CoreCommerce

As a brief introduction, my name is Tim Burns, and I work for Minnesota Workwear, an online clothing store that carries over 2,000 products and I’ve been using CoreCommerce for 3 years.

Patience. Most online shoppers have very little of it. If a web surfer can’t find what they are looking for in in a few seconds, they move on. Some of this has to do with your website layout but quite a bit can also be how long it takes for your webpage to appear before their eyes. Like waiting for the waiter at the restaurant…if it takes too long, I am getting upset and may leave or at least be frustrated.

Bottom line: Site speed is important. So much so, that Google will be much less likely to show your page higher in search results if you have a slow site. This makes sense because Google also wants its users to not be frustrated by slow loading pages.

We have have always monitored our website speed. The recent server upgrade at CoreCommerce has helped us dramatically. Our page load is faster and this is already being noticed by Google when analyzed in Webmaster Tools. I am sure many ecommerce companies use the ‘set it and forget it’ philosophy. Not upgrading hardware saves a company money but will cost them customers in the long run. I am glad CoreCommerce has invested in keeping up to date.

We have also signed on with CloudFlare. Although, we have only been using the CloudFlare service for a few weeks we are pleased with the service. The speed has been nice but the protection from the cyber bad guys has been very comforting. We can now see Spammers, Botnets and Zombies from US and other Countries trying to get to our site. They have all been BLOCKED and we are protected.

All in all, it is nice to know we are keeping up with the latest in technology and hardware.

Innovation is certainly not limited to one person or company. The greatest innovations happen when people work together, collaborating and sharing experiences and ideas. We at CoreCommerce strive to cultivate an idea culture in our company, plotting our future based on feedback from all departments and our customers. This often leads us to amazing features, products and services outside our own organization, helping us provide our customers with as many tools as needed to have an easy, fun and successful experience selling goods online. CloudFlare is an organization that we have recently discovered and have had a pleasure working with on a number of projects. With a number of tremendously beneficial features and such simple setup, it is very plain to see why so many are signing up for CloudFlare.

Improve Load Times
And it really does make your site faster too. All that security stuff and it is speeding up your site, not slowing it down. CloudFlare uses what they call a “next-generation” content delivery network, that “performs better than any legacy CDN you’ve tried before.” A recent customer reported on our CoreCommerce community that she had seen her time to byte decrease by half. This is no surprise given the cutting edge technology and the 14 CloudFlare data centers on 3 continents, from Los Angeles to London to Tokyo. This spreads your images, CSS, and other static site elements around the world, allowing the store pages to load faster and giving your store a global presence. Domestic and international shoppers will see the pages load faster and will be more likely to look at more stuff, increasing their chances to buy and decreasing the cart abandonment rate. The faster a page loads, the more likely a shopper is to make a purchase. Additionally, with the use of CloudFlare’s app called Rocket Loader and their JavaScript and CSS bundling, you don’t have to be savvy on the latest coding techniques to squeeze out a few more milliseconds of load time. CloudFlare takes care of that for you, multiplying the efforts of CoreCommerce to also speed up load times. If you add your own custom CSS to CoreCommerce, CloudFlare can automatically “minify” your CSS code for you too, with no work on your end. Quicker load times and a faster time to byte also assist with search engine optimization, as site load time is currently a factor in organic search rankings on all the big name search sites. When it comes to e-commerce, there is no such thing as “fast enough.”

Security Benefits
Malicious web traffic can cripple an e-commerce store, and if your site is down, you aren’t making money. This is where CloudFlare steps in. Oh, and it makes your site faster too, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The CloudFlare service is an additional layer between the shopper’s browser and the CoreCommerce server, filtering out malicious site visitors using technology that learns how hackers exploit web sites to keep your online store safe and running smoothly. This filtering provides protection against comment and product review spamming, denial of service attacks and other threats common to the online marketplace. And since CloudFlare is always learning, it’s dynamically protecting your site from the latest, greatest cyber attacks out there. It’s like insurance for your store, keeping it online and you making money.

Savings — in your pocket!
The last major benefit is the bandwidth savings. Since CloudFlare caches your static store content, much of the content is not retrieved from the CoreCommerce server, cutting down drastically on bandwidth usage. Shoppers get a large majority of data directly from the CloudFlare server closest (geographically) to him or her. We have observed customers on CloudFlare saving 81% of bandwidth usage. You reduce the chances of a bandwidth overage, if not eliminate the overages all together, keeping more money in your pocket.

Security, speed, and savings. You’re probably looking for the catch though, right? You’re wondering what the cost is and why we have taken the time to write up such praise for another service. Currently, CloudFlare is free, but if you want to secure the SSL side of your store or currently have a dedicated SSL, you will need to get their PRO plan for $20 per month. Not bad for security, potential conversion increases and lower bandwidth cost. CoreCommerce doesn’t charge anything to use it, either. So why are we on the CloudFlare bandwagon? It’s simple. We believe that offering our customers the best software and services possible is a great way to do business. And after the first couple stores were using CloudFlare and talking with the CloudFlare team, we realized they believe the same thing. We endorse their service because it helps us help you make the most of your CoreCommerce store. Additionally, it helps our systems run smoother, translating into faster stores for those who aren’t using CloudFlare. The more CoreCommerce customers that are using CloudFlare, the safer and faster it is for everyone on our platform. Everyone wins, and that’s no exaggeration. It takes a few moments to set up and their staff is super helpful. The CoreCommerce team is also familiar with CloudFlare and can help with the setup on our side, if any is even needed. Please, give them a try. I doubt you’ll be sorry if you do!

We’re excited about CloudFlare and ecstatic about what’s to come. Be sure to stay tuned!

Signup for CloudFlare Now

Hey folks:
We’re excited to announce the newest features, which was released to all stores on Monday, February 6th. We did have some challenges and are behind schedule in getting these details out to customers. We hope that you enjoy them and find them useful.

FedEx Label Printing with Web Services
Customers using FedEx Web Services can now print shipping labels. This will allow you to print shipping labels directly from FedEx to simplify and streamline your shipping.

Raw SKU Token
In the Product Detail Layouts, you can now use the token ##RAW_SKU## to display a product SKU number with no formatting.

Blog 2.0
We’ve updated our blog feature! Blogs now have tags, a tag widget, SEO friendly URLs, Publish and Save Draft abilities and a Read More feature.
Tags can now be used to link blog posts with common topics. The widget is used on the storefront to display those tags. They will be click-able, so a shopper can see a topic, click the tag and browse a list of blog posts related to that tag.
SEO friendly URLs are now used to maximize the SEO potential of your blog. This is much like the URLs already used for Products and Categories. Additionally, the use of "/blog" after your domain will route shoppers and search engines right to your blog. Example: http://www.mydomain.com/blog will be your new address for your blog.
Published and Draft statuses on your posts will allow you to work on a post and enable it later, keeping it from the public while still being able to save your work and post the article another time.
Enabling the Read More feature will place a "Read More" link below the blog’s teaser. This is useful to let your readers know that there is more to read and gives them an additional place to click to read your blog article.

Google +1
Enabling a +1 button on your products for Google+ is now easier than before. In the Google +1 settings, you will be able to enable the button, enable it for all products and select from various options such as language and size of the button. This can increase your exposure on the Google+ social network in addition to the currently available Twitter and Facebook buttons. See this article (http://corecommerce.com/kb/5533/how_do_i_add_a_google_1_button_to_my_site) in our knowledgebase for more information on setting up and using this feature.

Click-able Images for Personalizations can open in a new or same window
When using click-able images for personalizations, you can specify whether the link opens in the same window or a new window.

GetResponse
We are now integrated with GetResponse, an email mailing list service. This adds to the current options of MailChimp and ConstantContact, giving you the choice of 3 email newsletter services. You can enable and configure GetResponse in the Settings>Plug-In Settings section of you admin area. Be sure to sign up for the service at the GetResponse website: http://www.getresponse.com/

2 New Payment Gateways
Braintree Payment Gateway (Orange Platform) is a direct payment gateway, customers will never leave your site. This integration was done on the Orange Platform. New Braintree customers will not be able to benefit from this integration, however, existing Braintree customers on the Orange Platform will be able to take full advantage of this integration. http://www.braintreepayments.com/
PagSeguro is a our first Brazilian specific gateway. It is an indirect gateway, which takes shoppers away from your store to the PagSeguro site to pay. The settings can be found in the Settings > Payment Settings along with the other settings. Since it is specific to Brazil, use in any other country is not recommended. https://pagseguro.uol.com.br/

Google Feed secure/non-secure image toggle
The URL used for the image in the Google Product Feed export can now be secure (HTTPS) or not secure (HTTP) with the selection of a check box to toggle between the 2 settings. This setting is right beside the export button on the Product Feeds page.

Disable Customer Email Receipt
In the Settings > Store Settings > Notifications, you can now choose whether to send or not to send a customer email receipt to the customer when they have made a purchase. The email receipt is enabled by default, so customers will get the receipt email as they have been doing. This is used if you prefer to let your payment gateway send the email rather than CoreCommerce.

Hide Pricing on View Cart
The pricing, calculate shipping, calculate tax and coupon fields can all be hidden with the selection of this feature. It can be found in the View Cart section of the Checkout Settings.

Edit Customer Group Restriction directly from the Category
Changing the Customer Groups that are allowed or not allowed to see a particular category can be done directly in the category. You no longer have to go to the Customer Groups page and edit the Groups to change which categories that the group can view. You may now edit the category and choose who may view the group.

New Design Integration Interface
A new interface has been implemented for the Design Integration section. It offers a simpler layout than the previous interface, with all the features except the Design your Own Logo. Due to lack of use, this feature was thought by clients to be the same as the Text Logo feature and was more of a confusion than a tool, so it was removed. There is also a design integration wizard to assist in setting up a new theme. If you hover over the Design tab or click on it in the admin area, you will see there are new options and a new layout.

Abandoned Carts Search
In the Abandoned Carts section, you can now search by first name, last name, a combination of first and last name or the IP address. Keep in mind that if a shopper doesn’t register, then their first or last name will not be saved with the cart and, therefore, not searchable.