March 2008 Archives

Thank you all for your tremendous effort to give us such a cool functioning and looking online store. We have really elevated what ProStores can do and have created a real differentiator versus our competitors. Your determination to achieve the best representation for our products and best customer experience is very appreciated.

— Grant & Kent, Tribal Hollywood

Our first screencast - highlighting the Store Administration Home page of the ProStores software.

Lady and Gentlemen,
Thank you for all your efforts on the website. It looks fantastic and has met all our expectations — and then some. We love working with Neoverve and appreciate all your professionalism and dedication to helping us develop quality driven E-commerce sites. We look forward to working with you on our next project.

Respectfully submitted,

— Curt & Sharon Nordal, Nordal Enterprises Inc.
saltwater-poolsystems.com, poolsupplydeals.com

General Upgrades

We have added several key features designed to make it easier for eBay sellers to set-up a store quickly and manage sales on both eBay and ProStores without any additional maintenance. The key features added to all ProStores tiers include:

• Quick store set-up – ProStores configures your store automatically using your eBay listings, categories, shipping, PayPal and other settings.
• eBay Sync – ProStores automatically syncs your eBay listings – including shipping – with your ProStores products catalog and monitors when your items sell, so you can sell the same item on both eBay and your ProStores web store and never have to worry about overselling.
• Shopping cart cross-sell/upsell – Send your eBay buyers to your ProStores web store to checkout and then cross-sell/upsell them with merchandising on the shopping cart.
• Automatic Google Base product feed – ProStores will automatically submit your product catalog to Google Base so you can start driving traffic to your store.

Accessing and Activating New Features

You will need to enable the following features through Store Administration in order to take advantage of the new functionality:

• Inventory tracking (if not previously enabled) – Store Settings>Product Preferences
• Add categories – Product>Categories>Add
• Assign products to categories – Product>List

Note: Once your store has been upgraded to ProStores Starter, one category named “New” will appear in the left navigation. All active products will be assigned to that category until changed by the merchant.

• Add “Long” product descriptions – Product Information>Description
• Add “Product Detail” images  - Product Information>Images
• Product level shipping option – Store Settings> Shipping Preferences
• Product level shipping settings - Store Settings> Shipping Preferences
• Multi-channel inventory tracking – Product>eBay
• eBay Product Sync– Product>eBay
• Google Base product feed option (basic version) - Marketing
• Cross-sell/Up-sell option – Store Settings>General>Shopping Cart and Checkout Options
• Default product image resizing settings – Product List>Product Settings

Additional Changes

• Homepage Layout - The new home page layout (8-product display) will replace the current product list page after the upgrade to ProStores Starter. If a merchant has 10 products, only 8 will appear on the home page. 
• Store Themes – Only the 10 new contemporary themes and 3 eBay Stores themes will be available for selection in Store Design. Merchants can continue to use one of the 29 legacy themes until they change themes to one of the available selections
• Product Categories – Once your store has been upgraded to ProStores Starter, one category named “New” will appear in the left navigation. All active products will be assigned to that category until changed by the merchant.
• Product Detail pages – Product detail pages will not include a product “long” description or product detail image until they are added by the merchant
• Product Inventory - If inventory was enabled prior to the upgrade, all existing products will have an inventory quantity of 1 immediately after the upgrade, subsequent sales will decrement from that value

ProStores Business, Advanced, and Enterprise Tier Upgrades

See the New Features Tour for a look at all the new functionality available in ProStores 9.0 or see the Release Notes for more details on all new features.

Business/Advanced/Enterprise subscribers will need to enable the following new features through Store Administration in order to take advantage of the new functionality, as they are not automatically enabled:

• Product level shipping option and settings– Store Settings> Shipping Preferences
  • Tip: Switching to product level shipping requires merchant to also add shipping details to each product. Products without shipping settings will be sold as “No Shipping – Local Pickup” with shipping at $0.00
  • If you have edited/customized Cart and Invoice templates, you will need to “Revert to Original” or add SSML code to those templates to leverage the new product level shipping options.

• Multi-channel inventory tracking - Product>eBay
  • Multi-channel inventory tracking is not retroactive and only applies to eBay listings created in ProStores after it has been enabled. To enable Multi-channel inventory tracking, first enable Inventory Tracking by going to Store Settings>Product Preferences. Then go to Product>eBay to enable Multi-channel inventory tracking.

• eBay Product Sync
  • eBay Product Sync is not retroactive and only applies to new eBay listings created outside of ProStores (with eBay listing tools – SYI, Turbo Lister or Blackthorne) after the option has been enabled.
  • Inventory and Multi-channel Inventory Tracking must be enabled to utilize eBay Product Sync

• Google Base product feed option (basic version)
  • Tip: If you currently use Google Base product feed (advanced version), you  should not enable the new basic feed.

• Cross-sell/Upsell in Shopping Cart
  • Note: If you have  edited/customized Cart and Invoice templates, you will need to “Revert to Original” or add SSML code to those templates to leverage the new Cross-Sell and product level shipping options.
• Default product image resizing
  • Product image resizing option only applies to new images added after it has been enabled

• Store Themes - Remember, the selection of a new store theme will overwrite any custom elements previously added.  Be sure to add a new store version with a new theme verses modifying an existing store version with a new theme

• Existing merchants are not able to utilize the new eBay Quick Setup process to import eBay listings and settings.  The ProStores eBay Tools (Product>eBay) will allow one to copy listings, store categories, store logos.

Original source: eCommerce Currents