product stock notification – user...

PRODUCT STOCK NOTIFICATION

– USER GUIDE www.huntbee.com

HuntBee OpenCart Services [email protected]

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PRODUCT STOCK NOTIFICATION – USER GUIDE | www.huntbee.com

Product Stock Notification – User Guide This documentation is made with reference to OpenCart 2.x.x.x version. However the same

procedure is applicable to OpenCart 1.5.x version.

Extension Name Product Stock Notification

Extension Version 7.5

Developer Priyabrata Ghorai (PRIYO)

Technology Used PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ajax, Bootstrap

Platform OpenCart

Developer Store HuntBee OpenCart Services

Developer Website http://www.huntbee.com

Marketplace HuntBee Store, OpenCart Extension Marketplace

http://www.huntbee.com/

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Contents About the Extension................................................................................................................................ 3

Benefits/Features of this Extension .................................................................................................... 3

SMS (Text Message) functionality ....................................................................................................... 4

How it works ........................................................................................................................................... 5

Requirements .......................................................................................................................................... 7

Installation .............................................................................................................................................. 7

Uninstall .................................................................................................................................................. 8

Upgrade from 7.0 to 7.5.......................................................................................................................... 8

Upgradation Steps .............................................................................................................................. 8

Admin Components ................................................................................................................................ 9

Data: Alert Reports ............................................................................................................................. 9

Filters ............................................................................................................................................... 9

Reset ............................................................................................................................................... 9

Products in Demand ............................................................................................................................ 9

Email & SMS Design .......................................................................................................................... 10

Settings.............................................................................................................................................. 11

Form Setting .................................................................................................................................. 11

Condition setting ........................................................................................................................... 11

Product Analytics .......................................................................................................................... 12

Cron Job Setting ............................................................................................................................ 12

Sending out email notification/SMS notification .............................................................................. 14

Common Issues ..................................................................................................................................... 14

Suggestion to your website................................................................................................................... 15

SMS Setup ............................................................................................................................................. 15

Advance Customization Support ........................................................................................................... 15

Template Support ................................................................................................................................. 16

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About the Extension Many times customer will look for a product and when they see out of stock, they simply leave the

website, and you lose a sale.

What happens in this scenario?

1. The time duration spent by your customer on your website is less and therefore your page

CTR (Click-through Rate) is reduced. This affects website Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2. You do not know that a customer visited your website and left just because one of your

products is not in stock.

3. Customer gets unhappy

4. You lose a potential Sale and therefore your potential profit gets affected

5. You are unaware of Customer demands

6. Inventory Management is not effective

Here is an extension which will engage your customer to your website and also it will let you know

on the customer demands and gives you an opportunity to provide quality and better customer

service to your customers. It makes easy for you to keep customers up to date on the products that

they want to purchase but are out of stock.

Benefits/Features of this Extension 1. Improve inventory turnaround and get more profit

2. Build customer loyalty and increase customer satisfaction

3. Let your customer subscribe to out-of stock products

4. Let your customer subscribe to out-of stock product options of configurable items

5. Automatically Notify Customers when product is back in stock (Cron Job Setup).

6. Email Notification to Customer

7. Email template and SMS template designer

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8. Tracks Customer Selected Product Options

9. Tracks Customer Language

10. Multi-Store, Multi-lingual

11. Easy Admin Control

12. If the customer is logged in, the customer need not to type his/her email

address/name/phone. This extension will automatically get the email

address/name/phone of the logged in customer.

13. Google Analytics Campaign tracking

SMS (Text Message) functionality This extension offers you provision of adding SMS functionality to this extension. Adding SMS

notification functionality has great advantage over Email notification, as SMS reaches the customer

mobile instantly.

Offline Notification - The customer need not to be connected to internet to get the

notification.

Email may get delivered to SPAM in some cases. Therefore SMS provides you better

customer notification

To send an SMS to any mobile you will need to have an active SMS gateway service. Without an SMS

gateway service this extension will not be able to send any SMS. If you have already got HTTP API

from your SMS Gateway Vendor, contact our support team to integrate it with this extension.

There are many SMS Gateway provider who offer your SMS Web Integration. Select a service for

best and quality service and at affordable price package.

There are also free gateway available to send SMS where your smartphone acts as a server and your

mobile number is used to send SMS. Contact our support for more information.

Once you are registered to a service contact our support to integrate the facility to your website for

this extension functionality (Not covered under free support. Custom charges applicable according

to the SMS gateway API settings).

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How it works ILLUSTRATION SHOWING HOW A CUSTOMER SUBSCRIBES TO A SOLD OUT PRODUCT

ILLUSTRATION SHOWING SHOPKEEPER NOTIFIES CUSTOMER ABOUT THE PRODUCT STOCK

Customer looking for product

Finds the product sold out

Subscribes to the product

System notifies the Store Admin

Store Admin gets the product back in stock

& Updates the product quantity

Clicks on "Notify Customer" button

System Notifes the customer

Customer Purchases the product

Customer looking for

product

Finds the

product Sold

Out

Subscribes to

the product

System notifies

Store Admin

BENEFITS

1. Customer satisfaction increases

2. Store Admin always aware of customer demand

3. Improves store inventory system

4. Improves Sales Conversion

5. Improves Sale Profit

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ILLUSTRATION SHOWING HOW THE SYSTEM HANDLES MULTIPLE RECORDS

Customer 1

Customer 2

Customer 3

Customer 4

Product 1

Product 2

Product 3

Store Admin

Executes Notify

Customer

Operation

Customer 1

Customer 2

Customer 4

Out-of-Stock Products Customers

Product 1 and 3 backs in stock

System Notifies Admin

Notifications sent to Customers

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Requirements 1. OpenCart 2.x or OpenCart 1.5.x.x (Check the compatibility in the website description)

2. VQMOD for OpenCart (Latest Version)

Installation 1. Extract the contents from downloaded zip file. It contains 2 folders inside it

If you have installed OpenCart 1.5.x.x, use the folder opencart1.5.x

If you have installed OpenCart 2.x.x.x, use the folder opencart2.x

2. You will find an upload folder inside the folder opencart1.5.x or opencart2.x.

3. Drag and drop everything inside upload folder to your web root directory where your

OpenCart is installed such that folder admin, catalog, vqmod merges with the existing

folders in the web directory. This module doesn’t overwrite any OpenCart core files. All files

are new.

4. After uploading the files, login to your OpenCart admin page

5. Go to Menu: System > Users > User Groups. Edit Administrator

6. Select and assign full permission to extension/hb_oosn. Click on Save once done

7. Go to Menu: Extension > Customer Stock Alert (click on Customer Stock Alert menu link)

8. The extension is programmed to install automatically once you click on this link

9. Update the extension setting values according to your requirement and click on SAVE

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Uninstall 1. Go to Extension > Customer Stock Alert

2. Go to Settings tab

3. Click on Show/Hide uninstall link

4. Click Uninstall

5. The page will redirect to Admin home page (Please do not click on the Extension > Customer

Stock Alert once again to check if the extension is install or not. If will install the extension

once again)

6. Access your web directory (via filezilla / cpanel). Remove/Disable the vqmod xml files related

to this extension from folder vqmod/xml/

7. Once the vqmod file is removed or disabled, the extension will have no effect on your store

or admin.

Upgrade from 7.0 to 7.5 This feature is added only in extension version 7.5. Use this feature to upgrade the extension from

7.0 to 7.5. In version 7.5, the module layout feature is removed. Others please contact the support

for upgradation.

Upgradation Steps 1. Uninstall module Out of Stock Customer for layout from Extensions > Modules

2. Upload and overwrite the previous files from the latest download. Similar to installation

procedure

3. Final step is little tricky. Go to the extension and edit the URL by adding /upgrade after /

index.php?route=extension/hb_oosn such that it looks like

index.php?route=extension/hb_oosn/upgrade&token=<your present token value>, and

then hit Enter Key

4. Upgradation done. It actually adds a column to existing table of this extension.

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Admin Components

Data: Alert Reports This shows all the records that the customer subscribed for the products. Whenever a customer

subscribe for an alert, the data appears here and by default Notified Date column will be empty. The

notified date column values are only filled after successful notification to customer.

Product ID – Actual product ID of the subscribed product

Product Name – Name of the product subscribed

Option Out of Stock – Shows the product options are that out of stock for a particular

product

Selected Options – Shows the customer selected options for the particular product

Customer Email – Email address provided by the customer

Customer Name – Name of the customer mentioned by the customer

Phone – Shows the phone number of the customer mentioned by the customer

Customer Language – Shows the customer language

Customer Alert set on – Shows the timestamp of the subscription alert

Notified Date – Shows the date and time when the customer has been notified

Filters Show All Reports – Shows all data in the database

Show Awaiting Reports – Shows data that are not notified yet

Show Archive Reports – Shows data that are notified to customer

Reset Reset All – Deletes all records

Reset Awaiting - Deletes records that has empty notified date (Records that are not notified)

Reset Archive - Deletes records that has filled notified date (Records that are notified)

Products in Demand This shows a view of products in demand based on the customer product alert subscription. The

views are filtered based on records that are not notified to customers. This gives an idea to the

admin on how many quantity of a particular product is in demand.

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Email & SMS Design Design your email and SMS content using the available shortcodes. After updating the values, click

on SAVE button at the top right corner.

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Settings Update the setting value according to your requirement.

Form Setting Enable/Disable the fields to be shown in the popup notify form in the store frontend. Email field is

required field whereas Name and phone is optional.

You can validate the number of digits that can be entered by the user for the phone number.

Select the effect of popup appearance from the 6 different animation effect.

Also you can style the CSS and appearance of the form using the Define your CSS style field.

Condition setting You can set what defines a product as out of stock and the notify button to get enabled. By default

product quantity less than 1 is considered as product out-of-stock. Note that if you set it 0, the notify

function works for product quantity less than 0 (i.e., Negative values).

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You can enable the notify function based on Out-of-stock Status setting and quantity in product. If

this is disabled the condition is only based on quantity. If enabled for a particular stock status

setting, say for an example, Out-of-stock, then notify function will only get enabled for product that

has quantity less than 1 and out-of-stock status setting is set to Out-of-Stock

Product Analytics This adds the tracking code to the product link sent in email to customer. So when customer clicks

on the link, it gets tracked in to your Google Analytics and enables you to understand how effectively

the notification email helps you in the sale conversion or website traffic. You can track user’s

location, device, time spent, etc in your google analytics. Google Analytics account is mandatory and

the google analytics tacking code must be enabled in your website.

Cron Job Setting You can enable automatic notification to customer using your server cron job. A cron job is executed

by your server at a given frequency defined by you and loads a particular URL or executes a

particular script file. The cron job command is given in the setting page.

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Cron job setting differs from server to server. Kindly contact the server support and learn about cron

job setting in your server.

Sample Cron Job Setting in Hosting Server Cpanel

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Sending out email notification/SMS notification To send notification to the customer, click on the Green “Notify Customers” button. This will check

all the records in the list and checks product quantity for each record. If product quantity is greater

than 0, then customer subscribed for that particular product will get email notification and SMS

notification (if SMS Setup is Active).

This can also be done automatically by CRON JOB setup mentioned above.

Common Issues This extension works on VQMOD and therefore VQMOD needs to be enabled in your website. If you

are using a different theme/template other than OpenCart default template you may find issue with

the installation and Notify button will not appear in the store frontend. Please raise a support ticket

in http://www.huntbee.com and we will make required changes in the extension vqmod xml files to

adapt your current template.

http://www.huntbee.com/

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Suggestion to your website Keep the add to cart button in product pages alone and remove the Add to Cart button from all

other pages like home page and category page. By doing so you are encouraging the customer to

visit the product page for full details and therefore your click through rate (Page CTR) increases

which in turn an added advantage to your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Also you can observe

this factor in most of giant ecommerce websites like Amazon.com, overstock.com, flipkart.com, etc.

SMS Setup Our Support team can help you integrate SMS Gateway in this extension, however custom service

charges applicable. Kindly contact [email protected] for the more information or quotation.

If you already have an HTTP API for SMS Gateway, we may help you integrate in this extension

covered under free support. Kindly contact [email protected] for the more information or

query.

Advance Customization Support We also provide advance customization support which involves custom work.

This below mentioned support is free for default OpenCart template and custom charges applicable

for other custom templates.

Dynamic Change of Add to Cart button to Notify Me button for product options

Disable Popup form in Product page and embed the form in the page

Charges applicable for the below mentioned custom work

Show both button (Add to cart and Notify Me) for out of stock product

Custom extension modification according to your requirement

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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Template Support We provide support for integrating this extension with any of the templates however

Support is not provided for the Pavilion template because of its complexity.

This extension will not work and we will not support if you use any third party extension to

control product quantity.

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