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About the Author
Chris Iona is the Senior Engineering Manager at BigCommerce, responsible for engineering strategy, management, and execution of the engineering team. He's a strong advocate for both agile methodologies & progressive enhancement, but is passionate about all things web. |
Bloggers and media: You can find our copy-and-paste press release here.
As you may already know, we’re right in the middle of redeveloping our variations system, which has kept most of our engineers very busy. However, we strongly believe in the spirit of continuous improvement, so we’ve made time to give the current version some TLC.
We’ve just begun the rollout of the new BigCommerce update, which contains almost 100 new features, enhancements and bug fixes, some of which I’ll discuss below. You can opt-in to the new release from your control panel over the next few days and your store will be upgraded automatically.
Let’s take a look at the new features in this release…
Free Shipping Coupon Code
You can now choose to offer free or discounted shipping when creating a coupon code. Combine this with the coupon usage limitations below and you’ve got a great way to entice shoppers to buy from you. This was actually our most-requested feature!
Limit Coupon Usage By Location And/Or Shipping Method
One of the more powerful features we’ve added to this release is the ability to limit coupon code usage based on customer location and/or the shipping method selected. The new “Advanced” tab on the “Create a Coupon Code” screen lets you configure these options:
Limiting the use of a coupon code by location
Limiting the use of a coupon by shipping method
Limit Usage of Coupon Codes Per Customer
A simple feature but a good one – you can limit the number of times an individual customer can use a coupon code:
Customize Number of Product Breadcrumbs Displayed
Another simple feature, but one that was highly requested. You can now choose to show all/none/one product breadcrumb on your product pages.
Choose Where to Show Free Shipping Eligibility
If you have a discount rule setup for free shipping then you can entice customers to spend a little more to qualify. You can choose the exact message to show as well as where to show the message in your store:
Configuring the free shipping enticement message and placement
How the free shipping enticement message appears on the cart page
Post Import Review
It sounds impressive, but it’s really quite simple. We’ve added a link to the last step of product importing, which allows you to review the changes you just made. We’ve also improved the error messages that are returned if your import was unsuccessful.
InstantAddTM Suggestive Cart Upsell System
We know you want customers to stay on your website as long as possible, to improve the likelihood of them purchasing something. You also told us that you want them to stay on the same page when they buy things. Well now with the InstantAddTM suggestive cart upsell system, they can. You can click on the image below to see an example of adding a product to the cart.
Category Flyout Menus
A new feature for BigCommerce is category fly out menus, which are ready for your customization. They expand when you mouse over a category, presenting sub categories to your users. To enable them, login to your Control Panel -> Settings -> Store Settings -> Display (tab), and scroll down to Category Settings.
Customizable Gift Certificates
You asked for it, so here it is! Our gift certificates now allow you to change the color, font, layout and overall look of the template, so you can give them the same personalized touch you gave to your store.
Ability to Archive Orders
Like the trash can on your computer, there’s now an option to archive orders when deleted so that they can be restored if you need them. Believe me when I say that this nifty improvement can save you and us lots of time!
Performance Improvements
We’ve manage to squeeze out some serious performance improvements in product importing (especially those with complex and large data sets). We’ve also introduced some code to help BigCommerce operate under even less load, which is a good thing all round.
Here are the results of a complex test case we just ran:-
Importing 1,114 complex products
> Old: 26 minutes 14 seconds
> New: 38 seconds
… as you can see, this test case is over 40 times faster!
Integration Improvements
In this build of BigCommerce, we have numerous fixes to 3rd party integrations, including Facebook, PayPal, eBay, FedEx, GoogleCheckout, eWay and QuickBooks. As their API’s improve, so do our interconnects. There’s also lots of little UI & security tweaks and improvements.
I look forward to hearing your feedback in the comments section below. For those that would like to review the release notes, you can click here.
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Mitchell Harper Reply:
October 21st, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Hi Vai. Please see my reply to JK re:upgrading.
[Reply]