Dullness Alert: Maintaining HTTPS Security, Stopping Spoof Emails & GDPR Compliance

Yes we know that this is a dull topic to cover in a blog post, and we would rather be creating new and interesting features for everyone or cutting our toenails instead, however from time to time we do a sweep around with our clients to check on things like having HTTPS present (so people trust your site is secure) and that your email records are set up to stop spoof emails and increase deliverability especially with large email providers like Gmail, Yahoo and others tightening up on email security in 2024.

In addition businesses need to maintain their GDPR compliance, so if certain things have changed on your website then it needs a re-check.

So, we will be contacting you in the coming weeks with what's relevant to you and to book you in to have it sorted. There is a cost to do this but we will be keeping it as cheap as possible and quoting based on your individual needs.

So grab a cuppa and read on about the key areas that matter and learn some snazzy new phrases to throw around the office and impress people:

Managed SSL Certificate

A website needs to have an SSL certificate added to make it secure and ensure all the content on your web pages can be properly viewed by website visitors or, worst case, to stop them seeing a warning message saying the site is unsafe. You can check your site has an SSL certificate already by going to your website and making sure it starts with "https://" in the browser search bar. Most sites have it, but a few still don't so definitely worth making the move.

Whether you have an SSL or not it's worth having a scan of the website to identify any content / broken link issues that exist and we can then fix them.

Stopping Spoof Emails & Reducing Bounces

The immediate term here is 'SPF' (Sender Policy Framework). It's a method to prevent spammers sending emails from your domain without your permission which people then believe are authentic and get redirected to other sites to harvest their data and defraud them. SPF allows you to define which email servers are permitted to send emails on behalf of your domain. In addition, having SPF set up correctly stops emails bouncing from email services like Gmail, Yahoo and other large service providers. An SPF record therefore needs to be set up if not present or amended where it does not appear correct (which may need us to talk to your IT/email provider). 

Reaching The Next Level Of Email Security

Later in the year, we strongly recommend implementing something called 'DKIM' (DomainKeys Identified Mail) which helps ensure that the content of your emails remains trusted and unaltered during transit. It uses a digital signature linked to your domain to verify the email's source and integrity. And also 'DMARC' (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) which combines SPF and DKIM to provide a robust email authentication system. It allows domain owners to specify how email receivers should handle emails that don't pass SPF or DKIM checks.

To do that we recommend using Mailgun as the email service provider, which is built-in to your website software and let's you send 5,000 emails for free each month . It also brings greater email deliverability rates plus individual email tracking so you can check if somebody did or didn't receive an email when they ask. By the way we could set this up now if preferred, otherwise more on that later in the year and let's at least get SPF sorted.

GDPR Review

GDPR came into place 6 years ago (yes that long ago!), so if you have made updates to your website since last checking it was up to date, such as adding scripts on pages, which you may not even remember doing it was so long ago, installing pop-ups, adding extra analytics tracking, social media stuff, then we recommend undertaking a GDPR review which includes re-checking scripts and cookies via a website scan and that your policies are in place. This is one of those things that nobody ever wants to revisit, but once its' done you feel like you've had a walk through a fresh Spring meadow.

Congratulations for reading this far. Medals will be sent out shortly. Or more likely you will receive a call or email from us to agree what needs to happen for your site. If you want to get ahead of everyone else then you can always call your Account Manager to discuss next steps.



New in REC+: Page Slice Improvements, GA4 Ads & Social Tracking Plus More Magento Data Integration

Spotlight

Our Magento integration now pulls in categories, manufacturers, orders & customers.
New admin areas are now also available for Magento Integration & Magento Order States to help manage the integration and update sync'ing between a Magento instance and REC+
Sites not previously using REC+ for ecommerce can now pull in their products 
3297, 3308
 

Page Slices Mobile Styles
We've re-designed the way you manage many of the style/design settings with additional support for changing some styles between how they look on Desktop vs Mobile, such as different paddings and text alignments. 
3262

Ecommerce & Tracking

Google Ads Enhanced Conversions
Enabling this will send users sha256 hashed emails to Google to help associate their conversions in Google Ads. 
We match users emails by either their logged in user email or emails entered on any forms on the site.
Admin > Connect > SEO > GA4 > Enable Enhanced Conversions for Google Ads
3303

GA4 JS conversions
Enabling this improves how conversions are associated with sessions in Google Analytics GA4. The aim here is to minimise 'unassigned' traffic which can happen for multiple reasons but a big reason can be a disassociation between the session in GA from the JS / front end and conversions sent on the backend vs JS / front end side. 
Admin > Connect > SEO > GA4 > Enable JS Conversions for Google Analytics?
3298

Improved social visitor tracking support for instagram, tiktok, and more. 
Previously we showed social tracking for orders/forms only from Facebook or Twitter, with others being tracked and shows as a referral. 
We've re-worked this so we track many different types of social referrals into a top level Social traffic medium.  In Order Manager you can still see the exact social source either by hovering over the Social icon in the traffic column when listing Orders, or in the Traffic Source box on the actual order itself (very bottom box in the right hand column)
3304

RRS template tags for the front end products
You can now add Runner Repeater Strangers (RRS) template tags to the product_info.html.twig & order_confirmation.html.twig template files, using this you can render different messages about products on the product page such as their manufacturing lead time based on their RRS group.
3315

CMS & Admin

Hover tile effects for Flip vs Fade
New flip effect available on the hover-tile slice, a nice alternative to the default fade effect when building designs with Page Slices.
3306

Responsive admin dashboard improvements
The admin dashboard screen now flows onto smaller mobile screens better for quickly checking on stats and using the Site Banner Update area for updates on your phone for example.
3157

 


Merry Christmas | Support Cover

Merry Christmas!

From everyone at Wildfire we would like to wish you and your families a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!​​​​​​​ 

Thank you for using our services during 2023

It's been a busy 12 months with many new features added to our REC+ ecommerce & CRM platform including the addition of AI for content and product descriptions and translation, a raft of new page building features, customer sales classifications, enhanced expert answers, VIP Clubs, product lifecycle reports and many other features which are fully listed here plus the switch to GA4 which many customers made with our assistance

More Marketing, More Revenues...

We continued to help customers drive more revenues across paid advertising and brand build on social media. Google advertising remains king of the jungle for gaining revenue and because paid advertising is so critical, we also introduced a new automated monitoring service for Google Merchant Centre so you can ensure all of your products are available to advertise.

Price Compare...

Our essential price comparison app continues to help customers set their prices correctly in the market and this combines well with Top Product reporting to prioritise which popularly viewed products to work on first to drive up conversion.

Increased Security, Fast Performance...

Our server infrastructure remains updated and secure for combatting the ever-present threats from bad actors on the web. Whilst we seldom ever talk about this, rest assured it remains the cornerstone of our service for keeping your REC+ website secure and performant.

Again, thank you!

We'd be nothing without our customers and as always we value your custom and look forward to doing great things together in 2024.  


CHRISTMAS SUPPORT
Starts Friday 22nd December - Tuesday 2nd January 2024
During this period we provide technical support over the Christmas period, namely server and uptime monitoring. Regular support and project work resumes on our return.

Change Freeze Thursday14th Dec - Wednesday 3rd January 2024
We will not release any new REC+ software changes after Thursday 14th December until we return in the new year.

System Availability
You can view service status on our WildfireNet twitter account 

Raising Support Requests
Please log any calls on our ticket system as the office will be unmanned for this period or email [email protected]


New in REC+: Magento Integration For GMC Summary, Discontinued Product Variations & More

Spotlight

Magento Integration for GMC.
REC now supports Magento integration so you can pull Magento product and order data into your REC instance, for reporting and monitoring using GMC Summary & Top Products reports. Contact us to find out more about this.
Once enabled, as well as new connect details in the Admin > Connect area, you can also view a log of activity in Admin > Magento Log.

Discontinued variations
Product Variations now support the "Is Discontinued" tickbox like top level products. This allows you to discontinue just specific versions of a product such as a limited edition Red variation while keeping other colours live. 
Admin > Product manager > Add/edit products > Variations > new checkbox for "is discontinued".
Also in Admin > Exports > Variations > now supports a variation_is_discontinued column which uses either, the top level product if it has no variations, or the specific variation

More GMC

GMC conversion source switcher
Via the Boost Performance tab you can select the conversion source tracker as either Google Ads or REC (recommended if you use REC for your ecommerce system). 

GMC pause tracking
Pausing a product in GMC allows you to temporarily remove it from Ads without needing to remove it from the feed entirely.
We now track this so that if you're monitoring products in promotion groups and some are paused that you'd otherwise expect to be available to buy on your site, you'll see it on the GMC summary emails & in the GMC admin area. 

Design improvements to the GMC email & loading bar.
We've reworked how the GMC email and admin areas handle differences in monitored grouped products so they display better. 
Additionally, we also now show a loading bar when re-syncing with GMC so you can see progress.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Sales Summary product group filters
New improved filters are available on the customer view of the sales summary to let customers discover more products they haven't yet purchased including a switch between showing all top products they haven't bought before vs ones just relating to makes they've bought from before.
Enable which individual groups to show in the Sales Summary via Admin > Product Groups > Add/Edit > Filterable in Sales Summary.

Product Manager > new filters
New search filters are available for Tag Groups & tags.

Refund only required state
A new Refund Only order state can now be used for where a customer requests a return but the items haven't yet been set out. If enabled on an order via Admin > Order statuses, then the system will pick this status if the order item hasn't been despatched instead of return required.  

Price list exclude switch per product
Previously to exclude a product from the Price List available to Distributors you'd need to exclude the product from Google Shopping as well, this is now split out so you can have products in or out of Google and not impact if a product is in or out of the price list. 

Product filter > new setting to hide blocks where only a single result shows.
Building off the existing setting to remove blocks where no filterable values are found, this new setting lets you also hide where there's only a single value found as that doesn't really give the user much option to actually filter. This is optional for cases where you don't want this, such as where you only add a tag where it has something, but generally we'd recommend enabling this new setting to simplify filters for your end customers. 
Available in Admin > Product Filters App Manager > "Also remove single value blocks".

SagePay renamed to Opayo by Elavon
Recently Opayo was bought by Elavon, all existing old SagePay endpoints & references are being removed by them and replaced with Opayo by Elavon. To keep sites up to date and not confuse users, we've renamed this for you and updated references ready for their migration. 

Multi Store > ability to batch exclude products from Multi Store
When discontinuing products on one store, you may not want to discontinue them on the other. To do this you'll need to disable that product's updates in multi store and this can now be done en masse at the same time as discontinuing them via Admin > Batch Product Processor > new "Exclude from Multi Store & API Webhooks?" switch.

Product groups > counts of products
You can now see counts of products in each product group and these are clickable to reveal those grouped products. 

VIP Club

Manually trigger VIP club calculation run via this new button. 
This works especially well when initially designing and building out your VIP club so that you can test it faster. 
Once your VIP clubs are live, you'll normally not want to use this as running it can trigger emails to customers. 
Available via Admin > VIP Clubs > Manually Run

Prospect Manager

User Manager comments for calls
Using User Manager for call lists? With this new feature you can quickly review existing user notes/comments and add to them on the fly. 
Contact us to talk more about this feature. Once enabled, this shows as a new column in Admin > User Manager, as a comment icon against each user in the table.

Miscellaneous

Exit Popup > Country Setting
Restrict your exit popups to only show for customers in specific countries. 
This requires your site to be using Cloudflare which provides the customers country. 

Increase file uploads from 16mb to 24mb.
This doesn't impact images, instead use https://squoosh.app/ to optimise your images. We're adding links to this service around image uploads as well to help you do this. 

Google connect/OAuth changes
In accordance with Google's branding requirements, we've re-designed the connect / sign in with Google buttons in Admin > Connect for GA, Google Ads, Google My Business, GMC & YouTube integrations. 
Our REC+ Terms, Privacy Policy & Support links are now available in the footer of the admin area of all pages. 

 


New in REC+: Ad Feed Tracking & Customer Sales Classifications

Two major new feature sets have been added to our Advanced Edition of REC+ to help track issues stopping ads appearing in Google and to increase revenues based on segmenting customers based on purchasing patterns and displaying suggested products in their account area.

Google Merchant Centre Summary & Alerting Tool

Advertising on Google? Don't miss out on sales! Make sure your products are able to be advertised on Google Ads with this essential monitoring and alerting tool.

How GMC Works 

Products are uploaded from your website to Google Merchant Centre (GMC) to then be advertised within your Google Ad campaigns. GMC has strict conditions on whether a product is set up correctly to be advertised.

What This Tool Does

This tool enables you to monitor higher level account issues and which products have issues according to GMC and send out email alerts to staff plus to be able to view them on a summary screen within Admin which is easier to access  rather than logging into GMC. The issues shown are a direct reflection of how GMC reports them. More features will be added over time.

Read more

Customer Sales Classifications, Sales Summary & Product Discovery

These features help you achieve greater revenues by better understanding your customer base in terms of their buying patterns, performance against annual targets and showing customers best selling products & categories they haven't previously purchased, plus producing customer-based reports. This feature set comprises:

Sales Classifications
Classify customers according to their sales performance and risk levels

Sales Targets 
Measure customers actual v target revenue over a 12 month period

Individual Customer Reporting
Use Report Builder to build customer-specific reports which can be printed / saved as PDFs

Sales Summary & Product Discovery
Show trade/distributor customers a summary of their sales on their account page and display other popular categories & products they haven't yet purchased 

Read more

 


New in REC+: Top Products Report Custom Date Ranges, Exclude Options From Variations & More

Spotlight

Top Products > Custom comparison date range
Previously Top Products report would automatically calculate a comparison date range for you, this still happens but you can now override it. 
This lets you run monthly, quarterly and half-yearly reports.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Exclude options from variations
Some options on products may not mean that a product needs to be split out by variations. For example, size & colours combinations would be variations whilst a part being painted with primer does not form a variations, they are simply fixed price increases in the cart.

Product Variation Lifecycle
The product lifecycle report on the edit product screen can now be filtered to a specific variation, using this you can see trends of sales for specific option combinations of a product. 

Append content to product descriptions in a category.
Need to add some text to the bottom of all products in a certain category? This new feature allows you to do this en masse.
Available via Admin > Product Manager > Edit Category > Append content to product descriptions

Variation option combinations can now be shown to users with custom built product option templates.
Option level stock can already show on options to disable different values, but if you're out of stock of only specific variations (red in a medium size for example), then you can now make it so after selecting red, the Medium size disables automatically for the customer so they can instantly see availability. 
This is a custom template change which can be applied, contact us to find out more about this and what else is possible to improve product page designs.

 


New in REC+: Google Ads Integration In Report Builder, Stock History Tracking & More

Spotlight

Report Builder Google Ads integration
We now have reporting integration with Google Ads in our Report Builder tool. 
Using this you can add graphs of clicks, impressions, conversions, CPC, CTR, ROAS and much more. directly in your reports. 

Track in and out of stock products & variations
Available in Admin > Reports > Stock History, this new report lets you track the history of your in and out of stock items at both top product level as well as variation level. 

Ecommerce & Reporting

Run reports for specific customers
Looking to see sales details of specific big customers? Our Report Builder tool now allows you to filter to a specific customer. To make this easier, there's now a dedicated button to the top right of the user profiles to go direct to Report Builder with this customer pre-selected.

Edit Product > Orders Tab Lifecycle Date Range
By default the Lifecycle report on products defaults to the date range the product has been live on your site, but you may want to restrict this down to a specific range to see recent sales for example. 

Customer level address matching switch
On a per user basis, require their billing & delivery address/country match for added restrictions, optionally overriding the group level settings for this. 
Enable via Admin > Site settings > Ecommerce > Checkout > "Enable Checkout Address Matching Checks"
Admin > User Manager > user profile > status & levels > Address Checks

Reworked design for Report Builder > Saved Templates
Saved templates have been redesigned to be easier to use and modify with drag and drop support.

Filter by Product Groups in Report Builder
Use this to see sales growth for specific groupings of your products for example ease-of-fitment levels.

Sales Targets have moved to the top of the user profile.
This makes it easier to set these for your customers and spot them at a glance when opening their user profile. 

Purchase orders can now render product tickboxes checked by the customer on each order. 
Access `detail.options` directly as an array in the `purchase_order.html.twig` file.

Invoice PDFs can now generate with the Order ID in the name instead of Invoice ID if preferred.
Enable in Admin > Site Settings > Prices > Invoice Display > Generate Invoice PDF with Order ID instead of Invoice ID in the filename.
As part of this we also simplified the order lines CSV available from the order info screen's filename and it uses either the Order or Invoice ID following this setting as well. 

Product data validation for GTINs
Adding to our automated safety checks for product data in the system, we now monitor for invalid GTINs such as "#", "N/a" or "none" where these may have been imported by accident. Our checks run each hour so if this happens on your site, it is reported to you to fix the issue so it doesn't affect your products on Google.

Security & GDPR

Cookies
These are now re-recorded behind the scenes for sessions where the user returned with cookies already accepted. 
This fixes an issue where though initially we let you know if cookies were accepted on a session (such as against an order or form) where the user accepted them in the same session. But as cookies stick around for multiple sessions, they are now associated to those new sessions as well so you have a complete picture when reviewing sessions like this. 

Bot Blocking
Further improvements in Bot Blocking added to help block new bots from slowing down sites. 

 


New in REC+: Exit popups, Customer-specific products, 2 Factor Authentication and more

Spotlight

Exit popups

Engage your customers before they leave your site with our new exit popups feature.
You can use these popups to ask customers if they want to subscribe to your newsletter or offer them a special deal before they exit.
You can set up exit popups in your admin account by going to Admin > Site Exit Popup.
PR 3036

User specific access to products

With this new feature, you can restrict access to specific products to individual customers. This is useful for offering custom items or exclusive deals to specific users.
Once enabled, you can set up user-specific access to products in the Add/Edit products section by going to the Prices tab and selecting Restricted user access.
To enable this feature, please contact us for pricing.
PR 3044

Admin 2fa on login

Two factor authentication is now available for all Admin level accounts.
This feature adds an extra layer of security to protect access to your admin account.
You can enable this feature in your admin account settings by going to Admin > Top right dropdown menu > Your 2FA Settings.
PR 3056

Expert Answers > Brand new UI

We've redesigned the Expert Answers area in the admin interface to make it easier for you to manage customer questions on a large scale.
The new UI includes helpful filters to navigate through questions more efficiently, and you can now close questions without answering them.
Enjoy the improved experience!
PR3030

VIP Club

Admin VIP Club Override
We've added the ability to fake that an admin is part of a specific VIP Club & Level so they can preview the VIP club on the front end of the site.
PR 3059

CMS

Preview blog urls
Send previews of your blog posts for review before publishing them to others without your reviewers needing to login.
PR 3051

Page Slices > new height setting
This new height only kicks in on desktop but lets you design even better layouts. This can also be combined with vertical alignment if you set a container with the height and then the alignment on the inner slice.
PR 3070

Audits added to the Customise User Area in Admin.
Similar to Site Settings & other areas, we've now implemented full audits of each change made here so it's easier to know when key features have been enabled for your customers to see.
PR 3061

Ecommerce & Reporting

Product price imports renamed
We've clarified the difference between the 2 different price imports, "Product Price Columns" vs "Product Qty Break Price Rows" and why you'd pick either method.
PR 3057

Report Builder > New table display when comparing between 2 dates.
We have a brand new display for showing each value and the % difference so you can see if your sales have gone up or down highlighted in green or red.
PR 3086

Report Builder > % ratio columns for the traffic sources.
With this change it's easier to see which traffic source makes up the largest percent of your sales traffic.
PR 3086

Report Builder > new Traffic Medium filter
The order info reports now have a traffic medium filter available. 
PR 3084

Report Builder > Charge types report
When using custom charge types (e.g. Delivery Duties Paid), you can now get a sales report in Order Information Report. 
PR 3064

Report Builder > more fields on the Ecommerce Revenue. report are now optional
Allowing you to build reports easier and not need to select "All" when running through the different options. 
PR 3052

Delivery method & region audits
We now keep audits when you add/edit and remove delivery methods and regions, further helping you keep track of when changes are made on your site.
PR 3053

Autocomplete for many areas around admin now support ID based search as well as their existing searches. 
E.g. Restricted access products lets you search on User name or email but if you type a "#" and then an ID it'll only bring up that specific customer, letting you find people easier when you have 2 customers with the same name but you know the ID of the one you want.
PR 3072

Designer / Developer Changes

Products API now exposes back in stock dates.
This is useful for any trade/distributor customers you may have that access your API list of products so they can find out when you're aiming to have an item back in stock to keep them and their customers up to date easier. 
PR 3062

Admin tips have been disabled after logging in.
These quick tips have been disabled for now, they previously showed to the bottom right of the screen but we've decided to disable them while we rework their tips and reconsider how best to help you with these.
PR 3071
 


New in REC+: Runners, Repeaters & Strangers, Email Task Analytics, New Page Slices & More

Spotlight

Runners, Repeaters & Strangers For Enhanced Product Demand Analysis.
Introducing Runners, Repeaters & Strangers. Allowing you to easily determine the average weekly demand of your products and feed this into your procurement and manufacturing teams to optimise purchase ordering and manufacturing schedules. 
Contact us to enable this on your store. Licence upgrade required.

Email Task Analytics
Introducing Email Task Analytics. Gain valuable statistics on your automated emails, for example views and clicks for abandoned carts. Easily accessible under Admin > Email Tasks > Stats, this powerful feature provides you with comprehensive data in a simple, user-friendly format.

CMS

New Form Builder filters
These new filters to help you sort through responses including date range and traffic source/medium
You can also now group the responses to remove duplicates.

Page slices > new "hover tile" slice
When hovering over an image show content over the top of it.

Page slices > new "text carousel" slice
Similar to image carousels, these text carousels let you rotate text such as slogans or select testimonials on your site.

Page slices > new "content switcher" slice
Similar to sliders or carousels, these switchers are a 50/50 split with image to the left & content to the right, with numbered buttons to switch between each slide.

Page slices > border styles & radius
Round your slices with the border radius & optionally set different border styles to have further control over the display of slices.

Page slices > new featured slices for common uses.
Quick reusable patterns to display content such as: Articles, Services you offer, Quick Feature Overview, Team members.

Page slices > new tabs & FAQ slices
Easily add an FAQ section to your site with this new slice type or build a more interactive area with the new tabs.

Duplicate page
Quickly make a copy of a page with the new Duplicate Page button, available in Admin > Page Manager > Edit Page > new button to top right for Duplicate Page.

Page slices > gallery modals for image grids
Optionally enable modal popups on click of images in your grids, as well as control aspect ratios of the thumbnails to maintain a clean looking grid layout.

Ecommerce & Reporting

User Group Delivery Address Matching & Restrictions
Restrict delivery for specific groups to require either their full address, or just the country being delivered to is the same as the customer billing address. This lets you optionally require that your UK distributors aren't using you to dropship abroad. 
User Groups > Edit User Group > Enable Address Matching?

Report Builder exclude manual orders by default
Now possible by enabling the existing "exclude vat" site setting: Reports > Default the Order Info Reports & Report Builder to exclude VAT & manual orders

Coupon Manager search
As your store grows, the number of coupons/deals increases. This new feature lets you search through them faster by name or the coupon code.

Payment method address match restriction
Restrict payment methods to only show when a users billing & delivery address matches. Useful for selecting the most appropriate payment processor for financial inspection, for example Stripe may prefer the same billing and delivery addresses to process an order.

Unlimited YouTube videos per product. 
You're no longer limited to a maximum of 3 YouTube videos per product, now you can upload as many as needed, each displayed with thumbnails on the product page. 

Reports can now exclude restricted access products
This allows you to filter reports to exclude items restricted for sale to specific dealers only. 
Admin > Order Manager > Quick Search > Additional search filters > Restricted Access
Admin > Report Builder > Advanced > Exclude Restricted Products

Order Manager > Delivery method filter
Quickly find all orders placed with a specific delivery method quickly with this new filter e.g. all orders set to Collection or ones awaiting to be delivered through DPD for example. 

Prospect Manager

Prospect Manager > optional comment field on batch edit quotes.
You can optionally batch set a comment on multiple quotes at once for example setting which invoice they are part of.
Available under the table of quotes in Prospect Manager.

Prospect Manager > Auto watcher
When adding a quote for a customer, if that customer record has a Sales Manager set they will be automatically added as a watcher on the quote. This helps ensure your sales team are kept up to date on quotes relating to their clients.

Designer / Developer Changes

Modules > new colour type field
You can now use colour pickers directly inside modules to help make design changes per module item for example.

Meta tag character counts
All meta title, descriptions & keyword fields now have recommended maximum character counts 

Security

SPF record examples
An important piece of email security is setting up an SPF record to help ensure emails are delivered correctly and not spoofed from mail servers you don't trust.
We now show example SPF records for you in the admin area > SMTP settings to help you get this sorted for your site. 
SPF is also becoming a requirement for delivering to many email providers such as Google/gmail so it's an important step for all sites to consider.

Admin login IP checks
When logging in we now verify the IP/location you're logging in from is one we've seen from you before. 
Edit Customer > Subscribe to Security Emails

Suspended admins are now immediately logged out.
Previously suspending another user would only affect them on log in, this has now been re-worked to immediately invalidate their session in the case that they are already logged in, letting you take action right away if an admin needs to be removed from your site.
 

 


We Celebrate 15 Years Today!

🎉 Exciting News: Wildfire Internet Celebrates 15 Years of Success🎉

It is with immense joy that we announce the milestone of Wildfire Internet turning 15 years old. Since our inception in 2008, we have witnessed remarkable transformations in the realms of Google, website development, and digital marketing. Throughout this journey, we have constantly adapted and updated our services, employing innovative software and robust security measures to ensure our clients' continued success.

When we were presented with unprecedented challenges during the pandemic, we stood steadfast in our commitment to supporting both our clients and our team. As we stride into 2023, we have proudly pioneered the integration of AI into our software, marketing services and client business strategies, unleashing the full potential of this powerful technology.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our clients for placing their trust in us over the years. We recognise that it is their unwavering faith in our capabilities that has fuelled our growth and inspired us to reach new heights. Also, our appreciation to our dedicated and longstanding Wildfire team, who are the very essence and heart of our company.

Should you seek guidance on expanding your business or enhancing its profitability, we invite you to contact us today. Our experts will collaborate with you to identify the perfect solution tailored to your unique needs.

Here's to another year of remarkable achievements and shared success!

Wildfire Logo

Ecommerce Specialists

- Expert advice, software, AI and digital marketing -


Google Analytics v4 tracking switch over

Starting July 1st, Google is discontinuing the use of old Universal Analytics that all sites used and will be switching to GA4. 

You can find our migration guide here

 

If you prefer, we can take care of the migration process for you. 

Our charge is £95 + VAT, and we will handle setting up your GA4 account with our production-ready settings, connecting your site, and conducting thorough tests to ensure everything is functioning correctly. To request this service, please email us or contact us here with a subject line of "GA4 migration"

We can also assist you with any Google Ads changes that may be required if you utilise this feature. 

 

If you have already requested our migration service or if you are a current marketing customer of ours, your site has already been migrated. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us

Thank you. 


New in REC+: GA4 Reporting, VIP Club changes, Expert Answer followups and more

Spotlight

Expert Answer followups
Follow up with customers who asked questions about products but haven't since purchased to see if there's anything else you can help with to help bring in the sale.
To enable Expert Answers Followup Emails, go to: Site Settings > Leads & Alerts > Enable Expert Answers Followup Emails
PR 2999

GA4 Reporting
As part of the recent move to GA4, we now support Google's latest Analytics Reporting/Data APIs to pull in analytics data onto your dashboards & reports in admin. 
PR 3028

VIP Club

VIP Club reporting
We now keep track of how many customers are in each VIP club & level each day and report this back to you on the VIP club screen with new graphs to break down and compare this data by day, week or by month.
PR 3025

VIP Club level previews
Quickly preview how your changes to the VIP club levels will affect the number of users in that level before you save.
PR 3012

Track VIP Club on orders
We show a customer's current VIP club on orders in admin but sometimes you may want to know what VIP club level they were when they placed that order, in case it's since changed. If the customers current level does not match the one saved on the order, we'll add a line to the vip club message on orders to let you know the level they previously had. 
PR 3011

Toggle VIP Club summary on customer home. 
By default if you have VIP club enabled your customers will see a simple summary, however you can now disable this and instead we can use the customer hub template to create a more custom display for users around their vip club level. Contact us for pricing.
PR 3046

CMS

Sliders now warn if your content may break the slider display
Sliders can be linked to URLs but if you were to put another link inside, then this would break the display of the slider due to browsers restricting nested links. To help admins and designers, we detect this on save of a slider panel and warn you so it can be resolved. 
PR 3002

Audit search improvements
The admin comments area now has improved search capabilities for audits such as filtering on the related item ID & audit action. 
PR 3027

Ecommerce & Reporting

Product issues report > detect zero priced products
Both the site issues & detailed product issues report now alert you when you have zero priced products, even if there is a retail price but specific group prices are zero.
PR 3018

Hidden categories
Categories used only for promotions on your site can be hidden so they do not display.
Available to set via Admin > Add/Edit Category > Hide this category from the website
Categories Export > is_hidden => 0 or 1
PR 3001

Orders now report if the custom accepted cookies or not
Sometimes order counts in Google Analytics & Ads will not match the website and one reason for this can be that users didn't accept cookies and so can't be tracked. To help you identify if they did accept cookies or not, we now indicate this on a per order basis alongside the traffic source & medium and on forms.
PR 2997

Report builder > filter the ecommerce revenue report type by traffic medium.
You can now optionally report on specific traffic source/medium's such as just Ads/CPC sales in reports in Report Builder.
For example you might wish to see ad-generated revenue across different states.
PR 3048

Report builder > option to default all reports to exclude VAT.
Easily set all Report builder reports to exclude VAT.
Admin > Site Settings > Prices & VAT > Reports > Default the Order Info Reports & Report Builder to exclude VAT.
PR 3010

Sales targets export against users
If you're using the sales targets feature, the users export will now contain their sales targets for easier management & mass modification. 
PR 3007

Checkout confirm screen > Newsletter signup
As well as offering newsletter signup during customer registration, you can also prompt for this on the checkout screen as a reminder during the order process. 
Admin > Site Settings > General > Registration > Newsletter > Enable Newsletter Signup on Checkout confirm screen
PR 3028

Integrations

Unleashed > Delivery tracking
Automatically update orders on the website when you add tracking codes against orders in Unleashed. 
Admin > Connect > Utilities > Sync Shipment Tracking
Contact us to have the required scheduled task set up as well. 
PR 3031

Google Analytics > Cookie improvements
Google Analytics sets cookies when loaded, because of this we don't load their script until the user accepts the cookies in order to ensure your site follows GDPR compliance.
However, if the visitor doesn't accept cookies until the 2nd or 3rd page view, the previous URL google would be seen as internal and they would assume the user came here directly instead of via organic search or Ads. To resolve this, we now hold onto the visitors previous and entry URLs so that even if they are several pages down the line when they accept cookies, we replay the original pageview event for Google so they can track them correctly.
PR 2996

Designer / Developer Changes

Modules > New file upload field type
Similar to the existing image field type, you can now have modules attach related files such as PDF downloads. 
PR 3004

Module audits
We've now implemented audits for the Modules system so any new modules created, updated or removed will have full audits as well as changes to their items inside. 
PR 3033

Form Builder > Ajax helpers for forms
If you're building custom forms or calculators on sites and using frameworks like Vue.js, you'll want to submit the data via Ajax. We've simplified how this works and also offer a helper example ajax call directly from the edit form screen in admin.
PR 3003

jQuery upgrade
Allows easily switching from 1.x to 3.x as well as a 3.x-preview where it'll stay 1.x for most visitors but admins will see 3.x to help test the migration. 
Admin Site Settings > General > Front end Javascript > jQuery Version
PR 3019

New template keys for detecting subscribed users
user.send_emails now allows you to detect if a customer is subscribed or not, as well as user.send_emails_encrypted_id which gives you access to the hash used in subscribe or unsubscribe links for logged in customers. 
PR 3040


New in REC+: Modules within Page Slices, Expert Answers reporting, security and more

Spotlight

Using Modules With Page Slices
Our modules system, for use when adding data records in a structured way, is now even more flexible. You can bring in module items directly to pages built with page slices. This gives you the best of both worlds, allowing you to build pages with the flexibility of page slices while keeping your content structured for easy reuse, mass management, importing, and uniformity. 
PR 2984

Expert Answers Sales Report
Our Expert Answers system has a new report available that helps you identify sales resulting from answered questions, thereby gaining insight into the impact answering questions has on your revenue generation to help motivate sales and support teams. 
To access the Expert Answers Sales Report, go to Admin > Reports > Expert Answers Sales Report.
PR 2943

CMS & Design

We've added a quick link to Content Search from Page manager.
Content Search, our useful admin program for finding content on your site, can now be accessed right from the page manager screen where you'd find most site pages set up.  
PR 2945

Timeline reminders
In the admin area, we have a website timeline available for you to track when key changes on the website and it's marketing have been made. 
Now when saving Site Settings, the Connect area or making a new template live, we prompt to ask if this is something worth adding to the timeline to help encourage the use of this. The info is then useful when tracking changes in visitors & conversions on your site to see what made the improvements. 
PR 2971

Ecommerce & Reporting

Product filter tags cleanup.
While managing large volumes of tags against all your products, over time there will inevitably be old tags no longer in use. This new report helps you track these down and keep the tag list on your site clean, as this is used by customers when filtering products. 
Available in Admin > Product Filter Tags > Report: Tags not in use
PR 2981

Users Making Purchases report includes additional fields. 
This is a useful report showing each customer and their sales as well as other key data about them. the new fields include their business names, VIP club & level if you use this on the site, their saved vehicle (again if in use), smart type including if they are a Retail, Trade or Dealer account, as well as if they have been granted access to the Dealer/Shopify exports. 
PR 2969

Shopify export for Dealers now offers additional non standard Shopify fields. 
These currently include the packaging sizes but we'll expand on this in the future. This is primarily for use with other platforms and is not supported by Shopify.
PR 2987

The categories export now also contains a "shopify_category" column.
This allows you to set the related category for the Shopify export for it's sub products. 
PR 2987

Price List > Exclude specific categories
If you're using some categories only for promotional purposes, you may want to exclude that category from Price Lists shown on the site and their export. 
Available via Add/Edit Category > Exclude this category (and all sub-categories) from the Price List App.
PR 2961

Price List > Indicate discontinued products on the front end
The Excel version of the export already marked discontinued products in red but this now extends to the front end of the website.
PR 2956

User Manager > Revenue Range setting
To the bottom right of the user manager screen you'll now find a new drop-down for "Show Revenue over the last:" where you can select the range you want to use for the revenue totals shown against each user in the above users table.
PR 2952

User Manager > VIP override filter
If you're using the VIP club, from time to time you may want to set several specific customers to be in specific levels. Using this new filter in User Manager you can find all the customers with these custom levels set.
PR 2951

Purchase Order Coupons
The purchase_order.html.twig can now also show coupons/discounts applied to orders for dispatch teams that need to take actions when these are on the order .
PR 2957

Purchase Order VIP Club Tags
Your Purchase Orders can be customised based on the VIP club and level the customer is part of via the purchase_order.html.twig file.
PR 2950

Picking lists can now show more details about orders with new template tags.
New template tags inside each order object in the picking_list.html.twig file for user details, order dates and item prices.
PR 2963

Integrations

Alto properties feed
For Estate Agent sites, we have a new integration to bring in your properties to display as items on the website directly from the Alto feed using their Zoopla format. 
Contact us to find out more about this.
PR 2964

Further security improvements on the platform and servers to keep everything secure and up to date.
PR 2967 PR 2977
 


New in REC+: Page Slice, VIP Club and other changes, plus server security updates

Spotlight

Redesigned Page Slices Interface
We have updated the page slices interface to make it more straightforward and intuitive. The new design includes new features that allow you to name different blocks/slices on the page for quicker reference and collapsible sections for easier drag and drop positioning.

Twitter API Version 2 Update
To keep pace with Twitter's latest updates, we have upgraded to the new API version. In order to keep posting your new products and posts to Twitter, you may need to reconnect with Twitter via the Admin > Connect screen. 

Ecommerce & Reporting

Top products report conversion rates are now 2 decimal.
This allows you to view this metric at a more granular level.

The Partial Shipment option can now be restricted by smart type.
There's an existing site setting that can be enabled which allows customers to select if they are happy for their order to be sent in partial shipments or wait for the entire shipment at once. This new setting allows you to restrict this to a specific smart type, e.g. only your dealers.
PR 2912

Product Launch alerts are now fired at point of change rather than on an hourly schedule.
Customers subscribed to product launch alerts will now receive these whenever the status changes, especially useful when it is changed by an import rather.
PR 2850

Vehicle search > further customisation for text
We've added customisable definitions so you can modify all the content shown to users around the Vehicle search, find these over in Admin > Site Definitions. 
PR 2937

VIP Club

VIP Club Rewards & Requirements can now be dragged into the order you'd like them to display on the front end to users in their VIP club page.
VIP Clubs > Levels > Add/Edit > Rewards & Requirements
PR 2924

VIP Club requirements for reviews can be marked as optional.
There's often a delay between an order being placed and it then being dispatched, received and used, meaning there can be a longer time to collect reviews. To cater for this we have made reviews an optional requirement so that customers can still move between bands without reviews. Set this in VIP Clubs > Levels > Add/Edit > Product Reviews Requirement > Do not make this a compulsory requirement to achieve this level
PR 2918

Integrations

ShippyPro Click & Collect
When using our ShippyPro delivery adapter, you can now offer an alternative click & collect delivery option at checkout. 
Connect > Delivery > ShippyPro
PR 2908

Discontinued products now indicated in Shopify export.
The 'Published' field will now be set to False when the item is discontinued, also Status will be set to archived instead of active. 
Contact us to find out more about our export options for Distributors.
PR 2903

Server security
We wish to highlight that several new server security improvements have been implemented to keep your websites up to date and secure. 
PR 2906

Unleashed weights support against products can now be disabled.
Sometimes you may want to use "each" as your measurement rather than an exact weight.
This lets you switch all products away from using weight measures when sending them to Unleashed.
PR 2923

 


New in REC+: AI for content, translation and sentiment reporting plus other features

Spotlight

OpenAI Generated Content
Say goodbye to writer's block and hello to AI-powered content creation. With our OpenAI helper, you can now effortlessly generate content ideas and improve your existing copy. Use it to write blog posts, product descriptions, and more. Plus, we've added a feature that enables the creation of engaging email campaign subjects. You have control over the tone and style of your content by setting a constant prefix.
Available in REC Advanced Edition. Contact us for pricing. 

OpenAI Reports
New AI-powered reports are now available that analyse your customers' form replies and questions to help you understand their overall perspective. This simple but powerful feature lets you grasp your customers' views on your site quickly and efficiently. 

Google Cloud Translate Integration
With our new Google Translate integration in CKEditor, you can now easily translate your content directly from the page editor. This means that you can offer your products and services to an international audience without having to master multiple languages. 
There is also added support for translating questions submitted by non-English speaking customers, along with the ability to translate responses directly within the admin area. 
Available in REC Advanced Edition. Contact us for pricing.

And yes, we used AI to help us generate the above descriptions!

CMS & Design

Expert answers > spam detection improvements & the reason we marked them as spam are now recorded.
There are several improvements to our spam detection for the question/answer system including recording the reason we marked something as spam against the question itself.

Personal email template
There is a new email template available which can help you send emails that look more personal and hand written but can be sent en masse. 
This feature also brings in better support for preview emails and the From name/email selection has autocomplete to pick any admins set up on the site. 
Available via Admin > Email Manager > new "Personal Email" layout.

User manager > Add User lets you select from existing business names in the business name field.
This helps when adding new users who are from an existing business already registered on the site and ensures spelling of business names is consistent.

Page slice width & alignment settings now available
These allow you additional customisation options when building slices in page manager.
Found in slice settings > Width & Alignment against all slices. 

Image carousel slice speed setting
You can now set the speed at which carousels rotate.

Page slice gradients
The new background gradients section on the slice style popup allows you to make your backgrounds more interesting. This also brings the ability to set alpha transparency for all background colours, the 2 combined allow you to add semi transparent colour tints over background images.

Admin Content Search
Introducing a useful new program to search the site to find specific words or phrases quickly including pages, product descriptions, blog posts and more.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Trade/Distributor Sales Targets
Do your trade customers have targets they need to meet each month or over a year? Track they are meeting these targets with this new feature. Targets can be set and viewed per customer and reported en masse via the new report in Admin > Reports > Sales Targets. 
This can also be displayed on a revamped distributor hub using the template system.
Contact us for pricing. 

Edit Product > Lifecycle Graph
The orders tab on the Edit product screen has had a refresh and offers a whole new product life-cycle report, which is well worth a review on your top products. 

Top products report now shows products that have not been purchased.
Using the qty sold sort in reverse order you can now see products that have not been bought at all between a date range. 

Forms tab on the Edit Product screen
This new tab reveals enquiries made about the product. Also if the product is set to upcoming with a launch date, this tab will list the subscribers signed up to be alerted when it goes live. 


New in REC+: Order Tracker app, Product Lifecycle & Forecasting report, Vehicle search

Spotlight

Order Tracker App
Allow your customers track their orders with our new Order Tracker app. 
It provides a full timeline of their order from when it's placed to when each item is dispatched along with the relevant shipping codes (if supplied in admin).
This can be shown as an app on any page via: Edit Page > Main Body Apps > Track Orders
As well it can be linked to via order emails such as order confirmation and status update emails so the user can always find where their order is at easier.
Contact us for pricing. 

Product Lifecycle & Forecast Report
Our new report available in Admin > Reports Product Lifecycle & Forecast, offers you a snapshot of how products are added, how often they are purchased and if you track stock on the site we can even predict when an item is likely to run out of stock. 
Contact us for pricing.

Vehicle Search (for automotive parts sellers)
A new feature which shows a floating vehicle finder for users to quickly find related parts and items for their car (works when using product tagging to identify vehicles). 
The vehicle selection saves against user records allowing for extra email targeting in Email Manager. Vehicle can be selected when running the Users Making Purchases report (UMP). 
Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Vehicle Search.
Saved vehicles show against users & on their orders.
When enabled, product filter shows a way to save if a tag used in search, and to display your current or previous saved tag. Searching will also auto save the vehicle as well.
When floating search is enabled, it should display on all pages to the bottom left (except process pages: login, checkout & register).
Using "?vehicleSearch=open" url param will auto open & focus the search.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Previous orders summary display mode and tidy up
The previous orders screen has been improved to make it easier to navigate and we have a new display mode that switches from showing each item to a single table of orders complete with tracking codes. Dealer groups are automatically shown this version by default as it's easier to track large numbers of orders at once. 

Collapsible Price List
Price lists on the site can now be collapsed by category making it easier for users to drill through and find the specific pricing data they need. 
However users can also hold Ctrl and click to open all sub categories of a top level one at once, and press ctrl+f to find on page.

Automatic cleanup of group prices on delete of groups
When deleting a user group, all related group prices will be removed with it.

Product feed > additional images
For Google & Facebook product feeds we now support sending up to the first 10 product images instead of just the default, giving these platforms more image choices and helping users choose your products over others.

RRP display on products for Dealers
Dealers can now see the retail price a product sells at next to their dealer specific price. This is enabled in the template, contact us for a quote to change this. 

Upcoming Products report
This new report lets you see how many people are waiting for new products awaiting launch.
Admin > Reports > Upcoming Products Report

The "People who bought this bought that" listing on products now filters to just retail customers
This overcomes distorting the products being displayed due to dealer sales.

Stripe 2020 API auto select
For new sites using Stripe, we now automatically set Stripe to use the correct API versions behind the scenes.

Now check out last month's enhancements to be fully up to date
 


IMPORTANT: Switching To Google Analytics 4

This bulletin applies to REC+ users who use Google Analytics to track their website metrics. If you do not use Google Analytics then you do not need to take any action.

On July 1, 2023, Google's standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits and you will be moved to Google Analytics 4, their next-generation measurement solution to record your website metrics. We have put together an in-depth article to guide you through making the changes or asking us to make the changes.

If you use Google Analytics for tracking visits, ecommerce conversions, form / download events or are running Ads then you will need to take immediate action to set up GA4 in the next 2 weeks.

Read about migrating to GA4

 


New in REC+: Customer hubs, GA4, more page slice features

A new year brings new REC+ features, here's our spotlight for this month:

Spotlight

Customer & Distributor hubs
This is a major update to the customer account area where logged-in users manage their details, quick re-order etc.
This area is now fully templatable so that you can add links to extra services you offer or workflow processes. You can also have separate templates for different user groups, for example a general retail customer hub, another for distributors with different services available as you can see in the example below. 

 

Available to enable via Admin > Customise user area > Show Customer Hub as Dashboard? and edit the template: html/customer_home/customer_hub.html.twig
For design assistance please contact your sales account manager. 

Google Analytics 4
The latest version of Google Analytics is now supported in REC+ and it is important you take action if you use this for your website reporting.
Read more in this article

Page Slices
A whole new raft of features have been added to Page Slices to make content more dynamic on the page to increase interest and engagement. Read about these below.

CMS & Design

Page slice entrance effects
You can now set animation effects on slices which activate when the user scrolls the slice into view, such as fade or slide, to make your web page gain more attention.

Page slice hover effects
Also found in Animations is a new Hover selection, allowing you to zoom in or out of an image, change it's colour, lighten, darken or give it a slight tilt when loading.

Slice button alignment & opening in a new tab
You can now set the alignment of button slices, as well as optionally have them open their link in a new tab.

Slice single column containers
Similar to multi column layouts, you can now add a single column container to group together multiple sub slices when you want them all to have the same outer padding or background image spanning between them.

New slice background size properties
Increase backgrounds up to 125%, 150% and 200% on slices to zoom in on smaller images or images where their aspect ratios don't match how you want them displayed on the site.

Horizontal line slices
These can now have a custom colour set.

Button slices
Styles now come with simple hover effects

Image content block alignment in slices
New Advanced Options > Image Align setting allowing to change the alignment of images inside their slices

Page slice editor > fixed name, slug & update button area 
To make editing large pages easier, the save button and name/slug fix to the top of the screen. 

Customize User Area Rework
Settings in this area are now better organised to help you set which content is shown to logged in users on their home screen.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Product Reporting Types now renamed to Product Groups
Naming change only. Use Product Groups for extra classifications of your products rather than categories. Used in admin and for reporting.

Page product filters for tags & product groups
Via Page Manager store settings and Slices select which products are shown based on product tags and product groups. 
https://github.com/WildfireInternet/rec/pull/2725

New product sorting options available when listing via page manager
On add/edit page there are new product sort options for "Price (High to Low)", "Price (Low to High)", "Name (A-Z)" allowing more customisation for showing products on pages.

Dashboard products show drafts & product manager status summaries
This improvement helps you see how your products are split across different statuses on the site.

New import available for delivery addresses
This allows for easier imports when migrating sites.

Expert Answers > send answers from the admin user by default instead of the company. 
Send answers from the signed-in admin which then allows replies to go direct to them for an easier followup flow.

Expert Answers > product display/link improvements
The product columns are split out to make it easier to see which product a question is for with a link back to the edit screen to let you lookup product details faster when answering questions.

Expert Answers > full text editor available for answers
You can now send full rich formatted replies to questions asked on your site using ckeditor e.g. links and screenshot/images to help with the answer. 

Preview Expert Answers email
Designers can now preview the Expert Answers email while designing it. 

Expert Answers additional product details available in the template
Designers can now render the product and basic details about it into the answer reply emails to help smarten these up.

Download Search Partial Codes
The download search now allows users to find instructions on products more easily using partial matches. This is good when they don't know the whole code or a variation of a code is no longer sold. The search result indicates it's only a partial match so they can decide for themselves if it's correct for them. 

Prospect Manager

User Account Managers
Assign account managers to customers and enter summary notes per customer.
Site Settings > General > Enable User Account Managers

Integrations

CKEditor browser spell check
The WYSIWYG editor we use for pages etc. has it's own spell check you can enable but it doesn't show by default. 
We now enable the browser's built in spell checker so that you can see the spelling issues live as you type. Then to fix you can either enable the editors spell check, or hold ctrl while right clicking the error to see suggested fixes.

Shopify export now supports "cost per item"
This new column indicates to your dealers the price they pay in additional to the existing RRP price column. 

Unleashed > smarter error log messages
We've improved the error logs to help indicate the best resolution for an issue.
 


New in REC+: VIP club dropout emails, new page slices for ecommerce categories, Dealer export files & more.

CMS & Design

Categories Page Slices
We've added 2 new Page Slices for adding categories to pages easier:
"Categories - System" - List all categories on the site, or ones from a sub category. 
"Categories - Curated" - Select each category manually and drag and drop the sort order they are displayed in. 

Embed responsive iframes in Page Slices
When using page slices to embed 3rd party code into your site, if they utilise iframes for embeding the content (as many do), you can now tick to automatically make the iframe responsive for better display on mobile and tablets.

Further enhancements for Page Slices will be coming out soon.
 

Prospect Manager

Bulk delete quotes
You can now delete quotes entered in mistake or as duplicates of others. 
This can be done via Admin > Prospect Manager > tick the quotes you want to remove and at the bottom of the screen click the "Delete Selected Records" button.
Contact us to find out more about our Prospect/Quote management tool. 
 

Ecommerce & Reporting

VIP club dropout emails
To help make sure users don't suddenly drop out of the VIP club without warning, we've added 3 new email notifications you can send via Email Tasks:
1 month, 2 weeks, 1 days 
Create persuasive messaging within these emails in the /html/email/templates/vip_club_warnings.html.twig template 

Cart indicators for items excluded from in cart deals. 
"Excluded from offer" will appear next to cart items when a deal message shows and the item isn't part of it. This currently supports category exclusions but we plan to expand this to other coupon settings as well. 

New Product Issue report for products with encoding issues
When importing data we require the files in UTF-8 encoding and our exports are in this format as well. 
However, if you convert from UTF-8 to another encoding, and then back again, it may cause encoding issues in your data. This new check highlights any issues on a list of products. 

After product imports we now run Product Issue checks
Important product data quality checks are now run directly after an import with an option for you to easily view them. You'll see these after your next product data import on the site. 

Improved VAT reporting when changing settings
We now record VAT settings against orders so that if they are updated in the future then we have a record of the settings at the time. 
 

Integrations

PDF product catalogue
Our auto generated PDF catalogue listings of your products now gives even better control over the category chapters of the PDF. 
We show the existing category description that displays on the website, but there is a new field on the edit category screen which allows you to enter different category text to appear in the PDF. 
Additionally, there is another field to show content directly after the categories products, better allowing use of the available space of that page for adverts or information 

Distributor product data exports
We can now enable a feature on your site to send a common format export file (in this case we used the Shopify export format) to allow distributors to import your products easier (especially if they use Shopify, however the file's columns with a few changes should in theory work well with many other systems).
Contact us to find out more about this paid feature for Premium licence manufacturers only. 

Following on from the above feature, we also now have a way for Distributors to request access to the file.
This allows you to control who can have access and monitor if they are frequently downloading the file to keep their stores up to date. 
Once this feature is purchased, you can then enable it in Admin > Customize User Area > Enable Shopify Export Area?
Customer home > Shopify export (only shows if smart type not equal to 1/retail and it's enabled).
Admin > Dealer Export Access Manager
Admin > Email tasks > new event available for Dealer Export Access Approved
Admin > Email Notifications > new notification for Dealer Export request
New defines for DEALER_EXPORT_ACCESS_AREA & DEALER_EXPORT_ACCESS_AREA_INFO for customer area.
 


New in REC+ in November: Early bird & exclusive deals, new order exports for delivery, improved imports for sales and more.

Spotlight

'Early Bird' access and 'Exclusive products'
For selected customers, allow the purchase of specified products on an 'early bird' basis (allowing the purchase of upcoming products before the offficial launch date), or on an exclusive basis for products set as 'Enquire Only' (selected customers can purchase whereas everyone else can only send an enquiry).
Both new features are enabled on each product record and each customer that has access either manually or used in VIP Clubs as rewards within specified levels where the customer assignment is then handled automatically.
Read more about this and also the VIP Club feature.

Order exports for delivery companies
Delivery companies are working towards increased automation and some now ask for uploads of order items. The first file format is available for DHL.
In Order Manager you go into the order items section and in the export section select one of the available courier formats . You can then upload it to the courier company.
Additional formats will be quoted for other delivery companies upon request.
Contact us to enable this for you on your site and to find out about our other delivery integrations. Charges apply.

Set Special Offer pricing more easily using the Product prices columns export/import
The Product prices columns import/export now also handles changes to product statuses and special offer dates ranges.
This means you can change prices and put products on offer in the same import/export file without needing to use Batch Products Processor.
This also provides a good alternative to using Price Manager.

CMS & Design

Personalise site content using VIP club rules 
You can now personalise sliders and content displayed to visitors based on their VIP club and level via the Personalisation system and in templates. 
Admin > Personalisation Rules > Add/Edit Personalisation Rule > Smart Type, VIP Club & Level
New template tags available inside the "user.vip_club" object.
VIP club is now shown on the customer homepage for logged-in users displaying their current level and the ability to scroll through and view other levels.

Page Slices by default for building pages 
We've been working on improvements to our page slices system and now all new sites will have this newer page builder available to them by default. 
We've also made it easier to get it enabled on all existing sites, contact us to find out more about this new method of building pages. 

Page search improvements
Site search for pages has been improved to use a better scoring system and now also includes content blocks as well as the default page content. 
This returns better search result matching especially when multiple pages talk about the same topic.

New page slice blocks available
We've added a range of new slices in including buttons, horizontal lines, lists of links & page menus. 
These all help building up new landing pages using the page slice builder and building more custom experiences without the need for designers, while still letting designers customise the slices themselves where needed.
We've also added further settings to some of the existing slices, for example setting the aspect ratio of a map easily.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Discontinued products can now longer be purchased 
Products marked as discontinued can no longer be bought from the site. 
If this change affects you, please reach out to us and we can help improve the flow going forward.

New delivery report for 'county/state'
US sites can use this  to see sales performance across each state. UK sites can see performance across counties.

Prospect Manager 'Funnel by status' filters
Easily filter your sales funnel status to distinguish between open, won and lost quotes over time. 

New product slices and content blocks
You can now easily list your products onto pages by status/category/etc using the system products slice, or pick specific products and drag and drop into order with the curated products slice.

Price List "You Save" Column
Show a column of how much your dealers/distributors save per item vs the retail price in the Price List feature.
Enable via Site Settings > Prices & VAT > "Show difference between "Your Price" & "Retail Price" as a percentage"

Product import column checks
Both the product and user imports now have improved checks to recognise if required fields are missing, and the file format is correct.

Coupon improvements
We've reworked how coupons are checked to ensure they still qualify while in the cart, as well as soime small design improvements for the display of coupons in the cart. This includes showing the before and after discount price more clearly, crossing out the before price, plus cleaning up the line showing total discount & which code was used.

Integrations

Google Site Name & Website Schema Support
Adds Google Site Name support.
By default we use the Company (Site) name, but this introduces a new setting to "Override site name" and "Enable website schema markup (includes site search action)"
Admin > Site Settings > SEO > Site Name

Faster Google Analytics load after cookie popup
We've optimised how Google Analytics runs on the site after a user accepts the cookies to run immediately if permission is granted, ensuring any visitors who bounce quickly between pages are fully tracked. 

'Connect' and 'Edit user' areas new modal prompt for confirming & describe the changes being made
A confirmation modal pops up when changing and saving data for better audits. You can also set a note here at the same time to remind you or other admins why a change was made.  

 


New in REC+: October - Option Special Pricing, Top Categories Drilldown & more

Spotlight

Option special pricing
You can now set special prices on products right down to the option level, with additional template functionality for styling.
Edit product > options tab > next to option price & the group icon is a new discount tag icon which when clicked reveals a special offer price field.
This field is also available when editing group based option level prices. 
Requires a licence upgrade.

Top Categories Drilldown
Top Categories report now lets you drilldown through to sub-categories to explore which are bringing in the most sales for your site.

3D secure v2
We've reviewed and made relevant changes to all the payment processors we support to ensure they support the new 3D secure version 2 so your customers payments are kept secure, including PayPal, Stripe, SagePay, Barclaycard EPDQ and more. 

CMS & Design

Page access control using user smart type
You can now set access control rules by user smart types (which can contain multiple user groups e.g. retail, trade, dealer) meaning pages to only be viewed by users within that smart type. This lifts the previous limit of only setting up to 3 user groups for page access control.
Available via Admin > Page Manager on the edit page screen under the existing user group dropdowns.

Content Blocks > Links New Tab option
Content blocks that have links inside such as images can now be set to open in a new tab for additional flexibility when building up pages. 

Ecommerce & Reporting

Coupon Assignment design improvements & multiple selections
We've redesigned the way you can add coupon assignments to simplify the process and make it easier to select multiple products, categories and brands / manufacturers.

Report Builder percentage revenue change between comparison date ranges
Running Report Builder order info reports with a comparison date range set now shows you the percentage revenue change between the two date ranges.

Report Builder new advanced filter for excluding manual orders
Compare year on year sales without manual orders included to separate out online web v telesales orders. 

Refer a friend email task links
When sending email tasks e.g. order reminders, you can now include the template tag {{ user.refer_a_friend_link }} to remind customers about the refer a friend deal that's available.


New in REC+: September - Product Reporting Types, Added Flexibility For Coupons & more

Spotlight

Product Reporting Types
This offers a way to categorise products for different ways to report on product revenues, for example rather than just reporting category revenues, you could report on product usage where products could sit across different categories. Reports including Top Products & Order Info reports in Report Builder can filter their data based on specific reporting types. Read in full.
Admin > Reporting Types
Admin > Product Manager > new filter for reporting types
Admin > Reports > Top products > new filter for reporting types
Admin > Reports > Order Info Reports & Report Builder > new filter for reporting types & new report for product sales by reporting types

Qualify for coupons when products need to exist in different categories &/or manufacturers on coupons. 
Multi-select allows you to give a discount for each of the products in the basket which match to each of the multi-selections made.
For example, if you multi-selected category A and category B, you would need to have a product in the basket in category A and another product which is in category B to trigger the discount. If you added another product in the basket which was not in either category A or B then that product would not receive the discount whereas the first two would.
Use case example:
If you buy a jacket from the Coats category and a hat from the Headgear category then you receive a 10% discount off each product. If you also bought some wool gloves from the Glove category then they would not receive a discount.
Available via the existing product, category and manufacturer filters in Admin > Assign Coupons 

CMS & Design

For sites using the beta version of page slices for building pages, we've added 4 new slice types:
1. Main body app (lets you pick and pull in any main body app in place of a slice)
2. Sidebar app (as above but for sidebar apps)
3. Image grid (a repeatable image list but in a defined grid either going down as columns or across as rows)
4 Embed code (a raw html field where you could add any html such as a script or iframe)

Quickly find pinned comments round the system via Admin Comments.
Admin > All Site Comments & Audits > new filters to hide audits & only show pinned comments

Country personalisation filters can now be used to show content when a country does or doesn't match. 
This reverse logic enables easier setup, for example you can set a rule for the rest of the world by setting that it's not your country.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Per group delivery adapters to zones
Allowing you to use different delivery systems between different areas of the world, such as using our built in system for international orders but a 3rd party such as Postmen or ShipyPro for UK deliveries.
Via edit user group > new "Delivery Zone Adapters" section with dropdowns of adapters per zone.

Multiple youtube videos on products.
You can now set up to 3 youtube videos against a product to help advertise the product and show a mix of promotional and instructional videos directly via the product page. 
Add/edit product > new field under the existing youtube video for 2nd and 3rd URLs.
Same on batch product processor, csv exports and available via the front end template tags using the new product.youtube_url_2, product.youtube_iframe_2, product.youtube_url_3 and product.youtube_iframe_3 tags, see responsive-base's product_info.html.twig for example usage.

Discontinued product sorting changes
You can set discontinued products to be shown at the end of product lists so live/available products are shown to customers first without you needing to rearrange them in product manager manually.
Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Products > Sorting discontinued products to the end of product listings

Picking lists now show option details
Option names & values are now also added to products listed on picking lists to help ensure the correct version/colour is picked for an order.

Product PDF improvements for chapter handling.
We've improved how multiple pages of products inside chapters generate such as keeping table headings and repeating titles to show which chapter you're viewing.
Contact us to find out more about our PDF product listings feature.

Additional Product PDF improvements have been made to allow you to set the sort method, and further template improvements to improve style and flexibility while listing chapters. 

Buying rules can now be filtered by User Smart Type
This lets you can you setup buying rules that only apply to retail or dealer groups on your site.

Order Manager unpaid order improvements
You can now manually set if an order is unpaid or not via the order screen, this was previously only available via a payment processor marking it as paid or unpaid when processing the order but this resolves that flow for telephone orders where the customer had an order at checkout previously. 

Custom API templates can now be cached. 
This is especially useful for custom apps for filtering products on a single page, you can cache the data for a few minutes or hours if it doesn't change frequently, saving users time on reloads or on high traffic pages.
In the templates api() calls designers can now add "cache=true, cacheSeconds=10" and modify as needed.

Reports for order csv lines now shows category
Useful for checking the performance of specific categories via a spreadsheet.

Product export/imports assembly details
We've added the assembly bin location and assembly instructions product fields the products export and import to help you se these on mass.

Integrations

Multi store > You can now restrict how to sync categories on products
By default we send all 5 category relations on products through multi store, however with this setting we'll only send the first/default category, ignoring the 2-5 category relationships. Allowing multi store sites to have different categories while maintaining the same default category.
Admin > Multi Store > add/edit > Only send default category?


 


New in REC+: August - Backorder and Order Manager process improvements & more

Spotlight

Backorder improvements
Adds new "backorder" state and a top level Order Manager tab for viewing backorders along with a way for admins to set up and mark where an order is in the backorder process/status.
New "backorder" state in Admin > Order Statuses > Add/edit statuses
Admin > Order Backorder Statuses
In Order Manager, there is a new tab for backorders and when viewed it will also show as a new column for the backorder status.
On the order info screen you'll see the backorder status and comment field with colour coding.

Order Manager tab layout changes
We've cleaned up the tabs at the top of Order Manager & split the custom tabs you add onto their own line so you are no longer restricted by the space to the side of the system tabs.
Additional tidying up has been done to the filters as some will now be found under the new Additional search filters area inside Order Manager quick search.
You can also now set the sort order of these custom status tabs by dragging and dropping them in the Admin > Order statuses area.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Abandoned cart follow-ups now show recent related orders
When admins look at the abandoned cart follow-up popup for an order you can see other recent orders that user has made, helping you spot if they later went on to purchase but as a new order.

Dashboard now has a quick-link to Report Builder.
This helps you get to the fantastic range of reports available in report builder directly from your admin dashboard.

Customers subscribed to stock alerts for products now get alerts when back in stock date changes
This automatically ensures customers are kept updated if subscribed to receive stock updates.

Back in stock dates can be set at the product variation level
Allows you to set back in stock dates down to option combination/variation level. 
You can now set this via product variations with the new calendar icon next to variation stock fields.

Coupon Assignment Improvements
The coupon assignment area has been smartened up and now loads much faster even with hundreds of active coupons on the go.

Backorders > wipe stock button
Adds a new button via Edit product > Stock > Wipe product stock to clear not just the top stock level on the product but all stock against options and variations as well.
We also now indicate how many variations a product has from the stock tab to help you see its stock numbers based on the sum of variations. 

Image Placeholders
We now have a placeholder image system built into the sites rather than having to rely on 3rd party sites which can be unrelaible at times. 
This lets us put in default placeholders which you can then replace images easily, for example in email templates.

Back in stock email previews
Via email tasks you can preview back in stock emails for when either stock or the back in stock date is changed to test your email design faster.

Order confirmation, update and order email tasks can now all access User Smart types
This lets us customise the experience in the email based on whether the customer is a Retail or Trade customer.

Purchase orders can now show the customer order number.
New template tag {{ order.customers_order_id }} available in the purchase_order.html.twig file

Developers can now use a "product.combination.change" on product pages to get price, stock and back in stock dates down to the variation level for live updates on product pages. 

Integrations

Spam log and whitelist
Adds a a new spam log area letting you see all blocked IP and emails via stopforumspam on a site.
In future we may extend this to all the other spam checks.


 


New in REC+: July - Create a PDF Print-ready Catalogue & more

Spotlight

PDF Product Listing Catalogue
You can now generate PDFs (300dpi / print quality) of your product catalogue to distribute to customers or resellers easily. Read in full.
The templates are flexible and we can build fairly custom layouts for your products split out by category chapters inside the PDF while letting you add custom pages and cover/back images.
Admin > PDF Product Listings
Admin > Product Manager > Edit Category > Exclude category from PDF product listings
Also requires a cron to be set up.

User Manager mass search
Adds a way to mass search on a list of pasted in emails, as well as a column for their order total in the last 3 months and a simplified newsletter subscribed indicator.
Admin > User manager > Filter users > Mass search on emails

Ecommerce & Reporting

Order Manager filter for User Smart Type
Adds a way in Order Manager to filter the User Smart Type and show the smart type against orders in the main table and on the dashboard.
Admin > Site Settings > Display > Show Smart Types on Order Manager
Admin > Order Manager > Quick Search > Smart Type

Top Products report now shows conversion rate
Adds conversion rate to current and comparisons colums.
Available via Admin > Reports > Top Products report.

Top Products report filter for User Smart Type
Adds a smart type filter to the top products report

Top Products report category field select
The top products report now lets you select which of the 5 category fields it should use when selecting a category.

Back in stock admin alerts now email two reminders
We now email 2 business days before stock hits the back in stock date, as well as on the day to help remind you to check the stock positionahead of time.

Integrations

Unleashed retail customer code prefix
We can now add a prefix to retail customer codes we send to Unleashed to help you see which accounts are retail  more easily.
Admin > Connect > Utilities > Unleashed > Retail Customer Code Prefix

SMTP auth mode support when sending emails via SMTP
This helps improve compatibility with 3rd party email providers when using SMTP such as Office 365
Admin > SMTP & Email Settings > SMTP config > Auth Mode, Send Source IP & Ignore SSL verification/errors

 


New in REC+: June - Refer A Friend System Launched & more

Spotlight

Refer a friend
Encourage customers to share your site with friends with a discount and when friends order the sharer gets a discount too. Read in full.
Licence upgrade required, contact us to enable this, then manage via Admin > Refer a friend system
Customers can find their sharing link in Customer home > Refer A Friend 
Reports updated to show 'R' for refer a friend as the source including Order Traffic Analyzer and the Order Info report
Email tasks > new event for "Refer a friend complete order" > page contains "coupon_code" and "coupon_end_date" template tags.

Coupon User Smart Type & country restrictions
Adds support for setting User Smart type and delivery country restrictions directly on a coupon.
Admin > Add/edit coupon > "Make this only available for a specific user smart type" & "Filter this coupon to specific countries only?"

Single use coupons
You can now make coupons only apply once and then remove their assignment rule after use, this is auto set for the order anniversary and refer a friend coupons.
Admin > Assign Coupons > new tickbox for "Single Use"

Ecommerce & Reporting

Order anniversary restriction improvements
The order anniversary coupons can now be restricted to specific user smart types and countries.

Back in stock alerts to admin
We now check product back in stock dates every day so if the day comes and no stock is set on the product yet it will email you to remind you to get stock or update the date it's back in stock.

Product tag counts
In the admin management area for product tags we now show counts of tag groups and tags.

Users

Viewing user form responses now links to the full form response info.
We've added a " View Response" link to form entries on edit customer > forms to help you track customer contact more easily.


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