Add New Listings Menu Option

The Add New Listings menu option provides an easy way to add new product listings to your eShowcase site.  To activate this option, simply click on Add New Listings.

When you do, you will see the following screen.

To add a new listing, you simply enter data into all the fields.

These fields are:

Listing ID      The listing ID can be any combination of  numbers and letters up to 12 characters in length. It is a required field, and having it makes it much easier for you and your customers to identify products in your site.  Because you can choose to display products by listing ID on the product listings or order form page, you can sort products by category - if category is part of the product ID.  Keep in mind that the product ID sort is strict alphanumeric.

Price      Use the price field to enter price, with or without  the currency symbol of your choice.  You can leave the field blank or enter text(i.e. 'best offer').  This is not a required field, but it's always a good idea to include something here.  If there is no price, the item will not show up on the order form.  (But it will show up if you enter the word 'free'.)

Units -     The units field allows you to enter a 'units of measure' for each product you sell. This could be something like 'pounds', 'kilos', 'tons', 'dozen', 'case', or 'each'.  If you leave the field blank, no units of measure will show.

Taxable? -     The Taxable? field allows you to set some items as being taxable and others as tax exempt.  This only applies in orders where either state or VAT is being computed.

Headline      The headline is what your customers will first see about this listing, so it's important to make it interesting.  We suggest a  good 'teaser' description of the listing, up to 55 characters in length.  (This headline will be indexed by search engines, so the more specific the better.)

Description      The description describes the product to your customers, and can be as long or as short as you like.  Enter just as you would type any product description.  Include carriage returns (Enter key) to skip a line.  (You can include html tags in your description, including links to other html pages, audio or video files!)

Photo #1       This is the location on your computer of the photo or image  you wish to include with this listing.  To get the photo to appear, press the Browse button, and a box will appear showing all the photos on your computer.  (To get this to work, you must be using a Netscape compatible Internet browser. If you do not see the Browse button, your Internet browser is not Netscape 2.0 compatible!)

When the File Upload window appears (see example below), choose the folder on your computer that contains the photos you wish to upload, and change  file types to 'All Files', and you will see a list of all files in that directory.

Select the .jpg or .gif image file you wish to upload, and click the 'Open' button.  This will select the file for automatic uploading.  In the following example we are uploading a photo from a diskette (photo created with Sony Mavica digital camera).

Photo #2      This is the location on your computer of the second photo you wish to include with this listing (optional).  To get the photo to appear, press the Browse button, and a box will appear showing all the photos on your computer.  (To get this to work, you must be using a Netscape compatible Internet browser.)
Note that the two photos you select can not have the same name.  If they do have the same name, only the first one will be uploaded!

Contact Email    The email address that you want inquiries about this listing sent to.  In most cases, you will probably let the email default to the address you originally established when setting your eShowcase parameters.

Adding the Listing

After you have entered the listing information, click the 'Add Listing' button, and the listing will be instantly added to the Internet and the photo(s) will be uploaded from your computer to your eShowcase site.  (Upload times will vary depending on photo size.  Files less than 10k in size will normally load in 10 seconds or less.)

When the listing is updated, you'll see a screen confirming the upload as shown below.

At the bottom of the page, you will have the option to add another new listing or return to the main menu.  You may continue to add as many listings as you like.

Notes on Photos

• We have found that using a digital camera to acquire photo images is the easiest way to get good photos into eShowcase.  The Sony Mavica FD71 digital camera records photos onto diskette, and is ideal for eShowcase sites.  If you use a digital camera, be sure it can record in .jpg mode, and use the email or 'economy' settings when shooting photos.
• It is important that you keep your photo file sizes as small as possible.  Photos larger than 12k will slow the loading of your listings, and will discourage viewing by potential customers.
• In most cases, photos should be no larger than 320X240 and should be saved in .jpg format. Photos larger than this will fill the entire screen and sometimes hide the listing information.
• Using an image compression program such as Ulead's Smart Saver, will allow you to compress almost any photo image to well under 10k and still get excellent results. You can download SmartSaver at http://www.ulead.com
• Even though eShowcase limits you to two photo files per listing, it is possible to display a large number of images within those files.  By using a image editing program such as Paint Shop Pro, it is fairly easy to combine multiple photos into one file.  (see example below.)

The above photo was created in Paint Shop Pro by pasting 13 images onto a black background.  The jpg image was then compressed using Ulead Smart Saver to 8k.  The same technique can be used to show multiple photos of a single item.