MetaLocator can display links to your resources, products and services that are available online as part of search results. These might be retailers that sell your products online, or online classes or other results that don't have a physical address.
There are a number of scenarios that MetaLocator supports for buy online, consider which of the following matches your desired outcome and the data you have available:
Using this checklist, first identify which statement best fits the information you have available:
I have a list of online retailers that stock my products. I do not have an accurate list of which retailer stocks which exact product.
I have a list of online retailers by product category (or brand or type), but I don't have detailed product SKU-level data.
I have accurate, up-to-date product-level data for my online retailers.
I need accurate, up-to-date product-level data, price and stock status data but I don't have it.
For scenario 1, it is sufficient to create "online" results, display the Buy Online Tab and you are good to go. See below for more instructions.
For scenario 2 and 3, you should import product-level data into the products table with a linking table to the "online" results. This level of access is in Platinum and higher accounts that include access to our multi-table, relational solutions.
For scenario 4, please contact us to learn more about Omnichannel eCommerce. In that solution, we capture the product data, retailer location data and inventory data for you.
The above scenarios describe the most common use cases. Of those, this article will discuss the first scenario (1). Each scenario above builds on the next, providing more functionality to your customer, while requiring a bit more data to support the experience.
Enabling Buy Online
To enable Buy Online, first enable the tab control which allows users to toggle between in-store and online results as shown below. If this group is not available to you, contact us. You must be in the Pro or higher plans.
You can also
The Online Results option allows you to control how the results are presented. The default layout presents a simple series of Buy Online links. The below layout presumes you have data flagged as Online as described below.
The Online Results can be manipulated just as any of the Interface Builder templates. The layout above includes a name, link and image for each online row.
Online Data
The results displayed above have a special field called Online set to 1. This indicates they should be included in the online results. Online "locations" can be both geographic results and online. In the example above, we have imported an image representing the online retailer logo and also a link that should be used when the Buy Online button is clicked.
Notice that in some cases the link column includes a direct link to a search on the retailer Website. This was obtained by performing the search on the retailer Website, then copying the link into the spreadsheet.
For scenario 1 above, it is sufficient to create a single file where certain rows indicate a 1 or zero for the online column. An example can be downloaded here.