Terms used in Shop-Script

There are several terms, used throughout the backend and frontend of Shop-Script, which you should know to understand how the online store operates.

SKU is what actually is available for ordering in an online store. By clicking on “Add to cart”, a customer agrees to purchase a certain SKU, some specific kind of products you offer. Each SKU can have its code (for unique identification among all available SKUs), name (displayed in the storefront; e.g., “Red T-shirt, size L” or “Blue T-shirt, size XXL”), price, and some other properties inherent to a specific product unit available in stock.

If a product has multiple SKUs, then a customer is offered to choose one before adding the product to the cart:

Product is a group of SKUs having a common description, image set, assigned tags, and position in the catalog. Each product has its own storefront page; in that page, you can order any of the SKUs contained in the corresponding product.

A product can have only one SKU, and you can consider such an SKU as a separate product. If there is only one SKU in a product, then only the product name can be displayed in the storefront instead of the SKU name; e.g., simply “T-shirt”.

An example of products displayed in an online storefront:

Category is a group of products. Any product can belong to any number of categories; e.g., a product named “T-shirt” can belong to categories “Apparel” and “Sale”. Links to product categories are usually displayed as a drop-down menu or in a sidebar; e.g.:

Categories can be nested in each other (child categories are nested in parent categories). You can set up that products contained in child categories are displayed in the parent category-viewing page. For example, you may want to distribute your products among individual subcategories such as “T-Shirts”, “Pants”, and “Socks”, and enable the displaying of all such products inside the common parent category “Apparel”; in addition to their direct categories, products will also be visible when customers browse their common parent category.

A category can be either static or dynamic. Read more about product categories →.

A product can exist beyond any categories; this may be useful for showing certain products as a special offer (by means of product sets) without making them visible in the common catalog.

Product set is a group of products, similar to a category, which is not included in the common catalog and has a slightly different set of properties. For example, a product set does not have a description, its own page in the storefront, or built-in product-selection filter. Product sets can also be either static or dynamic.

Sets are for displaying various groups of products in arbitrary places of the online storefront: in the homepage, in category-viewing pages (in addition to the products contained in the existing categories), in individual product-viewing pages, in the shopping cart page, etc. Read more about how to add product sets to your storefront in article “Product sets”.

Like categories, sets can be static or dynamic. Below is shown an example of a product set displayed in the home page:

Product feature is an extra property assigned to a product. Examples of product features: weight, color, material, dimensions, manufacturer. Feature names can be displayed in the storefront in product-viewing pages and in category filters used for selecting products by parameters (feature values).

Product type is a property of a product, which can be used for convenient management of the products catalog in the following situations:

• when setting up multiple storefronts; you can choose which product types should be displayed in each specific storefront (in the “Structure” screen of the Site app); for example, apparel and cookware can be displayed in different storefronts;

  

• when setting up automated generation of recommended product lists; you can set up different recommendations parameters for different product types;
• when assigning various features to different groups (types) of products; for example, feature “Size” is suitable for apparel, and “Screen size” — for mobile phones;
• when exporting products to a CSV file (you can select individual products type to export).

Examples of product types: “Apparel”, “Food”, “Computers”, “Furniture”. Each product can be assigned only one product type.

Storefront is a set of website pages generated by Shop-Script, which have common design and URLs. Several storefronts of one online store can be available on different domain names (e.g., food-store.com and book-store.com) or within one domain name (e.g., yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com/facebook/ — these kinds of extra storefronts can be used to embed your online store with social media such as Facebook).

Tips on setting up multiple storefronts →

All orders placed by customers in different storefronts are accessible via one common backend.

Each of your storefronts can have different appearance. To achieve that, you need to select the desired design theme in storefront properties available in the “Structure” screen of the Site app.

Backend is the administrative panel of your online store in which you manage your product catalog, process orders, and view sales reports.