ShopSite Merchant Newsletter
Vol. 5 - Issue 1, Q3, 2005
- ShopSite 8.0 Released
- Merchant Tip
- The "Support Queue"
- ShopSite In The News
- eCommerce Articles
- Knowledgebase Articles
- Current Product Information
ShopSite Releases Version 8
Version 8 of ShopSite has been released. V8 includes a number of merchant requested additions such as the following ShopSite Pro features:
- Rewards - Reward loyal customers and encourage new customers with rewards such as "buy 10 get 1 free" or "buy two pairs of shoes, get a free pair of socks". Rewards can be set up per-order, or over time for registered customers.
- Create/Modify Gift Certificates - Merchants can now create Gift Certificates in the back office, as well as editing the balance of existing Gift Certificates.
- Option to prevent changing order options in shopping cart - Merchants can select not to allow customers to change order options from the Shopping Cart screen.
- Option to not store payment information in Customer Registration - Merchants can select not to allow customers to store payment information in their Customer Registration settings, in order to comply with Credit Card security guidelines
- Display Inventory - New Custom Template tags have been created to allow merchants to display realtime inventory numbers in a pop-up window.
The following features are in both ShopSite Manager and ShopSite Pro:
- Tell A Friend - Store Pages and Product More Info Pages can have links that allow visitors to send an acquaintance an E-mail containing a short message and a link to the page.
- Order Download Format - When downloading orders, merchants can now pick which fields to download, and the order in which they will be downloaded. In addition, order fields can be renamed to match local database field names prior to download.
- Automated XML Order Download in Manager - ShopSite Manager stores will now allow merchants to download orders in XML format using the automated XML download API. This allows Manager merchants to use the QuickBooks Order Transfer Module.
- Page/Product Download - When downloading Page or Product information, merchants can now specify individual fields and the download order, as well as changing downloaded field names to match with locally stored database field names.
- Option to not index subproducts - Merchants can choose not to index subproducts, so only parent products are found during a search.
The following features are in ShopSite Starter, ShopSite Manager and ShopSite Pro:
- Searchable Orders DB - Merchants with Pro stores can now search on various fields such as Order Date, New, Order Number, Orders with Coupons, etc.
- PayPal Website Payments Pro - ShopSite supports PayPal's new payment system offering.
- Removed Warning about leaving a Secure Page - Users with JavaScript enabled will not see a warning when going back to the non-secure Order screen from the secure Billing/Shipping screen.
- Display Payment Errors on the Billing/Shipping screen - When using an automated payment gateway, errors are now displayed on the standard Billing/Shipping screen, rather than on their own screen.
- E-mail address Validation - Merchants can select to display a second E-mail address entry box, which must match the first E-mail address, to confirm the customer has entered the correct E-mail address.
- Packing Slips - ShopSite now allows merchants to view and print Packing Slips for order fulfilment. Packing slips contain all the important order information except the billing information, so order fulfilment staff don't have access to customer credit card numbers.
- ShopSite Transaction ID - ShopSite now creates and stores an order Transaction ID number, which it passes to gateways. Merchants can use this number to easily match payment information in a Virtual Terminal to a specific ShopSite order.
- Print Order - A Print button is displayed on the View Order screen, so merchants can print the order to a local printer.
- Option to Not Store Credit Card Numbers - Merchants using real-time payment gateways can choose to never store Credit Card numbers in order to comply with Visa security guidelines (similar guidelines exist for MasterCard, Discover, and American Express).
- Verified By Visa - Verisign payment gateway now supports the Verified By Visa program.
- Verisign Fraud Control - ShopSite passes the information required by Verisign's Fraud Control system, allowing merchants to participate in the program.
- PsiGate - the PSiGate payment gateway, which works with both Canadian and United States merchant accounts, is now integrated with ShopSite.
- Two New Themes - Two new themes with templates for all the customer screens (including Shopping Cart, Search, etc.) have been added.
- Themes set Search, Cart, and other Templates - ShopSite themes can now set templates and colors for the Shopping Cart, Search (Pro, Manager), Customer Registration (Pro), Gift Certificates (Pro), and Tell A Friend (Pro, Manager), in addition to Pages and Products.
- Subproduct More Information Page Templates - Subproducts can now use their own template for More Information pages, rather than using the More Information page template of the parent product.
- Color Wheel - Color selection throughout the ShopSite back office now displays a swatch with the selected color, and uses a visual color wheel selection tool.
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Merchant Tip
"How do you insert a text field where the customer can include where they heard about your business or where they were referred from?" Something that would look like the following:
How did you hear about our website? |
Solution
By using the custom fields option for ShopSite Pro on the Checkout screen, one ShopSite user was able to do this and shared the HTML of how they did it. In ShopSite go to Commerce Setup > Order System > Checkout. Then in the Custom Checkout Fields section perform the following steps:
- checkmark to Display Custom Checkout Fields.
- checkmark to use field01 (the HTML code below assumes field01 will be used.)
- under Type choose the Select option from the pull-down menu
- finally paste the html code below in one of the HTML sections depending on where you would like the survey question to be displayed:
How did you hear about our website? <select name="field01" size="1"> <option selected value="Please Choose">Please Choose</option> <option value="Search Engine">Search Engine</option> <option value="Brochure">Brochure</option> <option value="Package Insert Flyer">Package Insert Flyer</option> <option value="Intex Trifold Brochure">Intex Trifold Brochure</option> <option value="Magazine Advertisement">Magazine Advertisement</option> <option value="Newspaper Article">Newspaper Article</option> <option value="Television Ad">Television Ad</option> <option value="Radio Ad">Radio Ad</option> <option value="Website Link">Website Link</option> <option value="Friend or Family">Friend or Family</option> <option value="Other">Other</option> </select>
Submit a Tip
Do you have a marketing or ShopSite tip you'd like to share with other merchants? If so, submit it to
The "Support Queue"
Q. After uploading a tab-delimited products or pages file that was created or edited in Microsoft Excel, I have noticed that many of my ShopSite fields contain extra double quotes (") that I didn't put there. Why is this, and how can I prevent it?
A. These extra quotes are being added by Microsoft Excel when you export from the Excel spreadsheet into a tab-delimited format. The best way to avoid this is to copy-and-paste the data from Excel into a text editor (such as Notepad) rather than use Excel's Save or Save As functions.
To read more about this solution, please see the following knowledgebase article: S02720 Solution 1.
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ShopSite In The News
ScanAlert and ShopSite Unveil One Click PCI Compliance for ShopSite Merchants at No Added Cost
"One Click ComplianceTM," a new integrated ecommerce service from ShopSite and ScanAlert, will enable tens of thousands of online merchants using ShopSite's shopping cart application to become automatically compliant with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard"
You can view this complete article at http://www.shopsite.com/news_04122005_one_click_compliance.html
ShopSite, Inc. Receives Fourth "Top 25 Under 5" Award
"For the fourth year in a row, ShopSite, Inc., was recognized today as one of the fastest growing companies in Utah. ShopSite was presented the "Top 25 under 5" award by the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum."
You can view the complete article at http://www.shopsite.com/news_top25-05.html
E-Commerce Vendor ShopSite Announces Version 8 of Leading Shopping Cart System
"8.0 Pro adds features such as Rewards and Tell A Friend which merchants can use to increase customer retention and to obtain new customers"
You can view the complete article at http://www.shopsite.com/news_8_0_released.html
For more articles on ShopSite go to http://www.shopsite.com/news.html.
eCommerce Articles
Online Shopping Trends
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/research/article.php/3524581
"Four or five years ago, it was somewhat difficult for a no-name to find their way onto the desktop of a consumer," Mudd says. Today, though, if a new merchant "is able to bid up a keyword high enough, or if they're able to compete effectively in price, which is the primary means of ranking on comparison shopping engines, they can find themselves displayed pretty prominently." Heading the list of things customers would like to see are two perennial favorites: protection of credit card information against fraud, and reasonable shipping and handling fees.
Selling to the older Shopper
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/trends/article.php/3532196
Seniors are a lucrative market that e-tailers can't afford to ignore. If you look at where the growth is going to come from in the next ten years, it's going to come almost only from adding seniors to the Net population. To optimize commercial appeal for older users, be aware of the following: font size, high contrast background and foreground, navigation, colored links . . .
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Knowledgebase Articles
The following article was recently added to the support knowledgebase:
S5487: Version 8.0.1 Maintenance Release
S5495: Add or Edit screens for Pages and Products loads really really slow
Current Product Information
Most recent release of ShopSite:
- Version 8.0.1 on Linux, Solaris/SPARC, Windows Server 2000 and 2003, FreeBSD or BSDI servers.
To upgrade your store to ShopSite 8 contact your authorized reseller partner. You can find contact information for all our partners here.
