E-business Coach Commerce

Search orders by item quantity

The e-commerce order module within the web-based Admin Area of Total Blue System now allows more precise order lookups.  Among the new filters available for you the site owner to find orders is this:

You can now seek out orders containing a certain quantity of the same item. For example, you can search for all orders containing more than 10 of any single line item.

This enhancement will allow the merchant's customer service personnel to quickly and easily identify "large quantity" orders that might result in a back-order condition at the time of fulfillment.

Tip: Know that Total Blue System is NOT an order management solution for e-commerce merchants. The software package focuses it's feature set on collecting orders, on closing the online sale, so to speak. While there are order lookup features, users of Total Blue rely on another software package for managing the information and processes surrounding the fulfillment process.

Create product feeds for Yahoo Shopping!, Shop.com, and Affiliate Window

The savvy e-commerce merchant extends his or her website's "path to purchase" well beyond the homepage. It begins on the search engine's results page, or in the results pages of the many shopping "portal" websites that vie to send would-be buyers to your site. But if it's a shopping portal, your participation requires that you deliver a product data feed. In other words, you need to deliver an XML text file packed with details about your products, and feed this into the shopping portal's catalog. Now it's easier than ever:

With the latest System Update, e-commerce merchants using Total Blue System can now create product data feeds for:

• Affiliate Window,
• Yahoo! Shopping, and
• Shop.com (this includes the UK version at http://www.shop-com.co.uk/.

This functionality is accessed from the Catalog section of the Admin Area of Total Blue System. In the left nav bar there are now links for each of these three data feeds. Clicking on one of these links will create a data file correctly formatted for upload to the associated site.

Hint: The feed for Affiliate Window can be easily modified to fit the format required for Kelkoo. Ask for Priority Support should you want tips on how to make this work for Kelkoo.

These capabilities rolled out as "core" features today to all clients began as a simple request from one client for one shopping service. Total Blue System feature development took place in time for 2007's peak holiday shopping season, but the data feeds were only available on a special by-request basis as we evaluated the value of the feature and fine-tuned it. Now it's available for all clients to benefit from. This example is a good description of how Total Blue System evolves as a continuously-updated, hosted software application.

Template updates move 'hard-coded' copy into 'Teasers'

The copy (instructions for site visitors) that appears on a couple of page templates are being updated in the next System Update. Here's the details should you want to make adjustments as a consequence:

First, a bit of background. The Total Blue System product includes page templates, representing "core" pages on your website. These core pages are effectively features of the Total Blue e-commerce software package. Specifically:

• Each page / feature has a consistent file name, thus URL, on all our clients' e-commerce websites.
• The code for these pages exists in a place that's inaccessible to site owners, therefore the files themselves can only be updated by E-business Coach programmers. Such files may be views, models, and controllers, if powered by the newer Ruby on Rails code base. Or else they're PHP files if still powered by the older codebase, not yet refactored as part of our on-going rewrite into Ruby.
• The structure of the page, it's lay-out, is effectively "core". This means the placement of where content could appear is consistent across all instances of the software, across all clients.
• The content on these pages is updated by site owners from within the web-based Admin Area site management tool. Most of content is accessible, but not everything. As the software's page templates evolve, more and more of the content is accessible to site owners.
• If it's a "core" page, then it affects all our clients' websites in the same way. In other words, an update to a "core" page template affects everyone. The changes described below are examples of such "core" pages.

So what's new? Two page templates:

1. The Update Your Email Profile page

The page at http://www.[yourdomainname].com/profile/edit is where a site visitors signs up to your email publications, answers demographic related questions to express preferences, and can also opt-out of email offers.  The following text will be removed from this page template in the next System Update:

"Would you like to receive more relevant and useful offers by email or when   browsing our site? Help us by answering these questions:"

The intent is for you to move this content, or create your own version of it, within a Teaser. This is done from within the Admin Area. Then you can associate this Teaser within the Teaser Spot called "Email Marketing Edit Profile". By doing it this way, you gain more control over the verbiage that appears on this important opt-in, email marketing-related page.

2. The Your Basket page

The page at http://www.[yourdomainname].com/cart_items.php is what shows a shopper the contents of his basket, or shopping cart.  (You can configure whether it's called a "basket" or "cart" or "shopping bag" or whatever.) Similar as the change above, the following text will be removed:

"Review the items listed below in your basket.  You can modify your basket to change the quantities ordered, remove items from your basket, or check out."

Note: What remains in the same place on the page template is an offer for the shopper to "save" her cart. This only appears if the shopper is "signed in" to her account.

As in the example above, this content ought be moved by you into a Teaser. Then that Teaser ought be associated with the Teaser Spot called "Cart View Items Page". In this way, you can have direct control over what message is communicated to a shopper who has just added an item to her basket. Perhaps you can now offer her a link to continue shopping that best serves your website...

Expect more changes to page templates to continue in a similar way, moving "hard-coded" copy on page templates into flexible, controlled-by-site-owners, Teaser message boxes on those same page templates.

Easier Access to Order Address Information via API

E-commerce merchants relying on Total Blue System as their ecommerce package need to share data with order fulfillment systems -- either in the back-office or as another hosted application somewhere else.  An update to Total Blue's Application Programming Interface (API) makes that integration easier than before:

Feedback from developers using CoLinear's Response mail order and direct commerce software, and from developers using FileMaker Pro, told us that the API's GET requests were too numerous for the data returned. We were asked, Can you consolidate GET requests and deliver more XML data with less overhead, less queries?

Yes, yes we can. Less overhead to get the data means a lower cost of integration. So improvements have been made to the Total Blue System API that make it easier to retrieve address information for orders. It's a start, and there's more to come.

Refer to the API documentation in your website's Admin Area at https://www.[yourdomainname].com/admin/help_topics/api 

Look for the new RESTful resources "/admin/orders/ORDER_ID/billing_address" and "/admin/orders/ORDER_ID/shipping_address" for additional information.