Next Version of ShopSite Pro

[lbohen]

ShopSite Pro went live 1.5 years ago (June 2011).

I would like to know when the next major upgrade will occur.

[Jim]

ShopSite v11 was released in May 2011, but there have been two major service pack releases (indicated by sp and a number) since then. There have also been a number of patch releases (indicated by and r and number) for each of the SP releases. The current ShopSite version is 11 sp2 r4 indicating that it it is the second service pack and 4th patch release. ShopSite 11 was released May 31, 2001, ShopSite 11 sp1 was release October 2011 and ShopSite 11 sp2 was released May 2012. So there are typically two major releases a year.

You can see what features were added in ShopSite 11 and 11SP1 and 11SP2 at http://shopsite.com/help/11.2/en-US/sc/pro/index.htm?page=/help/11.2/en-US/new-features.html .

I don't have a time frame for when the next service pack or version number change release will be available. We are working on a patch release, 11 sp2 r5, that should be available by the end of January 2013.

You can subscribe to the ShopSite Technical Bulletin and/or Merchant News letter from links on http://www.shopsite.com/support.html and you will be sent notices dealing with new releases, features etc.

What specific features are you looking for in a future release? (edit: I just noticed your enhancement requests or abandoned cart emails but are there other things also?)

[lbohen]

Jim; You ask "What specific features are you looking for in a future release?"

Small businesses like www.audiobooksonline.com that don't have dedicated design, SEO/SEM, social media, blogging, article writing staff DO NOT have time to keep up on the ever evolving changes and complexities in those disciplines. Businesses that don't keep up on those changes will likely fall behind eventually. I would like ShopSite to be on the lookout for ecommerce best practices, to educate me about those practices and to implement features which allow us to employ those practices.

For example, it was recently recommended to us that we add a SAVE $xx / xx% calculation wherever we present a retail price and our discounted price for an audio book. This is being implemented by a designer with javascript. I hope this change will motivate visitors and result in a few more sales. I would have preferred that ShopSite thought to suggest this feature to me and given me the option to make it live at our Web store.

[Jim]

With the introduction of the Custom templates, 10 or more years ago, there was a tag [-- CALL script (parameter, parameter, parameter...) --] added. This allows you to call a script that will process the data that you send to it and then print what ever the output of your script is in the html. So the functionality you are asking for is all ready in ShopSite with just a little work on your part.

I added these lines to a custom template

Code: Select all

<strike>[-- product.price --]</strike>  [-- PRODUCT.SaleAmount --]
You Save
[-- CALL savexpercent.pl (product.price,PRODUCT.SaleAmount) --]

Here is the savexpercent.pl perl code

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Print Discount on Product
$Price = substr($ARGV[0],1,length($ARGV[0]));$Sale = substr($ARGV[1],1,length($ARGV[1]));
#print "p1:".substr($ARGV[0],1,length($ARGV[0]))." p2:".substr($ARGV[1],1,length($ARGV[1]));

$Discount = ($Price - $Sale)/$Price;
$Save = ($Discount * 100);
print  sprintf("%.2f",$Save)."%";

;

Here is the output from a page (except the $6.00 has a line through it)

Code: Select all

$6.00 $5.00 You Save 16.67%