Build A Niche Store Website Builder Feature List
There's a lot on this page and much of it will in all probability make more sense once you have the Installation and User Manuals in front of you and have started to develop your first site and play with the features of the software.
Nevertheless, lets dive in...
All of your store / site development takes place inside the BANS admin panel which you access once you have installed BANS (as per the instructions contained inside the Installation manual):
Once inside there are 6 sections to the admin panel which enable you to first build and then develop your new site in many different ways.
The key principle that BANS has been built to serve is flexibility. Any one store that you build will only ever use a fraction of these features but their existence enables BANS users to build many different types of stores...one store will use certain features and another different features and so forth.
All of these features are covered in depth inside the BANS user manual.
The 6 core sections of the admin panel are:
1. Security
To make sure that your admin panel is not accessible to anyone but you, once inside you can set your own username and password which is recoverable (should you forget it) by email.
2. Setup
The Setup area of the admin panel is where you build your basic store. Here you can choose which niche you want to build your store to target (ie the kind of products you want to appear in your store, for example: antique tractors or Chinese vases), input your affiliate ids and decide on how you want to display your stores products.
Key Features Include:
(i) Store Building Options
- Build a store around one or more eBay category numbers.
- Build a store using keyword search queries.
- Build a store based around an eBay seller id.
- Build a store based around a geographical area.
(ii) Site Wide Meta Tags
- Set default title, keyword and description tags across all of your store pages.
(iii) Product Layout Options
- Choose from 5 different product layout styles (LINK?)
- Customize your store product listings by turning off or on the following part of each product listing description:
- 1. Image: the actual product listing image.
- 2. Title: the first written line of each product listing.
- 3. Bids: how many bids there have been on each product.
- 4. Price: the current price of the product listing.
- 5. Time: how long the product listing will remain listed for.
- 6. Paypal: whether or not to display the Paypal image.
(iv) Affiliate Details
- Input your eBay EPN affiliate id which will automatically add your affiliate id to every product in your store (meaning that all visitor purchasing activity will be tracked and credited to your affiliate account).
- Add your ClickBank affiliate id to make affiliate referrals of Build A Niche Store.
- Choose whether or not to cloak the affiliate links contained inside your store.
(v) Product Display Options
- Change the amount of products displaying on each of your store pages to any number between 1 and 100.
- Enter a site wide search query (ie a particular keyword or combination of keywords) to only list products which contain that keyword inside your store
- Choose whether or not to display product listings on your store home page.
- Choose whether or not to only list (Buy It Now) BIN items in your store.
- Choose whether or not to display the eBay logo above your store product listings.
- Choose whether or not to display the “view more items on eBay” link which will appear underneath each page of product listings. When clicked on this will direct your visitor straight to relevant eBay listed search results tagged with your eBay affiliate id.
- Choose whether or not to open a product listing when it is clicked on in a new browser window.
- Choose whether or not to display the “sort by menu” on each of your store pages which will enable visitors to change the way in which the products on a particular store page are displayed – eg highest price first / lowest price first / ending soonest / newly listed.
- Choose how to order your store products as default - eg highest price first / lowest price first / ending soonest / newly listed.
- Enter a minimum and / or maximum bid amount to limit the products displayed inside your store to those that currently fall inside this bid range.
- Enter a minimum and / or maximum price to limit the products displayed inside your store to those that currently fall inside this price range.
(vi) Navigation Options
With BANS you have three different navigation options for your store and content pages:
- A “Closed” Navigation will give your content and store pages a hierarchical structure (like a family tree) meaning that a visitor will actually have to click on a particular category to see what sub-categories it contains.
- A “Staggered” navigation is in between the open and closed options. When you click on a particular category the sub-categories inside that category will become visible but the other top level categories will also remain visible allowing your visitor to navigate to different parts of your store when inside a particular category.
- An “Open” navigation means that all of your content or store pages are visible from any one page.
3. Template
The Template area of the admin panel is where you can upload and modify your templates and then select the one which you actually want to use for your new site.
Key Features Include:
- Modify the styles.css, header.php and footer.php files of your “selected” template.
- Modify the styles.css, header.php and footer.php files of any of your “available” templates (modifications made to “available” templates will not be visible to site visitors until the particular template is “selected”).
- Upload a log to either your “selected” template or one of your “available” templates.
- View the modifications you have made to either your “selected” template or “available” templates.
Note: In the BANS member area there is a comprehensive template guide for modifying the BANS templates and in the BANS package there is a third manual which shows you how to convert any template into a “BANS friendly” template.
4. Ads
The Ads area of the admin panel enables you to add site wide ads (ie ads that appear on every page of your store) to your new site.
Key Features Include:
- BANS has 4 default ad spots – in the left navigation, above your store products, below your store products and in the right navigation. You can add ads (for example: contextual ads or affiliate banner ads) into one or more of these spots.
Note: In the Content and Store page areas described below there is an “ad overwrite facility” which enables you to add particular advertisements to just one page.
5. Content Pages
The Content Pages area of the admin panel enables you to develop your site with fresh unique content. Content pages are a great way to add “value” to your site and both improve your visitor experience and target new keywords in the search engines. Because your site revolves around eBay listed products, product reviews, recommendations and general information articles all act as great forms of content.
CONTENT PAGES AREA PRINT
Key Features Include:
(i) General Features Overview
- Edit your home page: takes you to the edit home page section.
- Edit your site map: takes you to the edit site map section.
- Create a new content page: takes you to the content page creation section.
- Edit a content page after you have created it.
- Delete a content page.
- Turn a content page on or off: by turning a content page “off” you will remove it from public view but it will remain saved inside your admin panel. Turn it “on” and it will re-appear for your site visitors.
- Change your content page order: re-order your content pages by moving individual pages up or down.
- View a particular content page: opens up the published content page in a new browser window.
(ii) Home Page Editing Features
When you first setup your store BANS will automatically create a home page which will either be blank or contain eBay products depending on your choice in the Setup area. The home page editing section looks like this:
And will enable you to do the following things:
- Change the meta tags (title, keywords and description) of your home page.
- Add content to your home page using the built in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editor. This content can be placed above, below, or both above and below the products displayed on your home page.
- Change the link name of your home page from “Home” to a more keyword oriented link. For example, if you have built a golf store you may change it from “Home” to “Golf Equipment”.
- Modify the type of products and way in which these products are displayed on your home page:
- Change the amount of products displaying to any number between 1 and 100.
- Enter an eBay category number to only display products from inside that eBay category.
- Enter a search query (ie a particular keyword or combination of keywords) to only list products which contain that keyword (combination).
- Enter an eBay seller id to only display products listed on eBay by that particular seller.
- Choose whether or not to only list (Buy It Now) BIN items.
- Choose whether or not to display the next page of results (ie page 2, 3, 4 etc) at the bottom of your product listings.
- Choose whether or not to display the “sort by menu” which will enable visitors to change the way in which the products on your home page are displayed – eg highest price first / lowest price first / ending soonest / newly listed.
- Choose how to order your home page products as default – eg highest price first / lowest price first / ending soonest / newly listed.
- Enter a minimum and / or maximum bid amount to limit the products displayed to those that currently fall inside this bid range.
- Enter a minimum and / or maximum price to limit the products displayed to those that currently fall inside this price range.
- Enter a mile radius and zip / postal code to limit the products displayed to those that fall inside that geographical area.
- Change the ads displayed on your home page with the overwrite ads facility (ie this feature will enable you to overwrite the sitewide ads facility found in the Ads area for just this page).
(iii) Site Map Editing Features
As with your home page, when first setting up your store BANS also automatically creates a site map. This site map will contain all of your store and content pages and will automatically update as you add / remove pages from your store. The site map editing section looks like this:
And will enable you to do the following things:
- Change the meta tags (title, keywords and description) of your site map page.
- Add content to your home page using the built in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editor.
- Change the location of your site map in the content page navigation structure.
- Change the link name of your site map.
- Change the page url of your site map.
- Change the ads displayed on your site map with the overwrite ads facility (ie this feature will enable you to overwrite the sitewide ads facility found in the Ads area for just this page).
(iv) Content Page Creation Features
The content page creation section enables you to create as many content pages as you want your site to hold. The content page creation section looks like this:
And will enable you to do the following things:
- Change the meta tags (title, keywords and description) of your site map page.
- Add the content that will make up your page using the built in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editor.
- Position your content page in the appropriate part of the content page navigation structure.
- Give your content page a link name.
- Give your content page a url address.
- Place specific ads on your content page using the overwrite ads facility to “overwrite” your sitewide ads.
Note: You can also return to and modify a content page that you have created using the “edit” feature.
6. Store Pages
The Store Pages area of the admin panel enables you to both edit the store pages that BANS automatically creates for you (based on your choices in the Setup area) and create new store pages. If gives you complete control over how the products that your store contains are displayed to both visitors and search engines.
Key Features Include:
(i) General Features Overview
- Edit a store page: takes you to the edit store page section.
- Edit your site map: takes you to the edit site map section.
- Create a new content page: takes you to the content page creation section.
- Edit a content page after you have created it.
- Delete a store page.
- Turn a store page on or off: by turning a store page “off” you will remove it from public view but it will remain saved inside your admin panel. Turn it “on” and it will re-appear for your site visitors.
- Change your store page order: re-order your store pages by moving individual pages up or down.
- View a particular store page: opens up the published content page in a new browser window.
(ii) Store Page Editing Features
Every store page that BANS automatically creates or that you create yourself can be edited manually with the aim of improvement and refinement. Editing happens through the editing store pages section which looks like this:
When editing a store page you can:
- Change the meta tags (title, keywords and description) of your store page.
- Add content to your store page using the built in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editor. This content can be placed above, below, or both above and below the products displayed.
- Re-position your store page in the appropriate part of the content page navigation structure.
- Edit your store page link name.
- Edit your content page url address.
- Modify the type of products and way in which these products are displayed on the particular store page:
- Change the amount of products displaying to any number between 1 and 100.
- Enter an eBay category number to only display products from inside that eBay category.
- Enter a search query (ie a particular keyword or combination of keywords) to only list products which contain that keyword (combination).
- Enter an eBay seller id to only display products listed on eBay by that particular seller.
- Choose whether or not to only list (Buy It Now) BIN items.
- Choose whether or not to display the next page of results (ie page 2, 3, 4 etc) at the bottom of your product listings.
- Choose whether or not to display the “sort by menu” which will enable visitors to change the way in which the products on the particular store page are displayed – eg highest price first / lowest price first / ending soonest / newly listed.
- Choose how to order products as default – eg highest price first / lowest price first / ending soonest / newly listed.
- Enter a minimum and / or maximum bid amount to limit the products displayed to those that currently fall inside this bid range.
- Enter a minimum and / or maximum price to limit the products displayed to those that currently fall inside this price range.
- Enter a mile radius and zip / postal code to limit the products displayed to those that fall inside that geographical area.
- Change the ads displayed on your home page with the overwrite ads facility (ie this feature will enable you to overwrite the sitewide ads facility found in the Ads area for just this page).
(iii) Store Page Creation Features
Creating a new store page uses the same page (ie the same functions) as the editing store page section, the difference being that it will be a blank canvas rather than containing pre-existing inputs. So rather than changing (refining) existing text / choices you will be creating it from scratch.
