1. I made changes to my website, but I don’t see the changes?

Commonly, website editors will see a new change on their “Preview” of their website but not on the live site that customers see. When you edit your website, saving your changes is not the final step. You also have to “publish” the site to push those changes to the live site.

Publish your Website:

• Log into your DC account
• Click on Websites Menu> Add/Edit Websites
• Click on “Edit” next to your website
• Here click on “Website Publisher“
• Now click on “Publish New Changes“
• Changes will take place in less than 15 minutes

2. Why do I see Retail pricing on my order?

DistributorCentral will allow you to view Retail and Net pricing during your Distributor Order Process. You can switch back and forth in the top left corner of the order. See image below:

3. Can I change my username and password?

Yes, you will receive a default username and password when your account is first generated and you can change it after you log into your DC account for the first time.

See this video and this guide.

4. I received an order from my website. What do I do now?

You should always test your ordering process on your website so that you are not surprised and unprepared when you receive your first online order. 

Here is a video to learn what to do with your first order.

5. How do I change my contact information?

You will always manage your own contact information that correspondence is sent to from inside your DC account. You can customize it by following these steps:

• Log into your account
• Click on Account Menu> Account Maintenance
• Click on Contacts tab on the left
• “Edit” or “Add Similar” to customize your contact information

6. How do I find the Supplier of a product that my customer found on my website?

Your website is meant for your customer to do research, so you won’t find the Supplier or net pricing there. You can log into your DistributorCentral account at www.distributorcentral.com to find the Suppliers information.

• Log into your account
• On the home page, type the item number in the “Product Search” field and hit go.
• You will see the Supplier of each product above the product image in the search results.

7. How do I pay my Suppliers?

You will be able to enter the type of payment that each Supplier offers to you when you create an order. If you would like to pay the Supplier with a type of payment that they are not currently accepting through DC, you will need to contact the Supplier directly to pay them.

8. How is freight handled?

Each Supplier does have the opportunity to enter in freight data for their products. Not all Suppliers are currently taking advantage of this feature though. If the Supplier offers freight it will automatically calculate on any orders that your customers place. If the Supplier does not offer freight, you will not have freight calculated on the order. 

As a Distributor, you can utilize a freight preference to customize the way freight is calculated on your orders.

Click here for a blog entry explaining that preference.

9. Who do I ask product questions?

Each Supplier is responsible for entering and maintaining their product data in the DC system. They have an account where they log in and use the product editor. Each Supplier also processes their own orders. It is best to contact the Supplier directly with any product or order questions.

10. How does tax calculate on orders?

DistributorCentral does calculate tax automatically on customer orders for Distributors. It is based on the local tax rates and only charges in-state based on the customer’s address.

You can set a customer to be tax-exempt as well:

• Click on Customers menu
• Find that customer
• Click on ”Info” and then on “Terms“
• Select “Yes” next to Tax exempt question.

11. How do I do a reorder?

You can easily create a reorder of any previous order in your DistributorCentral account. 

• First, find the original order.
• You can do this by entering in the original order info on the home page under “Order Search.”
• Then you will see a “Reorder” button on the right of the Customer Order and also the Supplier Order Summary. 
• 
• Click on “Reorder” then choose the type of reorder. Click here to learn about the reorder types.
• Make your changes and Save/Send the Order along.

12. Why is DistributorCentral FREE for Distributors?

DistributorCentral is a service that has been provided by each of our participating Suppliers. They have invested millions of dollars so that you can access their products and market them to your customers without being charged.

13. Can I use my own website address or do I have to use a given DC website address?

When you create a website using the DC web editor, you can use your own domain name and DistributorCentral will host that domain name as well as email free of charge. 

You do have to purchase your domain name from a registrar like Godaddy.com first though don’t purchase any hosting with them.

Click here to view our blog entries regarding adding a domain name to any website that you have created.

Note: you will also be able to access your site from our DC given address in addition to your domain name if you used that address. If a customer accesses your website using your domain name, then they will only see that domain name as they navigate your site – until they get to the secure portion of the shopping cart.

14. My website disappeared from the website list in my account.

If you have previously had a website listed under the Websites List area but now it is gone, you probably selected to make that website a Template on the Website Publisher Page. To see that site, you would now scroll down to the bottom of the Websites List area and click on “Custom Templates” to see that site.

You would select “Use” if you would like to make a copy of this new template to use and that will list under the Websites list section for you to access.

Note: you cannot give it the same name as the website that you made a template from.

Here’s how:

1 – Create a Fan Page for your Company in FaceBook
- Skip these steps below if you have already created a Fan Page in FaceBook
- Login to your FaceBook account, and then click on the Ads and Pages tab
- Next, select the Create Page link
- From this point, setup and customize your FaceBook fan page to your liking
- Click here for further information on creating FaceBook fan pages

2 – Add the Application to your FaceBook Fan Page
- Next, while logged in to both your FaceBook account and your DistributorCentral account, click or go to the URL below
http://apps.facebook.com/distributorcentral
- Then click on the Click here to add this to your Facebook page link
- On the next page, click on the Add to my Page tab (see image below)
- Then click on the Add to Page button in the pop-up window

3 – Add the Application to your FaceBook Fan Page.
- While still logged in to both your DistributorCentral and FaceBook Account, go your fan page for your business, and click on the Edit Page button in the upper right portion of the page (see image below)

- Click on the Apps tab on  the left side of the page
- Scroll down the page until you see the DistributorCentral application, and then click on the Go to App link (see image below)

- Next, click on the dropdown menu on the following page which will show all of the available website pages that you have created in you DistributorCentral account (If it does not show this, then make sure you are logged in to our DistributorCentral account while in this are in your FB account)
- Select the page that you would like to display, and then click on Save (We suggest that you select a website page that you are featuring products on, see image below)

You will now have a Products tab on your FaceBook Fan Page that will display the content on the website page that you have chosen to advertise (see example below).

Here’s instructions on how we suggest to setup a page on your DistributorCentral website to use the FaceBook application:
- Go to your Websites menu and select Add/Edit Websites
- Edit your website, and go the Add/Edit Pages area
- Select to add a Custom Page to your website
- Name the page, and select to not have the page link display on the website (see image below)

- Next, setup blocks to use the Feature Products tool
- We suggest using the 4 across block layout and using the featured product tool in the first three sections, leaving the fourth section blank (see image below)

- When using the Featured Product tool, select “Small” for the image size and indicate to have the Width set to 20% (see image below)
- Repeat this process to add as many featured products as you like

- Finally, publish your website, and then follow the steps at the beginning of this blog entry to add this page to your FaceBook Fan Page. The products page on your FaceBook Fan page should then look similar to the example below.

Here’s how to view them: 

1. Click on the Browse link in the Email Blast section located in the lower left portion of the Home page in your account (see example below).

2. Once you have conducted a product search within your account, click on the Email Blasts tab. This will then display the Supplier email blasts that pertain to the search criteria that you have entered (see example below).

This is a free service that we provide you as a DistributorCentral user to learn more about your DistributorCentral account.

We offer a wide variety of classes to you including these below for Distributors:

• Features Overview
• Website Editor
• Product Search and Presentations

There are also many Supplier classes available including these:

• Features Overview
• Product Setup
• Website Editor
• Customer Service Overview
• Order Management
• and more!

You can sign up for any of these classes by going to this page below at www.distributorcentral.com:

http://www.distributorcentral.com/websites/DistributorCentral/webinars.cfm

Once you choose the class and time, you can register your information to request to attend the class.

You are welcome to attend as many classes as you would like and DistributorCentral does not charge you to attend these classes.

To do this, just do a normal search in your account:

1. Log in at www.distributorcentral.com
2. On the Home page, do a keyword search
3. Hit Go

Here you will see the search results page, but you will see other tabs as well across the top of the search results.

The Products tab is our traditional search that searches the Products in DistributorCentral set up by our Suppliers. These have a shopping cart  and include all charges.

The Categories tab is a full list of every Category that a product is associated with in this search.

The Suppliers Tab lists all the Suppliers that have products that matched this search. This also includes a map to see the location of each Supplier.

Virtual catalogs tab allows you to research all of the virtual catalogs loaded in our system from any Supplier in the industry that match your search criteria.

Email Blasts tab works also allows you to research the indexed email blasts uploaded by any Supplier in the industry to our system.

The Supplier Websites tab gives you Supplier websites that match your search to help aid in product research.

The addition of these new search features was done as an aid to help with product research.

Below is a link to a document that could be helpful for you to optimize your website for search engines. This document is specifically targeted to optimizing your website for Google.

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide PDF