New features: bulk discount pricing, sale price, new shipping module, share your purchase and more
Posted 25 June, 2012 by Qetzal. Posted in Blog, Ecwid News, New Releases
A new major version of Ecwid (v11) has been released. All Ecwid members have been upgraded automatically. Our engineers worked throughout the entire spring to implement some highly anticipated features which will we talk about in this post. So sit back, get a cup of coffee or tea – it will be a long post : -)
New completely revamped shipping module
Shipping is an essential part of every online store. This process should be easy and user-friendly as well as powerful. We found that our old admin interface for setting up shipping rates wasn’t intuitive enough. Some merchants even had to study our knowledge base to add the shipping rates. This was clear indication that this area should be improved. We re-imagined the shipping module from scratch and created a completely new experience: easy and intuitive for starters, yet powerful and advanced, with many “under the hood” tweaks, for experienced merchants. Along with these changes some highly anticipated shipping features were added.
Setup of a new shipping method is now much easier and convenient.
Just press the “Add new shipping method” button and follow the steps – our wizard will guide you through the whole setup process. If you need to create a simple rate (e.g. $5 for all US orders) the wizard will guide you through, or if you’d like something more advanced – it will help you through each step. We’ve designed it to be the perfect balance of simplicity and flexibility.
Ability to limit carrier-calculated shipping rates by a region.
So for example if you want to limit your shipping to only a few US states, but at the same time want to use automatic carrier-calculated USPS or UPS rates to avoid creating rates manually, it’s now possible.
Ability to sort shipping methods and select a default one.
Now you have full control over displaying the list of shipping methods on the checkout pages. Prior to this upgrade it wasn’t possible to set the necessary order of shipping methods or select the default one. The cheapest shipping method was selected by default. Now you have full control over the default shipping method and can define them in any order you’d like.
Ability to create custom shipping rates based on order subtotal.
Before user-defined rates could be based on cart weight only. Now they can be set up based on order subtotal as well. For example $14 for orders more than $100, $6 for orders less than $100.
Finally you can now offer your customers free shipping based on their cart subtotal.
In a ComScore survey, 84% of consumers indicated that free shipping was somewhat very important when making a purchase, and 55% of respondents indicated they would be at least somewhat likely to abandon their shopping cart without a free shipping promotion. We’re happy to offer this feature to our users so that they could fully utilize and take advantage of this marketing tactic.
Important note: the new module is very different from the old one. So it will not be enabled for the existing users automatically. In the next several days it will be rolled out for merchants and you will be promoted to upgrade your shipping rates to a new system. If you agree, Ecwid will convert your shipping rates to a new format. So if you are not ready to upgrade your shipping rates yet, just wait a little. Please refer to our migration FAQ for more details.
Bulk discount pricing
Ecwid merchants can now offer price discounts based on quantity breaks. For example if a t-shirt costs $24.99, but if you buy 3 items, the price will be dropped to $20.99 each instead. It’s a helpful tool for merchants who have a lot of products in stock and want to attract customers to buy more items.
Discount prices are shown on the product details in the storefront and discounts are applied immediately as soon as the quantity added to the cart changes.
This feature also has something unique. We implemented an algorithm which suggests users to add more items to get higher discounts. How it works: you add some items to a cart and eventually a message appears informing you that there is a chance to save some money by adding a bit more items. Such suggestions are smart. If you have 1 item in the cart, Ecwid will not offer to add 10 more just to get a 3% discount. However if you already have 8 items in a bag, then the suggestion to add 2 items more and save, will popup. Otherwise if a discount is huge, the suggestion will appear at the early stages: “add 7 more and get 80% off!”.
The goal is to show these messages at key moments, when the chances that customers will like the discount and add more items are the highest. We think this feature will encourage your customers to purchase more items from your store.
Sale and promotional price
Customers love discounts and deals. Putting a product on sale or showing that this very price is less than a customer will find elsewhere is a great way to get more orders.
And this is how the “Sale price” feature works. You can set the special “Compare to” price for your product and this price will be shown struck out to demonstrate how much the current price is better.
For example, if you want to show that your prices are better if compared to your competitors, you can use this field to inform how much they charge for the same product. The other way is to represent your regular price when you want to put a product on sale or to show the suggested retail price (“MRP”, “List price”, etc.)
You can set this “Compare to” price in the product details and fine-tune it on the “System Settings → General → Cart” page.
Want to change its look? This feature was created to be very flexible and highly customizable using custom CSS themes. For example check the following screen-shot. It is the same feature modified by CSS.
We think it is a great promotional tool with high potential. We hope you will like it too.
Share your purchase
Twitter has 140+ million active users. Facebook has 900+ million. Almost everybody around us has accounts in social networks. People use such accounts (e.g. a Facebook profile) to showcase their personalities. To show who they are and, most importantly, show the image they want to be. For example they “like” Facebook pages not just to get the status updates in their news feed, but to express themselves via liking particular brands. I.e. they don’t like Converse just because they like their shoes. But because this brand represents a special life style that users want to follow. For example people who love these brands are different from people who love these ones.
It means that people love to share pages and links, as it expresses themselves. Just search for “just bought” on Twitter. If a user wants to look very intelligent, he will surely share the smart book he just bought. If a user want to look “bad ass”, he will share a link to a purchased cool snowboard. And so on. Not many of us will admit this, though, but our shares are always highly influenced by our image we want to show to our friends.
And that’s a peculiarity of the “Share your purchase” feature used to drive more traffic to your store. When enabled, customer is encouraged to share a purchased product on a Facebook or Twitter after an order is placed. And since customer likes a product and it is a part of his lifestyle and “image” (that’s why he purchased it, right?), the chances he will share it to all his friends are very high.
Ecwid is the leading shopping cart application on Facebook, actually we’re #2 based on the number of active monthly users. So we have a deep understanding about what social commerce is and how it should work. The “Share your purchase” is the first of big list of social features we want to add to use the power of social commerce and drive you more sales.
Improvements of the product editor
Most likely the “product editing” page is one of the most opened in the Ecwid control panel. If you create a new store or update an existing one, you will spend some time on it editing your items. So we decided to add some neat improvements to optimize this page and save your time when editing your items.
Now the “Save” button is always visible, even if you scroll a page. Save some seconds by not scrolling to the top to save the changes. And don’t forget, you can always hit Ctrl+S shortcut to save an item
We have moved the “Assign categories” section to the General section. No more separate tab for it. So you can now assign a product to different categories faster, without switching to a new tab and back.
You can set a default category for a product, which will be used if you open it via a direct link or from the search results. This feature is extremely useful if your items are assigned to multiple categories and you want to have control over what category to show by default.
We hope these improvements will allow you to edit and manage your products a bit faster.
Faster checkout for Google Chrome users
Ecwid now supports experimental Google Chrome feature that allows Chrome users to fill Ecwid checkout forms in much faster, easier and smarter: literally in a single click. Google said in their blog post:
One of the biggest bottlenecks on any conversion funnel is filling out an online form – shopping and registration flows all rely on forms as a crucial and demanding step in accomplishing the goals of your site. For many users, online forms mean repeatedly typing common information like our names and addresses on different sites across the web – a tedious task that causes many to give up and abandon the flow entirely.
That’s totally true. Nobody loves to enter the same information again and again. Browsers have the “autocomplete” features that help to do this by remembering a common profile information and pre-populating the form with those values. However, they don’t work accurately enough – sometimes browsers just cannot understand what form fields are for – e.g. is it for “Country” or for “Company name” ? So some fields remain unfilled.
That’s why Chrome announced support for an experimental new “autocomplete type” attribute for form fields that allows web developers to label fields with common data types such as “Full name” or “State”. If form has such attributes, Chrome always knows what each field is for, so it can pre-populate all the checkout form correctly.
We’ve added support of this experimental API to Ecwid. So now any Chrome user who stored his personal information in Chrome can fill an Ecwid checkout forms in in a single click. They just start to fill in any field of the form, select a stored address and all fields in the form are filled in properly. Very convenient and fast, no more boring typing of the same text again and again.
As we know Ecwid is one of the first shopping carts (maybe even the first one) which implemented that experimental Chrome feature. While this attribute is still experimental, it is already available for Google Chrome which has about 33% worldwide usage share. So now one-third of all your customers has the opportunity to fill in a form in a single click and checkout much faster, which leads to higher conversion rates and more sales.
Improved behaviour for the zero-total orders
People love free things. Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics, has the theory that for normal transactions/purchases, we consider both upside and downside. But when something is free, we forget about the downside. “Free” makes us perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is. So it is a good idea to offer a free promotional product to attract customers. Especially if you sell intangible goods, such as music, books, etc.
However most of the online payment gateways don’t allow orders with zero total. So there was an issue: a customer adds a free product to a cart, however if he or she selects an online payment method, such as PayPal, they will see a warning that checkout with zero total isn’t allowed. The only solution was to create a special custom “offline” payment method and ask users to select it, if their order total is zero. Not a very good and usable workaround. Moreover if you want to offer promotional free e-goods, you had to change its order status from “Queued” (default status for orders placed by custom payment methods) to “Accepted” manually in order to trigger sending the download links.
Now this behavior has been improved dramatically. Ecwid has the “Skip payment method selection, if the order total is zero” option. This can be enabled on the System Settings → General → Cart” page, “Checkout Settings” section. If this option is enabled and the order total is zero, Ecwid will skip the payment method selection, so a customer doesn’t need to think what payment method s/he should select to place a free order. Ecwid even can set such orders to “Accepted” status, so it will send the download links of your free promotional files automatically. No more manual work.
This feature makes the ability to promote “free items” much more efficient and convenient for you and your customers.
What’s next?
This is just a small part of the features our engineers worked on in the past months. v11 introduces great marketing tools to promote your items, we hope you like these new features. We are working now on v12, which will also have some highly anticipated and great new features included. Thank you all for your support, ideas and suggestions and stay tuned!
Congrats with the new version! Thank you very much for including the bulk pricing feature!
One question though: in the developer version I saw at some point the possibility to assign products to product classes (but this didn't work). I am assuming this was meant to be an override for the discounts, i.e. if someone puts 2 t-shirtsX and 2 t-shirtsY in the cart that the cart would say the customer may be eligible for an extra discount if he orders another thing belonging to this class...
My question here is: are the discounts calculated on a per-product basis or per number of items in the cart so everything in the cart will automatically be discounted?
Thanks again!
No, product classes are not anyway connected to bulk pricing, they are a different set of functionality, suited to filtering your product in the storefront or inputting some extra properties for your products (like ISBN for books). This feature is yet to be completed and released with the upcoming versions of Ecwid.
The bulk pricing is per product - only the said numbers of this exact product (or its options) will trigger the bulk pricing. What you talk about is rather a volume discount for order total, a feature that will also appear in one of the upcoming releases of Ecwid.
Отличные новости. Хочу консультировать предпринимателей по Эквиду. Как можно с Вами связаться?
Артем Пулатов,
Спасибо, Артем. Если вы что-то хотите обсудить - напишите нам на форум, в русскоязычный раздел.
I am running your new version 11 but the shipping feature does not look like what you have listed above. why?
Kim
Starbase Indy,
Kim, please refer to this part of our blog post:
Also please refer to this article about the shipping migration: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54506526/Shipping%20rates%20migration%20FAQ
Found an issue with the first and last name in the new version (I think). It's showing the first name on one line, and the last name on the next line. Also, it only shows the first name in the order list in the backend... Anyone confirm?
I've certainly seen this problem and a customer reported this to me a month ago. Unfortunately they couldn't give me any information as to what might new causing it. Maybe it was the Sagepay module?
slice,
Slice,
Do you have an ID of the order that has this issue? If yes, please report it to our bug-tracker - we will check why it shows the first name only.
Mike C,
Mike,
Do you have an ID of the order that has this issue? If yes, please report it to our bug-tracker - we will check why it shows the first name only.
Maybe most of Ecwid's clients are large stores with multiple items and that's who these upgrades are for. Some of us have small stores that sell one-of-a-kind items. Would love to see ability to offer sales promotions on 1 ITEM for a certain period of time. That said, congrats on all the hard work!
Liz
http://www.venusinfringe.com
Liz G,
Liz, I know that feature is coming soon, waiting for that one too!
Mike C,
Thanks, Mike! Looks like there's already another way already other than a promotional coupon.
Liz G,
Thank you for the suggestion, Liz.
The "Sale price" and the "Bulk discount pricing" features already can be used to promote 1 item. Just add a discount or a sale price to it and your item is already one sale!
Qetzal,
Ok, tried it, works and it's nice! Still would like a coupon for this because it's more like a "gift" and emphasizes the "limited time" value of the sale.
Thanks,
Liz
Liz G,
The "coupon for specific products" feature will be available in the next major Ecwid version : -)
Awesome! Can't wait to try them out. Thanks.
squarescore,
You're welcome!
This really is a brilliant update, the best for a long while. Every one of the elements updated this time round is perfect. I am know waiting for just one thing to be added and I will leave oscommerce and opencart behind - and that is a widget for featured products, so that I can have featured products everywhere I like (home page)
Keep up the good work guys.
Thank you for your kind words! Happy to hear.
1. By the way you already can display featured products using our Product API and some JavaScript magic: the http://www.ecwid.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6038
2. Also, could you please create a new thread on our forums and describe how you see the ideal "featured products" feature? It will help us greatly. Thank you in advance.
sketchprinting,
you could create a special category for featured products and pull that one into your store?
Another thing I noticed, I don't get any kind of new shipping wizard when I click on New Shipping Method. Everything appears to be the same as in the previous version....?
Mike C,
Please, refer to this article: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54506526/Shipping%20rates%20migration%20FAQ
@Sketchprinting you can add featured products yourself using the html code for each product and change them as you want to. I know you would prefer to have it so it does it on the fly, but you'd still have to go through and change the products that would appear in the featured area manually anyway
@Mike, I'm seeing the same thing with the shipping. Can't seem to get it to show me the wizard
@Ecwid when I add the sale price, the font's are around half the size as the normal fonts. They don't seem to stand out enough. Do you have somewhere to edit that particular css style? You can see what I mean here on the 900mm Canopy Rangehood product http://www.cutlist.biz/store/#ecwid:category=2104830&mode=category&offset=0&sort=nameAsc
Fazman,
Wow,I give it to Ecwid.They listened and implemented.Thanks guys!
You're welcome! Working hard on v12 already : -)
Yes, the sale price can be of course modified via CSS. Please create a new thread on our forums and we will help.
Love all the updates! Is there the ability to automatically apply the bulk discount to the total in the cart, as opposed to an individual product? (For example if the total quantity in the cart exceeds $150, a 4% discount will apply?) Thanks.
This feature will be added in the next major version : -)
Qetzal,
I have waited 2 years... I was told discount on cart subtotal would be in version 11. I cannot take payment for orders online because I give discounts on the total amount ordered. This is such a common and basic method got many stores. I am going to have to move to another cart if you cannot have this within a month or two. I have waited two years because of the complecity of switching carts. So this is not until the next major revision?
Brian Prothro1,
Sorry my wholesale store has to leave Ecwid I love the look!!! but not being able to give a simple discount on the subtotal amount in the cart is a requirement for me. GOod luck....
Sorry to hear this, Brian. We are really sad to hear that you want to move
: -(
The feature you ask for has been already developed. It is tested by our QA team at this moment and we expect it to be released in about 1-1.5 months.
Is it something we can do to keep you as our user? We would be happy to do this.
Thanks for all the hard work! Looking good!
I can't wait to implement the new features! Way to go!
What new feature do you like the most?
thanks! thanks! thanks! A very important and complete update. Is a pleasure to work with your cart!
Thank you!
Nice; sharing has one bug though: the price without VAT gets shared, but the customer paid with VAT, so this information is a bit misleading. Sorry I didn't know where else to post this! Beside: WOOT!
lebonmot,
Ok I entered it in Bugtracker: http://www.ecwid.com/bt/view.php?id=11202
Thank you for the report! We will improve the behavior of the "Share purchase" feature in such cases.
I do not speak English, and I hope I understand
Excellent! great work, congratulations!, this update is very helpful and productive, I have implemented and new features for volume pricing and works great (as I dreamed), now just need the translation into Spanish for the front end!. I wonder if soon these savings may be made at the category, ie the sum of several products in the same category merit discount, as they did for product or should I promote it as another idea?
Thanks Ecwid make us happy!
Yes, it will be possible in the next version using discount coupons.
Qetzal,
ok, I look forward to updating coupons, why when ready?, thank you very much for your invaluable work!
Thank you so much! I am unable to use the price comparison for ALL product sizes, however, only the defaulted size. Please help ASAP! All of my sizes say the original price was $25 regardless of their size!
Thank you!
Sheen
Agape Oils,
Sheen,
At this moment the "Sale price" is set for the whole product. So when you select a product option which affect the product price, the "Sale price" and the "Save %%" note isn't updated dynamically. If you want this feature, you should try the product combinations for sizes: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/40532454/Product%20Combinations
If product combinations are used, then "Save %%" note will be updated dynamically if combination changes the base product price.
Qetzal,
Hi!
I am using product combinations and it still only shows the sale price for my primary item and changes the regular price of all of the other sizes.
Yes, it uses the "Sale price" of the base item. However the "Save NN%" is updated dynamically: http://i.imgur.com/ba80F.png http://i.imgur.com/D8hvU.png
Qetzal,
Hello,
The original price is incorrect, however, so therefore the sales price discount is wrong. This does not help. Please correct this so that the sales price discount is reflected from the original price of each size and not just the original price of the base size.
Thank you!
Sheen
Qetzal,
Here is the example:
http://www.agapeoils.com/shop-agape-oils-organic-purely-edible-products#ecwid:category=2307795&mode=product&product=9982528
Looks good, but where is Pay Pal pro?
Awesome! Thank you!
What about a "free gift with purchase" option?
Donna von Hoesslin,
Thanks!
How do you want this feature to work?
Are all these features enabled as I can see the new shipping setup or options in the products for compare prices (though i can see the config page)
Shannon Smith1,
1. New shipping module is rolled out gradually for all users: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54506526/Shipping%20rates%20migration%20FAQ
So if you still don't get it, just wait a little.
2. How to use the "Compare to" price: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54802595/Sale%20price
How to i upgrade all modules to latest version... i need all the new features but i seem stuck in the old one...
1. New shipping module is rolled out gradually for all users: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54506526/Shipping%20rates%20migration%20FAQ
So if you still don't get it, just wait a little.
2. All other features were enabled for all Ecwid users.
- Sale price: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54802595/Sale%20price
- Bulk discount pricing: http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54816203/Bulk%20discount%20pricing
- "Share purchase" can be enabled on the System settings - Social Tools page.
- The “Skip payment method selection, if the order total is zero” option can be enabled on the System Settings → General → Cart” page, “Checkout Settings” section.
Entering 3rd quarter of 2012, still no paypal pro like promised for quarter 2 of 2012. We were really excited to see the new version, thinking that paypal would be implemented... but can't find it within the update here.
In the new version is there a way to add a simple "handling/packaging" fee to the carrier calculated shipping method? For example, since I sell alcohol, I am charged a 6$ "Adult Signature Required" fee by fedex, so their carrier calculated rates are always short. I would be happy to use the Carrier Calculated method (which works fine via fedex) however I need to be able to add 7 more dollars or so to each shipment globally (regardless of destination, weight etc.) in order to make up for that extra fee and the cost of packaging. Please tell me there is a way to do this in this version.
Daniel Mensch,
Sorry, Daniel. This feature isn't implemented yet. It is something that will be implemented in our future versions.
Any idea when entering parcel dimensions (l x w x h) will be added?
No exact ETA yet, sorry.
YAYYYYY!! This is so totally awesome! Thank you, thank you, thank you for the new shipping module and the ability to give free shipping above a certain cart $ total. You guys and gals are truly fabulous
^_^
Hello... I need your help, please.
I have a problem. I try to set up shipping method both flat rate and custom table.
But it doesn't work well both because it's not show up as it should be.
I can't set up since your previous shipping version and then this version, too.
For example, I set flat rate as amount 35 THB, but when I try to check out the cart... the price of shipping turn to be 70 THB. Even if I try the custom table... base on subtotal.... but it's not work, too.
I don't understand why it turn to be like this.
Could you please check my store and please tell me what should I do to my store?
Please contact me in future.
betweenbeauty@hotmail.com
Most likely the problem is caused by the incorrect settings of your shipping module. Please create a new thread on our forums and we will help you to set them up properly.
Absolutely Excellent! Everything
I can't believe how good ecwid is..
the team has worked so hard to constantly improve and extend ecwid to become not just an ecommerce software, but an inimitable marketing tool too.
Hi it seem with this new release the ability to hide shopping bag is no long there please will be added back thanks.
Naijacommunity Network,
If you want to hide the shopping bag, then just don't add the "Minicart" widget to your pages.
Can you work on mobile version of ecwid for touch enabled smartphones.
Improved version of our mobile catalog is already in our roadmap.
How do I get to the bulk feature and sale feature?
Please refer to these articles:
- http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54816203/Bulk%20discount%20pricing
- http://kb.ecwid.com/w/page/54802595/Sale%20price
you guys rock !
Thanks!
Love the new "compare to price" feature, but when is bulk editing going to be added so we can change pricing on an entire category or offer temporary discounts 10%,30%,50% etc off on entire categories?
I know I can price change by CSV but they are a pain and time consuming. Especially, when you have multiple sites and thousands of items and changing one at a time is a nightmare. This is very important feature for larger stores. Please consider this update ASAP!
It can be done using discount coupons now.
I love the new features - but I have a few issues! please help.
The main problems are with the bulk order price option.
1. size of qty box.
2. price update
3. volume costs per unit not total
4. combined total price
1. the qty box is not large enough for 4 figures or more (same for the basket), I run print store and my order qty can be in the thousands.
2. It doesn't update the price until in the basket, previously I used product options to allow the clients to select the qty required, however this meant our clients had to stick within our predefined qty options and sometimes we had too many to look sensible. We used drop downs and when you selected your qty the price was updated.
3. The updated version lets the user see the price breaks as a unit cost, can it be switched to show a total cost at each qty break? I realise the unit cost can be expanded with a click (nice), however they can't see the total for their required qty until they add it to their basket. Can the price update on the fly as the qty is entered?
4. If the same item is ordered more than once the basket recalculates based on total volume, this can create a problem for me - can we set selected products not to offer a combined total, I understand the benefit of this for most people, in fact for some of my digital products this is good for me too.
Jamie McMinnis,
We have answered you on our forums: http://www.ecwid.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13646
It is possible to still have the cheapest shipping option listed first? For some of my items, USPS is the cheapest shipping item. For others, UPS is the cheapest. I would like the cheapest method to always shown first. I can't figure out how to do that though. Could you help? Thanks!