Chapter 9: Go Live with Your E-Commerce Website

In the previous chapter, we discussed how to create blogs for your website, add a web page to it, and how to manage them. Moreover, we learned about the SEO optimization aspects of the Odoo website builder. Now we will move on to understand how you can define and run e-commerce operations in the Odoo website builder. Furthermore, we will be focusing on the creation, design, manageability, and use of various capable tools in Odoo for e-commerce operations.

In this chapter, we will be focusing on the e-commerce website aspects of building using the Odoo website builder. To do so, we will cover the following topics:

• Adding a product to an e-commerce website
• Functional options for an e-commerce web page
• Designing an e-commerce page
• Adding blocks to an e-commerce page
• Adding a carousel to e-commerce page
• Creating a separate page for product categories
• Configuring different payment acquirers for customer payments...

Technical requirements

A prerequisite basic knowledge of e-commerce website operations along with their functioning in a live environment will be an added advantage to learn the various aspects of building such a site using the Odoo website builder. Furthermore, an insight into the Odoo website builder along with an understanding of the various options and features involved would be beneficial. In addition, a system with a moderate processing speed and the Odoo platform installed is vital.

Adding a product to an e-commerce website

E-commerce websites and platforms have become the modern way of doing business rather than setting up a retail shop with limited accessibility. This is considered one of the major advantages of e-commerce platforms over conventional ways of doing business. You have no limitations in expanding the reachability of products to new areas, which can be done with ease and the same amount of investment. Another aspect to consider is the low amount of investment and facility requirements when compared to a retail as well as a wholesale business.

In addition, with e-commerce platforms, you can add n number of products to be sold with the same amount of investment, using which the entire operations are performed. You can add and remove products based on credibility, business statistics, and various other business reasons. With the Odoo website builder, you can add a product or remove one with ease. The operations regarding adding as well as removing...

Functional options on an e-commerce web page

Odoo provides e-commerce web page visitors with a variety of functional options that can be configured. Moreover, there are other options as well, which can be enabled and disabled from the frontend by you, which will provide visitors with a variety of functional tools while searching for products. Under the Customize menu, just as depicted in the following screenshot, you have these functional options visible:

Figure 9.14 – Functional editing options on an e-commerce web page

Here, you can enable the Show # found option, which falls under the Website Searchbox options for the products that are being searched based on the respective hashtag being made visible. Moreover, there are various Products Item options available, such as Comparison List, Product Description, and Wishlist Button, which can be enabled by the visitor, as well as yourself, from the menu.

Additionally, there are various Products options...

Designing your e-commerce page

The design aspects of e-commerce web pages play a crucial role in the appearance of products as well as the menu items present on your web page, along with the various options available. If you have visited various e-commerce websites, you might have observed their eye-catching design, the alignment of their content, and attractive product descriptions depicted in a format that is easily readable and accessible with all the required information.

With the Odoo website builder, the design elements of e-commerce websites can be taken care of in all aspects of e-commerce web pages. As seen in all other web page operations of the Odoo builder, you have the option of generalized block tools available here as well. Besides the block tools, there are various other styles and configurational options available as well, which will provide you with ample options to design and configure an e-commerce web page.

Style options

Under the STYLE configuration menu...

Blocks on your e-commerce page

The block operations of the Odoo website builder showcase one of the unique features of designing a web page with ease. Block tools can be easily dragged and dropped onto web pages. The block operation for the e-commerce web page and platform operating with the Odoo platform has similar block tools to define the contents and design style elements in the aspect of appearance.

As seen earlier, the block tools can be easily selected, dragged, and dropped to the desired web page area of the e-commerce, which will help you to describe the contents. Moreover, you will have various block configuration and style editing tools that will provide you with further operational capabilities and functional options to design the web page. Let's move on to discuss the various types of blocks available in the Odoo website builder for e-commerce page editing.

The Structure block

The first type of block tool available in Odoo is the Structure block. This helps...

Adding a carousel to your e-commerce page

A carousel on an e-commerce page can bring wonders to the web page as you will be able to describe specific features of products or services you offer and give them catchy titles in each carousel slide. A carousel for an e-commerce web page can be added in the Odoo website builder from the block operations in the editing menu. The Carousel block comes under the category of Structure blocks of the Odoo website builder. You can simply drag and drop it to an e-commerce web page at the top or the bottom of the page, after the header and before the footer of the web page respectively. 

There will be default content provided to the Carousel block that you have selected, and you can edit the contents as per your requirement. Furthermore, there are various style configuration options available for the Carousel block, just as depicted in the following screenshot:

Figure 9.23 – Style configuration options for the...

Creating a separate page for product categories

Assigning a product to a category will be a beneficial operation for categorizing the product for the in-house operations of the company. For the visitor, it will be the best tool for filtering out products. Moreover, the product category description can be done from the backend of the platform when products are described in the inventory module. On the e-commerce website, you will be able to add a separate page for a product category or one for all the product categories as it will help visitors to search for a product based on the category classification.

For the product categories to be added to the website of the company, you should initially create a product category in the Inventory module of the platform. To do so, select the Product category menu available in the Configuration tab of the module and you will be shown the menu where all the available Product Categories are described, just as depicted in the following screenshot...

Configuring different payment acquirers for customer payments

Payment acquirers are the tools available in operations that were introduced into the business world upon the establishment of digital and card payments. Today there are various payment acquirers available in the world – both local and international ones. The Odoo platform understands the need for and vitalness of payment acquirers in the operations of e-commerce platforms and provides you with the provisions to define the ones available.

By default, the Odoo platform will have auto-installed payment acquirers that are mostly supported internationally. However, if you need to integrate the platform with one of the payment acquirers that operates locally, you should initially define it and configure it to be operated based on the standards put forward by the service-providing company.

The payment acquirers defined on the Odoo platform can be accessed from the Accounting module to configure it to be operational...

Summary

The e-commerce website of your company is defined on the company website as a separate web page in operation that can be efficiently managed with the Odoo website builder tools and available functions. Now, you have an understanding of how an e-commerce web page can be configured, designed, and developed using the various operational functions of the Odoo website builder. Furthermore, you will have an understanding of and will be capable of configuring the various options available in the Odoo website builder to support the e-commerce operations of your company.

In the next chapter, we will be focusing on aspects of creating a discussion forum for website visitors.

Questions

1. How can we add a product to an e-commerce website run in Odoo?
2. Can we use any number of product category web pages for a website?
3. Can we configure a new product category from the website?

Further reading

• Working with Odoo by Greg Moss, Packt Publishing
• Learn Odoo by Greg Moss, Packt Publishing