Ways to Use Clubistry E-Commerce
12/19/2024
This week Clubistry launched its E-Commerce feature, now available on all plan levels. You can activate E-Commerce in Site Settings, set up your products and categories, and go live with your store page on your Clubistry site.
To learn more about how to set up the products and deploy to your Store page, check out the documentation.
NOTE: Use of Clubistry E-Commerce requires that your club have connected to your Stripe account.
Once you've got a few items added to your store, what can you do on your site to promote your products, and raise more money for your organization? Let's look at some ways to leverage your new E-Commerce feature.
Featured Products
You can set up a Product Category for "Featured Products", and add your most popular products to it, or your newest, or even just the ones you want to get the inventory moved out for. Remember that products can belong to multiple categories, so they don't have to be removed from their exising category. Just add them to your featured category in addition to the normal categories.
Once you've got some products in the category, you can now feature them on any page of your site you'd like them to appear on. Let's say you want to show your Featured Products on your Home page, or your About page. Go in to edit that page, and add a new section to the page, selecting "E-Commerce Section". Set up a headline, select only your new Featured Products category, and then if desired, set a limit to how many products are displayed. Save the page, and now you have a section of featured products on your page.
Event Merchandise, Meals, Etc.
Let's say your organization is having a big annual event. You've set up some pages in support of the event...a landing page with general information, plus a page for RV reservation info, a page about meals at the event, a page for a class or something else that members can sign up to participate in at the event. Now let's set up our E-Commerce features to support some of that.
Set up a product category like described above under Featured Products, for "Event 2025". (And don't worry about getting too many categories, because once one is no longer needed, it can be deleted from the system.) Now set up products for items related to this event. Obviously you want one for each style of shirt or other wearables you're selling. Got other special merch, like glassware, tumblers, tote bags, etc.? Add all those products, and place them into your "Event 2025" category.
Now set up a product for any meals you're selling tickets or seats to attend. Let's say there's an Aucion Dinner, and a Wrap Up Dinner. Set up a product for each of those. If the dinners have options (like steak, chicken, or vegetarian), then those become the product options. If you are going to mail the meal tickets, put that information in the product description. If you're going to have people pick them up at the event, put that into the description. Selling box lunches for during the event? Set those up the same way, one product per day, with the menu options set as product options.
Are you managing RV parking for your event? You can set up a product for RV parking, setting the price at however much per day. Make sure that you specify in the product description that the RV parking is per-day, and that the user should set the quantity to how many days they'll need. And if you need them to provide additional information, add instructions to specify that info in the "Delivery Instructions" field during checkout.
You can manage other "purchasable" items and services similarly. Set up products for parking passes, reserved grooming space, vendor booth space, catalogs, advertising, whatever you need.
Now, back to your website pages. On any page you've set up, you can add an "E-Commerce Section" to the page, and specify your event category. It will show either all the products in that category, or it will show a limited number if you specify a limit. Alternatively, you can set up smaller categories like "event meals", "event logo mercandise", etc. Add your products to the appropriate category, and show those categories only on the appropriate pages.
You can also skip setting up categories with only one or two items in them, and instead just post direct links to the detail pages for the appropriate products. For example on a page for Event Meals, you can describe each meal, the options, etc, and then link to the product page for each meal.
Use Promo Blocks
You can configure as many promo blocks as you need for your site. You can use promo blocks to promote your store, or specific products in your store. And remember that promo blocks can be used on any page as a content section type, as well as added to a pool of promos available to be placed in the sidebar of 2-column pages.
Set up a promo block that links to a detail page for a product, and use the product image for the promo block as well. Now you can place that with other promo blocks on your home page or other pages. Or you can set up multiple promo blocks that all go to products, and use a Promo Blocks Section instead of an E-Commerce Section to display them on any page.
Pre-Order Merchandise
It can be risky to order merchandise for your organization to sell, only to not be able to sell all of it for one reason or another. And sometimes you might want to offer a special, more expensive, item to your members or the public, but you might not have the funds available to make the big purchase of the items. This is where pre-orders come in very handy.
Simply set up your product with a photo of what it will look like, and in the description add any deadlines for orders to be received. Provide information about when the buyer can expect to receive the product, or how/where they can pick it up. Now use any of the methods discussed previously to promote your pre-order items. When the pre-order window is closed, simply remove or de-activate the product so it's no longer available for purchase.
By doing pre-orders through your club's website, you relieve your volunteers of the task of having to keep track of emails, text messages, phone calls, and other communications all from people wanting to pre-order an item. Instead of having to track the names, quantities, sizes, colors, etc., from all those sources, you can just let the website handle it, and when you're done, you've got everything in one place and one format to use to order the products.
Raise Funds with Clubistry E-Commerce
With Clubistry's E-Commerce, your organization can bring your members special products that help celebrate your organization, help streamline event-related purchases, and raise much needed funds, in the same system you're already using to manage your website, documents, and memberships. If you are already using Clubistry, check out E-Commerce today.
Learn more about how Clubistry can help your organization. And if you are ready to give Clubistry a try you can always get started with the free Bronze Plan. No need to upgrade until you're ready to import your membership.