It’s that time of year to start preparing for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, shipping deadlines and making sure your online store is up and running with all the tools needed to convert visitors to sales. It's also that time of year OTHER e-commerce platforms start focusing their energy on holiday blog posts, marketing ads and product development freezes. Luckily we at AmeriCommerce aren't like other platforms - instead we're handing out new features and functionality like it's free candy!
Speaking of which it’s been a little while since our last release update but if you’ve been following along in our release history area then you know we’ve been busy working on new tools to add to your arsenal. If you aren't one of the cool kids that follow our change logs here’s a recap of all the free stuff we’ve been rolling out over the last few months.
Feature Release Update
Product & Category Management:
- Product parameters now available to pass to contact forms. For example, you can now add a button near your product asking for a quote or personalization instructions and that form will pass along product parameters along with the form submission.
- Editing file paths in the admin is much easier. Click change URL in the image path drop-down
- New Merge Code to view/edit a review - ##REVIEWID##
- Item Link on Order Screen now navigates to Edit Product in the admin versus front-end product view
- New and improved product image editor tool replacing the deprecated Adobe Aviary
- Added review rating merge code for with schema markup
- Product sales history now available inside Edit Product Page in the admin
Cart & Checkout:
- Full VAT support extended to each line item including several merge codes that can be used that affect cart, cart items, orders, and order items.
- Wish List management: list/edit saved Wish Lists in admin
- Reward point merge codes created to enable reporting Point Balances/Deductions in emails
- Restrict/Permit certain payment types to a Customer Type
- New 'Save for later' feature - add products to 'save for later' list without needing to create an account. This feature extends/transforms wish-list functionality to work as a ‘save for later’ list and shows on cart page and listing areas.
Order Management:
- AVS codes for all orders (both authorized only and captured) can now be seen on the View Order Page
- Filter orders by customer type
- Cost field is now editable for phantom items while making quotes/orders
- We now show what Gift Certificate codes were used in order confirmation emails
- Added ability to manually sync orders with Tax Cloud
- New setting for "show billing address on packing slip
- New "file attachment" field type as a custom field for use on orders
- Print packing slips by warehouse
Quotes, Purchase Orders & Invoices:
- PDF's can now be generated and attached to invoice emails
- Cost field is now editable for phantom items while making quotes/orders
- You can now clone quotes
Widgets:
- New Widget for Generic Breadcrumbs that works with Schema markup, better layout flexibility and also works on content and blog pages.
- New Widget for Contact Information for better layout flexibility and control
- Improved Contact Form widget
- Added "quantity box" and "add to cart" button to product display widget items
- We have added more display types to the product display widget (Manufacturer, Attribute, Product Status, eProducts, Subscription Products)
Theme & Front End:
- Assign Themes to Multi-Stores: The AmeriCommerce multi-store security now allows user permissions for theme edits for themes that are associated to a store. What this means is that you can now have a user assigned to a multi-store with the ability to grant access for that user to be restricted to only edit a theme that's either set to active or set to "associated" with the store(s) they are restricted to.
- New caching feature for external content merge codes
- You can now preview theme from the theme edit area in the admin
- After theme installed, we now refresh the theme listing page automatically
- Updated Redactor WYSIWYG to Version 3.2.0
- Pasting images in WYSIWYG editor is now supported
- Added ability to override style of the Facebook Login Merge Code
Live Design Tool Upgraded:
- Overhaul of the UI/UX of Live Design
- New Color Picker
- Now easier to add custom theme settings
- Improved look of permissions error page
- Remove Advanced Button and replaced with Clear Cache
- Page settings and global settings now shown by default
- Pattern/Image upload and selector no longer exhibit strange behaviors
- Add Widget Overlay styling fixes
- Hover tip pop-ups now show inline at all times
- Adjusted code editor in widget editor
- Collapse element sections by default
- Fixed major issues caused by dragging and dropping widgets in a layout
- Actions panel got a "go back" link/button
Exports/Imports:
- Added last four digits of CC and cart type to order exports
- You can now import and export tax rates/regions and shipping regions.
- Store text/language import tool and export tool allowing for languages to be easily added to any store.
API Updates:
- Rebuilt Quickbooks payments gateway integration to use REST API
- "Add New Store" API endpoint created (for enterprise level customers)
- "Import Theme" API endpoint created
- Updating products through API will now clear cache appropriately
- Added last four digits of CC and card type to API
Domain, SSL & Go-Live Processes:
- Go-Live Instructions now include an IP address for A records
- Launch of IP redirect tooling for smoother domain go-lives
New Partnerships:
- New integration with CardConnect (with level 2 and level 3 processing)
- New integration with PayTrace
White Label Settings:
- New White label Setting - Hide Live Chat
- New White label Setting - Hide My Account
- New White label Setting - Hide Trial Banner
Other ways we've improved people's lives
I know it seems like all we do is create new features anyone can use but we actually do a lot more than that. Our team has recently knocked out several technical milestones that are carving out the path to AmeriCommerce becoming the most robust enterprise platform out there. Let's take a minute to brag on them a little bit.
Massive Speed Improvements on Front and Back end:
If you haven't read the article regarding our speed improvements you should check out why our data team is the bomb dot com. We've made significant milestones in tech performance this year that we've been chasing for years. Front end average request times from ~400 ms to 177 ms (55% improvement) while back end (admin) average request times from ~900 ms to 390 ms (56% improvement). They deserve a round of applause for being relentless in chasing these figures.
Complete Migration to Cloudflare:
We can now confidently say we have accomplished the not-so-trivial task of moving all standard e-commerce traffic away from Rackspace load balancers and completely migrated to using Cloudflare to handle all those requests. Kudos to the AmeriCommerce support staff walking each individual customer step by step on making all those DNS changes. If you missed out on our Cloudflare partnership announcement last year, check it out here. Now ALL our customers can rest assured they are getting the most out of their CDN and traffic handling on the web with all the extra security benefits along with it.
My Account Roll Out:
This year we launched My Account in beta and as of October of 2019 we have migrated every single AmeriCommerce customer into the new My Account system! This allows for transparent billing, changing plans at any time, improved reporting, better multi-store management, automated plan signups, and a short vacation for our accounting team.
Looking Ahead
You might be saying to yourself, "Wow - I literally can’t handle any more good news after reading all this. When does the product team sleep?" Our answer is this:
Coming Soon to AmeriCommerce
- More highly requested partner integrations (including Quickbooks Online, Zapier, a point of sale system, and much more)
- New BASE theme with updated everything
- Fresh new themes (free!)
- Even MORE improvements to the Live Design tool
- Rewards points tier system that will make other platforms blush
- Improvements to My Account
- A new modern look to the AmeriCommerce brand
- And several items from our feature request list :)
While other e-commerce platforms are focusing on new apps to charge extra for we're steadily building out more and more functionality for everyone on the AmeriCommerce platform. Looking to help? Join in by letting us know what we should be working on to help you do what you do best – sell more stuff!
Happy Selling!
-AmeriCommerce Team