It's important to provide quick links especially on your home page. This is your window to the world. While not all customers enter your website through your home page, many do. And so do search engines.

That makes your home page doubly important.

On one side it gives you the chance to promote your best products and to show your customers who you are. Why should they buy from you, rather than from your competition, or from eBay or Amazon?

This isn’t about offering the best prices. It’s about differentiating yourself and establishing trust. If you only list your products and try to offer  the lowest pricing, then how can a customer start relating to your business in a special way?  Only after you have established trust will they buy from you. And if the shopping experience went well, they are more likely to buy from you again and again.

A journey, which starts on your home page.

On the other side the home page also helps search engines find out about you. This doesn’t mean you should write home page content for search engines. You should always write for your customers.

But by doing this you can pay attention to some search terms your customers might be using. And help your website rise in search engine results. Have a look at your home page and check, if it could use some work.

Since the release of ShopFactory V11, you can now add 3 types of link image groups depending on the SFX template you are using -

1. Link Image Group 1 shows the banner links as banner slideshows

2. Link Image Group 2 - linkboxes are usually displayed above the page title but in some website themes, the links are displayed on the far-right column

3. Link Image Group 3 - linkboxes are displayed under the Products section - bottom part of the page.

Here's a visual example of the Link Image Groups using SFX-BASE-AA template:

ShopFactory Demo shop: http://shopfactory.com/demoshop/

- Open your shop in ShopFactory

- At the left-tree menu, double-click on the department/page you want to add image links. This will open the EditView page properties dialog

- Click on the "Properties" button (top right - beside "Finish" button)

- At the left menu, select Link Image Group 1 - if you want to add banner slideshow links

- You should be able to add image links to a page, product, internet address, or an image

- Please ensure the image you are adding is wide enough - use an external photo editing application to create your banner images. We recommend at least 1280px x 700px but this really depends on the template you are using.

- Click ok

- Save and preview in external browser.

*To add Link Image Group 2, repeat above steps but this time, select "Link Image Group 2" from the page properties menu.

**To add Link Image Group 3, repeat above steps but this time, select "Link Image Group 3" from the page properties menu.

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If you have old versions of ShopFactory (i.e. V10)

ShopFactory has a page style where you can display slideshow banner links within a page.

ASSUMPTION: You’ve already edited your banner images using a Photo Editor so the images are wide enough to fit on the page.

- Open your shop in ShopFactory.

- At the left tree menu, right click on a page and "Select a page design..." 

- Select 10-PAAI either variation Banner 1 or Banner 2

- At the same Page Properties box, click on the ADD NEW BANNER LINK menu option

- At the left column, select the page with products you want to link via the banner slideshow.

* If you want to link directly to a specific product, select the product from the Items list below the page list section (see below screenshot)

(Do not select a product from the items list if you wish to link directly to a page)

- Click on the >> button

- Click OK

- Save and do an external preview to see how it works.