How it Works
Note: Creo Commerce has a one time $99 license fee, and can be installed on any of the hosting packages we offer. Installation within 24 hours of purchase. You can add Creo Commerce during your hosting signup, or any time afterwards.
With Creo Commerce you can be up and running in three simple steps.
You don’t need to learn HTML or PHP, or install any software on your computer. Just open your administrative area in your browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox) and get started. It’s designed to help you manage your website easily so you can spend more time creating your products, delivering your services, or enjoying life!
Step 1 – Choose Your Design
Start by selecting the design template you would like to use for your website. You have five choices:
- Use one of the dozens of included templates (free)
- If you are fluent in HTML you can create your own design
- Purchase an exclusive template from our Creo Commerce Certified Designers
- Hire one of our Creo Commerce Certified Design Partners to create a custom template for you
- Transfer your existing website design into the system (one time $50 fee if you’d like us to integrate it for you)
Step 2 – Add Your Store Information and Products
Use our simple online interface to set up your store information, policies, shipping, and payment setup (some setup is done at Mal’s E-Commerce).
Add categories and stock your products. The Creo Commerce system includes an awesome WYSIWYG editor that you can read more about and see video demos of on the support page here. (Not compatible with Safari.)
Step 3 – Open and Promote!
Take advantage of the built in promotional features including:
- A Google Base Feeder to upload your products to Google Base
- A links page so you can exchange links easily
- SEO Friendly set with site map, meta tags, image alt tags, article library builder, and more
- Resources to help you manage and build your business
That’s it! You won’t need to learn complicated or confusing HTML or PHP codes. You can be up and running quickly and easily with an easy to manage and easy to shop ecommerce website.
Five Things You Should Know About Creo Commerce
1) It’s an online system.
There’s no software to download or install. Everything is done online through your web browser. We recommend Firefox, but the features also work in Internet Explorer. Creo Commerce is compatible with both PC and Mac. To run smoothly on a Mac, please use Firefox browser instead of Safari.
2) It’s a database-driven CMS (content management system).
A content management system is an easier way to build and maintain your website. Creo Commerce is more than just an ecommerce catalog that displays your products. It brings content management together with ecommerce. From within the store admin area you can activate built in features (such as the contact form or FAQ builder) and you can also add new pages. You can create categories and products.
The store admin works by allowing you to “fill in the blanks” as shown in this screenshot:
Then it saves your entered information into a database. That database is then used to create your website and pull in your information. Each page is dynamically generated by Creo Commerce.
What’s the difference between this and a hand-coded website? First, you don’t need to learn HTML or PHP to create your site. Creo Commerce takes care of the hard part for you. Second, because it runs on a template system, you can update every page of your site by changing one template file. That template file holds the style and layout of your website and every page is updated when you update that single file. This makes managing your site much easier!
An important note about database-driven website management systems is that because they generate your pages based on their pre-set layouts and programming, if you’ve been creating your pages in HTML and putting every piece exactly where you want it, this doesn’t work quite like that. Instead, it allows you to choose a built-in template or create your own template and tell it where to put pieces, and then allows you to choose your product layout style, and the system generates the pages based on your choices.
Creo Commerce offers you a range of product display styles (read below for more info) but those styles work they way they are shown in the demo. The same applies to other features like the contact form, FAQ builder, and event calendar. It will work as shown and if you’d like changes you will need to request a custom programming quote as there is an extra charge for modification of the php files of this cart.
If you are familiar with shopping carts, you quickly see how much more flexible Creo Commerce is compared to carts like osCommerce or Zen Cart. It’s much easier to integrate your website look and layout, and you have more product display options without adding extra modules or editing system files.
Here are some examples of product layouts you can see what’s available:
3) It’s a traditional shopping cart ecommerce system.
It works in a fashion similar to other ecommerce systems available online. The customer comes to your website and shops, and once the customers payment is completed *then* the order is recorded and items removed from inventory and marked as belonging to that customer. This means that if you are coming from a cart like Hyena Cart, there is a fundamental difference in the way Iris Market Builder works. But if you’re coming from a system like Zen Cart, osCommerce, and other traditional carts, it’s very similar. The importance in this distinction is that if you are “stalked” online by crazed shoppers awaiting your items and all trying to purchase the same item at the same time and you have only one available, and you’ll know if you this describes you *wink*, then you can contact us directly about the special inventory module.
4) It’s a hosted software system.
A hosted system means that the system includes website hosting. You get a full cPanel account including email addresses, statistics, etc. You can add a blog, create subdomains, and more.
This also means that you cannot purchase the system to host somewhere else. Our servers are specifically setup to properly run the Creo Commerce system and we couldn’t provide the level of support we strive to provide to our valued clients if it were hosted somewhere else. There are too many differences in the way servers are configured.
5) It works with Mal’s E-Commerce for the checkout.
Creo Commerce works together with Mal’s E-Commerce. Mal’s offers a secured, PCI Compliant checkout system so you have one less thing to worry about. All shipping, tax, and payment settings are setup at Mal’s. You can find more info about this on the support pages.
