Promo Stories

Shoppers already live in stories: they tap through them every day on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Promo Stories brings this familiar format to your store. A row of bright circles with sales, new arrivals and collections sits on the home page or anywhere on the storefront, and a tap opens a full-screen story with a buy button. Instead of a banner people scroll past, you get a format they watch to the end: a coloured ring invites a tap, slides change on their own, and each one leads to a product. Announce discounts, launch new items and see in the statistics which stories sell. Stories are built in the admin panel in minutes, no designer or developer needed.

Stories on the storefront

1. A row of circles anywhere

   Stories are shown by a layout block: on the home page under the menu, in the catalog, on a product page. Show all active stories or pick the ones for a particular place, and the standard block setting decides whether it appears on phones, tablets or desktops.

2. New stories stand out

   Unviewed stories have a coloured ring, viewed ones turn grey and move to the end of the row. When a story is updated, it becomes new again for every shopper.

3. No jumps while loading

   While the page loads, neat placeholders of the same size hold the place of the circles: the layout does not shift, and the circles appear in the right order straight away.

Viewing like in social networks

1. Full-screen slides

   On a phone a story opens full screen, on a desktop as a vertical card in the centre. Progress bars, the story name and its cover sit on top.

2. Familiar gestures

   Tapping on the right or left flips slides, holding pauses, a sideways swipe switches stories, a swipe down closes. On a desktop the arrow buttons and the keyboard work too.

3. A button that sells

   Every slide can lead to a product, a category, a page or any address. The button caption and colours are set per slide or for the whole store.

4. Stories play one after another

   After the last slide the next story starts on its own, just like in social networks. Looping can be switched on as well.

Stories are built in minutes

• Cover and schedule:

  each story has a name, a circle cover, its own ring colour, a display period and the customer groups that can see it. A promotion appears and disappears on the right dates by itself.

• Slides:

  a vertical image, a heading, text and its position, a link with a button, the display time and colours. Slides are reordered right in the list.

• Quick start:

  demo stories with slides in English and Russian are added in one click: use them as a template and swap the images and texts. A similar story does not have to be built from scratch, just clone it.

• Languages and storefronts:

  story texts are translated into every store language, and in CS-Cart Ultimate stories are kept separately for each storefront.

Statistics

The add-on counts how many times a story was opened, how many times it was watched to the end and how many times its button was clicked. Views, clicks and CTR are shown for every slide, so it is clear at once which offers work and which ones are worth replacing. Statistics collection can be switched off, and the counters can be reset before a new campaign.

Settings

• Appearance:

  the ring around the circle (gradient, single colour or none), the colour of viewed stories, the caption, progress bar and button colours.

• Playback:

  the default slide duration, the viewer header, moving on to the next story, looping, the desktop viewer layout.

• Viewed stories:

  mark viewed stories and move them to the end of the row.

• Layout block:

  all active stories or selected ones, circle size, captions, alignment.

In Multi-Vendor and multi-storefront stores the settings are kept per storefront.