Within a product details page, there are some key settings that will determine how your products will display for customers in your online shop if you choose to sell wines using the open cart sales model. You can adjust the settings for Product Visibility, Website Visibility, and Product Availability to address different scenarios for selling your products. Let’s start by reviewing the different settings.
Product Visibility
The "Product Visibility" determines if a customer can navigate to a product in the online shop. If you set it to "Visible" then this product is navigable from within your shop page. Customers will be able to search for it via the filtering on your Shop page and see it listed alongside other wines. When "Product Visibility" is set to "Hidden" that means the product is not navigable from within the Shop page. This means it won't show up in searches/filtering on the Shop page or in the complete Shop list.
Product Availability
The “Product Availability" determines whether a product is “For Sale” or “Not for Sale” to customers on your website by selecting one of those options.
Website Visibility
The "Website Visibility" controls how your wine is viewed on your website as a whole. When it is set to a status of “On” customers can see it on your website by following a link to the product. When it is set to "Off" it completely removes product details from being seen via the website and displays a “no longer available” message (pictured below).
When the Product Visibility is set to hidden “Hidden” it is important to know that the product is not navigable from inside the Shop, but that doesn't mean it can't be accessed.
Customers can still use links to view the web page because each SKU/product has its own unique URL in the Shop on the website. That unique URL allows you to send an email campaign to customers, using that link behind a button, so customers land directly on the product details page, where they can view the wine and load quantities in their cart. To view examples of the URL link, go to the address bar of a product details page on your web store and it will look something like this:
This same URL is also pulled by Wine-Searcher.com and Google, so when someone searches for a bottle of wine, they can click the link and go directly to the web page to buy it.
Visible to Product Feed
The "Visible to Product Feed" setting controls whether your wine is available to the Wine-Searcher.com product feed. If this setting is set to 'Yes,' Wine-Searcher will pick up product information from your website and if a customer searches for your wine on Wine-Searcher, it will display those details. This setting is determined on a product level, so you can choose which ones you want to be visible to the feed. We recommend that you visit Wine-Searcher to decide whether to choose 'Yes' or 'No' for a particular product.
At this point, you are probably wondering what settings are right for you. Let’s review some different use cases to help you determine what the best option is for your scenario.
Scenario #1: You want to sell this product on the Shop page of your website and you will be sending out emails promoting the product with links that will drive customers to the product page to purchase. Choose the following settings:
*Note that if you don’t make a selection of “On” or “Off” for Website Visibility and leave it as “Choose Status,” it does not have a direct effect on the Visibility, but has the same results as switching it to “On.” We suggest that you always make a selection for this setting.
Scenario #2: You want to sell this product, but you don’t want it to appear on your Shop page. Perhaps this is a promotion for a special product that you only want to offer to a certain segment of customers. You will instead be sending out emails with a URL link to the product so when the customers click the link they will be redirected to the product page where they can purchase the product.
Scenario #3: You want to sell this product, but you do not want it to appear on your Shop page, you won’t be sending out any emails to promote the product and you don’t want customers to purchase the product if they search for it on the web. You will shut this product off for the public, but only want to process an admin order through Figure on the back end.