In this post I’m going to foucs on three major topics, with some updates on upcomming posts for individual advanced features.

1.  Multiple Store Front Management

virtualro Flash e-commerce software has been designed from the ground to allow creation of a different  number  of sites  unique (or mini-sites) using a centralized, web based administration area. 

Each unique site may have it’s own URL, design, products, prices and  custom settings (shipping, discounts, tax, payment). The only resource shared between sites is  product base, whith option to select which products are active on which sites.

The administration area is designed around this concept and is divided for ease of use in the following sections:  products management, store management  and specific website settings.

For each individual site it’s possible to specify which products will be published, what  discounts/shipping/payment will be used as well it’s own design with customized templates  (email, invoice).

2. True Multi-Lingual Experience

virtualro software allow complete creation and management of a Flash site in multiple languages, where all store data may be customized in a different number of languages. 

There are three layers which may be personalized in different languages, to provide a true multilingual experience: 

• Product data: all product related text informations, including product options, tags, descriptions, etc
• Store specific  settings: templates (email confirmation, invoice), payment methods, shipping methods, tax (eq. VAT - in EU and   TAX in USA)
• Front-end labels: all labels that are fixed in front-end shopping cart, checkout fields, confirmation screen

3. Advanced Product Management

In order to allow customers easily sell different kind of products the software allow customers to  set a number properties that will apply only to appropiate product types. 

Such properties includes: product attributes (size, color, width, height etc), products type (phisical goods, downloadable products or digital products)  and product media (images, audio, video). 

For example if we have  store that market t-shirts, shoes and music (cd’s, mp3) we could have: 

•  On t-shirts:
  •  sizes: S, M,L, XL and colors: Red, Blue, Green
  • media: 1 thumbnail image, 2 detail images, 2 big pictures
•  On shoes: 
  • sizes: 8, 9, 10 colors: Velvet, Fucsia etc
  • media: 1 thumbnail, 1 detail image, 1 big picture
•  On music: 
  • product type: downloadable product (no shipping)
  • media: 1 thumbnail, 1 video preview, single  .mp3 file on purchase

Based on above settings once correct product type are set up the administrator is allowed to enter only product specific data  (on music it’s not possible to specify sizes or colors). 

Using  together the multi-lingual  with multiple store front features we give customers a powerfull e-commerce packages to run international websites, with minimum effort.

Despite the large number of e-commerce packages available on  the market we never run out of customers asking for feature or functionality they couldn’t find in their standard e-commerce software.

Our goal was to design a complete  e-commerce software package that allow  customers or developers/designers  to create custom/special e-commerce site  in a short time, with minimum effort.

virtualro  Flash E-commerce Content Management System is fully managed from a web based administration area.

virtualro Flash shopping cart software  software standard features includes:

• Product management 
  • any  kind of products supported, including digital products
  • dynamic product options (such as size, color,width, height, etc)
  • unlimited number of photos, video, Flash or music files for each product type
  • each product option can have it’s own media settings (images, audio, video)
  • all product data may be imported from a CSV file 

• Store design and customization
  • Design customization made from a simple CSS file 
  • Each product page, category or static pages may overwritten with your own custom designed Flash file from administration area 
  • Flash files may “talk” to the main store template by the following actions: add to cart, search, search by tag, go to product, go to category
  • You can use any ActionScript code to manage your custom flash files within the application (advanced navigations, effects, transitions, audio/video players etc)

• E-commerce functionality 
  • Search Engines Ready, deep linking, forward and backward buttons fully working
  • Customer accounts 
  • Discounts through coupons codes
  • Single screen checkout with instant error correction
  • Custom TAX schema based on location 
  • Custom shipping charges (by weight, by item, by quantity)
  • Live shipping (USPS  implemented, FedEx and UPS to come in the near future)
  • Payment Gateways: PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize.net

virtualro software is designed to be used by average web user.

We separated e-commerce flow (products, order management) from design work/customization to allow designers/developers maintain and update store design as many times they want, without interfering with store operations.

virtualro it’s a complete e-commerce solution built on LAMP technology,  and it has three major parts:

•  the client interface: a  Flash front-end interactive e-commerce site used to present products, shopping cart functionality and checkout (including payment)
• the administration interface: a comprehensive administration area for products, orders, users and store management 
•  the design interface, which is separated by content 

The system has been designed for minimum no changes within the code, all store operations are being performed using  the web administration  interface.

virtualro software work only with it’s own back-end and it can’t be embedded, loaded, included or otherway be part of another existing Flash file.  

You may, however fully  customize the store through Flex CSS  and include your own Flash files  as part of the application.

The store design  may be customized in the following ways: 

•  through custom CSS (Flex) 
• by using  your own Flash movies or  Flash files in the CSS style template
•  you may overwrite parts of the site with your own custom Flash files (homepage, each category or product, about and contact us page, etc)
•  custom Flash files may “talk” with the main store. Flash files are  uploaded  in administration areaand it can perform actions through a few AS3 functions (go to category, product list, product page, search, search by tag, add to cart).

The system has been designed to allow designers express their creativity and be able to update the site through a simple administration pannel in almost no time, with no coding.

virtualro software is licensed as a complete e-commerce system, without the source code.

A typical install include: a full Flash website, store main style design,  web administration module, a series of import scripts, along with all scripts and web services necessary to run the site.

For years we have been working on custom made Flash e-commerce sites,  and based on our experience we’ve created created first complete Flash E-commerce Content Management System.

If you are interested in Flash, Rich Interactive websites and e-commerce you’ve come to right place.

Paul Abrudean

CEO/Founder virtualro