Your shop

Bottle can build a website for your business from what you already keep here. Shoppers see your products with their prices, your delivery promise, your opening hours and how to reach you. It starts on a free bottle address, and you can connect your own domain when you are ready.

Shoppers can order and pay by card on your shop, and approved trade customers can order on account. Each order arrives in Orders like any other, marked From your shop, and goes on a round the same way. On the Shop plan, with no rounds, it appears in Your day under To deliver today on the day it is due. See Delivering it yourself.

Your shop comes with every plan, Shop included, at no extra cost. See Your shop in Plans and billing.

This guide is about a shop that Bottle builds for you. To bring products in from a WooCommerce or Shopify shop you already run, see Connecting your shop.

Setting up

Open your user menu and choose Your shop, then Set up your shop. Bottle makes your shop and gives it a free address such as acme-gas.shop.getbottle.app.

Nobody can see your shop until you publish it, so take your time.

Only owners and admins can change the shop.

How the editor works

The settings are on the left and a preview of your shop is on the right. On a smaller screen, switch between them with Edit and Preview.

Changes save on their own a moment after you stop typing. The words at the top say Saving…, then Saved. If a change cannot be saved, they say why, such as an email address that does not look right, and Try again sends it once more.

The preview shows each change once it saves. Use Phone, Tablet and Computer to see your shop at each size, and Open in a new tab to look round it properly. The preview link works for half an hour, and Bottle gets a fresh one while the editor is open.

The look

Under Look:

Design: Yard is ready now. It is classic, with big photographs. Flame and Ledger are coming soon.
Colours: a main colour for buttons and links, a highlight colour for labels such as offers, and a background colour. Type a colour such as #1F3A5F, pick one from the wheel, or press one of the suggested colours. If your choices would make words hard to read, Bottle says which and what to change.
Fonts: four pairs, each shown as it will look.
Rounded corners: slide left for square buttons and boxes, right for round ones.
Logo: shown at the top of every page. A PNG with a see-through background looks best. Until you add one here, the shop uses the logo from Business settings → Your business. Select Use a different logo for the shop to give it its own.
Browser icon: the small square picture in the browser tab. Leave it empty and Bottle uses your logo.

When you choose a picture, you can move, zoom and turn it to fit the frame before it uploads.

Picture sizes

Each picture box says the size that looks sharp. If a picture comes out smaller than the minimum after you fit it, Bottle warns you that it will look blurred, and you can still use it. Bottle never makes a picture bigger.

Picture	Shape	Best size	At least
Banner	Wide, 21 by 9	2520 × 1080 pixels	1680 × 720 pixels
Logo	Its own shape. A PNG with a see-through background looks best	600 pixels wide or more	300 pixels wide
Browser icon	Square	512 × 512 pixels	192 × 192 pixels
Sharing picture	Wide, 1.91 by 1	1200 × 630 pixels	600 × 315 pixels
Product picture	Square	1600 × 1600 pixels	800 × 800 pixels
Category tile	Landscape, 4 by 3	1600 × 1200 pixels	800 × 600 pixels

The home page

Under Home page, write your Headline and a short Strapline under it, such as the area you cover.

Banners

Banners are the wide pictures across the top of the home page. You can have up to six. Each one has a picture, a heading, some text, and a button that goes to a category, a product or another address.

Shoppers see the first banner that is showing today. Give a banner Show from and Show until dates and it comes and goes on its own, which suits a bank holiday offer. Leave the dates empty to show it all the time.

Use the arrows beside a banner to change the order. Remove takes it off.

Parts of the home page

The home page is made of parts: the banner, your categories, featured products, the delivery promise with a postcode checker, Google reviews, about, questions and answers, and contact details. Untick a part to hide it, and use the arrows to change the order.

Featured products

Search for a product by name or SKU and press Add. You can feature up to twelve, in the order you choose. A product marked Not for sale on Bottle Shop is not switched on in your products, so shoppers will not see it until you switch on Sell on Bottle Shop for it. See Products.

The rest of the page

Write a few lines About your business, a one-line Delivery promise such as “Free next-day delivery when you order by noon”, and the questions customers ask you most under Questions and answers.

Contact

Under Contact, add your phone number, the email address shoppers should use, the address to show, your opening hours and your social media pages.

To show your Google reviews, add your Google place ID. Search for “Place ID Finder” on Google, find your business on the map, and copy the ID it shows.

Taking orders online

Under Ordering, a list at the top says what is still needed before your shop can take orders:

Card payments are set up with Stripe. Shoppers pay by card when they order. See Getting paid.
There is at least one delivery area, or collection is on. Otherwise there is no way for an order to reach the shopper.
At least one product is on Bottle Shop. Switch on Sell on Bottle Shop for each product. See Products.

The same answer shows beside Publish at the top of the page: Ready for orders, or how many things are left to do. Your shop can be published before it is ready; shoppers then see your products but cannot check out.

Shop areas

A shop area says where your shop delivers and how. It is made of your delivery areas, the same ones your rounds use, so each postcode and town is set up once. Each shop area offers one or more of your delivery options, each with its days, its charge and any order-by time, so the shop promises what you already offer on an order. Set up delivery areas and delivery options under Business settings, Delivery, see Delivery options.

To add a shop area, press Add a shop area, then:

Give it a Name, such as “Thirsk and villages”.
Under Delivery areas, choose the delivery areas it covers. Each one shows its colour and what it covers, such as “KT3, KT4, Epsom”. Manage delivery areas opens Business settings, Delivery.
Under Delivery options, tick the options offered there. With more than one, use the arrows to put them in the order shoppers see them, such as the cheapest first.
Optionally, set Free delivery over a basket value, and a Minimum order for that area. Both are basket values with VAT. There is no minimum for the whole shop; each area has its own, or none.
Press Save shop area.

A delivery area can be in one shop area only. One that another shop area already has shows which it is in and cannot be chosen.

Use the arrows to put areas in order, Edit to change one and Remove to stop delivering there. Orders already placed are not changed.

Shoppers outside every area cannot order delivery. If you offer collection, they can still collect.

Collection

Switch on Offer collection and add the address shoppers collect from, with any notes, such as “Ring the bell at the gate”. Collection is offered whatever the shopper’s postcode.

Other ordering settings

Order-by times: set on each delivery option, not here. Orders after an option’s order-by time count from the next day, and your shop shows a countdown to it.
Ask about empties: shoppers buying a cylinder are asked if they have an empty to swap. Without one, the deposit is added.
Age check: shoppers confirm they are 18 or over before they pay.
Show “Prefer to order by phone?” on product pages: on by default. Product pages offer your phone number and email from Contact for shoppers who would rather ring.
Trade account enquiries: businesses can apply for a trade account from your shop. See Trade accounts.

Stock rules

These are for products you count. See Counting stock. Cylinders follow your cylinder stock instead.

When stock is low: Keep selling, or Keep selling and say Low stock on the product. You are told in Bottle either way, at the number you set on each product.
When something sells out: Stop selling, so it shows as out of stock and cannot go in a basket, or Keep selling as back-order, so shoppers can still order it and see that it ships when back in stock.

Each product can follow these rules or set its own.

Terms of sale

Shoppers agree to your terms of sale when they order.

Use Bottle’s template: terms filled in with your business details, on your shop’s terms page. These are your terms, as the seller, so read them and make sure they suit you.
Link to your own: type the address of your own terms, such as yourbusiness.co.uk/terms. Until you add an address, your shop uses the template.

Trade accounts and approvals

With Trade account enquiries on, a business can apply for a trade account from your shop. It signs up, then gives its business name, phone number, and optionally its company and VAT numbers, a delivery address, other contacts and a note.

Owners and admins are emailed about each new application, and it shows in the bell, on Your day and as a count at the top of Customers. Until you approve it, the business pays your normal prices.

To decide, open Customers, Trade applications and choose the business to see everything it sent. Then:

Approve, and either Add as a new trade customer, made from what they sent, with Pay later and the days they have to pay, or Pay now by card; or Join to an existing customer if you already deliver to them. They are emailed to say so, with their trade prices.
Decline, with a reason. The reason is sent to them.

Once approved, a trade customer signs in on your shop to see their trade prices and any rates you have agreed with them. On Pay later terms they can order on account, and the order is invoiced like any other. See Shop accounts.

Under Search and sharing, write the title and description Google shows for your shop. Bottle shows how it may look and counts the characters. Google usually shows about 60 characters of a title and 160 of a description.

The Sharing picture appears when someone shares a link to your shop on social media or in a message.

Your own domain

Every shop keeps its free bottle address, even after you add your own domain.

To use your own domain:

Under Domains, type the domain you want in Your domain, such as shop.northgategas.co.uk, and press Add domain.
Bottle shows two records to add. Sign in to the company you bought the domain from and open its DNS settings.
Add the first record:
- For a name under your domain, such as shop.northgategas.co.uk, add a CNAME record pointing at shops.getbottle.app.
- For the domain itself, such as northgategas.co.uk, add an A record with the address Bottle shows. A domain itself cannot take a CNAME record.
Add a TXT record named _bottle. followed by your domain, with the value Bottle shows. This proves the domain is yours.
Back in Bottle, press Check now.

Each domain shows where it stands:

Waiting for DNS: Bottle has not found the records yet. New records can take up to a few hours to reach everywhere.
Connected: your shop answers at this domain, with a secure certificate.
Problem: Bottle checked and says what is wrong, such as a TXT record that is missing or a CNAME that points somewhere else.

Once a domain is connected, press Make this the main address to use it in links, search results and emails. Bottle checks every connected domain each day and emails you if one stops pointing at your shop.

Where to add the records

Cloudflare: open your domain, then DNS, then Records, then Add record. Turn the orange cloud off so the record says DNS only, or your shop’s certificate cannot be issued.
GoDaddy: go to My Products, choose DNS next to your domain, then Add New Record.
123-reg: open your domain in the control panel, choose Manage DNS, then the Advanced DNS tab.
IONOS: go to Domains and SSL, choose the cog next to your domain, then DNS, then Add record.

Some companies want only the first part of the name, such as shop instead of shop.northgategas.co.uk, and _bottle.shop for the TXT record.

Publishing

The top of the page shows where your shop stands:

Not published: nobody can see it yet.
Live: shoppers see it at your address.
Live with unpublished changes: you have changed something since you last published. Shoppers still see the published version.

Press Publish to put your shop live, or Publish changes to show shoppers your latest changes. Any change still saving is saved first.

Unpublish takes your shop offline. Shoppers who visit see a page saying the shop is closed. Your settings stay as they are, and you can publish again at any time.

If your trial or subscription ends, shoppers see the same closed page rather than an error, so their bookmarks still work. Your own domain keeps working for 30 days. Choose a plan and it opens as it was, with nothing to publish again.

What shoppers see

Shoppers see the home page in the order you set, your products on the shelf with prices including VAT, your contact details and opening hours, and your questions and answers. Search engines can find your shop by the title and description you wrote.

When they order, shoppers:

check their postcode, and see the delivery charge and the first day it can come, or choose collection;
see Low stock or Out of stock on a product, as your stock rules say;
answer whether they have an empty to swap, if you ask;
agree to your terms of sale and pay by card, or, for an approved trade customer on pay-later terms, put the order on account;
get an email saying the order is taken, with a reference to track it.

Your shop works on phones, tablets and computers. Nothing from your office, such as other customers, orders or invoices, is ever shown on it.