The Store Tool is used to select the features and design settings you would like to display across all the automated product pages of your author website. It is accessed via the Page Builder, by clicking on the Store option in the left-side menu within the Builder:
Product pages for your books are automatically created internally inside your Bookshelf account whenever you create and add a new book to your account from the "Books" page of your main account menu. You do not need to be selling books direct in order to create a product page—product pages are automatically created whenever a new book is added and published, even if no direct sales information, specific formats, or third-party retailer information is added to it.
Because each of these pages are automated, they all adhere to the same layout, design and content settings in order to give your direct sales store a unified look as well as to make sure each page follows effective sales methods. By default, the Store Tool will follow the design options you've set in your Style settings, and will allow you to see an example of how your store will present to shoppers looking at your books according to these settings. Please note that you are seeing a generic representation of product page settings for a book that has multiple formats available for direct sale, as well as multiple retailer options listed. These are not directly correlated with any specific book inside your Bookshelf account. This page will also default to every item display on the paged toggled ON the first time you view it.
Adjusting What Appears on Product Pages
Because your store is automatically laid out and designed for you based on the main pages of your website, the most important features to adjust within the Store Tool are the items that you'd like to appear on each product page. To do this, navigate to the Store Tool, then click on "Automated Product Pages." The settings here (Book Info, Publication Details, Discoverability, and Related Books) correlate with many similar settings you filled out when adding your book on your Books page. Within the Store Tool is where you can see how these details will actually appear for visitors to your product pages, as well as decide which ones you would actually like to appear publicly.
For example, if you select the "Discoverability" category, you can find a detail called "Breadcrumb Trail." This is a map that details the pathway the visitor took to get to the product page they're on. You may not want to show that on your product pages, and so would just need to toggle it into the off position:
Before launching your direct sales store, go through each category of options under Automated Product Page and toggle your options on and off to see how they appear within the viewer. This way you can determine what you may or may not want included across all your product pages.
Adjusting Product Page Design
As mentioned, by default, your product pages will adhere to the overall Style settings you have set for the main pages of your website. While you cannot independently change overall Style settings specifically for your store's product pages, you can make adjustments to minor settings like typography type, font size, text color, and which buttons appear. These settings are found under the Appearance menu item when you click on the Store Tool:
The Cart Page
Cart pages are also automated pages that are internally created only when someone adds a format of your book to their personal shopping cart. Like automated product pages, the Builder shows a generic representation of placeholder books in a cart, and the page design will also adhere to your overall Style settings, with several options for making adjustments based on the options within your Style settings:
There will not be any features to toggle on or off specifically on your cart page, meaning all items appearing on the example page will appear in the final version of a shopper's cart page. This is because The Bookshelf is your Merchant of Record for every direct sale, meaning we have set up your cart page to adhere to necessary rules and regulations when it comes to running an online store.
Important Note: if you're selling books direct, you need to make sure you enable the cart feature on your website for shoppers to navigate to when they're ready to check out. Not every template or website project comes with the cart feature automatically set to appear in the header of your website. To turn this on, navigate to Style settings, click Header, then click Utilities, and make sure Cart is toggled ON.
Preview Your Product & Cart Pages
To see an actual representation of one of your books and how its product page will appear, navigate back to the Automated Product Page select under Store (to bring up the placeholder page). Then click the preview icon in the upper right corner of the builder:
The preview that appears in a new tab of your browser will pull the very first book listed on your Books page as its preview example. If you would like to see a different book's product page, you can navigate to it through this preview as though you are a visitor to your site. Just remember that you will need to have made sure the product page you would like to visit is linked somewhere within your main website first.
If you have any questions about how Automated Product Pages or Cart Pages work, you can always reach out to our team directly at support@thebookshelf.io.