ProductCart v3: What's New
The next generation, AJAX-enhanced shopping cart software
ProductCart v3 is the biggest upgrade we have ever released on our popular shopping cart software. It includes dozens and dozens of new features. Virtually all files have been updated, improved, optimized for better performance, and rendered more secure (Purchase v3 - Upgrade to v3).
We used AJAX in many areas of the storefront and Control Panel to improve the system and give it a truly cutting-edge look & feel. Just browse the storefront or perform a search in this demo store to try out these next-generation display elements.
Here is a first look at some of the new features (or changes to existing features).
Support for Cascading Style Sheets
The entire storefront was updated to support cascading style sheets. This will give you tremendous design flexibility when creating or updating a ProductCart-powered store. It will be up to you to edit the CSS file that will ship with v3 to make changes as deep as you would like.... or you can change just a few lines of the CSS file to affect only the font family, size or color (similar to what you can do in the current version of ProductCart).- Supplier Management, Drop Shipping & Back-Ordering
We took a lot of time studying ways to improve how ProductCart handles complex scenarios such as orders that contain products which are not immediately available (back-ordered) or products that are drop-shipped by a third party. In ProductCart v3 you will be able to:
- Associate products with vendors (e.g. to calculate prices based on cost, figure out margins on sales, etc.)
- Associate products with drop-shipping companies (some vendors might also be drop-shippers): when an order is placed the drop-shipping company is notified (automatically or manually depending on how you setup the system). Of course, if an order contains products shipped by different companies, separate e-mails will go out to each one containing only the information relevant to that drop-shipper.
- Specify whether a product can be ordered when temporarily out of stock (back-ordered).
- Handle orders that contain back-ordered products so that they can be partially shipped.
- And many more related features...
- Pricing Categories
ProductCart v3 allows you to create unlimited pricing categories and assign customers to a specific one (e.g. Preferred Customers, Gold Members, etc.). When the customer logs in, the correct price will be shown. - The AJAX shopping cart!
To improve the customer experience in different areas of the storefront, we have implemented a technology called AJAX (it's a big buzz word these days, so you might have heard of it). For example, the advanced search page and search results page have been tremendously improved by using AJAX. Learn more >>
- Advanced Cross Selling
You can now allow customers to add cross-sold products to the cart along with the main product. You can also promote product bundles (e.g. main product + an accessory) and provide customers with a built-in discount when they purchase the bundle. Take a look >> - Multiple product images
We have completely rewritten the product details page. While doing so, we added a bunch of new features. One that many of you will appreciate is the support for multiple product images. - Unlimited product options
Now you can assign unlimited product options to your products. We have also added new tools that make copying options onto other products quick and easy. - Updated product configuration (Build To Order only)
The product configurator that is the center of the Build To Order version of ProductCart has been improved and substantially optimized in its performance. Among other things, we added a new interface feature that updates the item prices in real time as you select different items on the page (try it with this laptop >>). In addition, new features were added so that Build To Order can truly be used as a quoting system:
- A customer requests a quote (no prices are shown)
- The store manager reviews, edits, and adds prices to the quote
- The customer receives the final estimate for the product/service
- Special customer fields
We replaced the 2 custom checkout fields that were part of ProductCart v2.x with a new feature that allows you to create an unlimited number of custom fields that you can have your customers fill out, and much greater flexibility in managing them (e.g. reseller number, date of birth, etc.) - UPS & FedEx: print labels from ProductCart
Another feature request that comes up often is the ability to print UPS and FedEx labels right from within ProductCart, saving a great deal of time as well as reducing order processing bottlenecks. You will be able to do this in ProductCart v3 as we have updated the integration with the UPS and FedEx APIs. - Redesigned, improved Control Panel
ProductCart's Control Panel, the administration area that ProductCart users have at their disposal to fully manage their stores, was already among the very best store management tools out there. Now it's gotten to a level that is unmatched by any other small business ecommerce system available on the market. AJAX-enhanced search features allow you to quickly find products or customers. Dozens of time saving tools have been added to reduce repeat tasks and give you even more flexibility in managing your storefront.
- Apparel Add-on improvements
We have made several, key improvements to this popular ProductCart add-on. Among them:- Ability to create sub-products with just 1 option assigned to the "Apparel" product (e.g. "size", but no "color") instead of the 2 previously required.
- Ability to create sub-products with more than 2 option groups (e.g. "size", "color", and "style").
- Ability to add more than one sub-product to the cart at the same time (e.g. add "Blue-Small" and "Red-Medium" to the cart at the same time)
- Ability to handle back-orders at the sub-product level (e.g. "Blue-Small" is in stock, "Blue-Medium" ships in 5 days and can be purchased, "Blue-Large" is out of stock and cannot be purchased)
- Ability to disregard inventory levels at the sub-product level (sub-products are available regardless of stock level)
- MAC-only pages no longer exist as the JavaScript on the main product page has been updated to support FireFox and Safari on the MAC
- ... and dozens of other new features. We have made literally dozens of other changes and introduced a number of great new features that will make the storefront much more powerful and flexible, and the Control Panel an even stronger store administration tool. Check out this demo store >>
