ShopSite Newsletter – Special Edition

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LexiConn ShopSite Newsletter – Special Edition
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In this month’s issue:
- ShopSite 7.1.1 – all v7.1 stores patched
- Special Offer – ScanAlert for less than $20 per month
- Tips: Gift Certificates, Tracking online ads in ShopSite Pro

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ShopSite 7.1.1 – all 7.1 stores patched

ShopSite has released a few patches for the latest 7.1 version of ShopSite, bringing the current version to 7.1.1. These patches fixed minor bugs with coupons, search, and order downloads. All existing 7.1 stores have been patched to the latest version.

If you have not yet upgraded to 7.1, now is a great time to do so to take advantage of new features during the upcoming holiday shopping season. Over 100 stores at LexiConn are running 7.1.1, and the release is quite stable at this point. The upgrade is free for any 7.0.x store or any store that leases the ShopSite software.

The upgrade form can be found at:
https://lexiconn.com/lexiconn/shopsite_v7_upgrade.html

You can find a new features list for v7 and v7.1 at:
http://www.shopsite.com/help/7.1/en-US/new-features.html

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Special Offer – ScanAlert for less than $20 per month

LexiConn is pleased to announce a special offer in partnership with ScanAlert. ScanAlert offers a secure, dynamic image that can be placed on your website that tells your customers that your site is safe from hackers and has been certified to be a safe shopping location on the web. Many shoppers feel more secure when they know a site they are visiting has been audited and is certified to be safe.

The ScanAlert service, normally priced at $179 per month for larger merchants, is now available through our partnership with ScanAlert for as low as $19.99 per month (shared hosting accounts only). Signing up is easy to do, and LexiConn will manage all the security alerts and issues. All you need to do is place a few lines of code wherever you want the ScanAlert image to appear on your site, thereby providing your customers with a greater degree of comfort that could boost your bottom line. To date, thousands of merchants have seen increased sales as a
result of displaying the “Hacker Safe” mark on their websites, with over 100 reporting increases of 14% or more.

Details on this service and the sign up form can be found at:
http://www.scanalert.com/WebHost.sa?hostId=233

With the busy holiday season fast approaching, now is a great time to put your customers at ease while shopping at your site.

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Tip: Gift Certificates in 7.1

With the new release of ShopSite 7.1, Pro stores can now offer gift certificates to their customers. The new feature integrates gift certificates into your store, with the software tracking each gift certificate, keeping track of how much is used on each certificate, and making it simple for customers to redeem them.

One issue that has come up recently is by default, the gift certificate page allows customers to purchase multiple certificates at one time. Although this can be a beneficial feature, the interface can often confuse a customer, and there is no mechanism for allowing multiple names or separating the email addresses when the certificates are emailed. A workaround that ShopSite suggests to limit the quantity to one gift certificate to be purchased at a time is shown below. It requires editing the gift certificate custom template.

1. Go to: Merchandising -> Custom Templates and click the “Copy ShopSite Template” button under the gift certificate section. Copy it to your own name.
2. From the main custom templates page, click on “Edit Template” for your newly created gift certificate template.
3. In the Gift Certificate template replace the tag
[-- GiftCertNumberAmount --]

with the following code:

Amount of each gift certificate ($10.00 - $1,000.00)

4. Go to: Preferences -> Store Text -> Gift Certificates and remove the text “Number of gift certificates”.

5. Go to: Merchandising -> Gift Certificate -> Configure and set the template to your custom gift certificate template.

This will hardcode the quantity to 1 for all gift certificate purchases, and not offer this option to the customer. If you run into any problems setting this up, let us know, and we can help get this in place.

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Tip: Tracking online ads in ShopSite Pro

If you purchase and utilize online ads at places such as Google or Overture, you can use the Associates feature in ShopSite Pro to track sales that come from these ads. The Associates feature in ShopSite is a built-in affiliate tracking program that can be used to also track online sales from direct ads.

To set this up, you simply create an Associate for each ad that you place. You can set the email to your email address for the Associate, and set the landing page to the page where people will go when clicking on the ad. Then for the URL you set for your advertisement, use the link in the Associates area of ShopSite instead of a direct URL to the page on your site. Now when someone clicks your ad, and ends up purchasing from your site, this will be recorded in the ShopSite Associates area.

For more in depth stats and the ability to track purchases from multiple sources (ShopSite Pro only), take a look at our Urchin ecommerce module:
http://www.lexiconn.com/ecommerce/shopsite/urchin.html

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As always, feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. Complete contact and support options can be found at:
http://www.lexiconn.com/support.html

Sincerely,
- The LexiConn Team

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