Product Roadmap
also see Detailed Release History for
detailed release notes for each point version
Upcoming Feature Map
- Usability Initiative: Easier setup and maintenance of key areas
- New Screens: FTP Explorer, Site Explorer, Add Page Wizard
- Enhanced: Product Quick Entry, Store Setup Wizard
- Revolutionary new theme system capabilities
- Deeper and Nested moveable merges and areas of all templated pages to allow for complete alternative layouts,
similar to Product Page's custom layout existing now
- Custom layout of repeated areas such as category listings, product listings, etc.
- Snapin Merges: ability to add a snapin to a page and move it around via merge tags
- Even Deeper Design support for programs like Front Page and Macromedia Dreamweaver content within the shopping cart system
- Review System: extensive product reviews, manufacturer reviews and store level reviews
- Gift Certificates & Gifting Module
- Store Credit Module
Upcoming Integration Map
- Endicia Shipping Label Integration
- 4Q Visitor Satisfaction Surveying Integration
- Enhanced/Integrated newsletter and mass mailing system for tracking open rates and more
- More extensive Order Motion Integration and pushing/pulling of
information
Version 5.0 - Sub Release 33 - 11/11/08
- Highlighted Features:
- User Defined Rule Based Analytics & Traffic Rules (more)
- Customer specific default payment methods and sorting
- DHL Direct Integration for Rates and Tracking
- Full Features/Changes:
Version 5.0 - Sub Release 29 - 6/18/08
- Manufacturer's Approved Pricing - MAP Pricing Support Added (more)
- Partial order shipping, package & item tracking when shipping pieces of an order (more)
- Value Added Taxing (VAT), Goods and Services Taxing (GST), and MOMS Taxing support added for European Union, Nordic, Australia, India and other countries (more)
- IP Firewall Blacklist
- User Defined Custom fields on products, orders and customers
- 'Drip Series' Automated Time & Action Based User Defined Email Followups (more)
- 40+ New "Set it and Forget it" Comparison Shopping Engine Feeds (New Service/Integration)
- Avalara Tax Engine (AvaTax) integration, street level taxation, writes checks to taxing agencies
- Generic XML Product Feed for integrating your vendors & distributors
- Estimate shipping costs right from product page
- Remote Shopping Cart enhancements for hosting a shopping cart on remote external websites
- Automatically associate product, variant, category & manufacturer images
- AmeriCommerce Account Management pages and statistics on traffic, bandwidth, store counts
- Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking support
- Official Google Checkout Enhanced level 2 support extended
- Variant/Option images and color swatches changes main image and selection and has swatches for each option.
- Enhanced multistore and microstore login/security options
Version 5.0 - Sub Release 2 - 4/30/08
- Integrated Tree menu navigation snapin tied dynamically to categories and integrated into
existing navigation system, search engine friendly
- Support for SiteMap.org - Standard Sitemap Format preferred by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft
- Dictionary (related words) Search feature added. User can maintain a list of related words to translate to/from.
- Directed search for pointing search phrases to exact urls both internal and external saving clicks
- Store Text & Languages manager added for deeper internationalization and configuration of all store text
- New Site explorer and content page manager
- New personalization type of image upload, allowing uploads of images to orders
- Many new site merges and conditional merges help put customer oriented dynamic content in each page
- Thousands of speed optimizations and page size reductions across the board
Version 5.0 - Sub Release 1 - 1/15/08
- Overhaul of the look and feel of the Administration Console
- LiveDesign Web Site Builder - manage your store from the front end web
site live, edit CSS and styles right there
- Integrated PayPal Express
Checkout option, certified by PayPal
- AJAX implementation on key pages
such as One Page Check Out removing all postbacks and capturing customer
information as they type it for abandoned cart tracking.
- Product Lists - create lists of products to be used on select features
of AmeriCommerce like on Featured Item snapins, Sales, etc.
- New SEO Manager lets you
customize default formats for meta tags, page titles and URLs on a per store
basis.
- AmeriCommerce API - Complete Web Service API/SDK for interacting directly with
the AmeriCommerce database and system.
- New imports and exports
- Upload File Snapin Added to
manage uploaded content to your site
- Zoomify product image zooming and panning tools integration
Version 4.3 - 9/15/07
- Deeper customer editing, logging and CRM functionality including email
templates with merges and more
- Audit History of most changes to
your data
- Drop Shipping Support - streamlined order process
and new options specifically for Drop Shippers
- Google Check Out Payment Processing support
- Role
based security and implementation of the model across all screens
- Custom URL's, you specify the
URL, we use it in all feeds and catalog pages (products, categories, content
pages, manufacturer pages)
- Product Groups & Kitting:
Sell items in groups and gets. A way to enforce a parent child relationship
and have the items show up in a grid. Allows binding quantity to
parent item and much more.
- Dynamic Dropdown navigation menu tied to categories and integrated into
existing navigation system, search engine friendly.
- Shipping enhancements for breaking out shipping per item and allowing
merging of shipping methods after being broken out
- Inline page popup help system extended with links to other areas and
relevant articles.
- Default product image support and theme overrides for products
- Implementation of Microsoft Team
Foundation Platform & Practices for enhanced code stability, larger
developer teams and improved testing abilities
- New QA department, testing tools
built, automated routine testing of all application features to make our
already fast paced development even faster while maintaining stability
Version 4.2 - Sub Release 2 - 6/7/07
- Added support for Paypal Web Payments
Pro, no PayPal account is needed for the customer
- Inventory at the variant level, keep
track of all permutations of a product
- Wish lists and public gift registries
enable shoppers to save items on a wish list
- Enhanced Order Editing and Payment Processing
for Call Center and Telephone orders.
- Product Attribute system created to narrow
products down by attribute not just category, with counts and optional dropdowns
- New snapins and site merges for moveable elements
like 1 line shopping cart, search box, and more
- Hundreds of speed enhancements to support
our new sites with millions of visitors a month
- Automatic Integration with Jellyfish.com's
product feed and comparison shopping engine
- Automatic Order Integration with PMA
Fulfillment Services (pmafulfillment.com)
- Enhanced Affiliate Console and
Program changes
- AmeriSync 2.0 released with deeper
integration into QuickBooks
- Upgrade software platform Visual
Studio .Net 2005 and the 2.0 Framework for extended developer support
- Mini-Stores Introduced - Ability
to have in-site searchable mini-stores of products (different from multiple
storefront which is a separate website).
Version 4.2 - Sub Release 1 - 1/1/07
- One Page Checkout process option
- Full external file support for designing
pages using Dreamweaver and Front Page for any content area
- Automatic Image Resizing of all pictures
when settings change for thumbnails
- Multiple pictures with zoom for each
product
- Submit a payment page, no cart is needed,
submit money or accept donations (one page payment!)
- New Themes settings manager, pulls out
theme settings into functions and automatically sets their options
- Added personalization options on products
to accept user input on the order for each item
- Site Explorer and Designer built to help
manage the multitude of content managed pages and links within a site
- Full text searching algorithm that searches
like major search engines with stem words, phrases and other advanced
techniques
Version 4.1 - 6/28/06
- Fully Automated Product Feeds to Froogle, Yahoo Shopping, Shopzilla, BizRate, and Google Base with Sales Tracking.
- Expansion of Theme System and Snap-In System.
- New Search Engine Optimization routines.
- 60 new payment gateways added for card processing.
- Enhanced shipment methods, calculations, and options on a per store basis.
- All new Theme Manager for designing custom Themes.
- Google Sitemap generation.
- Affiliate Console redesign and improvement.
- Improved eProducts for downloadable goods.
- Content Page Inclusion of custom HTML, ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, JSP and other scripting languages.
- Shipment tracking list for entering multiple tracking numbers at once for different orders.
- Automatic emailing of tracking numbers to customers.
- Store-level active shipping methods.
- Store-level minimum order amounts.
- Store-level handling markups.
- Custom form insertion for checkout and new customer processes.
- Improved catalog search speed for multiple storefronts and very large catalogs.
- Root Category selection in the Active Catalog for choosing your main category on a site.
- 2 Additional Theme designs - Ozark and Minimal White.
- Additional Snap-Ins for New Items, Spotlight Items, Hot Sellers, and Sale Items.
- Redirects from old site URLs to new site URLs, keeps links active and search engines up to date
- Many, many other updates and improvements...
Version 4.0 - 3/23/2006
- Multiple Storefront Administration.
- Google and Yahoo Pay Per Click Integration and Analytics.
- Content Management WYSIWYG Environment for Pages and Sections.
- Theme system for building and managing site designs.
- New CSS editor.
- Active Catalogs for multiple stores.
- Click fraud detection.
- Compare PPC to Organic SEO.
- Web Administration Console redesign.
- Mass Import / Export features using CSV using your own custom column mappings.
- Search Engine Optimization of all catalog pages, including URLs.
- Content Management System for adding your own content pages.
- Many additional graphical reports.
- Many, many other updates and improvements...
Version 3.0 and before
- Version 3.0 and earlier can be seen in past marketing materials,
primarily it was the founding features of AmeriCommerce that include many of
our standard core features