Online stores and small shops
This section is for business owners, shop managers and decision makers who want to sell products online with Exponential. It explains, in plain language, what the shop built into Exponential does, what you need to decide before you open a store, how orders, payments and taxes work, and how to keep the store running day after day. Every page links to the technical pages for whoever sets the store up.
Contents
- What this section covers
- Who it is for
- Every page in this section
- Suggested reading order
- What you will not find here
- Neighboring sections
What this section covers
Exponential ships a shop in its kernel. The project README lists "Advanced e-Commerce Stores (Built in)" among the main features (README.md). Products are ordinary content with a price field; visitors add them to a basket, check out, pay through a payment gateway, and the shop staff handle the orders in the Store tab of the administration, which opens the Store dashboard (Store dashboard and order statuses).
The pages of this section cover:
- planning a store and deciding what to sell, where and to whom;
- products, prices, currencies, VAT and the countries you sell to;
- shipping, the basket, checkout and customer accounts;
- orders, order statuses, receipts and confirmation e-mail;
- payments: PayPal, card payments and what card security means for a small business;
- discounts, wishlists and digital products;
- being found, promoting the store, staying fast at peak times and staying secure;
- launching, running the store every day, and common questions.
Who it is for
| You are | Start with |
|---|---|
| A business owner deciding whether to sell online with Exponential | What the built-in shop does |
| A shop manager who will run orders every day | Running a store day to day |
| A project manager planning the launch | Store planning for small businesses |
| The person who sets the store up | the technical page Running a shop: overview |
Every page in this section
| Page | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Store planning for small businesses | The decisions to make before any setup work starts |
| What the built-in shop does | The parts of the shop, and what it does not do out of the box |
| Product classes and catalog | How products are modeled and organized |
| Prices and currencies | Single and multi-currency prices, exchange rates and rounding |
| VAT rules and VAT types | How the shop charges VAT and sales tax |
| Country groups and regions | The country list customers pick from, and selling to several countries |
| Shipping and handling | Flat shipping cost and custom shipping rules |
| Basket and checkout flow | The customer's path from product page to placed order |
| Customer accounts and guest checkout | Buying with or without an account |
| Orders and order statuses | The seventeen shipped statuses and how to use them |
| Order receipts and confirmation mail | What the customer receives after buying |
| Store dashboard and reports | The figures and to-do lists the Store tab shows |
| Payment gateways for businesses | How payment providers plug in, and how to choose one |
| PayPal payments | The ezpaypal extension from a business point of view |
| Card payments and PCI basics | Redirect versus card form, and what that means for card security |
| Discounts and wishlists | Discount groups and the customer's wishlist |
| Digital products and downloads | Selling files, and what has to be added for it |
| Store search and navigation | Helping customers find products |
| Promoting your store | Search engines, social sharing, newsletters and landing pages |
| Store performance at peak times | Staying fast during a sale or a busy season |
| Store security checklist | The security tasks a store owner should check |
| Store launch checklist | Everything to test before the first real order |
| Running a store day to day | Daily, weekly and monthly routines |
| Store FAQ | Short answers to common questions |
Suggested reading order
- What the built-in shop does and Store planning for small businesses, for the decision.
- Products, prices, VAT, countries and shipping, in the order of the table above, for the setup.
- Checkout, accounts, orders, receipts and the dashboard, for the daily work.
- Payments, then the security and launch checklists, before opening.
- Promotion, performance and the day-to-day page, after opening.
Tip
Hand Store launch checklist to whoever builds the store on day one. It lists every decision the builder needs from you.
What you will not find here
These pages explain and summarize; they do not repeat the configuration steps. Settings, templates and code are on
the technical pages they link to, mostly under
website creators and the feature pages in
doc/eng-us/features/6.0/. Tax and legal questions are for your tax adviser and lawyer; these pages only describe what the
software does.
Neighboring sections
- Businesses: start here and How businesses sell online
- Newsletters for keeping customers informed
- Costs, including a worked example for a small store
- Security and Reliability
- Multilingual sites for stores in several languages
- Mobile and headless for selling through apps and partners
- Governments have their own section: Governments: start here
Related pages
- Running a shop: overview
- Store dashboard and order statuses
- Sales and marketing: start here
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
Become an Exponential Partner
Partners share their information, provide funding, contribute back and develop the products with us, and that is how Exponential grows. A partner website and dashboard are planned for mid-2027: please become a partner today to speed up our growth rate and land new features faster.