Your all-in-one website

A storefront for your customers, a tool for your business.

 
 

Feature Overview

The Bookmanager Webstore contains all the widgets and functions needed to provide your customers with a full-service e-commerce experience. To name a few:

 
  • Automatic and instantaneous integration with the Bookmanager software.
  • We provide the website hosting and security certificates as part of the webstore cost. All you need is a domain name, and we'll take care of the rest!
  • Take credit card and PayPal payments online, gift cards, or offer "pay at pick up" or "request a quote" options.
  • Enable the Guest Checkout option to allow your customers to reserve stock for pick up in-store without the need to create an account.
  • Your customers choose how they want to be notified when placing orders — by email, text message, or phone call. Auto-populating with order statuses, our template-based text and email notifications are done directly from the integrated Bookmanager software with the press of a button.
  • Cover images, interior images and previews, book descriptions, author bios, and published reviews are provided by Bookmanager.
  • Sell your Bookmanager gift cards online, and allow customers to redeem and check their balance online too. An emailed / digital gift card function can be enabled so you can sell and track both physical and digital gift cards in one system.
  • Create and organize your own custom site menus and content without needing a coder or web developer.
  • Not ready to make your Webstore live to the public? Go ahead and keep your site private while you design, and place a simple landing page to let your customers know your new Webstore is coming soon.
  • Our built-in event management and calendar system allows for ticketed events, RSVP and waitlist management, reoccurring and categorized events, and more.
  • Libro.fm audiobooks are fully integrated on your Webstore, cost nothing to offer, appear with regular title search results, and your store receives commission on audiobooks sold.
  • Sell anything — books, gifts, games, stationary, branded store merch, event tickets, you name it! If you sell it, you can list it online.
  • Set up which vendors you order from, and their live inventory and stock positions are reflected on your webstore. This allows your customers to place orders for products you do not stock but can get, all without you lifting a finger.
  • Use the "Biz" admin side to discover and order titles for your own shelves. Our powerful peer-based ranking, sorting, and filtering system allows you to zero in on titles you may not realize you're missing that are doing well at other stores.
  • Create public or private lists, generate your own PDF catalogues or order forms, and create or import Excel spreadsheets.
  • Send a rep a share request, and they will be able to monitor and comment on orders you make for lines they represent.
  • Your "Contact & Hours" page includes a section for holidays and special hours — set up your special hours up to a year in advance and keep your customers informed.
  • Give customers the choice to pick up in-store, ship, or deliver locally. Our shipping system allows for various carriers and rates based on the product mix within your customer's cart.
  • Designed and tested for the major browser platforms and devices — Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari are fully supported for content creation and management. Consumers using most any up to date browser can access your site no problem.
  • All built-in functions of the Consumer Webstore have been built with WCAG 2.1 AA / ADA compliance in mind, so your site is accessible to those using screen readers and keyboard navigation.
 

Design

A home for your brand

No matter your level of design knowledge, you'll impress your customers with a full featured website that is unique and consistent with your brand.

No coding skills needed

You have complete control over the look and feel of your Webstore, from its domain name to its layout, colours, text and content. Our intuitive drag-and-drop visual design system takes the best parts from user interface design programs like Figma, but keeps it simple enough that anybody can quickly dive in.

Styling consistency done right

Keep content and styling/branding consistent with the use of styling presets you customize yourself. Want to change the way all title list headlines appear? Modify the preset or swap in a new one, and all instances of that headline across your site gets updated instantly!

Schedule content

Create features, posts, and events in advance and schedule them to appear and disappear when and where you want.

A buffet of design options

Add, overlay and combine images, text, buttons, title and image carousels or grids, pop-ups and banners to any page on your site. Organize and create custom menus, lists and filtered search results without any web design knowledge.

Your words and offerings

Built-in areas like checkout and title browsing can be customized with your own messaging, options and preferences so your personality is consistent throughout.

Google Fonts, MailChimp, and more

We have integration with a variety of major third parties to give you even more options for design and features.

Third-party widgets supported

Are we missing an integration? Copy and paste the necessary code needed for a third-party widget, or see if we can natively add it so other users can take advantage too.

 

Payments

Choose what you accept

Accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and Bookmanager gift cards, and/or link up your business PayPal account. Do both to give your customers more options. Use your own payment processor, or switch to our Clearent (USA) or Global (Canada) integrated option for seamless and token-based processing.

Make it easy for schools

Give your teachers and librarians the convenience of automatic account-specific discounts, not requiring payment upon checkout ("Invoice me, I'm a teacher!"), and the option to request quotes.

Discounts in-store and online

Customers who receive standing discounts in your physical store can expect the same special rates online. Those discounts can even be sliding and factor in your profit margins and short discount titles so you don't have to worry about discounting beyond your means.

Pay when they pick up

Stand out from the competition and offer your customers a "Pay at pick up" option. For many customers who don't feel comfortable providing credit card details online, or are local regulars that want to make a quick order and pop in store shortly, this option takes friction out of checkout.

Encrypted or Tokenized for peace of mind

Credit card information is passed from the Webstore to your Bookmanager software through a secure, encrypted tunnel. For you technical nerds, we use RSA 2048-bit asymmetric encryption with private keys encrypted using Blowfish 128-bit CBC and a passphrase. If you go with our integrated payment processing option from Clearent or Global, credit card numbers are tokenized so your staff never handle or see credit card numbers. This eliminates liability and gives everyone involved peace of mind.

 

Inventory

Little to no data entry

Powered by BMData, you have access to book descriptions and cover images for millions of titles. As soon as a title is received in your Bookmanager software, the Webstore does the rest and provides the cover image, book description, reviews, and more.

Keyword searchable

Both your inventory and our huge database is keyword searchable. Search by title, author, ISBN, and subject, with results sorted the way you want.

Choose how you browse

Customers can choose to browse by large cover images, or with more title details should they want to quickly blast through dozens of titles without needing to expand each title. Quick "Add to cart", "Add to List", and "Add to Gift Registry" options right within Browse makes mass buying a breeze.

Make notes

Want to say something special about a product? Perhaps a staff review or information about an upcoming promotion or author event? It's easy to tag products with custom messages that can be displayed in bright call-boxes to customers, or for internal staff use.

Share and make lists

Both you and your customers can create, save, and share product lists on the fly. List links make sharing via email or social media simple, or create a print and web ready PDF or Excel sheet. Entire lists can be added to the cart in one click!

It's a sale!

Quickly put your entire inventory on sale, including titles you can order; or flag certain products or subjects with sales discounts for easy promotions and events. Enable promo codes and share with select customers to give dollar, percent, or BOGO discounts on all or select products, or waive shipping fees.

Browse, filter and sort

Our powerful Browse engine provides filtering and sorting of both your titles and our extended database. Results are sorted by default using our proprietary, indie peer-data powered ranking system along with publication dates, and interweaves both released and forthcoming titles. Customers can filter by stock availability, subject matter, in-store shelving location, binding, publication date, age group, language, and isolate books versus non-books.

Add custom items easily

Selling something we don't have in our database? No problem! Once a product has been received in your software, you can quickly add more details to its online listing. Upload your own images, descriptions, and product details in a snap.

See multiple conditions rolled into one

Whether you have new, used, remainder, signed, collectible, past, or next editions of a title for sale, your customer will only see one convenient entry with the choice to pick which condition they would like to buy.

 

Online Orders

Pick up or ship out

Offer your customers the choice to pick up their order in-store, have it shipped out, or organize local delivery for residents within an area.

Narrow down where you ship

Choose which provinces, states and/or countries you ship to. Customize the shipping calculator to automatically calculate shipping costs, offer different couriers and rates with varying delivery times, exclude certain products, and offer "batch shipping" to customers so they can receive their order in allotments as stock arrives.

Guest Checkout

Enable the Guest Checkout option to allow your customers to quickly reserve stock for pick up in-store without the need to create an account. Customers choose how they want to be notified when their order is ready for pick up — by email, text message, or phone call.

Request quotes

Give your customers the option to request a quote rather than checkout. The quote request is great for school accounts needing approval or review before a large order is submitted.

Quick notifications

Customers receive email order confirmations immediately after checking out. After you have reviewed and finalized their order, another notification can be sent directly from your software updating the customer on its status. Customers can access their previous orders online to see what they bought, and export detailed Excel spreadsheets for outside use.

Gift registries

Customers can create multiple gift registries, tag them with occasions, and view the titles being purchased off each registry. Registries can also be utilized by schools for book fairs or fundraisers, where management access is granted to the bookstore as well so both parties can keep tabs and make changes if needed.

Sell gift cards

Gift cards can be enabled for purchase and redemption online, and customers can check their balances anytime. Emailed gift cards are automatically generated and delivered to the recipient as soon as payment is confirmed, so your staff only have to finalize the sale to set things in motion.

Smart quoting for items out of stock

Set rules to define which titles can be ordered, which vendors you buy from, and what to charge to make your desired profit margin. This opens up your customers to millions of titles that can be ordered, with no need for you to handle every request. Powered by BMData / Pubstock.

Orders flow into your software

New online orders automatically pop into your Bookmanager software. Whether you have one station or twenty, and no matter where you are in the software, you are notified of online orders the moment they are placed.

No lost orders

Orders placed on your Webstore are transferred into your system, emailed to your store, logged on the Biz admin site, and saved on the customer's online account. This way, if any issues arise, you can always go back and see what the original request was all about, and even restore original orders should they get modified or deleted by accident.

Import files

You and your customers can import spreadsheets, text files, web pages, and PDFs directly into the Webstore. Dropping a file into your cart or search bar creates a list from any valid ISBNs found within.

 

Catalogues and buying

A buyer's best friend

Use the Biz admin site's powerful filter and sort options to bulk up sections and subjects in your store. Stock orders made on Biz transfer directly into your software, separated by supplier and grouping.

BMData on the go

Your BMData subscription is not just a feature of the Bookmanager software. Get access to pricing and availability from over 100 publishers, wholesalers, and distributors for millions of titles, integrated right within your Webstore and Biz site.

Online publisher catalogues

For Canadians, the majority of your new catalogues and drop-ins are available with the same powerful tools available everywhere else on Biz. See sales/order comparisons, cover images, descriptions, and even markup notes made by your rep. Using Edelweiss? We're integrated and have seamless importing of orders right into your Bookmanager software.

Compare then order

View a title's previous sales, orders, and returns history at a glance, as well as how a previous edition performed. Couple this with shared sales and orders history from over 500 independent bookstores, and you've got the tools to make intelligent buying decisions.

Split the work

Multiple buyers can create their own orders and submit separately from each other. Businesses with multiple locations can quickly designate how many copies of a title go to which location, all from the same order box.

Give your reps access

Your reps can mark up their digital catalogues just like they do in person. Allow them to see your order quantities for their lines, add notes and suggestions, and even view and edit your order quantities.

 

Analytics & Reports

Slice and dice

Bookmanager's Inventory Analytics is a simple setup with unlimited possibilities. Utilizing your daily sales, orders, on-hands, and returns, Analytics gives you a visual approach to see what is making you money, what has to go, and where your cash is being spent.

The future is colourful

Analytics utilizes colour-coded graphs that tell you exactly what is going on at a glance. The graph's varying shades indicate how old products are, if your sales are up or down compared to the same period last year, and if your current stock level changes are helping or hindering sales.

It's all in the details

Clicking a section of the graph gives you a detailed list of titles that make up that portion. From there, you can drill down and sort even further, allowing you to isolate big sellers and not-so-obvious flops. Hovering over segments of the graph gives you summaries for sales and on-hands, so no matter your approach, the details are available.

Time of day, day of week

Take a bird's eye approach to see which days of the week or times of the day your store is bustling or blundering. This can take the guesswork out of scheduling staff and transitioning seasonal hours of operation.

Sort and filter results with ease

Focus in on a single section of your store, or zoom out and look at the big picture. Filter your results by subject, supplier, publisher, customer type, date received, and more. With every option, compare your current analysis period with the previous period to see if you're trending up or down.

The bottom line

For those still interested in numerical figures and stats, each graph presents a detail oriented approach below. See your sales, profit, age, averages, turns, percent changes, and more, with the same period's stats from the previous year right there for comparison.

Compare your store

If you choose to anonymously share your weekly sales stats with us, you can join over 500 other indie booksellers in sales comparisons and trends. How is your "cooking" section doing compared with other stores? Are your sales changes from the previous year on track with everyone else? Know it all at a glance.

 
 

Stockchecker

Inventory on the go

Bookmanager's Stockchecker is a handy browser extension that lets you see small icons next to any ISBNs found on a website. Clicking on the icon will display a mini-window that shows what you have in stock at your store, your sales history, plus a handful of other vital Bookmanager features.

Build orders

Your Webstore's order cart is built right into Stockchecker, so you can quickly create orders on any website with valid ISBNs. Orders are transferred instantly to your main cart on your Webstore for further review.

Check Pubstock

Along with your current inventory on-hands and orders, checking Pubstock for a title is just a click away. Stockchecker uses your software and Webstore's settings, so you only see your preferred vendors, and pricing quotes are based on the rules you set.

Requirements

Stockchecker is available for both the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox web browsers.

Click here to download for Chrome
Click here to download for Firefox
 

Webstore Examples

See what a few of our companies have done with their Webstore:

Mosaic books Kelowna, BC

Charlie's Queer Books Seattle, WA

Elliott Bay Book Company Seattle, WA

The Lynx Books Gainesville, FL

Skunk Cabbage Books Chicago, IL

Titcomb's Bookshop East Sandwich, MA

The Last Chapter Book Shop Chicago, IL

Slow Burn Books Calgary, AB

The Little Book Des Moines, IA

Smitten Bookstore Ventura, CA

Books Are Magic Brooklyn, NY

Golden Hour Books Indianapolis, IN

Black Bond Books Vancouver, BC

Wonderland Books Bethesda, MD

Bike Trail Books Loveland, OH

Liz's Book Bar Brooklyn, NY

Flying Books Toronto, ON

Fonts Books & Gifts Mclean, VA

 

Requirements

Bookmanager software users

The Webstore is available for businesses using the Bookmanager software. Along with the software, you must also have the following:

No BM Software?

Third-party POS software users, distributors, publishers, or wholesalers

The Bookmanager Webstore was created for integrated use with our POS/Inventory control software. At this time, the Webstore is not available to those using third-party software like Basil, Anthology, Booklog, iBID, etc.