marketplaces/docs/SALES-GUIDE.md

# Sales Guide — How to Use & Demo the Marketplace Platform

Audience: sales team. Plain-language guide to what the product does and how to show it. No code. When something isn't live yet, it's marked **Coming soon** so you never over-promise in a demo.

## What we're selling in one sentence

A **multi-tenant marketplace platform**: one codebase runs many branded marketplaces, and each customer gets their own storefront + a self-service admin panel to run it — no developer needed for day-to-day changes.

## The two halves of the product

1. **The storefront** — what shoppers see: homepage, catalog, product pages, search, cart, wishlist, compare, multi-language, multi-currency.
2. **The admin / editor** — what the marketplace owner uses to run and customize it, without touching code.

## The headline demo: "change your whole store without a developer"

This is the strongest pitch. Open the **Project Editor** and show that a marketplace owner can restyle and reconfigure the entire storefront themselves. It has 11 tabs:

| Tab | What you show the prospect |
|---|---|
| General | Set the marketplace name, domain, description, and languages |
| Branding | Upload logo, small logo, favicon |
| Theme | Pick brand colors with a color picker, light/dark mode, choose a site layout |
| Header | Toggle which features appear in the top bar (search, cart, wishlist, languages…) |
| Footer | Company info, address, contacts, payment icons, social links |
| Homepage | Drag-and-drop the order of homepage sections, choose layouts |
| Widgets | Configure homepage blocks (hero banner, category grid, product rows) |
| Marketplace Features | Turn features on/off (reviews, recommendations, recently-viewed, search history…) |
| Languages | Add or remove a language for the whole store |
| Navigation | Edit the menu links, per language |
| Static Pages | Write pages like "About Us" with a rich text editor |

**Demo flow that lands well:**
1. Change the brand color in **Theme** → show the store instantly reflecting it in **Preview**.
2. Reorder homepage sections in **Homepage** by dragging.
3. Edit an "About Us" page in **Static Pages** using the text editor (bold, headings, lists, links, images, tables).
4. Point out the **Save / Publish** bar: work is saved as a **draft** first, and only goes live when they hit **Publish** — safe to experiment.

> The rich-text editor for static pages **works today**: type text, make it bold, add headings, bullet lists, links, images, and tables, or switch to a "Code" view for raw HTML.

## The admin backoffice (running the business)

Beyond styling, there's a full back-office. In demos, show the **layout and workflow** — the screens are built and polished. Be aware most of these currently run on **sample data** for demo purposes; real live data connects during onboarding (that's a backend integration step, not missing product).

| Area | What it does | Demo note |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | At-a-glance status: store status, theme, languages, counts, health, recent activity | Cards are live for config; sales counts show "pending backend" until integrated |
| Products | Add/edit products: price, variants, images, categories, badges, bulk actions | **Sample data** in demo |
| Categories | Category tree with drag-reorder, SEO, translations, soft-delete/restore | **Sample data** in demo |
| Orders | Order list/detail, status changes, refunds, cancel, notes, CSV export, invoices | **Sample data** in demo |
| Transactions | Payment records, retry failed, fraud flags, audit log, CSV | **Sample data** in demo |
| Users & Roles | Team members, roles/permissions, invitations, session/audit history | **Sample data** in demo |
| Monitoring | System health + security/event feeds, queues, webhooks | Health is live; feeds are sample |
| Analytics | Revenue, orders, top products, plus visitors/funnels | Revenue/orders demo from sample; traffic analytics **Coming soon** |

## What's polished and worth showing off

A full UX pass was done across storefront, dashboard, admin, and editor:
- Clean, consistent buttons and controls everywhere (one design system).
- Smooth, tasteful motion — cards and sections animate in, buttons respond to hover/press — and it automatically respects "reduce motion" accessibility settings.
- Works responsively down to phone size.

## Honest "coming soon" list (don't promise these as live)

- **Live business data** (real products/orders/customers) — connects per-customer during onboarding; demos use sample data.
- **Saving edits to the cloud** — today the editor saves drafts in the browser; server-side save/publish is an onboarding integration.
- **Traffic analytics** (visitors, funnels, heatmaps) — the screens exist; the data pipeline is not built yet.
- **Per-customer sitemaps / advanced SEO automation** — baseline SEO is in; full automation is roadmap.

## Quick answers to likely prospect questions

- **"Do we need a developer to change our store?"** No — the Project Editor covers branding, colors, layout, pages, menus, languages, and feature toggles self-service.
- **"Can we have our own domain and branding?"** Yes — each marketplace is its own tenant with its own domain, logo, colors, and content.
- **"Multiple languages?"** Yes — add/remove languages in the editor; content is editable per language.
- **"Is it safe to experiment?"** Yes — changes are drafts until Published.
- **"Is it mobile-friendly?"** Yes — responsive across phone/tablet/desktop.

## One rule for demos

If a screen shows sample/placeholder data or a "pending backend" label, say **"this connects to your live data during onboarding"** — it's a real, built screen waiting on integration, not a gap in the product.