons

These can be used to create discount codes for products.

• Codes can be created for three different discount types: Shipping, Percentage, and Fixed Amounts.
• You can create the code and define the number of times a single user (email address) can use the code and the valid dates during which the codes are active.
• LOUcommerce will create a QR Code and a Link in addition to the alphanumeric code. This allows Customers to scan or click the link to go straight to your site with the code applied and begin shopping.

 

Content

This is where you can create and manage pages and content on your site.

• Store Pages: Homepage, Categories, and Products are all created for you when the site is created.
• Custom Pages: You can create additional custom pages.
• Menu: You can edit the Header, Middle Footer, and Right Footer.

 

Media

This shows every single image on your site and is intended as a repository for easy reference. You can organize these into folders that impact this page only.

 

Users

Add and manage users, including assigning them Roles and Permissions.

 

Roles and Permissions

We’ve created Roles with different levels of permissions for your LOUcommerce account, including the Customer which has no access to the Admin panel.

The Roles we have created are, in descending order of permissions:

• Owner: This Role is automatically assigned to the user who signs up for LOUcommerce and has full permissions throughout the account. There can only be one Owner.
• Admin
• Manager
• Moderator
• Customer

 

Each has a preset list of permissions visible by viewing the Role. During onboarding, you can determine who may need access to the admin panel and assign them a Role according to their responsibilities.

 

Settings

When you begin onboarding, you will determine what templates and other settings you want to use for your site. These settings are all configurable and updatable.

You can affect the following areas:

• Company
  • Images: Company Logo and Favicon used throughout the site.
  • Locations: You must have at least one location in order to calculate shipping.
  • Contact: This is the Primary Email Address used for all website communications as the To Address on Contact Forms and From Address on emails sent from the site.
    • You can determine whether include Forms, Locations, and Social Media on your Contact Page.
  • Company Store Settings: Determine whether you want to hide Out of Stock items and provide Low Stock warnings.
• Shipping
  • Enter the Shipping Settings for your store, including Shipping Rates.
• Payments
  • Enable PayPal and Venmo
• Meta
  • SEO: Web Search visibility
  • Analytics: enable Google Analytics
  • Social Media: Add your social media links to display on Contact Page and on the Footer.
• Policies
  • Store Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
• Theming
  • Colors
  • Fonts
  • Custom CSS
• Templates
  • Header
  • Navigation
  • Product Pages
• Emails
  • Orders
    • Enter emails that should be BCCed on all Order Emails sent from the site
    • Create the Order Email Header Text that will appear at the top of all the Emails.