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User guide

Setting up a box, from installing to going live.

A box is a list of steps. Once that idea lands, the rest of this app is choosing which steps yours has and what goes in them.

Before you start

Two things have to be on the site already.

  • Wix Stores, with the products you want people to put in boxes. A product with a photograph and a price is all a box needs.
  • Wix CMS. Installing Packhouse Build does not install it, and without it every one of the app’s data calls fails. If CMS is already in your dashboard sidebar you have it; if not, add it from the App Market first. The app says so plainly rather than failing quietly.

Then install Packhouse Build and approve the permission prompt. The collections the app needs create themselves at that point.

Your first box, in three questions

The app opens its own walkthrough on a shop with no boxes. If you skipped it, Set a box up step by step on the Build Your Own Box tab opens it again.

  1. Start with a shape. Pick a ready-made box — a gift box, three sizes with a nudge, or an empty one — and change whatever you like afterwards. Nothing about it is fixed.
  2. What goes in the box. Tick the categories customers may fill it from. Leave them all clear to offer everything you sell.
  3. How it looks. A starting point for colours and corners. Your own CSS lives further down the same tab if you want it.

Press Save, then publish your site. A new box arrives switched on, so there is usually nothing to switch.

The four kinds of step

Every box is built from these, in whatever order and however many you like. This is the whole model.

Choose your box — sets the price and how much it holds

Each size has a name, what it adds to the price, and how much it holds. Give it one of your own products and it can take that product’s price and picture instead, and its stock moves with the box.

A choice — ribbons, cards, colours, wrapping

Whatever you offer alongside the box. Each option can carry a price and a photograph. At least and at most decide whether it is optional, one-of, or several — and at most 0 means no limit, for a step with no sensible ceiling.

Fill it — which of your products may go in

Scope it by category or by naming products. A category keeps up with itself as you add stock, where a list of named products quietly goes out of date.

A message — what to write in the card

With a length limit if you need one. It reaches the order beside the contents, so whoever packs it can read it.

Ask a step only when it applies. Any step can be set to appear only when something else was chosen — a card message that shows up only if a card was picked.

Capacity is counted in units, not items

A box of twelve holds twelve places. Most things take one. Set takes up room to 2 on a celebration cake and it takes two places, so a box of twelve holds six of them — or one cake and ten brownies.

That is the difference between a box that holds twelve of anything and a box that physically closes.

Charging for what costs more

  • A flat box price. Twenty-four pounds for any twelve. Simplest, and what most shops want.
  • Per item. The box price plus what each thing sells for, so an expensive line prices itself.
  • A surcharge on a category. Twenty-four pounds for any twelve, but a celebration slice adds fifty pence. Set it on the fill step.
  • A price on an option. A ribbon at £1.50, a printed card at £2.00 — or free, which says “no extra” rather than “£0.00”.

Putting it on your site

Two ways, and you can use both.

  • On a page of its own. In the Wix Editor, Add → Apps → Build Your Own Box, and drag it onto any page. Choose this if you sell more than one kind of box.
  • On a product page. Name one of your products on the box, and the builder replaces that product’s Add to basket button. Every other product page is left alone.

Letting customers change a box from the basket

A built box arrives as one line, and Wix offers no way to reopen it — so without this, changing one thing in a box of twelve means deleting the line and starting again. Two things turn it on:

  1. Tell the box which page it is on. The field is on the box itself: the address as it appears after your domain, such as /build-a-box. Without it there is nowhere to send anybody back to, and the link stays away rather than losing their box.
  2. Press “Add the link to my cart”, then publish. It appears under the items in your side cart as Change your box, and reopens the box exactly as they left it.

A box built after that is set up remembers its own page, so the link keeps working even if you move the page later.

Nudges, and filling the rest

  • Offer a bigger box where one would fit, in your own words — and see on What Sold how many took it.
  • Fill the rest for me. Finishes a half-empty box, for the whole thing or one category at a time.
  • Hide what you have run out of. A step can show only what is in stock, so nobody picks something you cannot pack.
  • Narrow a long fill with a category list down the side, so forty products stay browsable.

What the app does with your stock

A built box reaches your order as one line, and Wix does not know what is inside it — so without help, selling a box of twelve would leave all twelve still showing as in stock.

Packhouse Build takes the contents off the shelf when the box sells, and puts them back if the order is cancelled and you tell Wix to restock. There is nothing to switch on.

Two things it will not do quietly. Every movement is written down before any stock is touched, so an order Wix delivers twice cannot take the same thing off twice. And a product held as variants, or at more than one location, is reported rather than moved — there is no way to know which of them the box used, and choosing one would put the mistake on a shelf nobody is watching.

Reading what happened

Both figures are on the What Sold tab.

  • Boxes begun and boxes bought. The one thing your orders cannot tell you: how many people started filling a box and gave up. A box counts as begun the moment somebody chooses a size, and as bought when it reaches a basket — not when it is paid for.
  • What sold, with every box opened into its contents, so a jar sold inside one is counted as a jar. The box’s money is shared between what was in it, by what each thing sells for on its own; trimmings carry none of it.

Before you put it in front of customers

  1. Build one yourself, end to end, on your own site.
  2. Check the basket line reads the way you want — the name, the price, and the list underneath it.
  3. Place the order through your own checkout and look at it in Wix. Everything in the box should be on it.
  4. Check the stock of one thing that was inside went down.
  5. If you have set up the cart link, open the side cart and press Change your box.

Five minutes, and it is the difference between finding a problem yourself and hearing about it from a customer.

If something is not right

Support covers what to check when nothing appears on your site, what the app records and where, and how to reach a person. Or write to support@packhousebuild.co.uk.