CoreCommerce

So you want to start a store and sell your products online. I hope you choose CoreCommerce, of course, but the purpose of this article is about the design of your site. A simple yet professional design can be key to your store’s success. It’s not the only factor of course, but it can make a difference.

A design that backs up the type of products you sell will give the customer the sense you know what you do and you are an expert in what you sell. For example, if you sell party supplies, you would most likely NOT want a site that is very dark and mysterious. You would want something colorful, happy, and gave the impression you are an expert on how to throw a party and what supplies are needed.

When you are looking for a design, sometimes you can stumble across a premade template that is exactly what you want your site to look like. Other times, you may find a template that just requires a few small changes.

But a lot of times, to get the exact look you want, you want/need something custom to be  built. The good things about a custom design are that you get something unique to your business or company, it tells the story of what your company is about and what types of products you sell, and it shows that you are an EXPERT in your field, giving customers the TRUST to buy from you.

You will see a LOT of sites with very complex designs, that do not sell a THING. Ultra complex designs may LOOK really nice, but if they are too busy, with too many options, customers tend to get overwhelmed and leave your site.

On the other hand, I have seen VERY SIMPLE designs on sites that bring in MILLIONS in dollars every year. So in the end the products you sell will be your bread and butter, but a good looking, but not too busy design can help keep customers on the site long enough to notice your products, and eventually buy from you.

A poorly designed site, can also have a negative impact. If a customer goes to a site that looks like it was slapped together with a spatula, they get the impression you are not serious about what you are selling (back to the whole “EXPERT” concept) and are much LESS willing to trust you with their money.

For example, here is a screenshot of a test site that has no design, no feel to it:

Now you see that there is nothing about this site that gives the customer any indication of what the site sells, what its company is about, how their products are the products the customer should purchase.

Now check this screenshot out:

You can see by viewing this site’s design, its not too busy, simple, yet professional, and you immediately know what types of products this site sells. this type of design allows the customer to know they came to the right place, yet they will not be overwhelmed with too many images, or links to confuse or frustrate them from wanting to buy from you.

So in the end, a good design can go a long way, and a custom one can give your site the unique, and “experty” (yes I made that up) feel you are looking for. Just make sure it tells the story of why you are in business and why customers should buy from you (since you are the expert).

Til next time!

As many of you know we recently upgraded our design framework. We have just released our new guide.

You can also view our detailed KB article on this change here.

We have added several new features in our latest release. The biggest of which is our new template tokens.

We have changed our entire templating system, making it even easier to modify any themes. This includes our all new token system, so instead of relying on complicated php to pull in data or to create if statements, you can now use our new tokens, which completely removes PHP code from our design templates. To view the new token list go here.

The following new features have been added during the July Release:

• New Template System
• Use text personalization fields as a quantity fields
• Progress bar option when submitting a customer submits an order

Below are training videos on how to use each of these features.

New Template System

NOTE: We are currently working on an updated customization guide to go along with our new token system, which will be released by late July.

Use text personalization fields as a quantity field

Progress bar option when customer submits an order

Our latest CoreCommerce release is rolling out today Nov 11 and tomorrow Nov 12. This week’s features are listed below. The videos below will describe some of the new features work.

Back in Stock Inventory Notification

Facebook Like Integration

We also made changes to the main navigation tabs. We made them slightly smaller and now you can access the navigation with one less click. Also, you can now tell what tab you are on (we change the color to black). You will also notice a better organization of links inside of the main navigation.

The design link on the top right has now been moved into a tab. This is for easier access, plus you can now access your FTP information inside of that tab.

You can now also have UPS negotiated rates. This way, if UPS gives your UPS account number special deals you can pass those savings to your customers. Just check the “UPS Negotiated” check box when configuring your UPS setting in the shipping zones section of the admin.

Integrated with Lynx fulfillment.

Added one new payment gateway, Renaissance Associates gateway.

As usual if you need any help please contact our award winning support department.

CoreCommerce Team

Here is our latest release.

• Coupon Limit 1 Per Customer – A new feature to use within coupons is the ability to limit a coupon as one use per a customer. This means once a customer uses a coupon they can’t use the same coupon again on a future order.

• View Product Reviews When Editing a Product – When you are editing a product you can now see all product reviews tied to the specific product by clicking on the advanced link and expanding the section called Product Reviews.

• Re-Designed the Product Advanced Section – Created navigation layers like the general page when adding/editing a product for a more intuitive deisgn.

• Added CVV2 Helper Text – You can turn this on or off. By having this on, your customers will see a question mark icon next to the cvv2 code. This will help them understand what they need to enter here to checkout.

• Admin Users Can Be Restricted to Design Only – When creating limited admin user accounts, you can now restrict certain accounts to only access the design area of your admin.

• Custom Product Lists Now Work Together – Previously if you created custom product list like (just an example) Make and Model, each one showed independent results. Now if your customers choose Make and then choose Model, then all product belonging to the make and model will appear.

• Forward URL – When you are requiring customers to login before viewing categories or products, you can now choose which URL they go to after logging in. For example instead of sending them to the my account page, maybe you want to send them to your homepage or a special content page you created.

• Front-end Products View All Added – We added View All as an option on your store front for customers to choose when you have products or categories which span multiple pages.

• Newsletter Sign-Up Change – If you use the newsletter feature, you can now choose to whether or not have the sign-up checkbox checked or not checked by default when your customers place an order with you.

• Order Error Email Modified – If you are receiving order error emails, we have now added three new tokens which you can add to your order error message. Those tokens are ##CUSTOMER_EMAIL##, ##CUSTOMER_BILL_PHONE_LANG## and ##CUSTOMER_BILL_PHONE##. Using these tokens will allow you to view the customer email address and billing phone number in the order error emails which are sent out if you have that featured turned on.

Thanks,
CoreCommerce Development Team

This our latest release with a few new features, including a major change to how our pre-design templates work and the customer group discounts functions.

• Pre-Designed Templates Modifications – You can now control directly in the admin your widgets for the left and right side of your pre-designed templates just like in Generic Design mode, in addition to be able to change the colors and fonts. We also stretched out many of the templates to give them a wider look. To be able to use these new features you will need to either add a pre-designed template to your store and click configure after you active the template or if you are already using a pre-designed template you must click the restore button when viewing the pre-designed templates for your current active template to get the latest changes.

• Customer Groups – You can now offer customer group discounts for your product options, along with your regular product price. Along with this you can also use a percentage discount for a customer group instead of an exact dollar amount.

• Real-Time Shipping Update – If you are offering real-time rate quotes from multiple providers your customers can now quickly view other rate-quotes from the other providers without having to use the back button on the preview shipping calculator on the view cart page and the standard checkout payment page.

Thanks again to all of our customers for their ideas and suggestions!