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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.

Prostores is pleased to announce our latest product release: ProStores 8.1. With this release, we’ve included a number of enhancements that make it easier for merchants to create, manage and display attributes. Merchants will now also be able to send partial shipments in cases where part of the order is backordered.

You will notice some changes to the look and feel of the store administration. Other than the obvious color changes and such, the only major change was in the Design Studio.

The Design Studio is now integrated into the navigation of the regular administration under the heading “Store Design”. You can now set baselines on your designs page by page - and is offered automatically when you edit a template.

• Support for up to 10 attributes per product
• Display attributes by drop-down menu or radio buttons
• Support for reordering attributes on the storefront
• Shared attributes across products
• Support of partial shipments

Attributes Enhancements

Support for up to 10 attributes per product
We've increased the number of attributes for Business tier and above from 2 to 10 per product. This allows merchants to have more specifications for products.

Display attributes by drop-down menu or radio buttons
Merchants now have the option to use pull down lists or radio buttons for each attribute. They can also combine the display types, so both pull down menus and radio buttons can be shown for attribute selections for one product.

Support for reordering attributes on the storefront
The order in which attributes are displayed on the storefront can easily be changed with the new "Reorder Attributes" option on the Product Information page.

Shared attributes across products
Merchants with products that have similar attributes can now share attributes across their entire product catalog. Attribute lists allow merchants to save time by not having to apply similar attributes to each product one at a time.

Support of partial shipments (Advanced tier and above)

Merchants are also now able to offer better customer service by sending partial shipments, so that their customers don't have to wait for backordered products. With ProStores 8.1, Merchants can now split an order in which products are backordered.