What's new in ProductCart v3.5
Drill-down navigation, unlimited search fields, improved search features, ... a search-focused release!
ProductCart version 3.5, the latest release of our popular shopping cart software, is focused on one thing: making the store catalog easier and faster for customers to use. Advanced features found on large ecommerce stores such as "drill-down navigation" can now be turned on in your ProductCart-powered storefront, dramatically improving your visitors' shopping experience. Here is a partial list of new features:
Drill-down Navigation
ProductCart version 3.5 allows you to introduce "drill-down" navigation into your catalog. This means that you can allow customers to easily narrow any list of products, in any category, by associating "product properties" (which we call "Custom Search Fields") both at the product and category level.
For example, you could associate the Custom Search Field "Screen Resolution" with 150 computer monitors that exist in your ecommerce catalog, and with the category "Computer Monitors". When you do that, customers will be able to narrow down the list of products shown in the "Computer Monitors" category by using the "Screen Resolution" filter. They can easily "drill-down" into that category (see image example below).
This advanced storefront feature is based on a number of new store management tools:
- Create an unlimited number of Custom Search Fields (e.g. "Screen Size") and Values (e.g. "19", "20", "21", etc.)
- Easily associate them with products, individually or for multiple products at once.
- Associate any number of Custom Search Fields with product categories to enable drill-down navigation.
- Add just 1 line of code to your store interface to dynamically show drill-down filters in your storefront.
- Allow customers to select multiple filters at once on the Advanced Search page for particularly targeted searches
More Advanced Search Options
The new menu item "Settings > Search Options" gives access to the following, new, search-focused store settings.
- Include sub categories when searching in a specific category
This option will make the search include sub-categories of the parent you select. - Max Search Results
This will limit large queries to the number of results specified. On large catalogs, this translates in huge performance improvements (e.g. if a search would return 2,000 results, but you set this parameter to 250, only 250 results are returned, with substantial performance improvements). - Enable Waiting Dialog Box
Enable/disable a nice-looking modal window on the advanced search page to indicate the search is under way. - Custom search field widget for categories
This allows you to show or hide the search widget that enables drill-down navigation in the storefront. It requires that the widget has been added to either header.asp or footer.asp (view instructions).
New visual effects
We have integrated Highslide JS into ProductCart to improve tools such as the image slide show that is launched when a product has multiple images. here is a visual example.
Support for Microsoft Live Search cashback
The integration with Microsoft Live Search cashback brings to ProductCart-powered ecommerce storefronts the ability to advertise their products on Microsoft Corp.'s popular comparison shopping engine, paying only when a sale happens.
The commission on the sale can be set at the product level, and customers are reminded of the 'cashback' that they would receive on the purchase when they visit the store, for higher conversions.
New tools in the ProductCart Control Panel help you quickly create a data feed for Live Search cashback.
New payment gateways (and improvements)
We have added support for new payment gateways, and improved existing integrations. We have also improved the layout of the batch processing page.
- Added PayJunction
- Added PX Pay
- Added Transaction Gateway System
- Added Total Web Solutions
- Updated iTransact integration
- Updated eWay integration
- Updated LinkPoint integration
The LinkPoint API is now supported, and LinkPoint can now be used with the "Order Editing and Batch Processing" feature.
New affiliate settings
We've added some new features to improve the affiliate management system.
- Save Affiliate ID
You can set the system to save the affiliate ID to a cookie, and decide how long the cookie should last. - Commission-eligible orders
You can specify the number of orders placed by the same customer on which affiliate should get a commission. - Auto-approve affiliates
You can configure ProductCart so that affiliates are automatically approved when they sign up (you can always turn them off after reviewing their account) and specific a default commission value that should be granted. - Exclude wholesale customers
You can now setup the system so that orders placed by wholesale customers (or customers belonging to a Customer Pricing Category with wholesale privileges) are not eligible for affiliate commissions (no commission is awarded).
In addition, the Affiliate system is now compatible with Google Checkout. That is: even if a customer checks out using Google Checkout, ProductCart will be able to record that the sale came through an affiliate, if that was the case.
Improvements to the Build To Order system
New features make the product configurator that is part of the ProductCart Build To Order ecommerce system even more powerful.
- Downloadable Product Bundles through Build To Order products
A Build To Order product can now contain any number of downloadable products in the product configuration. For example, you could use this powerful new feature to sell software bundles, image collections, or music albums. When the order is processed, each digital good purchased within the BTO product is handled as a separate, downloadable item. So if the customer ordered a software bundle, ProductCart will generate downloadable links, create licenses, include installation instructions in the confirmation message, etc. for each software application purchased within the BTO product. A powerful new addition to the Build To Order system. - Drop-downs vs. radio buttons at the category level
You can now define how options will be presented on the configuration page at the category level. One category of selectable items may use a drop-down, another one radio buttons. Of course, if multiple selections are allowed, check boxes are used by default. - Back-ordered products
If an item shown on the product configuration page is back-ordered (and therefore could delay the shipment), that information is now shown to the customer (e.g. "This selection might delay the shipment by ... days"). - AJAX-powered preview
The AJAX-powered product preview now works on the "Additional Charges" page too. - Updated Conflict Management interface
This applies to users of the Conflict Management system. The way a store visitor is alerted of conflicts between selections on the product configuration page has been substantially improved. We now use a modal window, which can be fully styled. Try it on this demo.
Miscellaneous improvements
We've made a large number of small (and sometimes not so small) improvements in a number of areas of the our ecommerce software.
- Control Panel: Improved interface for the Add/Edit product & category pages. A new, tabbed-based layout makes browsing the many options available on these pages much easier and faster.
- Marketing: ability to resend Gift Certificate message to the Gift Certificate recipient. A new feature to do this has been added to both the Control Panel and the storefront.
- Marketing: new Discount Code archive. You can now easily archive discount codes that are no longer used.
- Marketing: Discount Codes (electronic coupons):
- You can restrict the applicability based on customer type (e.g. retail customers only)
- You can restrict the applicability to customers that belong to specific Customer Pricing Categories.
- You can turn a % discount into a flat fee above a certain order amount (e.g. 10% off, but $10 over $100).
- Performance: we've made many code changes focused on delivering performance improvements, especially in the storefront.
- Shipping: you can now "split" a product ordered in more than 1 unit onto separate packages when using the Shipping Wizard
About ProductCart
ProductCart is a reliable, secure, feature-rich shopping cart program used by thousands of Internet stores (see a directory of some of the ecommerce stores that use ProductCart). If you are new to ProductCart, buy it today and build a truly professional online storefront. If you are an existing ProductCart user, use the "Check for Updates" feature update to version 3.5.
If you need more information...
- View a complete list of ecommerce features
- Return to an overview of our shopping cart software
