Blog: Release Notes

With ProStores 9.3.2, we continue to add enhancements designed to improve sales conversion and efficiency with order management, as well as increase the satisfaction of your buyers when shopping in your store. Merchants can now place a category or subcategory of products on sale, adjust invoice discounts for partial orders and easily access a summary of pending orders. Shoppers can now checkout through a streamlined multi-page checkout flow on a merchant’s store, with better breadcrumb navigation the ability to continue shopping without losing information already entered.

Key features are listed on this blog post at prostores.com.

Listed below are the new rules for passwords and authentication for store administrators in ProStores version 9.2.0 and higher.

• Contain both alphabetic and numeric characters
• Contain at least seven characters
• Change every ninety (90) days
• Cannot reuse the last four passwords
• The account will be locked after six invalid password attempts for a period of 30 minutes or until reset by an administrator
• Sessions will time out after being idle for 15 minutes*

If these new rules frustrate you as a store administrator, just remember... it's more secure.

*Idle is when you are logged into your store admin and are not clicking about using stuff. One very important distinction is that once you enter the product update area (editing product data like descriptions and such) your clicks are not recognized by the idle monitor. So, if you spend longer than 15 minutes editing a product and click on submit, it's gone. [ouch - that's a bag O'hurt]

Security Enhancements - Visa Payment Application Best Practices (PABP) updates

Why do secondary users see messages about expired passwords?

ProStores modified secondary user account requirements to become compliant to the Visa Payment Application Best Practices (PABP) V1.4. Secondary users (users added through Store Administration > Store Settings > Users) now need to change their password every ninety (90) days.

What are the password requirements for secondary users?

Secondary users now have the following requirements for their passwords:

• Seven character minimum length
• Alphabetic and numeric characters required in password
• Password must change every 90 days
• Four previous passwords cannot be reused
• Account locked after six invalid login attempts for 30 minutes or until reset by main user

How do you change or reset a password for a secondary user?

Primary users (original ProStores user profile) can add and edit secondary user profiles. Navigate to Store Administration > Store Settings > Users to update secondary user profiles and passwords.

Why do I need to keep logging in to access store administration?

ProStores modified secondary user account requirements to become compliant to the Visa Payment Application Best Practices (PABP) V1.4. Secondary users (users added through Store Administration > Store Settings > Users) need to login after 15 minutes of inactivity.

How does a merchant configure their store to be PCI compliant?

The responsibility for PCI compliance does not stop with ProStores, or with the payment processing system you chose to use. PCI compliance is the responsibility of anyone and everyone who is collecting, transmitting and/or storing credit card information. Merchants are responsible for conducting and managing their business in a PCI compliant manner. The ProStores PABP Implementation Guide for Store Administration is available to assist merchants. This document details the various settings, controls and steps a merchant should take to ensure PCI compliance.

Download the ProStores PABP Implementation Guide for Store Administration at: http://www.prostores.com/learningcenter/ProStoresPABPGuide.pdf

Source: ProStores Learning Center | Quick Tips | ProStores 9.2 FAQ

One-Page Checkout

One-Page checkout will give merchants a better way to guide their buyers through the checkout process. This new checkout will be streamlined compared to the existing ‘Multi-Page Checkout’ which has many pages in the checkout flow. In One-Page checkout, a buyer will remain on a single page with each step being completed on the left of the screen and then captured on the right of the screen in their invoice. As they move through the checkout process their invoice will be completed with each step. This feature will be an option for all store tiers.

ProStores To-Go

The ProStores To-Go widget is designed to help merchants distribute their storefront to as many different places on the web to drive traffic/sales to their web stores. This widget can be placed on a merchant's blog or website. Buyers can fill their shopping carts in the widget itself and then checkout will be redirected to the merchant's ProStores web store cart page.

Merchants will be able to access the widget builder from Store Administration > Marketing > ProStores To Go!

Source: ProStores Learning Center

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

Prostores is pleased to announce our latest product release: ProStores 8.2. With this release, we've included the following key enhancements designed to help merchants drive traffic to their store and give access to additional functionality from third party providers

New Features in ProStores

ProStores 8.2 Feature Highlights
Prostores is pleased to announce our latest product release: ProStores 8.2. With this release, we've included the following key enhancements designed to help merchants drive traffic to their store and give access to additional functionality from third party providers:

• Sitemap Management
• Solutions Directory Page

In addition to the 8.2 release, ProStores has also integrated a third-party sales tax calculator from AvaTax.

Sitemap Management
ProStores merchants with dedicated URLs can now generate sitemaps which will make their store more visible to search engines. The sitemap generation tool will generate and store a sitemap file in the store's root directory for web crawlers from any search engine to index a ProStores web store. It also allows merchants to leverage Yahoo and Google's sitemap submission services (merchants must configure accounts with Yahoo and Google first).

Control of the sitemap settings will be included in Store Administration under Product->Market Demand->SEO.

Solutions Directory
ProStores merchants can now view a page of all certified third-party applications that are available to integrate with their store. The new page is accessible from Store Administration >> Support Manager.

Integration of AvaTax Sales Tax Service
In addition to the ProStores 8.2 release, ProStores has also integrated a third-party sales tax calculation tool from AvaTax. This real-time tax calculation tool eliminates the need for merchants to create and manage tax regions and tax categories in Prostores. To select AvaTax as your sales tax calculator, go to Store Settings >> Sales Tax and select AvaTAx from the drop down menu. ProStores merchants can then sign up for the service and proceed with configuration within the ProSTores sales tax preferences settings.