The latest version of ShopSite ®, Version 10 SP2, has been out for a while now. If you’ve recently upgraded, here a few tips and tricks that may be helpful when trying to integrate and use the new ShopSite features.

Customer Registration – New shipping address tag

The latest version adds support for allowing a customer to immediately enter a shipping address when they sign up.  If you are using a custom customer registration template, upgrading to SP2 will not automatically add this feature, as it’s a new ShopSite tag.

Fortunately, it’s an easy addition. In your customer registration template, look for the “DEFINE Shipping_Options” section, and add this tag to allow customers to add a shipping address:

[– BUTTON Add –]

Advanced Ordering Options and the changing image

SP2 adds support for more advanced ordering options which include inventory levels and weights for options like size and color. You can even assign a specific image for each combination. However, if you have an existing custom product template, you may need to change your image tag.

In order for the image to change based on the ordering options selected by the customer, you need to use this tag for displaying the product image on the moreinfo page:

[– MoreInfoImageRow –]

Managing advanced ordering options via the backoffice

If you plan to manage your advanced ordering option combinations via the backoffice, a few limitations to be aware of…

1. You cannot delete a combination once you turn on advanced ordering options. You can mark it to not be used, but it will still appear in the list. So if you have 3 dropdowns (color, shape, and size) each with 10 items, that will generate 1,000 combinations that will display when editing a product.

2. Once you enable advanced ordering options, you cannot add a new dropdown menu. So make sure you have all of your menus defined before enabling this option.

Sales stats in dashboard

The new dashboard in the backoffice is a great addition. It gives you “at-a-glance” stats to get a good overview of many statistical categories in your store.

One thing to note is that the sales stats are tied to the orders you have saved in the backoffice, and not all orders over time. So, if you delete orders from the backoffice (which we recommend doing periodically to keep the orders section running fast), realize that your stats in  the dashboard view will also be affected.

New advanced ordering options SKU – ramifications for APIs

With the new ordering options, you can assign an alternate SKU to any ordering combination. This is a great new feature for many merchants, especially clothing related stores.

One thing to be aware of is if you have an API such as a shipping API or order API script that uses the SKU field, make sure it is designed to handle this new alternate SKU if you make use of it in your store. There are new variables to account for:

Order API – parent SKU uses Bnn-OrigSKU variable if alternate SKU is used

Shipping API – parent SKU uses pXorigsku variable if alternate SKU is used

…

Just a few odds and ends to help you get the most out of ShopSite. Anything else that should be added to the list?