We've been focusing on building the groundwork for some major new features around personalisation, which will continue to grow, and multi store management, as well as a range of other useful enhancements.
CMS
- Personalisation rules
Personalisation rules let you determine how content is displayed on your site for different user groups. For example, setting parts of your homepage content to display different messaging for different types of customers. This is achieved by detecting the user, identifying which group they are in and switching content blocks to show one created for their user group.
Setup the rules in Admin > Personalisation Rules
In Page manager or directly on a content block you will have a new dropdown to select the rule and set the content to display for each rule.
This can also be used inside templates for example: { % if rec_rule('VIP group only') % } Welcome VIP! { % else % } You're not VIP { % endif % }
Contact us to subscribe for personalisation. - New Ckeditor templates for columns.
This improves on the default column template by introducing gaps between columns for easier styling. - Form scores report
Visually see how form scores change over time.
For example monitoring a 1-7 CES rating on your thanks page form to measure the ease-of-use of your website.
You can then check how this is affected when making any major site changes ( respondants can leave other useful feedback in the comments section as well).
Available in Admin & Reports > Reports > Form Scores
Ecommerce
- Multi Store - Create multiple REC+ stores to sell your products (beta release)
The new Multi Store feature creates new opportunities to sell your products and save you time by replicating products from your master store to other REC+ stores you operate. For example:
- Create a US or Australian version of your store with localised branding and pricing;
- Manufacturer? Sell direct to consumers on a separate store with different branding;
- Target specific audience segments with particular categories (which can be renamed) and different branding.
Check out our short video demo
Contact us to discuss your requirements and for pricing. - Upcoming products now have release dates and email alerts
Schedule your product launches by setting the product status to upcoming and entering the launch date and time.
You can also set the product status at launch to be live, featured or special offer.
Customers visiting the product page can subscribe to be emailed on the date it is launched. - High value abandoned cart notifications for admins
Receive an email alert when there is a high value cart that has been abandoned so you can contact the buyer to try to close the sale.
To enable this go to: Site Settings > Ecommerce > Abandoned Carts > "Alert Admins when Abandoned Cart Value is over" [enter value] - Display store prices inc/ex vat with the new price switcher
Users can select if they want to see prices inclusive or exclusive of tax on your site.
Contact us to amend your templates to add this feature for a small charge. - Discontinued products
Mark products as discontinued via Edit Product > Main Details > Discontinued.
This can be displayed to customers viewing the product via a template tag change. - Price lists can now export with product tag hierarchy
Display product tag hierarchies in your price list export for greater clarity e.g. Tag1 > Tag2 > Tag3 > Category > Product Name > Price.
An example would be using product tagging for automotive parts and then displaying your price list as Make > Model > Submodel > Category > Product Name > Price.
Enable this in Site Settings > Prices & VAT > Show Product Filter Tags on Price List CSV - Price Lists now export as CSV for ease of use by customers rather than the previous TSV/TXT format.
- Quickshop now allows product CSV uploads
Customers can now upload a CSV of the product codes and quantities they want to make the buying process even quicker, especially for B2B customers.
There's more information on how users can do this via the info buble on the quick shop app.
Quickshop is part of the Premium Ecommerce subscription. - "Verified Purchase" marker on reviews.
Your product reviews will now show a marker verifying that a purchase was made before leaving the review. This helps increase confidence for future customers reading reviews left on REC+. - Order line comments now available
Admins can now also leave comments against each order line, whereas previously comments were only held at order levels. There is a new notes icon to the right of each order line allowing you to see a count of current notes as well as a quick way to read and add to these notes. For example, this could be used to record custom changes against a product. The comment field is also available when manually adding an order line to an order. - Store locator now shows up to 25 stores at a time
Up to 25 stores can now be displayed on the map which is an increase from 10 previously. Additionally, the pop-up for each store can show their own individual website address if they have been entered at the store level. - Price manager confirmation before running price changes
Price manager will now confirm the changes you have entered before it runs for you to double check your price changes are correct before proceeding. There is also better logging of price changes so we can debug potential issues more precisely. - Delivery method preview
Delivery Manager has had a design refresh including a new way to preview your delivery methods before making them live.
In Admin > Delivery Manager > Add or Edit a delivery method > Mode selection.
Defaults to 'live' but can now be set to 'test' for admin users only allowing you to view / test it.
- Improved support for older email clients such as Outlook
A common issue when creating emails occurs when adding images that are larger in size than the area they occupy in your email design. When these are sent, most modern email clients such as Gmail will adapt and display these perfectly well, however older clients such as Outlook may show the image at it's full size therefore breaking the design.
To prevent this we now automatically detect the real and visual sizes of your images when you add them, alert you and automatically adjust their size downwards so that they display properly on Outlook. - Scheduled email notification
In EMail Manager when you send a scheduled email for the coming days it will now ask you to confirm the date and time. Note that Mailgun only allows scheduling up to a few days in advance.
Site Admin & Services
- Admin message bar
Alert your own site admins with important news / updates.
You can now set a banner to show at the top of your internal admin area in Admin > Site Settings > Display > Admin Message Bar.
For front end messages for website visitors use the free new app Our Site Updates. - Our Site Updates NEW APP
This free new app allows you to quickly publish important information via a banner that appears on the top of every page of your website.
This was initially to allow you to display COVID-19 related notices, though we're also exploring it's uses for showing deals and other messages around your site quickly and easily. Extra features will be added soon such as date range support which would be useful for promotions such as Black Friday or Daily Deals. Sign up directly at Our Site Updates.
Designer
- Script Manager
Script Manager is a simpler way to add custom 3rd party scripts to your site, such as tracking codes or our new banner app.
Go to: Admin > Connect > Custom Scripts and add your script. Give it a memorable name to remember its purpose and provider, paste in the script and it'll be live right away on your site. You can also temporarily disable the script at any time or edit/remove it later. - Twig v3 Upgrade
We're now on the latest v3 release of the Twig template language.
Find out more about the tags, filters and functions now available to you in the latest release of Twig. These are on top of the functions we already have available for you. - Module imports and exports are now CSV rather than TSV/TXT files to make them easier to work with.
API
- The API Accounts & Webhooks (previously called push urls) have had a major refresh.
These areas have been improved with much more advanced logging, editing and manipulation options available. - Products API resource updated
This now contains every possible field on products and sub product resources such as options.
The multi store release introduces fully automated testing to make sure the data is fully synchronised. - Users can now be filtered by status in the API request.
By default the API does not show deleted users in the recycle bin, but you can now pass status=deleted to reveal deleted users or even status=* to see all users including those set as deleted. - Speed and stability improvements
In addition to the changes above, we have also updated to the API to make it faster and further increase stability.
As always we hope you're continuing to stay safe during these difficult times.