LOUcommerce: Things to Consider

Online shopping is the way of the world, these days, and LOUcommerce makes creating an online store that integrates with LOU easy.

While everyone’s experience will vary, the average LOU business can complete configuring their online store within a few days. Additional time will be needed for other tasks such as processing the TSYS e-commerce merchant account application, gathering your SKU images, and generally setting up your business processes.

Our LOU Team will guide you through the onboarding experience, stepping through every setting together. You can help keep the process moving efficiently by preparing your business and gathering data for the topics discussed in this document.

First Things First

There are some things to consider and prepare for before you dive in.

1. Shipping. Have a plan and infrastructure in place to ship out online orders.
   1. Processes and Policies. Create your shipping department/team and business processes.
      1. Who will be responsible for packing and shipping products sold from your online store?
      2. What are your internal policies and procedures for handling shipping?
         • Do you ship out daily, once per week, on demand?
      3. Consider order processing times. How long will it take you to pull Inventory, package for shipping, and deliver to shipping carrier?
      4. Terms and Conditions for both ordering online and potential returns.
         • Make sure your Return Policy incorporates online orders.
      5. What are your customer policies and procedures?
   2. Hazmat. Consider the geographic area that qualifies for shipping from you. Due to hazmat regulations, keep the deliverable area limited to an area that qualifies for ground shipping.
      1. IMPORTANT! LOU doesn’t have Hazmat support currently. We recommend avoiding shipping by air for that reason.
   3. Shipping Carrier Accounts. LOUcommerce offers flat rate shipping so that you don’t have to have an account with a carrier. However, research UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL to determine whether it makes sense for you to create an account with one of those shipping partners.
      1. Flat rate shipping. If you use the flat rate shipping, you need to determine the rate for the items you sell.
   4. Supplies and Materials. Consider shipping supplies – boxes, bubble wrap/popcorn/package protection, labels, tape, etc. Have a business process for purchasing and stocking those supplies for your shipping department/team.
   5. LOUcommerce is set up to support shipping, but not “curbside checkout” or local pickup situations.
2. Inventory. Currently, LOUcommerce is ideal as an extension of your retail store. Cash and carry hard goods that can be sold and shipped through ground shipping methods are best. Avoid Service and Serialized items.
   1. Consider what inventory you will sell online and start making a list.
   2. Dimensions and Weight for shipping. Gather dimensions and weight for the inventory you will sell online. These are required to calculate shipping costs. TIP! Reach out to buying groups or manufacturers for the information.
      1. Carecraft, PoolCorp, and Heritage can provide dimensions and weight for products. Reach out to your account contact for information.
      2. REMEMBER! Dimensions and Weight can be entered when you create SKUs and that information is on the initial SKU Inventory import template. However, that information cannot be updated through the SKU Mass Update tool. For existing Inventory, you need to go to the SKU Profile for each SKU and edit the information one by one.
   3. You’ll need photos for those SKUs! This will potentially be your heaviest lift.
      1. Make sure you have the right product image saved in the SKU Profile for every SKU. This must be done one SKU at a time on the SKU Profile directly.
      2. TIP! Both the Carecraft and Heritage integrations will import images with SKU information. You can quickly import images for Carecraft SKUs you already have in your Inventory by going to the SKU Profile / Images and using the Check for Carecraft Images button.
   4. ECommerce Availability. Every SKU you want to appear in your online store must have the ECommerce Availability flag toggled on.
      1. The SKU import tool has a column for this flag when importing SKUs for the first time. Existing SKUs, and those imported through one of our integrations, must have this flag set individually on the SKU Profile.
   5. Website Assets. Your logo, header images, color palettes, and more!
      1. LOUcommerce is designed to offer you templated sites with preset color palettes, but you have the option to customize the colors. If you decide to do that, you need to have your color palette.
      2. You can place an image on the header of the website. The header image field is fully responsive. The recommended size for this image should be a minimum of 1600px.
      3. Have a high-quality image of your logo available.
      4. TIP! Any time you add images to your website, ensure they are high-quality. If you can use vector file formats, great! Otherwise, LOUcommerce is compatible with most standard image formats.
   6. Finances for TSYS Application. You must have a separate TSYS e-commerce Merchant Account in addition to your primary Merchant Account. You can speed up the TSYS application process by having the following pieces of information ready:
      1. 3 most recent months of merchant processing statements
      2. Ownership information
      3. 2 most recent years of income statements
      4. 2 most recent years of balance sheets
      5. Proof of business (license or other) 
      6. Copy/example of terms for deposits with future deliveries (if applicable)

When you’re ready to get started, reach out to sales@evosus.com.

LOUcommerce Onboarding Considerations

During Onboarding for LOUcommerce there are some additional considerations and setup items to complete outside of building your online store website. Many of these items will be on your onboarding checklist and your onboarding specialist will go over them in detail with you. These include:

1. Website Domain. Consider whether you want a custom web domain or whether you want the store to be an extension of your existing website.
   1. LOUcommerce can accommodate your custom domains or provide a domain for you.
2. LOU API Access. To use LOUcommerce you must also subscribe to our LOU APIs. These are required to facilitate communication between your online store and LOU Web
   1. Check out Get Started with LOU API.
   2. Set up API Defaults.
      1. REMEMBER! You do not need to enter a LOU Tag for LOUcommerce. It will create the ecommerce tag for you. You can leave the LOU Tags fields blank on the Defaults page.
   3. E-Commerce Merchant Account. You must have a separate e-commerce merchant account through TSYS to process payments in your online store.
      1. EFS will guide you through this process as you begin onboarding for LOUcommerce.
   4. Setup Items in LOU Web. There are some additional setup items that need to be created in LOU Web.
      1. Department: you will need to determine what Department will handle LOUcommerce orders.
      2. Distribution Method: Create a shipping Distribution Method for online orders.
         • This should be configured to define Tax Codes by Destination.
      3. POS Station: create a new POS Station associated with the Department and connected to your new merchant account
         • TIP! Name the POS Station something obvious like “Online Store” or “E-Commerce”, not “POS 1” or “POS 2”.
         • Set to auto-open so that it will capture Payments any time.
      4. Trade SKU: You need to create a Trade SKU that can be used to charge shipping.
         • Consider the SKU Category this SKU will be in and what GL Accounts are mapped to that Category for Revenue and COGS. It may make sense to put it in its own Category.
      5. Document Type: create a Document Type to be used on Sales Orders created by LOUcommerce.
      6. Other Payment Method: if you plan to use PayPal or Venmo, you must create an Other Payment Method and associate it with the correct GL Accounts.
      7. Tags. LOUcommerce automatically creates the ecommerce tag for you and attaches it to the Sales Order. If you want to incorporate this tag into Workflows or follow it ahead of time, you can create it yourself.
         • IMPORTANT! It must be just ecommerce with no dashes in all lowercase. Anything else will be unique to what LOUcommerce creates and will result in you having two tags – one from LOUcommerce and one disconnected from any LOUcommerce process.

LOUcommerce Settings to Consider

There are some settings in LOUcommerce that will require you to consider your business processes and how you’d like LOUcommerce to help guide your business. During onboarding, you will go over each of these in greater detail, but it’s good to be prepared for the conversation.

1. Customer Checkout: You can allow your Customers to register and log in or allow guest checkout only.
   1. Allowing your Customers to register and log in will give them a way to see their Online Order History.
   2. Whether Customers log in or use guest checkout, LOUcommerce uses the email address to determine whether to associate an Order placed online with an existing Customer or create a new Customer in LOU Web.
      1. IMPORTANT! This may lead to duplicate Customers if a Customer checks out with a different email address than the one they’ve given you.
2. Terms and Conditions: LOU Web allows you to define Terms and Conditions in several places. You may determine there are unique Terms and Conditions for online orders in addition to your standard Terms and Conditions.
   1. LOUcommerce calls these Terms of Service and comes configured with default terms. You can customize these to include your standard Terms and Conditions as well as any you create for online orders.
   2. Make sure to include a Return Policy in your Terms and Conditions.
      • Consider whether to charge restocking fees, refund shipping charges, limit what can be returned, etc.
3. SKUs: LOUcommerce calls these Products. In addition to the callouts in the first section of this document, there are some additional considerations.
   1. SKUs that have been flagged for ECommerce Availability will be automatically synced by LOUcommerce when the site is set to Active.
      1. When SKUs are first synced to LOUcommerce, they will not be Active online. You must go into Products and activate them one by one.
      2. LOUcommerce uses My SKU as a unique identifier. Changing My SKU in LOU Web will result in a duplicate SKU being synced to LOUcommerce.
   2. Extended Descriptions are only synced the first time the SKU is synced. They will be unformatted.
      1. Future changes to Extended Descriptions in LOU Web will not sync to LOUcommerce, nor will changes made in LOUcommerce sync to LOU Web.
      2. You can change Extended Descriptions in LOUcommerce without impacting LOU Web. Including using LOUcommerce’s built in AI tool to help create descriptions.
         • REMEMBER! Whenever using AI to help with text, be sure to carefully proofread and edit for accuracy and appropriateness.
   3. Images sync every time LOUcommerce syncs SKUs from LOU Web.
      1. 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.
      2. The primary image is used on the 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.
   4. Options:
      1. Active – active and visible on the site
      2. Hidden – won’t show in listings and search, but available with a link
         • This can be helpful for specials only available for specific Customers. Provide the link and the Customer can buy the product. Without the link, the product cannot be found on the site.
      3. Featured – prioritizes the product in lists and searches.
      4. Free Shipping – SKU will not be considered when calculating shipping charges.
         • When multiple SKUs are present on an order, shipping will be calculated for all SKUs except those with this flag set.
   5. Categories will automatically match LOU Web.
      1. Making changes to the Categories in LOUcommerce will not affect LOU Web Categories.
      2. Changing Categories in LOUcommerce will not affect the Tax Code defined for the Category in LOU Web.
   6. SEO – Search Engine Optimization – allows you to enter search words that increase the visibility of your site and products in searches on the internet.
   7. Inventory – Quantity on Hand. These are not real time.
   8. Sync with LOU allows you to perform a full sync of SKUs/Products with LOU Web. This process occurs automatically, but this button allows you to perform a sync on demand when needed.
4. Categories: these are automatically synced from LOU Web. Your entire SKU Category list will be synced regardless of whether they contain SKUs flagged for ECommerce.
   1. Cannot delete LOU Web Categories in LOUcommerce, but you can delete LOUcommerce-created Categories.
   2. Can create Categories and sub-Categories in LOUcommerce that will not sync to LOU Web. These can be used for online store navigation.
5. Coupons: codes can be generated in LOUcommerce for your Customers to use for discounts on shipping and products sold in your online store.
   1. Codes can be created for three different discount types:
   2. Shipping – these code types will discount the Shipping Charge, not the Products.
   3. Percentage – these codes will take a percentage off the total Order.
   4. Fixed Amounts – these codes will take a fixed amount off the total Order.
   5. You can create the code, define the number of times a single user(email address) can use the code, and the valid dates during which the codes are active.
   6. In addition to manually entering the code on your site, LOUcommerce will create a QR Code and Link. When the QR Code is scanned or the link is accessed, the user will go straight to your site and the code will be applied so they can immediately begin shopping.