We have been working hard to ensure the REC platform complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which comes into force on 25th May 2018. This is a heads up about the changes we will be releasing next Tuesday 24th April which will enable you to take many of the necessary steps to ensure you are compliant.

New Cookie Message

A newly-worded cookie message and layout will be displayed to first-time visitors in place of the existing message. The new message will inherit the colour schemes of your site if you have adapted it.

 

New Cookie Pop-up (for responsive design websites)

When the Cookie Settings link is cliked it will fire up a modal window giving the visitor the ability to manage which cookies they wish to allow, as required under GDPR. A version of this will be made available for non-responsive websites at a later date. 

Positive Opt-in Consent For Newsletters / Email Campaigns

The system will cater for positive opt-in consent to newsletters where the individual will have to tick a box to be added as a newsletter subscriber, rather than it being pre-ticked for them.

Re-permissioning For Email Campaigns

A re-permissioning process has been defined to include a program for bulk unsubscribes and a new "Subscribe" field which can be added to email templates to allow people to opt-in to future marketing emails.

Form Data Collection Tips

This enables you to add some explainer text on form fields to explain why you wish to collect that particular data. 

Users Can See Their Form Submissions

Users will be able to see what forms they submitted on your site when they log in to their User Home page.

Additional Auditing

The audit log will keep a record of when users are added to the system and when there are changes to their newsletter subscription, status, level and group. This will help administrators to see what has happened historically as part of complying with individuals' rights to restrict processing or to be forgotten.

What Will You Have To Do?

We will be providing guidance on the steps you need to take to use these new features when the release is made available next week.

There will be further releases before the 25th May which are more targeted towards alerts and notifications when administrators access private data. This is part of extending the perimeter for data breach detection because many data breaches originate from inside a company rather than being external website hacks.

Applies To: Ecommerce Sites Taking Standard Paypal Payments Through The Checkout Process
Does Not Apply To: Paypal Encrypted and Paypal Express methods, or Form payments

We have recently received a few reports where a small number of users paying via the standard Paypal method have had an issue completing the payment process. This does not apply to your site if you instead use the Paypal Encrypted and Paypal Express payment methods, or you are taking payments via a form rather then the normal checkout process.

This is a small, random problem which we cannot recreate and Paypal cannot offer an explanation why it has occasionally occurred. We therefore recommend you consider moving to Paypal Express which has not had any reported issues and also offers a much smoother and faster checkout process for the user as an added benefit.

How Do I Know If I Am On Standard Paypal Payments?

Go into Payment Processors Manager and see if "Paypal Or Credit Cards" is set to a Status of "on" and Mode of "live". If it is then we recommend you migrate to Paypal Express. 

How Do I Update To Paypal Express Checkout?

Follow this article on Freshdesk

Test!

Make sure you test your changes by successfully putting an order though the checkout process using the Express Checkout method you have set up.

We are excited to announce the release of Version 7 and the Module system which is now available to REC+ users. This brings a new method of creating and displaying custom content and optionally displaying the data on web pages with full design control for web developers. In this way you can use a single design style to create unique pages with their own URL's and content plus tagging and filtering, all populated from a database table you define yourself.

On the fun end, you can create polls and make better looking team pages. Or maybe you want to publish web pages containing detailed recipes, technical FAQ's with lots of data fields, case studies or knowledge articles - all nicely styled the way you want. You could also store your business data in the site which only admins can view and edit, such as audit reports, project tasks, approved supplier lists, purchase authorisations and more. 

We have provided documentation on Freshdesk on how it works. Due to the bespoke nature of custom content, all implementation, support and training is chargeable time.

Available Tuesday 6th February 2018

You now have the ability to enter an email signature on admin user records (in this case you'd be using it for sales agents) and have this displayed within the emails you send via Prospect Manager by adding in the tag {{ email_signature }} to the "email quote" system page.

Membership number (often renamed to Account ID via site defines) now appears on the main user record and prospect activity record which saves having to look it up. 

The "value" field displayed in the email message will be suppressed if the value is zero (tip: remember to remove the preceding text which is normally just the word 'Value".

We have introduced a number of enhancements including Weekly Tips to help admins with your conversion optimisation program, being able to email by user tags so you can precisely segment who receives your campaigns and you can now connect to Google Tag Manager to make it easier to insert 3rd party tracking code. In ecommerce, you can add meta data on Manufacturer records for improved SEO and Order Manager has improved sorting to complement the recent release of 30-day session cookies. There's a minor tweak in Download Manager to allow you to drag and drop the download file in without needing to click to upload it.  For Prospect Manager users, we have now made it easier to roll forward a reminder with some pre-set links to add an hour, a day etc, plus you can now create a prospect directly from a form created in Forms & Processes. There's also a small feature to disable a dropdown option temporarily on a form by adding a '-' in front of the drop down text. These enhancements are available on either 26th or 30th January. 

VIEW VISITOR ACTIVITY IN PAGE MANAGER 

You can now see a 30-day activity graphline in Page Manager against individual pages so you can see which pages are being viewed the most, with the exact visitor numbers appearing when you hover over the graphline. This data appears when you have connected your website to your Google Analytics account. This is useful to see at-a-glance where you have the most activity and any spikes in visitor traffic across your site.

REMINDER TO REC USERS

Remember to upgrade to REC+ to access all features, while the upgrade is currently free. You do this in admin by clicking the link to upgrade to REC+ in the top left hand side of the admin screen.

NB Separate charges may apply when using extra modules such as bulk email and Prospect Manager.

STILL TO MIGRATE TO HTTPS?

We strongly recommend that you migrate to HTTPS. See our previous post for full details.

We have introduced a new Invite system, helpful management reports on pages and products and extended the session cookie.  

Read full details and setup instructions on freshdesk

Invite System

The Invite system can be used to send out emails to invite people to use your site. This allows them to accept the invite and set up their own password.

Top Pages Report

This displays the top 100 most viewed pages on your website.

Top Products Report

View your top 500 most popular selling products with the facility to select by specific categories or brands. 

Top Manufacturers (aka Brands) / Top Categories Report

View sales grouped by manufacturer / brand to see which brands are most popular, or by category for your most popular categories.

Revenue Sources & Form Responses

Available for marketing clients to view the different sources driving revenues or replies to your forms, directing you to the detailed information on the Marketing Console.

Session Cookie Change 

We have changed the session cookie so that users can now see their incomplete shopping cart baskets for up to 30 days after they have closed the browser. This will help to increase conversion rates for returning users who abandoned the shopping process and can still see the products in their baskets when opening a new session.

Read full details and setup instructions on freshdesk.

These new features are available in REC+, remember to click on the top right link in the header to upgrade for free currently. Charges will apply in the future!

CHANGES IN BRIEF

Available 1st November 2017

A number of small changes have been introduced in ecommerce with product re-ordering and the Google product feed, a "form fade" effect when forms are completed plus making it easier to enter an ID for a user to identify them in your accounts system.

Read all about the changes on Freshdesk

REMINDER TO REC USERS

Remember to upgrade to REC+ to access all features, while the upgrade is currently free. You do this in admin by clicking the link to upgrade to REC+ in the top left hand side of the admin screen.

NB Separate charges may apply when using extra modules such as bulk email and Prospect Manager.

STILL TO MIGRATE TO HTTPS?

We strongly recommend that you migrate to HTTPS. See our previous post for full details.

Welcome to our new blog on REC+

To read all prior REC+ releases going back over 5 years, please visit our knowldege centre