Design215 PCart
Since 2014, the Design215 PCart shopping cart has provided online ordering for retailers and restaurants. Customers
stay on your website for their entire ordering experience. While there
are many solutions for online ordering, the Design215 PCart offers the best experience for your customers and the
lowest overall cost for you...
Topics
Click each topic to learn more or just scroll down:
Shopping Cart Features
Here is an overview of the many features in our PCart shopping cart:
- Product Options
Many products and restaurant menu items have options. Some of those options are complex. Our shopping cart supports
options and sub-options, option lists, option quantity limits, separate option pricing and SKUs, option descriptions,
option groups that can be used across multiple products, and more. We've also designed the easiest controls for the
customer to select their options.
- Separate menus and product catalogs/inventories
You can have any number of public facing menus or product listings that come from your internal product database.
Take products in and out of the public view while keeping them in the internal database. For online retailers, there are
inventory features, shipping controls, and a manufacturer database.
- Store Locations with integrated Google Maps
If you have multiple stores or pick-up locations, you can set up each store with its own Google Map. The Design215
PCart uses the Google Maps API to help customers find your nearest location. You can use global
settings for all stores, or each store can have its own settings. Each store can have its own hours, menus, prices, tax
rate, pick-up options, and more.
- Image Uploader
Upload images into any existing folder on your website. Our image uploader can upload multiple images at once and
automatically creates thumbnails. You can configure image and thumbnail size and shape. Want all square thumbnails? No
problem. Want landscape images and square thumbnails? No Problem. Want portrait/vertical images and thumbnails for a
clothing site? No Problem.
- Product Linking
Product linking allows you to promote and upsell complementary items at checkout. You can link specific products to
each other and those products will be recommended each time a customer adds the initial item to their cart.
- Hours and Holidays
Set any number of business hours and holidays for online ordering. Do you open and close multiple times per day? No problem.
You can specify any number of daily hours. While customers can always browse the menu, our system automatically disables
checkout on holidays and outside of business hours. If you have multiple stores, each store can have its own hours and
holidays.
Our system is designed to let customers explore the menu and place items in their cart at ANY HOUR yet
it also notifies them if checkout is only available during business hours. This way, a customer can create an order
before you open, then submit their order as soon as you open. We've seen many restaurant chains lose customers and
sales because their entire shopping cart is disabled outside of regular business hours.
Online retailers can set checkout to be functional 24 hours a day.
- Order History
Not only can your customers easily purchase their favorites again and again with just a couple of clicks,
you and your managers can easily look up any customer's complete order history. This can be useful information
when reviewing customer feedback and it can also be tied to rewards and loyalty programs.
- Batch Functions
If you have many products, use the batch function control panel to quickly update prices, SKUs, and other information
on many products at once. One of our clients is an online retailer with 2500+ products and their employees use this feature
often. Restaurant clients can use this panel to update an entire menu in just a few minutes.
Credit Card Processing
For credit card processing, Design215 is proud to be a SHIFT4 partner.
When payments are completed, the money goes directly into your bank account, not a third party
who may take a considerable percentage off the top.
- Shift4 Partner
In order to become a Shift4 Developer Partner, our shopping cart and payment module had to pass rigorous testing
to ensure it met all requirements for certification. In the past, Design215 has been a
developer partner for MercuryPay, Vantiv, Worldpay, and NMI. We built certified payment modules for each system.
We've been building e-commerce websites since 2012.
Shift4 provides a secure, end-to-end payment platform with PCI-validated P2PE and tokenization for brands like
Cheesecake Factory, Denny's, KFC, IHOP, Bonefish Grill, and many others. Shift4 also provides
fully integrated hardware solutions like EMV/swipe card readers and complete Point-of-Sale terminals.
While Design215 provides online ordering and web design services, Shift4 and Design215 can build
a complete system for your business with the best features and lowest overall operating cost.
- Tokenization
The first time a customer enters their credit card, an encrypted token is created. The customer can make
subsequent purchases without having to enter their credit card again because their token is sent to the processor
instead of their card number. This is one of the most secure methods because only the credit card processor
can read the tokens.
No credit card numbers are stored on your website, your server, or our servers. Customers are rewarded with an easy
way to make regular purchases and there are no credit card numbers for hackers to steal.
Not a Third-Party Website
Your customers never leave your website to go somewhere else because the Design215 PCart becomes a part of your site.
This has significant advantages:
- Customers stay on your site
Because everything happens on your site, customers always have access to all of your pages and navigation. They don't
suddenly jump to a new, third party website that may or may not reflect your brand. Because the Design215 PCart
becomes a part of your site, it uses your color scheme, fonts, navigation links, and logo.
Your domain name always remains in the URL bar of the customer's browser. The "back" button
in their browser always works, and customers will generally have a better experience.
- Customer Satisfaction
What happens when an order goes wrong? Who does the customer call? Do they call you or the third party site where they
placed their order? Who has the ability to issue refunds or credit? These issues frustrate customers
every day.
With the Design215 PCart on your website, there is no confusion. The customer calls
you or uses the integrated contact form. You, or your store managers, have complete control.
You can look up any customer, see their order, order history, and payment status. You can issue refunds or credit.
Your customers will be happier.
- Better SEO
Search Engine Optimization or "SEO" is vitally important for any business. When your customers leave your site and go
to a third party site for online orders, it doesn't help YOUR SEO at all. Because Design215 PCart is part of your website,
all links to your products start with your own domain name, and Google will index all of those pages. In the backend, we
have an SEO panel where you can set additional text to help Google and other search engines find your products, store
locations, and online ordering pages. Finally, when customers bookmark pages, they are bookmarking pages on YOUR website,
not a third party site.
Here's an example bookmark to one of our client's restaurant locations:
https://zonafresca.com/order/from/pompano_beach
Want to use QR codes? We do those too, and they go to YOUR website...
- Who owns your customer list?
With Design215 PCart, customers sign up on your website and you own your customer list. No one else has access to your
customer list. No one else will show ads or marketing to your customers. What your customers see on your site is
entirely up to you. If you're using a third-party site for online orders, you should read the fine print. You may or may
not own your customer list and your customers may or may not be subject to advertising from other sources.
- What if I dont have a website?
If you don't already have a modern, mobile friendly website, we can build one for you. We prefer to do this because
it is often easier and more cost effective to build a new site that integrates properly and SECURELY
with our secure cart. Our system is very flexible. If you don't have an SSL certificate, you can keep your existing site and
we can host the shopping cart securely at a URL like https://order.yourwebsite.com.
If you only want to do online ordering and don't need an entire website, you can use our shopping cart by itself with
an opening splash page. We can design the splash page with your photos and logo. You still receive all the benefits listed
here.
FREE mobile app included
The Design215 PCart is designed to work in desktop browsers and as a mobile web app. Your customers can instantly
have your app on their phone. This is how we built the system. Your own online ordering app is included at no extra cost.
- What is a web app?
A web app is software that runs on a remote server, like a web site. Web apps are fairly new but they are supported by
almost every phone made since 2019. Web apps don't need to be downloaded or installed, but can be added to your
phone just like a regular app. A web app is NOT simply a shortcut to the website, but has its own interface and app icon.
On your phone you could actually open the web app and then open the website in a browser and you would see they are two
separate things.
Zona Fresca in mobile browser on the left and standalone app on the right.
- Advantages of web apps
Because web apps run on the web server, they are automatically updated when your website is updated. Anyone opening
your app will always see the latest menu and pricing. Customers don't have to download or update the app. Web apps use
very little memory on the customer's phone, compared to downloaded and installed apps. Having an app on the customer's
home screen with your logo as the app icon, is a great way to drive repeat business and customer loyalty.
Seamless POS Integration
The Design215 PCart currently has seamless integration with FOCUS POS (Point-of-Sale) Terminals. Incoming
online orders go directly into the register and tickets print in the kitchen, without any interaction from your
staff. Your cashiers can focus on the physical customers in your store. At the end of the day, there is no
need to transfer totals from tablets or third party services. The register already has all the numbers because
all the online orders came through it. At the end of the day, the accounting is already done.
- What if I only have an EMV/swipe terminal?
If you don't have a full size, Windows based POS terminal, we have a tablet app where you can track all of your
online orders. You don't even need to buy a tablet. Our order tracking app runs on any modern phone or
browser, Windows or Mac, iPhone or Android. Only managers can log into the app but you can assign as many managers
as needed. Our backend Management Suite also shows all external devices using the app.
- Using the tablet app as a backup
If you're using the POS integration, you don't really need the app, but we recommend having it available anyway.
If your internet is down at the restaurant, the POS won't receive the online orders. But customers can still
place orders and pay at home or on their phones. You can use the app on your phone to see the incoming orders,
or you can temporarily disable online ordering with a message, "Sorry, our internet is down, please try again later."
- What if I use another brand POS terminal?
We are currently working on modules for other Windows based POS terminals. We built our FOCUS module from scratch.
It receives each order from our shopping cart over an encrypted connection and passes it to the FOCUS software.
It's been working flawlessly since 2016. Encryption wasn't even necessary because we're only sending the list of
items ordered and the total, but we decided we wanted the extra security.
In the meantime, you can still take online orders and use our tablet app or full backend Management Suite to see
all of your orders and customer interactions in real time.
Customer Service
Customer service and customer relationship management are very important. The Design215 PCart has specific features to help
you grow your customer base and keep them happy.
- Manage Customer Emails
In the Mailing List tab of the Management Suite you can filter customer email addresses by city or zip code and export
the results in CSV format for importing to MailChimp, Constant Contact, or other email marketing services. You can also
sort the list by first name, last name, company, date created, date modified, zip code, and number of orders.
- We built a better contact form
Included with the Design215 PCart Management Suite is a contact form for your web site. This form allows customers to
contact you when they have any problems or suggestions. Almost every website has a contact form but they are plagued
with problems so we built a better one:
- Tough on Spam
As email spam filters have improved, more and more spammers are targeting contact forms. You'll still receive an
occasional marketing message but our software detects 999 out of every 1000 spam messages! This saves you
and your staff a LOT of time. We accomplish all this WITHOUT forcing the
customer to read squiggly lines or pick from a bunch of photos. We're quite proud of it!
- Real-time Messages Panel
In the Management Suite there's a messages panel where you can see all of your incoming contact form messages in real
time, BEFORE they're emailed to the addresses you've configured. Sometimes Google, or your local ISP, will filter
out messages coming from unknown domains (like your website). But you can see all customer messages in the panel, whether
they reach your inbox or not. You can have this running on any screen or tablet for employees to watch.
- More Features
Our contact form has a ton of features. You can route messages to different departments. You can require the
customer to select a store location. You can require they enter a phone number, or not. You can set the maximum size of
their messages. In addition to our powerful spam filtering, you can add your own spam keyword filters. In the
IP address filtering tab you can manually block specific IP addresses if you ever need to.
We received considerable praise from our clients after we launched the Contact Form module. We recently added more
features and we are constantly improving the entire system. We're sure you will love it!
Security Features
We've seen many changes in web development over the years. Many things are better. Some things are
easier. One area we always focus on is security. Now only do we keep our software and servers patched with all
of the latest updates, we are constantly going through our code to look for and eliminate any weak links. But encryption
is strong and most hackers today rely on social engineering to get into backend software and steal information
or install ransomware. This is why we've built some extra features into our software.
- All passwords use the latest encryption
Passwords for customer accounts and Management Suite accounts are encrypted with one of the latest
algorithms and includes "salt". This means if two different people use the same password, each will have a
different encryption. This way, hackers can't reverse engineer common passwords like "123abc" even though we keep
telling the public not to use such passwords.
- Multi-tier user levels
Our PCart Management Suite is very powerful and you will want to assign login credentials for each of your store
managers and probably some of your other employees. But experience has taught us that you shouldn't give
complete control of your operation to everyone. This is why our backend Management Suite has three different user levels:
- Managers can log in, view most panels, create new items, and edit existing items.
They can set store hours and holidays, and temporarily disable online ordering. They can access customer data.
- Team members can view most panels, create and edit some items but not everything.
A good middle tier without too much responsibility.
- Associates can view some panels but are restricted from others, and have limited ability to make changes.
A good level for beginners because they can't accidentally delete anything.
Our system lets you decide who is responsible for the more critical areas of your operation while limiting the
abilities of others who don't need access to everything.
- Two-factor verification for all managers
All Management Suite users with Manager level must use two-factor verification. This is a security feature that
cannot be turned off. Strong passwords are enforced. Every attempt to access the Management Suite is logged, whether
successful or not. The system uses pattern recognition to prevent login attempts from bots even if they know the
right password.
Please CONTACT US if you have any questions. Our contact form is the same one we built for the
PCart Management Suite.
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