Ecwid v10.3 has been released
Posted 29 February, 2012 by Qetzal. Posted in Ecwid News, New ReleasesA new version of Ecwid (v10.3) has been released. All Ecwid users have been upgraded automatically. This minor release adds two highly-anticipated features to Ecwid.
Affiliate program: 20% revenue share
We are glad to announce that Ecwid Affiliate Program has been officially launched. Becoming an Ecwid affiliate is the fastest and easiest way to partner with us and get rewarded for spreading the word and love about Ecwid. Refer clients to Ecwid and get your cut from our profits: 20% recurring revenue commission for all their payments to us.
Our affiliate program is powered by zferral affiliate software and features:
- Automatic commissions payment via PayPal
- Real-time performance tracking and comprehensive set of reports
- Pre-configured marketing banners for quick start with the program
- Tools for running campaigns on Facebook and Twitter
To join the program please visit our web site at www.ecwid.com/affiliate-program.html and press the “Join Affiliate Program” button. We believe this program is a great opportunity for everyone that would like to help Ecwid grow and also earn with us as well.
Next / Previous product navigation links
Ecwid now displays special “Previous / Next Product” links on the product details page, so your customers can browse your items quickly, efficiently and more conveniently.
Prior to this new feature, if a customer wanted to browse all items in a specific category, he/she would need to open a product details page, then go back to the category level, then open the next product and so on. This was not ideal and not the way it should be. That’s why we added these links, so now your customers can easily press the “Next product” link and the next product is loaded instantly.
This feature hides a lot of great changes and improvements under the hood. We wanted to create the fastest and “wowest” experience as possible, so we implemented a complex combination of product caching and products pre-loading mechanisms to make sure the next/previous product will be loaded blazingly fast. Actually when a customer presses the link, the next product is already loaded and ready to be shown, so it is displayed instantly. This means that Ecwid will display product pages faster than any shopping cart on the market, period.
But this is not all. If you’re a keyboard ninja and love keyboard shortcuts, you can use them to browse your catalog. Use “Ctrl + →” and “Ctrl + ←” to browse products and “Ctrl + ↑” to go one level up.
As one of our users who tested this feature, said: “Ah that is really awesome… I was just messing with it in the test store. It’s kind of addicting, getting you to click through the whole catalog“.
Your customers will view more items and spend more time on your site, which will lead to more sales for you.
These “Next / Previous” links are new elements on the product details page, so if you use a highly-modified custom CSS theme on your store, you will probably need to style them as well. For this reason, we’ve disabled this feature for our users by default (as we do with other new features). If you would like to use this new feature you will need to enable it manually. Just log in to your control panel and follow the instructions.
Also
- We’re constantly working on improving the performance and speed of all Ecwid stores. We strongly believe that fast page loading is a big advantage and leads to more sales. As a result of our internal changes the average speed of Ecwid response was improved by 15%.
- We’ve also improved the order search in the control panel. As many of you probably know already, Ecwid provides a unified field to search for all order values. It’s very convenient not to think of what field to fill in and just enter the search string in one field and find the specific order for whatever you search for: customer name, email, purchased products or anything else. It works great, however as soon as the number of orders grows in a store, the performance begins to suffer – too far from our standards. That’s why our engineers revamped the order search completely. Now Ecwid uses a separate search server to perform such tasks. So even if you have thousands of orders (we wish for you to have them), the search will be extremely fast and accurate. As a neat addition to this feature, it is now possible to search by the “Affiliate ID” order field as well. This feature will be automatically enabled for all merchants who have more than 100 orders a few hours after v10.3 release.
Feel free to use and enjoy these new features. Our team is already working on the next major version, which will include a completely revamped shipping module, new social sharing buttons and many more important new features. Stay tuned and subscribe to our blog, Facebook page and Twitter for updates and news : -)
Was really hoping for the Korean translation to be included in this release....
Rob Titley,
It will be released soon : -)
Qetzal,
Great! Thanks for all the hard work and great product!
Thanks, Rob! We've released this translation.
For the affiliate program; does it only considers new customers to which we recommand ecwid?
Or can we some kind of import customers to whom we already recommended ecwid?
At this moment only the new customers are counted. Unfortunetely there is no automatic and reliable way for us to find/determine all old customers, that were referred by you, sorry.
Was really hoping PayPal Pro would be included. Was told by Qetzal via the forum that it would be ready by the 3rd quarter of 2012. :*(
Hi Derek,
We understand that you wait for this feature and it is important for you.
As we said earlier PayPal Pro is in our development plans and we're working with PayPal closely on these changes.
However if we have a choice between releasing a poorly implemented undone feature just to match the previously announced approximate ETA and delaying the feature release, but releasing a perfect solution, then we will select the second option. To be honest now I think that maybe providing any ETA for any future feature (even an approximate one) isn't a good idea at all.
I will post more about the new features and our development roadmap on the forum to the thread where you commented, so you will get notifications. Let's continue the discussions there then.
Qetzal,
Qetzal,
BOO! You do not love us! :*(
not much..
Well, it is a minor release, so it is supposed that it has only minor improvements only. All the big things and changes usually appear in major releases, e.g. v10, v11, v12 and so on.
Minor releases are for minor improvements and bug fixes, because we all love bug free apps : -) For example in v10.3 our team has closed 396 tickets in our internal bug-tracker. That's 396 improved things or fixed bugs. That's about 7 ones a day: pretty great number, especially if you keep in mind that at the same moment our team implements big features and maintains Ecwid (i.e. servers) itself, so it works properly for all our users. A lot of work.
So stay tuned, big features are on the way.
Thank you ALL for the great add-on of the: Next / Previous product navigation links.
May I ask a question? The next and previous text is in english and i have Dutch as default language. How do i change the text to a custom Dutch language text??
Keep on the good work!
Hi, do you mean the tooltip texts? If you want to translate them, just create a new report in our bug-tracker and we will add the necessary translations to Ecwid. If you need something custom there, override that text labels as described here: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/22978888/Translation+FAQ+and+How-to#HowcanIchangeortranslateanytextinmystorefront
You will need to change the "ProductDetails.next_product_title" and "ProductDetails.prev_product_title" labels.
Hello there,
I absolutely love the next/previous products, thank you but feel that there needs to be permanent, visible wording saying next/previous product above the arrows instead of only seeing it on a mouse over, as many customers will miss it otherwise. Just a thought.
Oz Wildlife Studio,
I've just noticed that we can do this after reading the Knowledge Base at http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/51403894/How%20to%20change%20the%20next%20and%20previous%20product%20links%20in%20the%20storefront#Howtosettextlabelsinsteadoficonsforprev/nextlinks
Excellent!
Our goal was to create new elements that would be universal and suitable for any design, visible, but at the same moment would not overload a page and attract too much attention, when it isn't needed. That's why we selected the current look.
However since some Ecwid merchants will certainly want to customize them, we provided tools to do this, including the ability to replace arrows with texts. Glad to know that you have already found our article about this : -)
I appreciate your efforts to increase the speed of ecwid. That is something that I find very valuable.
Thank you! We totally agree, good speed and performance of a store is a great advantage and sales driver. It's a pity that many vendors forget about this.
why I can't use this new future...I follow instructions but nothing happened
Ivan Milicevic,
You don't see the links, because your custom CSS theme has some incorrect styles. Please refer to this thread for details & the solution: http://www.ecwid.com/forums/showthread.php?p=46595
Ecwid keeps marching on...
May I propose country (Malaysia) specific requirements;
1) Malaysian Online Payment Gateway - NetBuilder / MOLPay
http://www.netbuilder.com.my/
2) Poslaju National Courier (Malaysia)
http://www.poslaju.com.my/
I look forward to these integrations.
If you have specific queries from them, I could assist with the local legwork.
thanks.
JLK,
Thank you very much for the suggestions! Of course, we will consider these changes.
Скажите, можно ли добавить на страницу товара еще и кнопку "Вернуться в каталог",
что бы вернуться к этому товару в каталоге. Это просто необходимо, потому что если в каталоге
(категории) 10 и более страниц, то возвращаться каждый раз на первую страницу и искать на какой странице ты остановился очень затруднительно. То же самое и в корзине с кнопкой "Продолжить покупки". А функция Вперед-назад действительно работает быстро, спасибо.