Free Shipping Add-on Module

We have just finished up a new module, Free Shipping 5, that makes it easier to display when you have free shipping in your store.

Free Shipping 5 is built on top of our suite of shipping modules - UPS Custom Integration, FedEx Advanced and USPS Advanced. The module reads the settings of any of those modules you have installed and allows you to place some simple SMT Code in any location where a product is displayed in your store. You can use the module on product, category, product listing, basket and other pages in your store.

An ancillary benefit of Free Shipping is the ability to quickly test whether or not free shipping is working in your store (without having to go through the checkout process). So, if you were to flag a product is set to ship for free and you are tinkering various override settings at the category and product level, you could easily test if shipping were working as you anticipated. (Note, however, Free Shipping 5 doesn’t take into account price point free shipping, e.g. if you set products to ship for free on orders greater than $50.)

Focus released into the wild!

Our new search module for Merchant 5.x (and eventually for 4.x if the market is there) is finally completed and available for sale.  You’ll find it in our store here:

Focus

Focus has been in the works for quite a while.  I started on it shortly after the last conference and since then I have had to re-write it a few times to change the overall approach.   I like very well how it turned out and I’m really looking forward to seeing what people can make it do.  The layout and functionality is “Template and Token” based (like most of our modules, and Search Manager before it)  and provides for a great deal of customization.   Being able to modify the search form any way you see fit provides for an amazing degree of flexibility.

You can find a partial list of the module’s features  here.   The documentation is “mostly done” and we’re updating it every day (and hope to have it completed early next week).  The documentation on the admin interface itself is done.  You can find the documentation here.

I love to talk about Focus (well, modules in general) so if you have any particular questions ask here and I’ll get a good detailed response into the mix.

Pulse: Updates and Direction

Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to dedicate to Pulse that I wanted, thus the prolonged beta release. However, I’m now back in the groove with it and am releasing an update with a few tweaks and bug fixes:

| Revision 5.010 2008/09/10
|    - fix live stats date range search defaulting to week
|    - whois opens in new window
|    - changed wording to “Excluded” for IPs and Referers
|
| Revision 5.009 2008/08/01
|    - add new module UI
|    - fix issue with zero orders
|    - fix blocked ip

I’ve gone back and forth on some pending issues, e.g. the referer field–should it only show the initial referer or should it show the referer for each subsequent screen? The initial referral is obviously the most important, as you want to know where your customers are coming from. However seeing how they navigate through your site is also informative so for now, I’ve left the referal trail active and may make it optional in a later update. Note that the referer reports will always be based only on the initial clickthrough to your site.

My primary focus will now be on purging. Although not the issue it was with the old DBASE backend, it’s understandable that some users will want to cleanout data. The challenge will be doing that without losing too much valuable information.

Other items on the to do list:

• hits/visits
• category reports
• individual product reports
• date range queries on all the existing reports that can allow for it, e.g. the basic products reports (viewed, added, removed, ordered)  should allow for date range restrictions
• a current baskets report

If there are other features, you’d like to see, please let us know.

Bret.