You can temporarily close your Lightspeed eCom (E-Series) online storefront to visitors if it is under construction, you’re having a vacation, or you currently can't accept orders for any other reason. After you close your storefront, customers won’t be able to view your catalog, and they will see a special “Closed for maintenance” notice instead of any of the online catalog pages. If you're using eCom with Ecommerce, placing online orders will also become unavailable.

Closing the online storefront from customers will not affect your POS subscription.

Temporarily closing eCom storefront to visitors

You can stop visitors from accessing your eCom storefront by enabling the maintenance mode. After you close the storefront to visitors, you can still access your eCom admin panel and view and edit the catalog and all the other settings, including previously placed online orders.

To close your storefront to visitors:

1. From your Retail POS, go to Online tab > Settings.
2. On the General tab, switch to Store Profile (or Profile).

3. Click Close Storefront for Maintenance (or Close for Maintenance if you're using eCom without Ecommerce):

   

Now neither you nor your customers will be able to view products in your eCom online catalog and place orders in your online store, and customers won’t be able to access their accounts. On any of the online storefront pages, "The store is closed for maintenance" (or "The catalog is closed for maintenance" if you're using eCom without Ecommerce) message will appear. 

In case you’re using eCom (E-Series) Instant Site, the catalog sections will simply be hidden from the front page, and no additional message will appear there.

Keeping eCom storefront open to chosen visitors

After you close your storefront to the general public, you can still keep it open to some visitors like yourself and your staff and/or specific customers. For example, you can keep the store open to yourself, so if you make design changes or update the catalog, you can check the result live.

To open storefront to chosen visitors:

1. From your Retail POS, go to Online tab > Settings.
2. On the General tab, switch to Store Profile (or Profile).

3. In the Remain open for IPs text box, add the IP addresses of those who can view your online catalog/store. If there are several IP addresses, separate them by a comma.

   

Changing the "Closed for maintenance" notice

You can edit the default "The store is closed for maintenance"(or "The catalog is closed for maintenance") text with the help of a CSS code. For example, you can give more details in this notice about why you are closed and when the store will be back online. Replace the We will reopen soon text in the example code with your custom message and add this code to your eCom site theme:

/* Change the text of the closed storefront label */
span.ecwid-maintenance-message {
font-size: 0;
}
span.ecwid-maintenance-message:after { content: 'We will reopen soon';
font-size: 30px;
}

Learn how to add CSS codes to your eCom site.

Opening eCom storefront back to visitors

Once you are ready to show your online catalog to customers, you can open the storefront back so that it is available to any site visitor again.

To open your storefront to visitors:

1. From your Retail POS, go to Online tab > Settings.
2. On the General tab, switch to Store Profile (or Profile).

3. Click Open Storefront (or Go Live):

   

Now your storefront is open to everyone.

If you are using eCom (E-Series) Instant Site, the catalog sections will be visible to customers again.

Other ways to temporarily stop taking online orders and hide your online catalog

Closing your storefront is a quick and easy way to hide your online catalog and inform customers of the reasons. You can use other ways to temporarily stop taking online orders and hide your catalog if they suit your needs better:

• If you're using eCom with Ecommerce, you can switch to the Showroom mode to let your customers browse your product catalog without checkout. For that, go to Online > Settings > Online store in Retail POS and click Deactivate online store.
• To open and close your storefront based on a specific schedule, you can use the We’re Closed app from the Lightspeed eCom App Market. The app can optionally allow customers to browse your online store without placing orders (the Add to Bag buttons will be hidden).
• You can have the storefront closed and reopened automatically at a certain time with the help of a custom script based on the eCom (Ecwid) API. If you need help with programming this script, you can ask someone from your IT team or hire a third-party developer.
• If you’re using the eCom (E-Series) Instant Site and want to keep a simple promo site for your business, you can remove the catalog sections from your site pages.
• If you want to block your customers from choosing particular dates for order pickup (e.g., on holidays when you don’t work), you can set blackout dates for your pickup methods.
• If you want customers to continue buying from you and inform them that the orders will be processed with a delay, you can add an announcement bar with that warning to your online store.