CitrusStore 2.0

Cyclescheme Tender Type

2013-04-30T12:43:11Z

We’ve added Cyclescheme quotation emails to CitrusStore.

Customer Builds Order on CitrusStore –> Customer selects Cyclescheme as the payment method –> Customer receives Cyclescheme quotation via email.

This allows a customer to select Cyclescheme as a payment type, and the system will produce a quotation with your scheme membership number for the end user. The order will then download into the retail system so you can complete the order once you have the voucher. This provides a simple and cost effective way to capture Cyclescheme customers.

We are interested in feedback on developing this further, so if anyone is keen to get started down this route, contact Grant, Lizzie or Katya.

Grid Edit // Merchant Tools // Quickly Set Style Group

2013-04-29T20:48:45Z

Scott at Edge and Wax has provided budget to allow grid editing of “Style Group” so products can easily be built into style groups for both the front end of sites, and also Google Product Listing Adverts. The editing is fully real time, with no requirement to “click save” or wait for a postback.

We can add other dynamic fields, each one is £182 to add, and if we get a few customers wanting grid editing for different fields we can pop these into a popout box so the userinterface does not become confusing.

Google PLA – Extra fields in Citrus Store for creating Ad Groups - Create Ads targeting Specific products and styles

2013-04-25T10:29:41Z

Within a PLA campaign, an ad group lets you easily manage the status and default bids for one or more related ads as well as their shared set of keywords. By targeting ad groups at specific sets of products you can create and manage your ads and bids separately for specific products, or particular style groupings of products.

The Citrus Store - Google shopping link has been improved to expose style code and range grouping to Google PLA for creating ad groups.

You can manage your Ad Groups by

Brand – This is the brand of the product set in Citrus Store. Using this you can create and manage your ads and bids separately for different brands
Adwords Grouping – This is the Range Grouping set for the product in citrus store. This allows you to create and manage your ads and bids separately for different product ranges
Adwords Label - This is the Style Code set for the product in citrus store. This allows you to create and manage your ads and bids separately for different product styles

To create a new product group in the PLA campaign click the new Ad Group button send set the Ad Group name, Promotional text and the default bid got this Ad Group. The Name should be start with PLA and then include the brand,label or grouping as this allows us to easily identify it in Google Analytics. When you save the Ad Group you will be promoted to set up a product target. You can select brand, adwords labels or adwords grouping to target the ad at specific products.

Visitors from Outer Space

2013-04-01T10:33:32Z

Looking at Google Analytics “real time” by geographic location reveals some strange results on April the 1st. Visitors from the ISS, or more likely a Google April fools joke!

Collect @ Store and Finance // Line Items on Picking

2013-03-28T10:42:43Z

We’ve added a patch which allows Collect at Store orders and finance orders to have line items on which reflect appear on the orders and picking in case you have special flows for dealing with these items.

Small charge for the technical chaps to deploy and test this, so contact sales if you want this deployed.

SEO Canonical References // page n

2013-03-26T17:16:35Z

We’ve tightened up our support for Canonical references on pages beyond the first page of results. The reference now provides a master page reference for 2nd page results.

We’ve also added support for paging in the canonical links:

We’ve added support for link next and prev as described here :

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

We’ve also tightened up our handling of deleted products, sending a HTTP status 404.

http://www.fatbirds.co.uk/333342/products/notaproduct.aspx

All this is applied by DLL updates.

Price Column in SEO Products Screen

2013-03-26T10:13:25Z

At the request of Scott @ Edge and Wax we’ve added order by price to the screen which helps find products which require SEO. This helps find high value products which need some SEO lovin.

Free with every site update.

WAS

NOW

A better way with sizing charts

2013-03-21T13:56:54Z

CitrusStore has supported a size chart per product, but no centralised method of managing sizing information. We now have the ability to associate a size chart for each gender by brand.

The CItrusStore “sizing field” per product remains and this can be used to override the main brand size chart for products which require custom sizing information.

Brand Editor Allows a chart for mens, womens and unisex products. The correct chart is displayed based on the gender of the product:

The traditional “Sizing info” chart can be used when you want to specify a custom sizing chart for each product.

eBay V2 now supports Automatic Combined Shipping Postage Discounts

2013-03-15T09:28:41Z

Postage discounts let you offer buyers savings on P&P when they purchase items from you. Offering a postage discount helps promote your item and encourages buyers to buy additional items from you.

Listings with postage discounts appear to buyers with the message "Save on P&P." When your postage discounts are set up and activated, eBay will automatically calculate the discount and deduct it from the total cost. The postage discount will be shown to your buyers when they complete payment.

These can be set up in My eBay > My Account > Site Preferences > Postage and Packing Preferences > Offer Combined Postage and Payments.

Flat postage rules

Flat postage rules let you offer discounts to buyers who purchase more than one of your items. You can charge for delivering the item with the highest P&P cost, and then add an additional lower cost for each additional item that they purchase from you. You can also subtract P&P costs for each additional item purchased, or offer free P&P on additional items. Select the Add an amount for each additional item option, and then enter a P&P cost for each additional item.

Promotional postage rules

Promotional postage rules apply to all listings that have combined P&P discounts. When buyers qualify for your promotional postage rule, the promotion takes priority over existing flat postage rules.

When you create a promotional postage rule, you can offer buyers special discounts if they buy multiple items or spend a certain amount. For example, you can create a rule that gives buyers free P&P as long as they spend at least £25 and buy 2 items. You can also charge a maximum P&P amount for a single order. For example, you can specify that a buyer be charged no more than £5.00 for P&P if the buyer purchases more than one item from you.

Show All on “View Stock Onhand, but Inactive in CitrusStore”

2013-03-13T18:09:48Z

Added at the request of Ratrace a “Show All” button to the “View Stock Onhand, but Inactive in CitrusStore” report, this allows “copy and paste” export into Excel for analysis and also provides the option of “just loading everything” obviously when selecting this option the report takes longer to load.

Finance on Sale Items // Interest Only

2013-01-22T22:47:39Z

We’ve amended our finance code, with a new option which rather than hiding finance options for baskets containing sale items, only displays your interest bearing products. This allows you to have interest free products on full price sales, but offer only interest bearing products on products which are onsale.

There is a small setup fee, but this means you can you can make a profit on finance whilst keeping customers happy by offering finance options on sale items.

Scan Barcode to Search in ecommerce system

2013-01-21T14:42:42Z

CitrusStore has been extended to allow barcodes to be scanned into the search field. This allows a product to opened directly from search.

When this update is applied CitrusStore will search:

Your itemlookup code
Your style number
Any alias/barcodes entered into the alias field in the retail system
Supplier partcodes
Supplier barcodes

When such a match is found you are directed straight to the product page.

Scan your barcode into the search screen. In this example “8717611563337” is the barcode of a 2013 Giant Glory 1 and you are sent to the Giant Glory page.

With a simple tablet, and a bluetooth scanner you have a great tool for walking your customers around your website, or taking adhoc orders on the shop floor.

Returns Email // Automatic

2013-01-14T17:56:01Z

We’ve added an upgrade which allows CitrusStore to scan returns which have been processed in RMS and email the customer an email confirming the return has been processed. This email can be CC’d to an internal accounts/CSR contact as well.

Finance Support Improved

2013-01-05T16:05:21Z

We’ve added support for multiple finance products, including dynamic calculation for of repayments and variable deposits.

For example :

http://www.bike-treks.co.uk/505807/products/2013_specialized_stumpjumper_fsr_comp_carbon.aspx

Performance Enhancements // Product Detail Page

2012-12-01T16:46:51Z

As part of our continuing efforts to keep CitrusStore trim and slim, ~~we’ve sent it out on a twenty mile ride on a single speed~~ we’ve cached currency controls, and removed some internal logging and exception handling, slicing about a second off page load time.

Looks the same, but it’s a lot faster….

Cheeky Upgrades to Better Search

2012-11-27T09:26:28Z

BetterSearch would slow down significantly when dealing with very large (400+ products) results sets from a single search. For example searching for “jackets”, it would take 8-12 seconds to move to the next page of results. This was caused by the calculation of the “price sliders” and we’ve optimised this code, and it’s now approximately twice as fast.

BetterSearch new searches the keywords field .

VAT Removal in Currency Display

2012-11-27T09:25:52Z

We’ve enhanced our currency display to look at the VAT status of the product and remove VAT from the price display for none EU and UK customers, so the estimate is correct on the product page, not simply within the checkout once billing country is confirmed.

Multi Images // ebay

2012-11-14T19:29:46Z

We’ve added support for multi images within our ebay module.

Free update for those using version 2.0 of our ebay module.

For example:

Mobile Site // Brand Improvements

2012-11-08T20:01:07Z

The mobile sites (as long as the URL starts m.) will never rewrite category links. For example clicking 2XU on the mobile site for Ratrace will take you here:

http://m.ratrace.com/139/2xu.aspx

Rather than :

/2XU/

This allows support for complex landing pages on the desktop site, whilst getting punters to the relevant products quickly on the mobile phone app.

I’ve also written a “Brand” control which is not rubbish, this now produces a list of Brands, which have active products, and supports landing page links. When no landing page is specified, it sends the punter to BetterSearch with a brand filter applied rather than a brand category page. On mobile it ignores landing page links.

New Website Management Interface Panels

2012-11-01T15:26:05Z

What does it do?

When you login to Merchant Tools rather than a “geeky” screen full of settings, you’ll find panels which assess the setup of your store, and provide advice on improving performance. Not all panels will be relevant to all customers, but by working to turn your panels from red, to amber, and to green you’ll improve the performance of your store.

Clicking on a panel provides more detail (if available) of why the colour is showing as it is.
You can also click the help icon on the panel to show a description of what makes the panel change colour, and what impact this will have on your site:

Also, look for help icons in the screens when you click on the panels:

Some other features

Finding Stuff Faster

The search tool supports stacked searches, allowing you to setup items much quicker.

For example you can quickly search for “instock” “2013” “Giant” products:

SEO Mode

The product search now has an “SEO” mode which allows you to find all products which are not setup properly to be found by Google Search and start sorting them out. Just click on the panel on the home page to see the list. No point ranging them if they cannot be found.

Image Upload and Handling

We now have a bulk upload tool which allows you to upload multiple images onto one product record in a single upload.

It also supports directly uploading from other websites (using Chrome and Windows) saving the hassle of saving images to your local machine – just paste in the web address into the browse box when selecting to upload. Best of all reordering images is now a simple drag and drop affair, and images can be removed simply by double-clicking.

Putting a Date on New Season Arrivals….

2012-10-22T20:39:04Z

We’ve expanded our pre-launch functionality so you can show a date next to the “coming soon” feature. Extra nice part, if the date has passed the date display is hidden automatically, meaning you can set a date and forget about it!

Google Affiliates

2012-10-11T08:19:59Z

We’ve added support to CitrusStore for Google Affiliate reporting. This is £199.00 installed for anyone looking to get involved with Google’s exciting new affiliate program.

http://www.google.co.uk/ads/affiliatenetwork/#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-emea-uk-bk&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=google%20affiliate%20network

Giant Stock // PreOrder Information Available

2012-10-09T14:27:29Z

We’ve updated our Giant stock integration within CitrusStore.

Where a product is out of stock both instore and in the UK Giant warehouse, but Giant have it on the way, then a delivery date is shown if this is inbound from Giant Global. This is deployed by a DLL update, and is already live on 700 Cycles.

The development has been paid for by Giant UK, and we’re providing this for free to our Giant ecommerce customers!

For example:

Raise Giant Purchase Orders Electronically

2012-09-20T13:59:27Z

Exporting your Purchase Order directly to Giant UK couldn’t be easier:

Open a PO within your Purchase Order Manager;
SIM users with Giant UK data feeds can check stock availability at this stage;
Make any final adjustments to the products or quantity required;
Select the ‘Raise Purchase Order to Giant’ via the Purchase Order menu;
Your order is raised within the Giant UK system and delivered directly to your store

Better Search // Faster, faster, faster, FASTER damn it

2012-09-19T16:31:46Z

Inspired by the work Steph has been doing for Ratrace super tuning their site to cut the bloat and get the thing running better, and with train and plane time allowing some time to kick around ideas, I’ve been kicking around caching and batching stock lookup and image requests on Better Search.

No Request Batching and No Cache – the setup “pre-flight”

Without HTTP Request Batching with caching

With HTTP Request Batching and Caching

BOOM - 63% faster

@ 500 mph and 30,000 feet

This is automatically deployed for Better Search customers on builds later than the date below:

NOTE :: Steph has also sorted the "flicker” on the stock hover over!