26 replies to this topic

[royster13]

I think a niche site created for a retail customer is quite a different animal than for a business client....You mentioned adwords and I suspect most traffic goes to the exact page.....And yes these sites are quite clumsy....

For b2b sales I think the look has to stay consistent....Almost to the point you do not realize you are even leaving one site to go to another site.....

And as far as invoicing, I think that all sites should be branded as a division, etc. of the master company so when www.XYZNicheSite.com sends an invoice it will be in Master Company's name....

PS.....Working on custom menus now and pulling out my hair.....

[biggerfish]

royster13 said:

And as far as invoicing, I think that all sites should be branded as a division, etc. of the master company so when www.XYZNicheSite.com sends an invoice it will be in Master Company's name....

Building these sites in DC is another issue altogether... I tried long ago to duplicate one of my sites to another (to maintain consistency), and it involved keeping two different browsers running side by side - not browser windows, but literal browsers - Firefox and Safari - to avoid the cookie confusion in DC. Then I was going through each link in DC on the main site and doing the same thing on the new site - copying content from the blocks of one site to another, copying colors, settings, etc. Not for light hearted, I might add. But it's the ONLY way to build a consistent look and feel across niche sites.

Then I had to add specific catalogs for the new site, then set up new email and domain and dns setups for each, and before I knew it I was swimming in a giant mess.

After all that, I learned about the order management problem and quickly gave up the Niche thing using DC. There's still no easy way in DC to manage multiple niche sites, and their respective orders and customers.

royster13 said:

PS.....Working on custom menus now and pulling out my hair.....

There's quite a few cheap options out there that make those easy. Check out Quick Menu from Open Cube - http://www.opencube.com/index.asp

[tmertz]

Rich,

In your main account when you do an order search do an ADVANCED SEARCH. At the bottom of the search box you will see "Search Child Accounts Yes/No".

Click "Yes" on this. This sets your personal cookie so that future searches done by you include searches of orders into child accounts.

You will also notice most of the sales and order reports now offer reporting on aggregated child account orders and sales.

If this does not enable you to satisfactorily manage your orders in your child accounts from your main account please advise us.

[biggerfish]

tmertz said:

Rich,

In your main account when you do an order search do an ADVANCED SEARCH. At the bottom of the search box you will see "Search Child Accounts Yes/No".

Click "Yes" on this. This sets your personal cookie so that future searches done by you include searches of orders into child accounts.

You will also notice most of the sales and order reports now offer reporting on aggregated child account orders and sales.

If this does not enable you to satisfactorily manage your orders in your child accounts from your main account please advise us.

Wow, how long has that been there? I'm searching through all of my emails, and still can't find the announcement from DC about this great functionality. Don't see it on the Blog either.

Check your old emails for the subject - DC Sites as "Stores" - from August of 2008 - where I was requesting this.

This changes everything. Thanks Tom.

[royster13]

I have a menu built.....In fact I have a couple (Coffee Cup and Coffee Cup Menu Builder).....But have not quite figured out how to install it.....I am going to put it in the side bar....I keep getting interrupted by orders and my wife's "honey do" list....

[tmertz]

biggerfish said:

Wow, how long has that been there? I'm searching through all of my emails, and still can't find the announcement from DC about this great functionality. Don't see it on the Blog either.

Check your old emails for the subject - DC Sites as "Stores" - from August of 2008 - where I was requesting this.

This changes everything. Thanks Tom.

This feature has been live since last fall. We have been trying to go back through features that may have been in the system for some time and are trying to get them added to the blog.

The programmers are moving up features on a regular basis. Some of them we like to have a few people use before we tell the entire user base of their availability to ensure they are user friendly and working as expected. Sometimes we like for features to be in limited use for some time before we post them to the blog.

Our apologies for not getting you alerted on this. It was developed shortly after you requested it.

Distributors should think of DistributorCentral as their IT department. Features you desire that we can incorporate into DC we will consider. Both large and small Distributors and Suppliers are using DC to greater degrees. Distributors and Suppliers of all sizes should call DC regarding features they feel should be added or may not know exist. There is a "Request and Issue Tracker" link on the right hand column of the home page.

[ProPrinters]

There are some very good sites indeed.

I liked scotts, from LogoNetwork Athena Expressions.

Derek