Total Blue System Ecommerce

Control MOM's data sync and behaviors

E-commerce merchants that operate Dydacomp's Mail Order Manager (a.k.a. MOM) can now more easily, precisely control the flow of data between MOM and their website. The Total Blue System integration with MOM goes back four years, so there's not a lot that's new in the way of raw functionality in this latest System Update. What is new and important is the introduction of a dedicated MOM configuration tab within the configuration options of Total Blue System's Admin Area.

Our objectives included:

• Enable site owners to directly control site-wide configuration settings, managed in one place, that affect all relevant data on the site. So in contrast to the MOM configuration setting specific to one product described here, the merchant can more efficiently control data sync behaviors.
• Make explicit and obvious to site owners and their web team the behaviors that govern the MOM integration. Now you can see exactly what's going on for product names, description, inventory, web order types, and more. And you can make adjustments directly as you work out the best solution for you.
• Update the chart in the Help section showing data flows and behaviors for MOM and Total Blue System. This chart concerns products that exists within MOM and the web catalog.

If you don't use Mail Order Manager, then don't be concerned with this. You'll only see the new MOM configuration tab if your site has been set-up for such an integration.  E-commerce merchants using something besides MOM will prefer the API integration with Total Blue System that uses RESTful XML over HTTPS.

Flexible product template shows more image details, upon request

Embracing the idea of progressive disclosure, the latest System Update to the 'tabbed' product detail page no longer shows all additional photos that may be available for a product. Now the 5th photo (you can sort their priority) will not display without what might be called "extra user input." In other words, the site visitor needs to now click a "more" link to show all additional photos beyond 4. The text of the "more" link is configurable by you the site owner, and only displays if there are more than 4 photos for a given product. The behavior is similar to the "more info" or "more details" link that can show the full product description, if you so configure it to hold some details back. The key word is progressive disclosure.

A couple other refinements have been introduced that amend what was described in the 'view larger' post here. The changes may best be observed rather than described. Suffice to say they are subtle and all manifest the idea that the template ought not waste space without feeling tight, and ought adapt to the fact that some products have lots of descriptive data (photos, text, links, relations to articles, etc.) while other products have very little.

• In either case, the page template ought exhibit enough intelligence to display information in a way that's appropriate to the product, while appearing consistent in lay-out for the sake of making it easy to comprehend by the site visitor. Feedback so far says we're hitting that target.

Bios give product reviews more credibility

By reducing the barriers to collecting product reviews, the volume has increased. E-commerce merchants are getting more reviews for editing and publishing on the public website catalog. But not surprisingly, most reviews are coming in as anonymous.

To give more credibility to product reviews, you can now solicit reviewers to identify their location. "Share with us where you live," encourages the product review form. While reviewers mostly choose not to identify themselves by name, it would be nice to get a city or country location. The intent is to build up a brief little bio on the reviewer to give credibility to the product review.

Note there are some other slight lay-out enhancements and some additional explanation next to each form field on the page in this latest System Update. The email address field now clarifies the purpose of it's presence on the form, for example.

• Expect more about the email address field on the product review form in a future System Update...

MOM users can sync data specific to one product, or not

E-commerce merchants who use Mail Order Manager for their internal order management needs can integrate with Total Blue System, sending a daily feed of product data to the website. You can configure what data is sent and how it behaves (updates products once, or updates continuously overwriting what's there, etc.). But prior to the latest system update, you could only control this site-wide.

• Now you can control it on a per product basis. A new "Disable Import from MOM" check box on the edit product screen in the Catalog module's Admin Area enables this feature.

Why might you want to do this?

As background, the MOM integration assumes that the product be displayable on the website, if the CANNOT SELL field in MOM is NOT checked. So, if you can sell it in MOM, it's on the website to be displayed.

Each night, the settings for the product are updated from MOM, and this includes the Displayable? field, which is nightly set to Yes. It's set to "Yes" because the Cannot Sell field is unchecked, and it's not Discontinued with inventory less than 1. These are the conditions that need be met to display the product on the website.

Would you like to hide products on the website, even though the product meets all the "sell online" conditions in MOM? Maybe because of a print catalog you must be able to take orders for the product by phone, but your website presentation of the product isn't ready yet? Or you have terms established by your suppliers that restrict on-line sell dates. Whatever the reason, here's how:

1. Mark the product as Displayable? = No.
2. Then check the  new "Disable Import from MOM" check box.

"Feature" code plus "test" code means few surprises

An important appeal to our e-commerce software product's migration to Ruby on Rails is the built-in testing framework. For e-commerce merchants, it means you can enjoy a continuously updated software product without wincing before each upgrade cycle. New features and functionality, like the product detail page template, can be released with confidence when tests are built into the code.

There's many related features and improvements and dependencies for this new page template. The implications go beyond a new teaser spot, advanced product option matrices, and easier-to-collect product reviews. A great many components to this page are dynamic and conditional. Because there are units tests, functional tests, and integration tests, there are fewer surprises after the new features are released to the live production web site. Nobody likes surprises.

Here's a quick example of what's going on behind the scenes of the product detail page template:

• There are 50 tests with 312 assertions at last count, and that's specific to the product "controller" used on this page template.
• Another 6 tests and 29 assertions, at last count, give confidence to the product controller helper methods.
• A great many more tests are embedded within the models that the product detail page uses to construct the data displayed on the page.

Overall the big gain to be realized is the confidence that comes with each feature upgrade. This means that even heading into a crucial end of year holiday sales period, new features can be released. Conventional wisdom says "no functionality updates after October." Not anymore. Or at least not because of a fear of technology surprises. Improve and optimize your e-commerce feature set right up until Christmas.

"Landing page" template eliminated after solving the root problem

For shoppers who arrive at your site referred by a search engine's results page (SERP), you've got just a moment to grab and hold their attention. Total Blue System's Catalog module used to have a special page template intended for this purpose, specific to a product detail page.

Known as the "landing page template," it consisted of a stripped down, minimalist look without all navigation options and without all of the product details and related content. Site owners could link to a product, add a special snippet of code to the end of the URL, and transform the page into using the "landing page template." This was frequently done in the context of search marketing, especially as cost-per-click, click-through landing pages. No more; the feature has been eliminated. Here's why:

First, the new tab orientation of the enhanced product detail page template goes a long way towards solving the problem that the landing page template intended to solve: progressive disclosure. The reason there existed a need for the landing page template in the first place was because, at the time, the product detail page template did too much, showed too much, scrolled too much, all at once. Not anymore. So the landing page template's reason for being has disappeared.

Second, we believe in removing software features. Call it pruning or refactoring or whatever you wish, but we look for reasons to eliminate features or preferences or configurations that, in the end, don't matter. If for some reason we find the landing page template or it's intention to needed again, that's fine. We'll add it back. But over the long-term, the objective of our turn-key e-commerce product is to provide all of the features you need and none that you don't. That means removing features or older code when prudent.

Search engine optimized product URL's: new scheme

Product detail pages, the page with the most information about a single product and the all important "add to cart" button, now have a new URL scheme. This changes comes about as part of the release of a new tabbed product detail page template in the latest System Update.

Whereas before the URL included the name of the category in which the product appears (in human readable words) completed by the product's item # (or Stock Keeping Unit, SKU) and capped with a .html extension, now the product name appears in place of the item #. This somewhat subtle difference offers one more bit of search engine optimization to the URL's in your website catalog.

• An example of the URL: http://yourdomain.com/product_categories/[category ID]-category-name-subcategory-name/products/[product ID]-name-of-product

What may catch your eye is the presence of the category and product ID numbers. Their introduction to the URL provides a number of performance and maintenance benefits, internal to Total Blue System. For example, there ought be some faster page load times on large category pages with many product detail URL's. There is no real harm or gain by their presence in terms of search engine optimization.

• URL's can be shortened for your convenience, removing the SEO-friendly keywords, and function with just ID #'s. The format is: http://yourdomain.com/product_categories/[category ID]/products/[product ID]

One tangible external benefit from the presence of these ID numbers for site owners or visitors is the fact that this URL scheme eliminates the possibility of a "page not found" error being encountered when a product detail page URL is requested and the containing category or subcategories have been renamed (this did happen in certain isolated circumstances before). A second benefit is that this URL scheme with it's ID numbers is consistent with the REST Application Programming Interface architecture style that we've adopted for our API. Third-party developers working to integrate Total Blue System with internal or externally-hosted order management databases will find it easier to work with these URL's.

Important: the old style of product detail page URL's will continue to work indefinitely. We'll phase them out at a point in the future when we're certain to have minimized any possible disruption to search engines or click-throughs from old email marketing messages.

Communicate site-wide messages on product detail page

When your customers are closely examining a product, viewing what's known as the product detail page, there may be one or two key points that prompt the purchase now. You can make these visible at this pivotal point in the browsing process by creating a "Teaser" for the product detail page template. There's now a "teaser spot" on the top  of the product detail template, released as part of this week's System Update.

Keep in mind this teaser spot is not unique to one product, but applied to all products that use the latest, tabbed product detail page template. So the message need be appropriate for all products. Here are some ideas:

• Announce a special, time-sensitive promotion concerning shipping that's worth emphasizing to someone who is about to click the "Add to cart" button.
• Communicate your site's secure ordering process, perhaps by promoting the HackerSafe designation from Scan Alert.

Here's how:
The Teaser Spot is placed at the top of the page, so you could create a graphic image that spans the entire width of the page "body" -- whatever dimension that is for your site. If you're going to post "trust symbols" like the HackerSafe badge, you may want it to float to the far right of the page, with text and other elements on the page wrapping around it. Here's sample code to help you achieve this, which you ought include in the Teaser that you create for this purpose:

Wrap the teaser's contents  in these tags: <div style="float: right">This is my teaser content</div>

Consolidate product option choices to one page

The new product detail page template with tabs for progressive disclosure and minimal scrolling can help you consolidate the product option choices presented to the web shopper. When a product comes in multiple sizes and colors (to use the two most common options for a product), the optimal way to present those choices is on one page. Known as the "product detail page" to Total Blue System users, this page now gracefully handles a product matrix with two, three, or more dimensions.

Here are some highlights:

• Create a product with item ordering options, as many sets as necessary. Examples include color, size, fabric all for one product.
• The Catalog module will perceive which option determines the price variance. The price for each option will then appear in the drop-down select menu that presents that option set. So if the price varies by size, then only the size drop down menu will show the price, separated by white space at the far right of the menu option.
• The price range will be automatically calculated and displayed in place of the product's "Our Price" field value, which is used if there is no price variance among options.
• Each option's select menu will be preceded by a label that you configure. It could be as simple as "Size," for example" or more explanatory as you choose.
• If there are no options for a product, then the drop-down select menus do not appear, of course.

This kind of product arrangement has positive benefits for search engine optimization efforts, as it can eliminate what would otherwise be deemed "duplicate content" from your site as perceived by a search engine spider.

By implementing this kind of product arrangement, you ought also consolidate product reviews into one product detail page. In short, reduce the number of "products" in your website catalog and increase the depth of descriptive content about each product.

The timing of this release matches the release of the new product detail page template in an upcoming System Update that will be coordinated specifically for you and your e-commerce site.

Contact our technical support team for input on how this may interact with your internal order management system. Mail Order Manager users may find there are adjustments necessary to how you store items in MOM, or in how you construct the item # or SKU.

Update more Total Blue System data via API

More data about orders and customers is now exposed to third-party developers or your internal order management system. Our e-commerce software's application programming interface (API) enables you to securely share data in a RESTful, XML format over SSL.

The latest System Update extends the ability for third-party or remote data sources to update more information about a website shopper's "My Account" and order history. This is an incremental but important enhancement to the data made available via the API.

The documentation about how to use Total Blue System's API reflects the new changes. Additional details have also been added to the documentation posted in the Admin Area of your website management tool. These details explain more about how to make the most use of the API when dealing with customer data, reflecting lessons learned by a client's third-party contract programmer who is completing a new API integration with their e-commerce website.