Select a topic
All Gravit-e solutions are built from the stable and scalable core product. The core solution takes into consideration e-commerce best practice and offers a strong platform from which to grow your e-commerce business.
The Gravit-e product guide highlights the features and functions that are available as part of the Gravit-e core product. The platform itself is scalable and can be adapted to suit any business.
Download
Download our Product Guide as a PDF document by clicking the link below:
- Product Guide.pdf (You can save the file directly to your computer by right-clicking and selecting 'Save Target As')
If you would like to request the Guide in a different format, please let us know.
Homepage
Site Logo
The logo will appear in the upper left hand side of every page, including the homepage. Clicking on the logo will take the user back to the homepage on all pages.
Header Content
There is capacity in the header to hold two static pieces of information. These are typically used to display contact information and a message with regards to delivery costs. The content of these is fixed at design time. This will appear on all pages.
Basket Preview
The basket preview will appear on all pages. It summarises for the customer the number of items in their basket and the total value of the basket. Links are displayed here for the customer to access their basket or jump straight to the checkout process.
Primary Links
A single level drop down menu. This will initially be populated from the product category data and can later be modified manually through the CMS. This will appear on all pages.
Search Box
The search box allows the user to enter a full text search phrase to start a full text search. The categories dropdown allows the user to narrow their search automatically to a category of product. The options in the dropdown are driven by the product categories in the CMS. The search is started by pressing enter while the cursor is in the search box or pressing "Search". This will appear on all pages.
Product Menu
The product menu is a multi-level expanding menu that is driven by the product categories in the CMS. Menu items will automatically pop-out when the user hovers their mouse over them. Clicking on any menu item here will take the user to the appropriate Product Listing Page. This menu is maintained by changing the product category hierarchy. This will appear on all pages.
Banners
The homepage has capacity for three tabbed banner items in the central column. The banner template allows for the following elements.
- Main image, Corner image, Title, Text, Tab Text.
- The homepage also has capacity for a set of static banners in the right hand column. These are to be agreed at design time.
Social Networking Links
We include links to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as standard, pointing to the customer's specific accounts/pages on these sites.
Highlighted Products
The homepage will typically contain one or more sections promoting categories of products. Typical promotional categories would be: Special Offers, Latest Products or Free Gifts. The user must define during design the promotional categories. Allocation of products to categories is a manual process, performed through the CMS.
Best Sellers List
The Best Sellers list will show the top ten best-selling products on the website. The list is updated automatically whenever content is updated in the CMS. The list does not exclude product based on stock or other conditions.
Recently Viewed List
The Recently Viewed list will show the last 4 products that this user has visited. This information is stored in a cookie with no expiration date.
Site Description
A keyword rich plain-text description of the website, used to improve SEO of the homepage for visiting search engines.
Footer Content
The footer has capacity for four pieces of static information, which can be used to direct the user to products and services or direct them to specialised Contact Forms. This will appear on all pages.
Strapline
The slogan or mission statement of the business is presented in the strapline. This will appear on all pages, its position and styling defined during design.
Footer Links
This secondary menu is controlled through the CMS and is typically used for mandatory links such as the Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, etc. This will appear on all pages.
Copyright Notification
The copyright notification for the site. This will appear on all pages.
Credit Card and Security Logos
Logos denoting the acceptable card types and level of security on the website. This will appear on all pages.
Product List
Banner
A category specific tabbed banner. See Banners for more information.
Sort
The products displayed on screen will be sorted by Relevance as the default. The sort drop down can be used to change this sort order to any of the following options: + Name (A-Z) + Name (Z-A) + Price (Low-High) + Price (High-Low)
Pager
By default, the page will display a maximum of ten products per page, and a maximum of ten pages of search results in any category. Pager controls are displayed at the top and bottom of this list. The pager controls allows the user to move to:
- The first page of results
- The previous page of results
- The next page of results
- The last page of results
- A specific page of results by number
Options the customer cannot choose, such as moving to the next page when already on the last page, are displayed but clicking them will not result in a postback to the server.
Changing the sort order does not change the current page. Changing the page does not change the selected sort order.
If the user clicks "Back", the browser will return to the previous page displayed, with the sort order and page as they were when that page was displayed.
Product Details
Product details are show in summary on the Product Listing page. The following details are displayed by default:
- Product image, reduced to a thumbnail size. (See Product Images for more information).
- Product Name
- Product Rating (see Reviews for more information)
- Stock Status (see Stock Status Display for more information)
- Delivery lead time (see Stock Status Display for more information)
- Selling Price
- List Price (if greater than Selling Price)
- Saving (if List Price greater than Selling Price)
- Add to Basket button
Search Results
Faceted Search Navigator
The Faceted Search Navigator gives the user the ability to filter the presented Product List by one or more additional categories. The available facets are driven by the categories that products are associated to in the CMS.
The system will show categories from all levels of the hierarchy simultaneously, along with a count of how many products match this category.
When a facet is selected, the search will be narrowed to include that facet and any other facets already selected (including the category selected at the start of the search, if one was selected. See Homepage for details).
The pager control will automatically reset to page 1 when a new facet is chosen. Sort is unaffected.
It is only possible to select one category from each "facet", so multiple category hierarchies are required to provide multiple facets. These hierarchies must be agreed in advance. The system can automatically build facets for Price, but the price bands must be agreed prior to implementation.
To accommodate the faceted search navigator, the Product Menu (see Homepage) will be removed.
Product Details
Product Image
This is a larger version of the default product image, as seen on the Product List page. (See Product Images for more information.) Clicking on this image will show a full size version of the image in a lightbox.
Product Title
The Product Title, as shown on the Product List page.
Product Code
The Product Code, also referred to within e-commerce as the SKU, for this product. If Variants are in use, this will display the style code for this product.
If Gravit-e is being integrated to an existing back office system, this field must match the product code used in the back office environment. If Gravit-e is being installed without integration, it is advised that this field is populated to match with any product codes used by the business for ease of despatch and reporting.
Stock Status
The Stock Status will display the following information:
- Stock Status (see Stock Status Display for more information)
- Delivery lead time (see Stock Status Display for more information)
Social Bookmarking Links
We include social bookmarking functions from the 3rd party site addthis.com. This includes Facebook "Like" functions, Twitter, email to Friend, Printer Friendly Page, and bookmarking. Additional services can be configured via addthis.com. To include social bookmarking functions, we require the customer to register with addthis.com.
Sell Price, List Price, and Was Price
This section will display the following:
- Selling Price
- List Price (if greater than Selling Price)
- Saving (if List Price greater than Selling Price)
Add to Basket
The Add to Basket button, when clicked, will add the item to the user's shopping basket and take them immediately to the Basket page.
Optionally, the customer can given the option to enter a quantity of product, either in a drop down list of quantities or a free text box to enter a required quantity.
If Variants are in use, the customer will be required to select the variant required using one or more dropdown boxes.
Reviews
This section will show a summary the following review information:
- Average Star Rating (out of five) given to this product.
- Total number of reviews.
- Link to a form where a customer can leave their own review of the product.
Alternative Product Images
The page will display thumbnails for up to four additional, alternative images for the current product. Clicking on any of these images will show a full size version of the image in a lightbox. (See Product Images for more information.)
Tabbed Product Content
A tabbed content area is available with four standard tabs. These tabs contain content as follows:
Description
This is the main product description as entered in the CMS. The user will have the ability to maintain these descriptions using a "What You See Is What You Get" text editor.
Specification
The specification section allows the user to maintain multiple "specification fields".
Specification fields are free text, single lines fields intended to store product specification data appropriate to the product.
Each specification field must be preconfigured in the CMS and a list of specification fields must be agreed at design time. All products must share the same list of specification fields. However, any specification fields that are not populated for the product being displayed will be hidden from the customer.
Downloads
The user can upload attach multiple files to each product. These files can then be downloaded by customers visiting the website.
Files are restricted to a maximum size and a set of file types that must be agreed at design time.
Reviews
The system allows customers to post ratings and reviews for products on the website. Reviews are simple, plain text messages with an associated rating for the product out of five.
Reviews posted by customers must be reviewed by the user and approved in the CMS before they will appear on the website.
Alternative Products
The system will automatically offer a set of alternatives to the current product to the customer. This can be configured to be automatic or manual.
When the system is working automatically, alternatives will be chosen by the system based on the closest matches to the current product based on product categorisation.
When the system is working in manual mode, alternatives for all products must be chosen by the user through the CMS before they will appear.
It is not currently possible to combine automatic and manual modes.
The data displayed for each product is the same as in the Product Listing page, albeit in a different layout.
Recently Viewed Products
This section of the page will display the details of the four products most recently viewed by the customer, using the same design as the Alternative Products. (See Homepage for more details on Recently Viewed Products)
Basket
Basket
The customer's shopping basket will be displayed, showing the following information:
Remove item
A tick box that allows the customer to remove an item from their basket. The tick box must be ticked when the customer clicks Update Basket to remove the item from the basket.
Product Name
The name of each product in the basket.
Quantity
The quantity of this product in the basket. This is editable, with changes be submitted if the customer clicks Update Basket (see below).
Line Total
The selling price of the product, multiplied by the quantity.
Sub Total
The total of all line totals (see above).
Options
The customer has the following options when viewing the basket:
- Continue Shopping: Returns the user to the Homepage
- Update Basket: Applies any changes to quantity and removes any ticked items.
- Checkout: Takes the user to the Checkout page.
A note on Sidebars
On the basket page, the sidebars of the Homepage (including Banners and Product Navigation) are suppressed. This is designed to reduce distractions for the customer and move them quickly through the checkout process.
Checkout
Basket reminder
A read-only view of the basket, confirming for the customer the content of their order.
Contains the following information:
- Product Name
- Quantity
- Line Total
- Sub Total
- See Basket for definitions of the above data
Discount Codes Pane
The customer has the option to enter discount codes to receive discounts on their order. Codes entered here will be applied when the customer clicks the Click to Calculate Discounts button. See Discounts for more information.
Customer Information Pane
If the customer is registered and logged on, this pane will show the customer their email address and confirm that any emails relating to the order will be sent here.
If the customer is not logged on, they will give the option here to either:
- Enter an email address and continue
- Log-in and then automatically return to checkout
If the customer opts to enter their email address, the system will automatically create an account for this customer when the checkout is complete and email them the details.
Billing Information Pane
This pane will collect billing address and contact information for the customer.
The following fields are collected as standard:
- First Name (mandatory)
- Last Name (mandatory)
- Company Name
- Street Address Line 1 (mandatory)
- Street Address Line 2
- City (mandatory)
- Country, from a drop down list (mandatory)
- County, from a drop down list (mandatory)
- Postal Code, with optional Postcode Anywhere address finder (mandatory)
- Phone number (mandatory)
The list of countries must be agreed during configuration. If only one country is available, e.g. for countries that ship only to the UK, the country dropdown will default to that country.
Selecting the country drop down will automatically populate the County list with Counties, or outside of the UK Postal Zones, that match the selected country.
Delivery Information
This pane collects the delivery address and contact information for the order. If this data is the same as the Billing Information above, the user can copy this information from the Billing Information pane by clicking a single tick box.
If the data is not the same, the following fields can be entered:
- First Name (mandatory)
- Last Name (mandatory)
- Company Name
- Street Address Line 1 (mandatory)
- Street Address Line 2
- City (mandatory)
- Country, from a drop down list (mandatory)
- County, from a drop down list (mandatory)
- Postal Code, with optional Postcode Anywhere address finder (mandatory)
- Phone number (mandatory)
Selecting the country drop down will automatically populate the County list with Counties, or outside of the UK Postal Zones, that match the selected country.
Shipping Information
This pane will display the shipping costs for the shipping options open to the customer. A single shopping option must be selected. See Shipping Configuration for more information.
Payment Method
The payment method pane will display the following elements:
Order Total Preview
This section of the pane will display the following information:
- Subtotal (as per the Basket, see above)
- Discounts (as calculated by the Discount Pane, see Discounts for more details)
- Shipping costs ((as calculated by the Shipping Pane, see Shipping for more details)
- Total: Calculated as (Subtotal + Shipping) - Discounts
Payment Method
The user will be offered the choice of payment methods as configured for the system. The available payment methods available are SagePay and PayPal. The default is SagePay.
Payment Information
If the customer selects SagePay as their payment method, this section of the pane will collect the information required to process the payment:
- Card Type
- Card Owner
- Card Number
- Expiration Date (using month and year dropdowns)
- Issue Number
- CV2
Delivery Notes
The delivery notes section allows the customer to add notes to their order. These can be used for special delivery instructions or for any other information or feedback that the customer wants to include with their order.
Terms and Conditions
A single tick box that the user must tick in order to complete the checkout process. Ticking the box confirms that the customer agrees to the website's Terms and Conditions.
Review Order
At the end of the checkout page, the customer is given the option to Review their order or Cancel.
If the customer opts to Review, the checkout data will be validated and any issues highlighted to the customer before they can continue. If all data validates, the customer will be shown a read-only summary of their order and given the option to Confirm.
Confirming the order will process payment, taking payment from the customer, and save the order to the e-commerce system for processing.
Single Page and Multi-Step Checkout
Checkout can be presented as either single step or multi-step.
Both options render a single page to the customer. If the checkout is single step, all of the "panes" described above will be open simultaneously. If the checkout is multi-step, the "panes" above will all start closed (with the exception of the first pane displayed) and the customer will be able to click on a "Next" button to move from pane to pane.
A note on Sidebars
On the basket page, the sidebars of the Homepage (including Banners and Product Navigation) are suppressed. This is designed to reduce distractions for the customer and move them quickly through the checkout process.
Standard email Templates
There are three emails sent as standard by the system:
- Email Order Confirmation, sent when an order is successfully placed with full payment.
- Email Despatch Confirmation, sent when an order is marked as despatched either by integration (where available) or through the CMS.
- Email Status Change Notification, sent when the status of the order is changed either by integration (where available) or manually through the CMS and a notification tick box is checked.
Standard Configurable E-Commerce Features
Shipping
Gravit-e supports multiple shipping rates to represent different costs and different options to e-commerce customers.
Each shipping method has a fixed price and a set of conditions under which it is activated.
See Shipping Configuration for more information and list of allowable conditions.
Payment Methods
There are two supported payment methods as standard; SagePay and PayPal. These will be configured with the customer during the implementation process. For security of credit card data, an SSL Certificate must be purchased or supplied by the client.
Discounts
Discount Functionality
A discount, also sometimes referred to as a deal or promo code, is a way of giving a user a discount when a certain set of criteria are met. The Gravit-e discounts module allows the user, through the CMS, to define these discounts.
Discount definition has four distinct components:
- Discount Identification: Naming your discount and controlling how it will be later analysed.
- Discount Eligibility: The criteria that must be met for the discount to activate.
- Discount Calculation: How the discount is calculated.
- Discount Limits: Controls to prevent over use or over exposure of codes.
Discount Identification
Name
The Name field is mandatory meaning that text will have to be present in the field provided. The text entered here will be shown in admin reports and logs.
Short Description
This is another mandatory field. The text that is entered into this text box will be the code that will be entered when the checkout page requests the discount.
Description
An internal description may be provided for reference. Only administrators will be able to view this.
Discount Eligibility
The following options exist for controlling discount activation/eligibility. All conditions are cumulative, e.g. all configured conditions must be met for a discount to become active.
Qualification Type
There are two options for qualification type, and one must be chosen: + Minimum Price + Minimum Quantity.
For a discount that will always be active, a minimum quantity of 1 item can be used.
Discount Code
Discounts can, optionally, require a discount code to activate them. A single discount may have multiple codes. Codes are case sensitive.
User Role Qualification
Discounts can be restricted to users who have particular roles within the CMS. This option can be used to exclude anonymous users.
Product Qualification
A single product can be identified that must be in the customer's basket for this discount to be active. This does not need to be the product that is discounted (see below).
Discount Expiry
Discounts can be given an expiry date and time, after which they can no longer be applied.
Discount Calculation
There are five types of discount calculation:
- Percentage discount on whole order
- Fixed £ discount on whole order
- Percentage off per qualifying item
- Fixed £ amount off per qualifying item
- Free items
- Product Name
- Product Category
- Product Code
- Product Class
Discount Limits
Maximum Times Applied
This maximum determines how many times the discount can be applied to a single cart. Percent off discounts are not eligible for this limitation. Discounts can be configured to apply an unlimited amount of times in a single cart.
Max Uses
This maximum determines how many times a discount code can be used in total across all customer orders. This can be used to create discount codes for the "first 100" customers, etc.
Max Uses per User
This maximum determines how many times a discount code can be used in total across a single customer's orders. This can be used to create discount codes that are "one time only" usage per customer.
By default, only one deal can be activated in an order at a time. A checkbox is available during discount configuration to mark a discount as being "combinable" with other discounts.
When discounts are combined, weight is used to control what order the discounts are applied in. Weights run from -50 (applied first) to +50 (applied last) and are controlled in the CMS
Standard CMS Features
Static Pages
Static pages are used to present static, non-interactive, text/HTML pages to the customer. These are typically used for pages such as:
- About Us
- Terms and Conditions
- Privacy Policy
A static page contains the following features and content in addition to the standard features and content inherited from the Homepage.
Static Content
- Static content can be entered into the system through a WYSIWYG editor or as plain text.
- Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
- Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
- Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Blog/News Pages
The Gravit-e system provides the user with a simple blog/news page that can be used to publish news and information to visiting customers. Blogging can often have a positive SEO impact.
The Blog/News page contains the following features and content in addition to the standard features and content inherited from the Homepage.
Article List #
Each posted article on the Blog/News page is a Static Page. The article list presents a list of these articles in reverse data order (e.g. the most recent first).
The following information is displayed for each article:
- Article Title: Clickable to access the whole article.
- Article Teaser: A shortened version of the article itself. giving a preview of the content.
- Read More link: Clickable to access the whole article.
Contact Form
(This page enables customers to contact you and is an essential part of any e-commerce system)The Contact Us page contains the following features and content in addition to the standard features and content inherited from the Homepage.
The Contact Form is an online form that enables customers to contact website owners without exposing the email contacts of the business to web-spiders.
The following fields are displayed as standard:
- Your Name: The name of the person contacting the website.
- Your email: The email address of the person contacting the website.
- Message Subject: The user must select one of these options to indicate the reason they are contacting you. Message Subject impacts the delivery address for the email generated from the contact form (see below)
- Your Message: A free text area where the customer may enter their message
Standard SEO Features
SEO is vital to the success of any e-commerce venture.
Gravit-e is pre-loaded with a number of powerful SEO tools.
The following SEO features are available as standard:
- Clean URLs
- All URLs exposed by the system are "clean" URLs.
- Cleans URLs are automatically calculated by the system using category and page title data.
- Content Meta Data
- Page Title
- Page Meta Keywords
- Page Meta Description
- URL Redirection
- A list of URLs to redirect can be imported into the system during implementation.
-
There are three types of redirect data supported:
- Redirect to a known relative or absolute URL
- Redirect to a product based on product code
- Redirect to a piece of content based on its content ID
Standard Administration Functions
Gravit-e has an online control panel that allows you to perform the following functions:
- Add/Edit a Product & Edit Product Price Lists
- Add/Edit a Product Discount
- Add/Edit a Static Page
- Add/Edit a News Article/Blog Post
- Comment Moderation & Publication
- Add/Edit a Category
- Edit Menus and Add/Edit Menu Items
- Add/Edit URL Redirects
- Order Administration
- Add/Edit Users & Add/Edit User Roles
The scope of this functionality is defined in the User Guide.
- Add/Edit Webform & Access Webform Results
Standard Security Features
All customers are required to supply a username, password, and valid email address. Customers can register an account and request a new password via the website.
For administration, users must also have a username, password, and valid email address that is attached to an administration role. The rights of administrators to access the CMS functions outlined above are configurable into multiple roles with varying levels of access in each role.
Standard Analytics Features
We integrate with Google Analytics as standard and require ongoing access to the user's Google Analytics account for performance monitoring purposes.
