AmeriCommerce Releases New Tools and Updates

It’s that time of year to start preparing for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, shipping deadlines and making sure your online store is up and running with all the tools needed to convert visitors to sales.

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It’s also that time of year OTHER ecommerce platforms start focusing their energy on holiday blog posts, marketing ads, and product development freezes.

Luckily, AmeriCommerce isn’t like other platforms – instead, it hands out new features and functionality like it’s free candy!

It’s been a little while since the software provider’s last release update, but if you’ve been following its release history then you know that it’s been busy working on new tools to add to your arsenal.

If you aren’t one of the cool kids that follow AmeriCommerce’s change logs, here’s a recap of all the free stuff it has been rolling out over the last few months.

Product & Category Management

• Product parameters now available to pass to contact forms. For example, you can now add a button near your product asking for a quote or personalization instructions and that form will pass along product parameters along with the form submission.
• Editing file paths in the admin is much easier. Click change URL in the image path drop-down
• New Merge Code to view/edit a review – ##REVIEWID##
• Item Link on Order Screen now navigates to Edit Product in the admin versus front-end product view
• New and improved product image editor tool replacing the deprecated Adobe Aviary
• Added review rating merge code for with schema markup
• Product sales history now available inside Edit Product Page in the admin

Cart & Checkout

• Full VAT support extended to each line item including several merge codes that can be used that affect cart, cart items, orders, and order items.
• Wish List management: list/edit saved Wish Lists in admin
• Reward point merge codes created to enable reporting Point Balances/Deductions in emails
• Restrict/Permit certain payment types to a Customer Type
• New ‘Save for later’ feature – add products to ‘save for later’ list without needing to create an account. This feature extends/transforms wish-list functionality to work as a ‘save for later’ list and shows on cart page and listing areas.

Order Management

• AVS codes for all orders (both authorized only and captured) can now be seen on the View Order Page
• Filter orders by customer type
• Cost field is now editable for phantom items while making quotes/orders
• It now shows what Gift Certificate codes were used in order confirmation emails
• Added ability to manually sync orders with Tax Cloud
• New setting for “show billing address on packing slip”
• New “file attachment” field type as a custom field for use on orders
• Print packing slips by warehouse

Quotes, Purchase Orders & Invoices

• PDF’s can now be generated and attached to invoice emails
• Cost field is now editable for phantom items while making quotes/orders
• You can now clone quotes

Widgets

• New Widget for Generic Breadcrumbs that works with Schema markup, better layout flexibility and also works on content and blog pages.
• New Widget for Contact Information for better layout flexibility and control
• Improved Contact Form widget
• Added “quantity box” and “add to cart” button to product display widget items
• Added more display types to the product display widget (Manufacturer, Attribute, Product Status, eProducts, Subscription Products)

Theme & Front End

• Assign Themes to Multi-Stores: The AmeriCommerce multi-store security now allows user permissions for theme edits for themes that are associated to a store. What this means is that you can now have a user assigned to a multi-store with the ability to grant access for that user to be restricted to only edit a theme that’s either set to active or set to “associated” with the store(s) they are restricted to.
• New caching feature for external content merge codes
• You can now preview theme from the theme edit area in the admin
• After the theme has been installed, the theme listing page will refresh automatically
• Updated Redactor WYSIWYG to Version 3.2.0
• Pasting images in WYSIWYG editor is now supported
• Added ability to override the style of the Facebook Login Merge Code

Live Design Tool Upgraded

• Overhaul of the UI/UX of Live Design
• New Color Picker
• Now easier to add custom theme settings
• Improved look of the permissions error page
• Remove Advanced Button and replaced with Clear Cache
• Page settings and global settings are now shown by default
• Pattern/Image upload and selector no longer exhibit strange behaviors
• Add Widget Overlay styling fixes
• Hover tip pop-ups now show inline at all times
• Adjusted code editor in widget editor
• Collapse element sections by default
• Fixed major issues caused by dragging and dropping widgets in a layout
• Actions panel got a “go back” link/button

Exports/Imports

• Added last four digits of CC and cart type to order exports
• You can now import and export tax rates/regions and shipping regions
• Store text/language import tool and export tool allowing for languages to be easily added to any store

API Updates

• Rebuilt Quickbooks payments gateway integration to use REST API
• “Add New Store” API endpoint created (for enterprise-level customers)
• “Import Theme” API endpoint created
• Updating products through API will now clear cache appropriately
• Added last four digits of CC and card type to API

Domain, SSL & Go-Live Processes

• Go-Live Instructions now include an IP address for A records
• Launch of IP redirect tooling for smoother domain go-lives

New Partnerships

• New integration with CardConnect (with level 2 and level 3 processing)
• New integration with PayTrace

White Label Settings

• New White label Setting – Hide Live Chat
• New White label Setting – Hide My Account
• New White label Setting – Hide Trial Banner

Doing More to Improve People’s Lives

AmeriCommerce does more than just create new features anyone can use. It has recently knocked out several technical milestones that are carving out its path to becoming the most robust enterprise platform out there. Among them are the following:

Massive Speed Improvements on Front and Back End

AmeriCommerce made significant milestones in tech performance this year that it’s been chasing for years. Front end average request times from ~400 ms to 177 ms (55% improvement) while back end (admin) average request times from ~900 ms to 390 ms (56% improvement).

Complete Migration to Cloudflare

The company has accomplished the not-so-trivial task of moving all standard ecommerce traffic away from Rackspace load balancers and completely migrated to using Cloudflare to handle all those requests. Kudos to the AmeriCommerce support staff walking each individual customer step by step on making all those DNS changes. Now all of its customers can rest assured they are getting the most out of their CDN and traffic handling on the web with all the extra security benefits along with it.

My Account Roll Out

My Account was launched in beta this year, and as of October every single AmeriCommerce customer has been migrated into the new My Account system. This allows for transparent billing, changing plans at any time, improved reporting, better multi-store management, and automated plan sign-ups.

Looking Ahead

While other ecommerce platforms are focusing on new apps to charge extra for, AmeriCommerce is steadily building out more and more functionality for everyone using its platform.

Coming Soon to AmeriCommerce:

• More highly requested partner integrations (including Quickbooks Online, Zapier, a point of sale system, and much more)
• New BASE theme with updated everything
• Fresh new themes (free!)
• Even MORE improvements to the Live Design tool
• Rewards points tier system that will make other platforms blush
• Improvements to My Account
• A new modern look to the AmeriCommerce brand
• And several items from the platform’s feature request list