This is the Editor window for more control over products than the Inline Editor gives you. Add images, HTML descriptions, fine-tune pricing and discounts, age ranges, shipping over-rides and assign related products. This is the window you  get when you import an item, or click it in the Inline Editor.

The help page is organized around giving people the Least They Need to Know, supported by Advanced explanations of each element and area. That way there’s one page as a reference, no one is sorted into newb/expert user, and people get the idea it’s an approachable process.

I have a cleaned-up layout ready to go, but implementation is queued behind locking down the new shared images, and moving all our clients to Cloudsites. Awesome technology courtesy of Kristopher Ives and Lucas Green.

This is what we work on instead of developing a new corporate business site. It’s more valuable to people who use our services, but you have to dig a little deeper to see it.

Member clients can click to import the pre-processed data into their sites. An overlay Editor window allows them to make changes before the item is saved, or cancel without importing.

Newest items are at the top, which shows our clients that we’ve been busy on their behalf.

They can filter and sort by the columns to see the products they want to import. There are still some refinements to be made, but it works pretty well for them. It’s more important to explain the non-intuitive elements like pagination, than to explain the parts that work like they look. The goal is always to refine the design until any help page is redundant.

Columns to sort and filter by:

•     Date (sort by Date, filter by Year) – The Importer is sorted by date by default, so you see the newest added products at the top.
•     SKU (mfg prefix, + item number) – Filter by partial SKUs to get a range (“dj” in SKU and “Hotaling” in Brand shows all Djeco products).
•     Product Name – Filter by partial name to see similar items. “Smen” in Product Name shows Smencils and Smens Pens, for example.
•     Brand – Sort or Filter by manufacturer name.
•     Category – Categories can be “mapped” to local site category names with the Import Mapping tool.
•     UPC / ISBN / EAN (all in the same filter box) – UPC is the most common, ISBN is books, EAN is euro-UPC.

Kristopher Ives made this version of the Import Tool, based on his Inline Product Editor, Don Hays is the reason there’s any data to import, and I made the help pages.

A Child’s Delight in Marin and San Francisco; Anklebiters, Inc. in Marietta, GA; The Toy Center; Toy Station at School Crossing; Frog Pond Toys in Lake Oswego, OR; G. Whillikers; Imagination Toys and Shoes; Kaleidoscope Toys in Round Rock, TX; Over The Rainbow Toys in Anchorage, AK; The Learning Tree in Kansas; and Toy Town of Cadillac.

Web site designs for independent toy manufacturers and service providers. Uncle Skunkle Toys (unique games), the Good Toy Group catalog, Wedgits (building toys), and Wild Creations (the frog in a box people).

Over the top. I work with a very talented programmer who, all too often, says “you can really get away with things for toy store websites you can’t really do for anyone else…” Partly he means “Dang, dude, you can do crazy bad things!” and partly he means “Comic Sans? Really?”

Boing! JP’s Toy Shop;  BeBeep a Toy Shop; Franklin’s Toys; Kid’s Center; Kidoodle’s