E-business Coach Commerce

Preview customer-submitted product reviews for faster editing

Publishing product reviews from customers just got easier. You've probably seen the queue of unpublished, newly submitted product reviews build up with junk or spam reviews. The list of pending reviews ready for you to edit and publish within the Admin Area now helps you cull out the junk.

As of the latest System Update, you can now see a 100 character display of the review in the review list in the admin area. This will make it easier for a site administrator to identify and delete bogus reviews.

System status updates appear on Admin Area login page

As a Total Blue System e-commerce software user, you enjoy a continuously updated product with built-in web hosting. As we roll out system updates, we want you to always know what's going on with the features of your e-commerce site or any scheduled maintenance of it's hosting. That is why we always update the Total Blue System status blog whenever there will be, or has been, activity or events that potentially affect web site availability or performance.

The last time you logged into the Admin Area for you site, you may have noticed that the latest system status blog posts are summarized on the login page, with links to the full post for those desiring more information. This is one more way we are striving to make sure you always have the latest information about Total Blue System.

Tip: If you'd prefer to receive updates by email whenever the Status website is updated, enter your email address in the left-side-of-the-page subscription form at http://status.e-businesscoach.com/

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.

Manage category tree for optimal SEO and 'Path to Purchase'

With seasonal changes in your web catalog, or with organizational changes driven by search engine optimization (SEO), the work to keep your catalog's categories or departments in order can be a chore. What's called the 'category tree' in Total Blue System's Catalog module now makes this work easier for you.

When your web catalog goes through some turmoil, consider this:

1. For any category that has subcategories, does it have its own products associated with it?
   
   If yes, those products won't display on the public pages of the site. The category gateway template will only display subcategories; thus those products are effectively invisible. To clarify, they'll be invisible until there's a category gateway template offered that merges the role of the category gallery template (showing products) with that of the category gateway template (showing subcategories...).
2. Are there any categories with 0 products? Now you can more quickly spot these likely unfinished or old categories.
3. Are there any categories with more than 30 products? If yes, it may suggest a need for better allocation across multiple subcategories. Or else you ought delete old products to simplify management of the category.
   
   Now you can see how many products are contained in each subcategory. (Note: The product count is specific to that category only, and not inclusive of subcategories beneath it.)
   
   
4. Are products hidden that ought not be? The view of the category tree now makes this obvious.

Lastly, you can now spot hidden categories a little easier as they're highlighted. Hidden categories can serve a search engine optimization (SEO) purpose in ways that don't clutter your primary category or department tree, typically visible from a left side navigation bar. There are also merchandising considerations that suggest hidden categories. For example, a category like "online exclusives" OUGHT be hidden and linked to prominently from teaser spots rather than being lumped next to topic or functional or gender categories in a main navigation bar. By making the category hidden, it won't be visible in the left nav bar. Ask us about how to evaluate which categories ought be hidden and which visible...

The category tree deserves special attention, as it serves not only as the "path to purchase" for the human shopper, but a key factor in your site's overall search engine optimization.

Customer and admin accounts separated for improved security

In our ecommerce site management tool known as the Admin Area of Total Blue System, the "Contacts" section now distinguishes between Customer accounts and Admin accounts, with the organizing tab being renamed "User Accounts". Formerly grouped together as "contacts," they are now managed from separate screens or pages, which reflect deeper changes in how the software functions.

Driven by our compliance to the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and timed for the conclusion of our audit of compliance, admin accounts are now managed distinctly and more intensively than customer accounts because admin accounts can grant access to sensitive order payment details.

Here are some notable changes:

• You cannot login to the public side of the website, the customer's My Account area, if you are using an admin account. Only customer logins gain entry to the My Account area now.
• Passwords for your Admin Area account are now encrypted. We cannot know them or help you recover them. Passwords can only be reset if need be to restore access.
• If you forget your Admin Area login details, you've got about 5 chances to enter the correct username and password. After that, you'll be locked out of the Admin Area for a period of time. This helps prevent what's known as brute force or dictionary attacks.
  • If you need further assistance after being locked out of your account, you can contact another Admin Area site manager or E-business Coach's tech support team for assistance unlocking your account. Direct the person helping you to edit your account in the Admin Area and follow the prompt to unlock the account.
• The login URL for the Admin Area has changed slightly. That explanation may help make it easier to login.

There are other significant, sometimes subtle changes going on as we complete our PCI audit. Find out more by reading those posts categorized as ecommerce security.

Updated login URL for Admin Area, site maintenance

Total Blue System's ecommerce software includes a full-featured Admin Area, enabling site owners to maintain their site's catalog and content from within a web browser. The login URL to the Admin Area that you ought bookmark is https://www.yourdomain.com/admin/ and that will remain the same after this latest software system update. But there is the potential for confusion when logging in, as the redirect from https://www.yourdomain.com/admin/ to the form where you enter your username and password will change effective 26 February. The changes are part of a number of security enhancements related to our compliance to the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Learn more in posts categorized as ecommerce security.

Whether you have a problem logging in will depend much on whether you use a password manager tool (we recommend RoboForm and 1Password),
or rely on your web browser to save and manage your passwords, or you type directly in the form fields.

Here are some tips on how to login if you don't know your password and the software you use to manage your password seems confused by the updated login URL:

• View and edit your password from within the software you use as your password manager. Once you fetch your password, then enter it directly into the form by manually typing it into the fields. As you submit the form to login, you'll be prompted to save this information. Choose to save the login details and this ought update your URL and make it easy to login next time.
  • In the Firefox web browser, for example, you can go to Edit -> Preferences. Then choose Show Passwords and find the URL of your website's admin area. Then enter the password as you see it there into the form fields for the Admin Area login. Try a similar process if you use Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
  • In 1Password, you can edit the URL that's saved. In this case, the old URL may look like https://www.yourdomain.com/admin/signin.php. Instead, change it to just https://www.yourdomain.com/admin/
  • In RoboForm, you can't typically edit the URL. But you can view the password and then manually enter it into the form field. Upon form submission, you can save a new "passcard" to use the next time.
• If at least one person in your company who has Admin Area access does know his or her password, then the others who do not can ask that person to update their passwords from within the Admin Area. Go to "User Accounts" then "View / Edit Admin Accounts". Choose to edit the admin user in question. You can enter a new password in the  so-named field and save your changes.
  • Just remember that communication of the new password need be in person or by phone and never by email. The sensitivity of the password excludes email as a means of communicating it, unless the email message itself is encrypted.
• If none of the above options are working or make sense, then contact our technical support team for assistance. We can reset your password for you if you have an existing account. (We cannot tell you your existing password, as it's encrypted and not available to us.)

New PCI-compliant login page to Admin Area

When e-commerce merchants test their compliance to the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), there are business processes to be followed in order to be compliant. Changes in Total Blue System's Admin Area are incorporating several of these processes into the way the software works. The consequence is that by using the Total Blue software, your business processes cannot help but be PCI compliant. Specifically, this concerns how access is controlled to sensitive financial or personal cardholder data.

The Admin Area of Total Blue System, available at http://www.yourwebsite.com/admin/, is changing in important ways to achieve this compliance to the PCI standard. There's a lot concerning password strenghth, brute-force attacks, and the like.

Most visibly for you, the URL that you may have bookmarked in your browser is changing. The URL http://www.yourwebsite.com/admin/signin.php changes to just http://www.yourwebsite.com/admin/ . This change will take effect in the System Update to be released to your live website the night of 25 February.

That's the URL you ought to bookmark instead of /signin.php.  (Note that part of what's going on here is that the older PHP scripted webpage is being replaced with a new set of pages powered by the Ruby on Rails framework, as part of a rewrite of Total Blue System into Ruby on Rails.)

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.

Identify products in web catalog precisely, quickly

For an e-commerce catalog manager with thousands of products, finding the one product you need to update on your website ought be quick, and precise. The Admin Area's Catalog module offers a new Product Search function designed to help you do just that. Now you can create filters to apply to your product searches.

Filters are ways of identifying a product in a catalog, and can include whether the product is orderable, whether it's displayed publicly on the website's catalog pages, and whether it contains a photo. There are many more filters that might be applied, but these three are shown in the nearby screen shot.  These three are a useful combination because any products that show up in the results after these filters have been applied will be those needing a photo.

Depending on the database integration choices you made when your e-commerce site was established, the presence of a product photo may be a manual step you need to take. Now you can quickly spot which products need photos added, because they're effectively "live" on your website without one.

How else might you use this feature? Here's an idea:  The presence of a product review will impact the purchase conversion rate as measured in your e-commerce analytics software package. We like to take a snapshot reading periodically to identify how many of your products have a review posted by a customer. What's the ratio of products with a review to those without a review?

Find out now by applying filters that identify all of the products that do, or do not, have a product review and are displayable and orderable on your live website catalog.

Easy upload of banner and promotional graphics

Within the Total Blue System we have the concept of Teasers, which are simply rectangular spaces tucked into various places on your website where you can communicate to site visitors about the latest promotional offer, customer service message, or announce whatever's new.

Teasers are often graphic files, in .jpg, .gif, .png, or .swf (flash) format. Sometimes they're a combination of grahpics and text, with HTML to stitch it all together.

Now it's easier than ever to create a new Teaser because you can easily upload graphic files through a web browser, within the Admin Area of your website. Click the upload button, select the file on your desktop computer, and upload it to a special folder on the web server with another click of the mouse.

Choose the "Upload Teaser Content" menu item in the Teasers section of your e-commerce site's Admin Area.