Getting started

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A. Parts of an ecommerce web page

Let’s look at a typical page of an ecommerce website. This page contains these parts.



1. The Header

Header is the top part of a web page. This part contains some elements that normally exist in all pages of the website. They are:

• The Logo. In this example, it is the logo of “Gift Shop Company”.

• Horizontal Menu or Top Menu. This type of menu usually appears near the top of the web pages. There are 5 items in this Top Menu: “Home”, “About Us”, “Products”, “Announcements” and “Contact”.

These are the commonly used items. The less used items are normally put in the bottom menu.

• Banner. This is an image that tells about your shop or the products that you sell. You may use more than one image and they will appear one after another as in a slide show.

Some tools.

2. The left column

The left column of this website doesn’t have a general menu, but there is a product menu, instead.

• At top of the left column is the Product menu with groups of products such as Christmas Gifts, Valentine's Gifts, Birthday Gifts, etc. These are the product groups that belong to “Products” on the Top Menu.

• Lower down is the QR code (QR stands for quick response) which provides a quick way to save a website address or a web page address. Visitors may use the camera in an iPhone or a smart phone to scan the code. It will be converted to a website address and can be saved for later viewing.

Some pages of the website might have a right column to display advertisements, videos, or special products.

3. The Footer

• Footer is the bottom part of a web page. It may have a menu for information that is less used by visitors. In this example, they are “FAQs”, “Customer Services”, “Privacy Policy”.

• Underneath the bottom menu is the copyright notice.

• Some websites may display the logo of the web builder company. In this example, you will see the logo of VNVN Company.

• The website might have a “Choose Theme” box to let visitor choose a theme color.

4. The Body

This is the main part of each web page. It displays the main content of the web page. In this example, you are viewing the Home page and it is displaying 2 groups of information:

• Some products.

• A short introduction of the online shop. You will need to replace it with your own text.

You’ve just viewed the different parts of the homepage of an ecommerce website. These parts will also exist in all the other pages. The only part that is different is the body of each web page.

B. Login the Control Panel

When you want to make changes to the website, you must use a special program to manage the content. The program is called the Control Panel. To access the Control Panel, you must login using a web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.

• In the address box of the web browser, type the web address of the Control Panel as instructed by VNVN. Then, hit the “Enter” key. The login screen will appear.

• Fill in your Username as assigned by VNVN.
• Fill in the Password as given to you by VNVN.
• Click the “Login” button.

If everything is correct, you will see the first screen of the Control Panel. The upper part is the menu and the lower part is the list of existing articles.

On the right side of the “Logout” button, you will see a greeting ,“Welcome admin”, because we’ve just login with the username “admin”.

The title bar is showing “Articles” which means you are looking at the list of articles and you ready to manage the articles in the website.

C. Logout

After you are done with managing the website, you will need to logout. Logout is the act of closing the Control Panel.

Click the “Logout” button. The login screen will re-appear.



You have closed the Control Panel and have disconnected from the web server.

You’ve just familiarized yourself with the ecommerce website. You will practice posting an article in the next session.

If you are in a hurry and want to post a product right away, you may skip the next three articles and go to Article 5.