How to?

[niche]

Hi Im not sure how to approach this and wondered how others would do it:

Our website currently has products that are available to buy online and in our shop (all ordered are processed from our shop premises).

We want to create a range of new separate one off products that will fit into our usual categories (each product goes into two categories currently) but that will be for online purchase only and not available to see/buy in our Bricks and Mortar shop, unlike all our other products. We need to make it clear these are for online purchase only and may or may not be slightly discounted. Importantly as these items will not be available in our actual B&M shop we want to be able to easily hide them all from time to time (as they will be at our warehouse and staff won't have access to them during holidays etc etc). The only issue may be that they are going to be in 3 categories and i cannot see how I could hide them easily.

There may be a completely different alternative way to approach this with a 2nd site that I know you can do with BP, but I wasn't sure how that would work.

Does anybody have any pointers?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated
Kim

[MountMan]

You could use Additions, so the customer has to tick a box that say's "Avialable Online Only" the tick is required to order, I do it if I'm on holiday and use it as "Dispatched after 17th August" (I have it set at the moment as I have a lot of orders at the moment)

[Dave]

Just a few suggestions

on the category and product pages you can use the short description and product description to make it obvious it’s online only and not available to view and buy in the shop. You could also add a product label saying online only.

as for hiding the product(s) you could simply set to inactive, that way it retains your stock figure. However, it could confuse shoppers who are revisiting the product and get a product not found page instead. Also google could delist the page when they revisit and find it not there.

you could remove the stock quantity or price and assuming you don’t allow backordering or purchase of zero price products this would remove the add to basket. Downside is you will need to restock product or add price back later.

leave products live and change to a different shipping method that doesn’t fulfill the order for x number of days.

[niche]

thank you mountman and Dave, Im very grateful for your suggestions, Im going to look into them throughly and see what would work best, I definitely dont want to have to individually click on or change each product when shipping will take longer as there will be some hundreds, but Im sure I can work with some of these suggestions,

thank you both so much for taking the time to reply,
kim

[Loxta]

Some of the bigger retailers seem to mark their images and H1 with "Online Exlcusive" and would possibly be the easiest way to manage these products. You could also add an attribute showing Store and Online on most of your products, and Online Only for the new ones - that way customers can easily filter store items easily.

From your side adding them to a new Online Only category would make it easier for your manage and de-list products quickly and easily

[niche]

Im so grateful for your input Shaun, I like this idea too especially the wording Online Exclusive. Our shop items are also available online as well as in the shop, so I need to be really careful not to confuse people! Im going to digest everything and work out a way forward weighing up the pros and cons of each approach.

Many thanks.
Kim

[niche]

Ive been looking into these helpful ideas for hours now. I have these issues still however:


From MountMan
“You could use Additions, so the customer has to tick a box that say's "Avialable Online Only" the tick is required to order, I do it if I'm on holiday and use it as "Dispatched after 17th August" (I have it set at the moment as I have a lot of orders at the moment)”


THE PROBLEM WITH THIS IS THAT IF A CUSTOMER ORDERS ONE ITEM OF NORMAL SHOP STOCK ONLINE PLUS AN ITEM OF THE NON SHOP STOCK, WE THEN THEN HAVE AN ISSUE AND ONLY HALF THE ORDER CAN BE COMPLETED, THE REST OF THE ORDER WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO BE DESPATCHED UNTIL A LATER DATE WHICH WE DONT WANT? PLUS WE DONT WANT TO DELAY THE REST OF THE ORDER.




From Dave
“Just a few suggestions


on the category and product pages you can use the short description and product description to make it obvious it’s online only and not available to view and buy in the shop. You could also add a product label saying online only.


PART OF THIS IS WORKABLE RE THE LABELS. HOWEVER THERE IS THE ISSUE AGAIN OF A MIXED ORDER WHEN SOMEBODY BUYS SOMETHING IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE PLUS A NON IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE ITEM SO WE CANNOT SHIP THE WHOLE ORDER AND DONT WANT TO DELAY THE WHOLE ORDER?


as for hiding the product(s) you could simply set to inactive, that way it retains your stock figure. However, it could confuse shoppers who are revisiting the product and get a product not found page instead. Also google could delist the page when they revisit and find it not there.


BP SAID THIS ABOUT THAT - “YES, GOOGLE WILL STILL INDEX THIS CATEGORY BECAUSE THEY HAD ACCESS TO IT ORIGINALLY, THE SAME APPLIES TO ANYONE WHICH HAS A DIRECT LINK TO THE CATEGORY” - BUT IT STILL DOESNT STOP SOMEBODY ADDING IT TO AN ORDER WITH A NORMAL IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE ITEM —— IM NOT SURE IF THIS APPLIES TO PRODUCTS IN A DEACTIVED CATEGORY THOUGH.


you could remove the stock quantity or price and assuming you don’t allow backordering or purchase of zero price products this would remove the add to basket. Downside is you will need to restock product or add price back later.


THIS COULD POTENTIALLY WORK, I COULD PUT A LABEL SAYING AVAILABLE AFTER XXXX DATE, I ASSUME BY CSV QUITE EASILY? ALTHOUGH NOT GOOD MAKING A CUSTOMER WAIT FOR AN ITEM AND IT MAY STOP THEM ORDERING OTHER ITEMS


leave products live and change to a different shipping method that doesn’t fulfill the order for x number of days.”


AGAIN IM NOT SURE THIS IS WORKABLE AS WE MAY GET A MIXED ORDER OF AVAILABLE AND NON AVAILABLE ITEMS AND WE DONT WANT PEOPLE TO WAIT A WEEK OR TWO FOR THEIR WHOLE ORDER AND ALSO DONT WANT TO POST SEPARATELY



From Loxta
Some of the bigger retailers seem to mark their images and H1 with "Online Exlcusive" and would possibly be the easiest way to manage these products. You could also add an attribute showing Store and Online on most of your products, and Online Only for the new ones - that way customers can easily filter store items easily.


From your side adding them to a new Online Only category would make it easier for your manage and de-list products quickly and easily


NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY MARKING WITH H1 BUT YES THE FIRST PART WOULD BE POSSIBLE WITH ATTRIBUES/ADDITIONAL TEXT ETC.


YES AGREED DELISTING ONE CATEGORY WOULD BE EASY BUT STILL UNSURE HOW GOOGLE WOULD SEE THIS OR IF SOMEONE STILL HAS A LINK AND ADDS TO AN ORDER?




We were thinking originally that we need the items to be in other categories otherwise they will be missed when people filter our products which is the main way of searching on our website and if we separate them completely people would need to search in two completely different parts of our website to find what they want which would be tiresome and annoying for the customer. However, in saying that if I have them in just one completely separate category and then still give each product the usual Attributes (not additions) then they would come up in the filters search. (I have two different ways of searching for products on my site, via the attribute filtering and also in separate categories). So if we were to remove stock quantity, put a label saying when available, i guess that would stop people buying. From a customer's point of view Im not even sure its a good idea to make people wait, as they may go elsewhere and it could cause all sorts of other issues! Alternatively I guess the whole order could be delayed but thats not great either as we are known for very fast despatch and delivery. I think completely hiding the products may be the only option, but worried about the impact on google.


I just cannot see the wood for the trees at the moment or a good way forward with this that is good for the customer and good for us. Dare I ask but any further inspiration would be invaluable bearing in mind the issues above.

Kim

[Loxta]

Hi Kim

NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY MARKING WITH H1 BUT YES THE FIRST PART WOULD BE POSSIBLE WITH ATTRIBUES/ADDITIONAL TEXT ETC.
Your H1 would just be your main titile, so your customers would see:
[ONLINE EXCLUSIVE] Large Cardboard Box...

YES AGREED DELISTING ONE CATEGORY WOULD BE EASY BUT STILL UNSURE HOW GOOGLE WOULD SEE THIS OR IF SOMEONE STILL HAS A LINK AND ADDS TO AN ORDER?
I would add these to your other categories as well so each product is in multiple categories, but just add them to a specific online exclusive category so you can find them easily.

To manage the delisting or delays, you could also put those products on SPO stock and make a new supplier that has a longer SPO delivery timescale. It is a bit of a pain to manage but maybe the easiest way.

[niche]

Hi Kim

NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY MARKING WITH H1 BUT YES THE FIRST PART WOULD BE POSSIBLE WITH ATTRIBUES/ADDITIONAL TEXT ETC.
Your H1 would just be your main titile, so your customers would see:
[ONLINE EXCLUSIVE] Large Cardboard Box...

YES AGREED DELISTING ONE CATEGORY WOULD BE EASY BUT STILL UNSURE HOW GOOGLE WOULD SEE THIS OR IF SOMEONE STILL HAS A LINK AND ADDS TO AN ORDER?
I would add these to your other categories as well so each product is in multiple categories, but just add them to a specific online exclusive category so you can find them easily.

To manage the delisting or delays, you could also put those products on SPO stock and make a new supplier that has a longer SPO delivery timescale. It is a bit of a pain to manage but maybe the easiest way.

Loxta thank you for your replies. If I add them to other categories, they will still show up in those categories even if I delist the ONLINE EXCLUSIVE category. I guess I have to deactivate the products themselves which will cause google issues, so I dont think I should do that.

Ive never used SPO's on BP but delaying an ONLINE EXCLUSIVE may still cause confusion if a customer has a normal item in their basket too? I want to keep the whole thing as simple as possible.

Im wondering if I should keep it very simple and just use some sort of popup/advisary note at checkout or when adding to basket (if this is even possible). I would have to look into how to do this, with either an addition like Mountman suggested with or without a tick box, or by using another shipping method as Dave suggested. It could state something like "Despatch of Online Exclusives will be after 20th August along with the rest of your order - if you wish any additional items in your basket to arrive sooner with our fast delivery service please make a separate order" Obviously I will get much better wording and make it as short as possible but this is just to explain what Im thinking? I would also add wording as additional text to those products by CSV showing this info. This will only happen for a one or two week period a few times a year.

I wonder if this could work, that way there are no Google issues, the products are always available, and it makes it clear that the customer can still order the other items for quicker despatch ?

Kim