Panther Template

Welcome to the Panther template guide for ekmPowershop.com

Here are a few basic guidelines to help you use this template with your online shop.

The Panther template features a fixed width meaning the website sits within the confines of the screen. This is a popular option for those who prefer a neat and tidy shop front and want to keep their design simple yet accessible.

There are also top level categories which run vertically down the left hand side, allowing for easy navigation around the site and space for lots of categories unlike horizontal ones, helping customers find what they need quickly and efficiently. The following sub-headings refer to the different design elements within the template:

PAGE LAYOUTS

Here you can customise the three pages that make up your online shop – main page, category page and product page. For each of the pages you can choose a layout from those provided. You are however are advised to use the Panther templates defaults. Once you have chosen your 3 page layouts, take a look at the shop branding section of the template.

SHOP BRANDING

It is important that your shop logo reflects the image of your company or business. When building your online shop, you can edit the ‘Panther logo’, 'promo' and ‘footer text’ areas to upload images and information as you choose.

The social networking icons contained within the header can be edited to meet your requirements. Boost the profile of your online business – customise these links to include include your own social networking address, for example www.facebook.com/yourlinkhere. Once you have done these things you can begin customising the template with your own colour scheme.

COLOURS

This section allows you to customise your template with colours of your choosing.

Cart/Checkout Colour – The colour you select here is used during the checkout process. We advise you keep it the same as your website’s background colour (most people leave this white), as an important message regarding secure transactions will be displayed.

Colour_3 - Category and product titles colour. Make sure these stand out against the background colour.

Colour_4 - Image backgrounds for white bg / black bg toggle. If you are using product images with a black background you can set this colour to black to blend in with the black background of the site, however its set to white by default as many product images are photographed on a white background.

Colour_5 - Product image border - There is a very subtle border around each product image holder.

Colour_6 - Products price colour - simply the colour of your products price.

Colour_7 - Most foreground links / headers.

Colour_8 - All button colours. This is quite a big change as there are many buttons on the site (view product / search / add to cart / log in / sign up etc).

Colour_9 - Button hovers.

Colour_10 - Top navigation links and category menu link colour.

Colour_11 - Category and best sellers hover colour.

Colour_12 - Footer text colour.

Colour_13 - Button text colour, very useful and added in later as we found when testing if you adjust the Button colour to light you cannot read the white default text.

Text Colour – All text you include on your site will default to the same colour.

LEFT COLUMN

Down the left-hand side of the template you will find a best sellers list, there are some clear instructions on the page itself on how to get this working for you. You literally need to either use an existing category or simply create a new one specifically for it. Please note this doesn't have to be best sellers you can edit the title of this box so perhaps change it to NEW STOCK or your preferred title.

To fill the best sellers category with products simply find the ID number of your category, you can do this a number of ways, the easiest is to literally browse to the category you want to use and in the address bar of your browser you'll find towards the end of the address (before the .asp) you'll spot a numerical value, this is your categories ID.

Where the best sellers box is located you'll see an edit button, hit edit and fill in your categories ID in the element name field and simply click update. You'll now find product names and prices appear in this area being pulled out frrom your selected category.

There's also a promotional box where you can advertise delivery prices or maybe the latest deals to your customers. You can use images and text in these promo areas and you can add links to both, images should ideally be no more than 220px wide.

You can either upload your own images or banners to this area or contact the ekmWebDesign team to have some created personally for you. Tell your customers how they can pay for their products by displaying the logos of accepted payment methods. You can replace the current text ‘Secure Online Shopping’ if you wish to – but bear in mind this acts as a reassurance where handling personal details is concerned.

The customer login box will appear at the start of the column once activity. To do this, go to your shop settings and enable the customer login function.

MAIN PAGE

Use the main page to display your best promotional images in the space provided. Ideally some descriptive text and add links to specific categories or products. If you would like more slides added then simply contact the ekmPowershop support or design team.

We recommend a picture size of around 712px width and 305px height for a clear and well-defined image.

Also, by enabling the special offer button next when editing your products you can have a section dedicated to offers just below the home page categories.

Throughout your online shop, you have the facility to display category and product images to visually enhance text and description. Category images are best at around 160px x 160px and product images should ideally be 600px x 600px.

FOOTER

The footer area is a useful area for items such as "newsletter signup", "customer login", accepted payment methods and other personal details. The footer text is a good way of adding informative text to your websites homepage, text such as what area's you cover and maybe even links to webpages / categories or products.

PRODUCT/CATEGORY PAGES

Category pages offer a useful filter option, where your customer can now sort your listed products by either price or name.

The category and product pages are very simple to use on the Panther template. You can add an image and description for each category – and likewise with the different products you upload.

PRODUCT PAGE

The product page is a very simple layout containing all the regular ekmpowershop tags such as RRP and related products, there is also a "facebook like" link on the product page, this means a customer viewing the site can "like" and item, this will then show a link on your customers facebook page saying that they liked a product from your shop.

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