Once you have your products created in your Store pages, it is time to display them on the website for the world to see.
Since Store pages (Art Print Store and Standard Store) are Stand-Alone pages that operate in the background and serve as Warehouses of your site, your Art Storefronts website provides you with an easy and efficient way to present your art on your website through Product Gallery pages.
This article will walk you through the correct use of a Product Gallery pages, and how to set up your homepage as a Product Gallery of subject matter categories.
Setting up your home page as a gallery of subject matter categories is the single best way to make sure potential customers can quickly find what they are looking for on your site.
Setting up your home page as a gallery of subject matter categories is one of the most important ‘best practices’ that Art Storefronts recommends to its customers. It provides simple site navigation to your visitors.
Table of Contents
Set Up Your Product Galleries
Make sure you are logged in to your Site Manager, and make sure you are on the Pages tab. This is the place where you will see all of the pages of all types on your website. By default, your website should have 4 Product Gallery pages.
You will immediately notice that there are 2 different types of Product Gallery pages. First one is a Product Gallery that is set to display other Product Gallery pages. These Gallery types are best suited for Homepages of your website as it will display other Product Gallery pages in the form of a thumbnail image on your site. Second Gallery type we'll cover today is Product Gallery that displays Specific Products. This Gallery type is best suited for presenting your products on your website. In the screenshot above, Shop Art is presenting other Product Galleries, and Best Sellers, Gallery 1 and Gallery 2 are presenting products.
Let's start by selecting one of the Galleries for Specific Products. We are going to go with Best Sellers.
A) How to sort products in your gallery (This will reflect the order in which they appear on your site)
After selecting a Gallery, you will be led to the back end page of the selected Product Gallery page and land on the View & Sort Products tab. Here, you'll need to hit the refresh button in order for the products added to this Product Gallery from the Store Page to be shown.
Once the products are shown, you'll be able to re-arrange them in a desired order, and also select the "Cover" image for the Gallery. This image will be the Thumbnail image of the Gallery on your Homepage.
The cover can be selected by clicking on the "Make Cover" option that appears when you hover your cursor on the product
Your Art can be arranged in several ways. You can use the "Bulk Sort" option, which will allow you to sort your products alphanumerically, or by date added. You can also use the Drag and Drop feature which will allow you to sort each product individually, in a preferred position.
B) Adding more products to your galleries
You can also add more images from your Store Pages (Art Print Store and Standard Store) to the Product Gallery by selecting ADD/REMOVE PRODUCTS tab. On this tab, you will find all of the products uploaded to your store pages, and you can select them and add them to the Product Gallery right there.
You can use the built in filters to find your product more easily. You can filter by the store, folder and by a keyword (name of the product)
To add or remove products, first we need to select Products to Add / Remove – This allows you to choose the products you’d like to add to this gallery. After selecting your preferred images, you can click on ADD SELECTED.
After adding the selected, you will find a prompt informing you that your images have been successfully added to your gallery.
C) Edit Gallery Name, Layout, and other basic info
Next Tab we need to check is the "Info" tab. This tab contains basic information about the Product Gallery such as Name, Headline text, Layout, number of columns, Lead and Ending content, etc. Let's start by making sure the name and the headline text of your Product Gallery is set up correctly and according to your preferences.
Art Storefronts Recommendation: We recommend naming the first category on your home page Best Sellers, or similar "catch-all" name. In this Gallery you'd add collection of your best work, around 20 pieces, of your actual best sellers or just your favorite pieces.
Next step is determining the Layout of the gallery. We have several different options here, and this is entirely up to your preferences. You can select one layout, save, see if you like it and if not, you can always change to a different layout. In the option below you can select the number of columns on your website. Fewer columns mean larger image previews, but potentially a longer scroll through the products.
Displaying Titles of your Products, Teaser Prices (the "starting from" price) and Artist Name options are up next. Select True or False here.
Lead Content and Ending Content are up next. This is where you can add text, images, links or videos that will appear on your site. Lead Content will display content above your products, while Ending Content will display content below your products.
Downloading a QR code is the last option, and it will allow you do download a QR code linked to your Product Gallery.
Once you are satisfied with the changes, please click on the Save Button to save those changes and have them applied.
Set Up Your Home Page
Now that we have our Product Galleries set up, we need to set up our Homepage Product Gallery. Here we got two choices, depending on personal preference. If you'd like your Homepage to be a Gallery with different Subject Matter Categories (Product Galleries), you need to select a "Gallery that displays other product galleries" as your homepage. If you'd like your homepage to display products directly, without any categorization, you'll need to select "Product Gallery for specific products" as your Homepage.
Homepage can be changed by selecting a page you'd wish to be your Homepage and selecting "Make Home Page" option that every page on your site has.
If you decide to go with a Gallery that displays other product galleries, and your Homepage will be a Gallery of subject matter categories, you need to locate such Product Gallery and make it your Homepage. By default, your site comes with "Shop Art" as a Gallery that displays other product galleries, and it has already been set as your Homepage.
Next up, we'll look into selecting which subject matter categories you'd like to display on your Homepage. For that, we'll need to open our "Shop Art" Homepage Gallery, and select Info tab.
Scroll down the page to the section labeled Display these Product Gallery Pages as Categories and put an X next to each category you would like to appear on your home page.
Once you are satisfied with the changes, please click on the Save Button to save those changes and have them applied.
Finally, you can click on the View Live Site button, and you will see that your home page is set up and appears appropriately.
Troubleshooting
The image I want as my thumbnail isn’t appearing correctly on the home page.
If your thumbnails are not appearing correctly, your Smart URL may not be working correctly. You’ll need to navigate to the back end of your site, click on the category that is having the problem, and click on the tab labeled SEO Option. In that section, look at the Smart URL and make sure its name matches the name of the page itself.
My page won’t save properly.
You may need to use an approved browser. If you’re using anything other than Firefox or Chrome, you should stop, and start using either Chrome or Firefox.
If you’re using an approved browser, you may need to clear your cache. Check out how to clear the cache using the article How To: Clear your Cache.
My Smart URL has a bunch of letters and numbers on end.
This means that the Smart URL you are trying to use is being used elsewhere on your website. The most likely culprit is you have created a folder in your Warehouse and named it the same thing as a category on your home page. You’ll need to either change the name and Smart URL of the category, or you can go to your Warehouse and change the Smart URL of the folder listed there.
What do I do next?
You’re getting so close to getting your site launched! The next step will be enabling a payment processor, so you will be able to accept payment for orders. To learn more, check out our article How To: Enable a Payment Gateway.