Total Blue System Ecommerce

Consistent display of item's price given quantity discount

You've asked for more flexibility, freeing you to creatively design shopping cart promotions that give shoppers just the right incentive to complete a purchase. We've listened, and are up to our elbows in an overhaul of Total Blue System's shopping cart promotions module. Read our alerts here, or trust we'll contact you directly in advance if there's an impact to existing promotions on your e-commerce website.

As we introduce a more flexible and creative feature set, the shopping experience will evolve. Some changes will be significant and appealing, other changes will be subtle and possibly appear trivial. Here's the latest:

• Today the display of a product's price on the product detail page -- or category gallery pages, or recently viewed items, or wherever a product's price appears -- is conditional based on the presence of a special pricing discount promotion. What this means, to use an example, is that if there's a buy 1 at $10 normal price and a 'buy 2 at $8' pricing promotion, then after you add 1 item to your shopping cart, the product's price will appear as $8. This is because it's showing you the price for the next purchase. However, you're shopping cart will show the one item you've already added to your cart at a price of $10, the normal price.
• What's changed in the latest System Update:  the product's price will now display as $10 throughout the website rather than $8. IF you add a second item to the cart, then the cart will show the special pricing discount you've received. The product detail page and other pages will show the normal price.

Note that the product detail page can still contain messaging that explains the pricing discount, that being the option to save if you buy more than one quantity. But this will be in text that's separate from the official 'your' price of the product, as it's visually designated on the page.

For users of Mail Order Manager (MOM), the mix and match code pricing will still be recognized, and the explanation on the product detail page will still appear as normal. For example, the message "Buy 2 for $8" would appear in the normal place on the page, based on mix and match code pricing imported from MOM.

The intent of this change is to eliminate potential confusion of the shopper. This means showing discounts or special savings consistently on the cart items page, while not inconsistently displaying the product's normal price elsewhere.

Updates to shipping during shopping cart check-out

As your e-commerce software continually grows and incorporates new enhancements, it's worthwhile to pause now and again and ask: what ought be removed? In other words, as new features are added, does it make sense to remove some features that have lost or never gained substantive value over time? We say yes. A software product ought be pruned in some areas, even as it grows in others.

Here's a couple updates along those lines concerning shipping during the cart check-out. As you review them, know that they do not impact our present clientele, or the impact has been mitigated, or the client's needs will be managed differently and we've worked out those changes with you directly. If something's been overlooked, please contact us immediately:

• When shipping costs are equal to $0.00, because of a promotion or coupon code or just because that's the way you've set up your Shipping Services, then the line item on the order subtotal will display as £0.00 or $0.00 (the currency being configurable by you, the site owner). Before, it used to display as "Free". Now it's the actual amount, even if that's zero.
• A site-wide configuration to allow shoppers to specify during cart check-out a shipment arrival date and or the day of the week for shipment arrival has been removed.
• A product may no longer ordered as a "pre-order item," with implications for inventory management, shipping cost calculations, and multiple shipments.
• Related to the above pre-order items, there is also no longer a "ship-ahead" option for shoppers to choose, specifying that they want the in-stock items to be shipped ahead of those that are not yet in inventory because of a pre-order status.
• In the Admin Area of Total Blue System, there is a place to view order details. What's changed: the shipping calculations are no longer split out into costs for pre-order, back-order, and ship-ahead, as these features are no longer present to make the data meaningful.
• The "estimated" qualifier has been removed from the cart check-out process when it appeared next to the shipping amount. This qualifier related to the fact that there may have been back-order items that, when shipped, would be charged a different shipping amount than the shipping total specified at the time of check-out. The removal of this language doesn't prevent you from charging more or nothing for additional shipments of back-ordered items, but it does eliminate the ambiguity that caused concern among shoppers. You can communicate your own policies in "Teasers" on the Cart check-out pages where you think appropriate, to communicate what you wish.
• If you create a Shipping Service in the Admin Area of Total Blue System, and you define a maximum shipping weight, this weight total now applies to all items in the order, even those specified as on back-order status.
• Promotions involving the cost of shipping now apply to orders that include items  that have a back-ordered inventory status.

Pitch the email opt-in after you've got the order

For every merchant who wants to query would-be buyers with all sorts of questions (yes, we love the data, too), there's a shopper who wants to buy with a minimum of hassle. Creating a website account in order to make a purchase of cart items can be one such hassle that our latest System Update seeks to reduce. New: an email opt-in invitation no longer appears on the Create a New Account page.

The website account creation process for site visitors is now separate from the act of opting-in to receive email offers. With the latest System Update, the Create a New Account page now asks these two questions only:  your email address, and "How did you hear about us?" -- assuming the merchant has configured this question and answer options to appear here.

So what can be done to encourage a shopper who wants to buy to also opt-in to email offers? Here's a couple of ideas:

1. Make use of Teasers in your site's navigation bars to call attention to your Publications sign-up form page at http://www.yourdomain.com/profile/signup or alternatively the Quick Sign-up form if you use it.

2. Configure the Cart Thank you Page Teaser to offer an invitation to opt-in. This Teaser displays after the cart's order has been placed. It's a great time to encourage your new customer to stay in touch and get great offers by email. Here's a tip on how to do this:

In your teaser, as a link around a graphic image or as a text link, point to this special URL: http://www.yourdomain.com/profile/edit_using_session_email

When you do this, the site visitor who clicks through will be brought to the Update Your Profile page and the email address he or she already entered during the cart check-out process will be pre-populated in the appropriate form field. (If the shopper used the Express Checkout option and didn't enter an email address, then of course it won't appear.)

By setting up the Cart Thank you Page Teaser in this manner, you can keep the continuity of the ordering process going with minimum interruption, and then pitch the email opt-in at an opportune time: after you've got the order.

Satisfy cravings for shipping cost info

If there's one question that comes to an on-line shopper's mind after "How much does it cost?" it's likely "How much will it cost to ship?" Of course, those questions are really the same: what's the cost to make this purchase? Total Blue System's Cart module now attempts to answer that question for shoppers -- only knowing the items to be purchased.

Shopper concerns about shipping costs prompt some merchants to offer free shipping. But often that's only a temporary promotion, and if not, then shoppers can conclude the shipping cost is baked into the product's price. Since a "free shipping" pricing scheme isn't often practical, some e-commerce sites will attempt to meet the shopper's craving by offering to forecast shipping costs. The answer is given after asking the shopper for his or her zip code. That's one route to take, but it's not optimal because it requires input from the shopper that slows the buying process. It also doesn't necessarily work for merchants selling into the United Kingdom and Western Europe.

In response to this situation, E-business Coach developed a proprietary algorithm for estimating shipping costs. These are communicated to the shopper without asking any information about the shipping destination, and before the cart check-out process begins. In collaboration with the merchant, the algorithm can be tuned so that what the shopper sees is higher or lower than actual estimates, depending on the selling psychology that's preferred.

For now, access to this feature is on a limited by-request basis. We'll be watching this beta test closely in the coming months, in particular measuring the impact on shopping cart conversion rates as a result of this new information given to shoppers.

Identify Shipping Carrier and Service by name

Communicate more clearly in your order confirmation email the shipping details of your customer's order.

You can edit the text of your order confirmation email in the Configuration section of the Admin Area. Look under  the "Email Templates" tab, and find the Order Receipt Template.

Now you can specify the shipping carrier and service by name by inserting the variable [ORDER_SHIPMETHOD] into the copy of your message. You may have previously specified only the shipping code you use in your internal operations, using the variable [SHIPPING_METHOD]. Now you can use one or both.