I am pleased to announce that Auctiva Commerce has been updated to include the following features of fixes:

– Fix to USPS shipping to correctly handle packages that are less than one ounce in weight.
– Fix to USPS shipping to correctly set dimensional maximums for Flat Rate box shipping options.
– Fix to display the correct Order Number on the Ship Order page.
– Fix to display the correct currency symbol on the Payments page.
– Fix to display the correct currency symbol on the Order History page.

– Update to add additional filtering options to the Tax Reports page.  With this update you can now filter the Tax Reports by Order Status and/or Payment Status in addition to the previously existing date range filtering.
– Update to allow Packing Slips and Pull Sheets to be printed regardless of shipping status.
– Update to remove link to HTML editor from the Email Templates pages.  The templates can still be edited but the HTML editor was removed as it was causing malformed HTML issues.
– Update to State/Province drop-downs to include a default value other than the first State/Province in the list.
– Update to allow for sorting and reordering of the Countries list.
– Update to add functionality to include support for adding the Tracking Number in the Order Shipped email.  Note that you need to update your Email Template(s) to take advantage of this new functionality.  Instructions on how to update your Email Template can be found Here.
– Update to remove the option to Delete countries from the merchant admin.  They are now made inactive vs. being deleted – this is so they can be easily recovered later if needed.

These fixes and updates have been deployed live and where applicable Help and or FAQ documentation has been updated on the Auctiva Commerce Help Site.
Thank you -

Chris

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Auctiva Commerce has been updated today to include the following features of fixes:

– Addition of validation to credit card based payments.  With this feature we will now display an error message on the screen if the buyer does not enter the correct information required to process their credit card; for example if the billing Zip Code is not populated.

– Update to use a drop-down system for the entry of the Billing address during Checkout.

*** IMPORTANT NOTE***  With this update, after selecting the country the buyer will then be provided a drop-down of the States/Provinces for that country, <b>IF</b> there are any States/Provinces defined for that country in your Auctiva Commerce store.  If there are no States/Provinces defined for the selected country the buyer will be able to type in the State/Province name.  By default Auctiva Commerce provides States/Provinces for the following countries:  Australia, Canada, China, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  To edit the Countries and/or Provinces available in your store go to Store > Shipping > Countries in your Auctiva Commerce merchant admin.  Be sure to use the correct Country code, Province name and Province code when editing your countries or provinces. This site contains a list of Countries/Country codes and associated Provinces/Province codes and may be a good starting point if you are planning to edit your countries or provinces.  However, please note that this site has not been audited so please verify any updates to your countries or provinces with resources or sites specific to your region.

– Update to the default list of available provinces for the United Kingdom. To coincide with the update to the entry of the Billing address during Checkout noted above, we have updated our default list of United Kingdom provinces to be more comprehensive.

– Addition of an Address Book drop-down to the manual New Order creation flow.  Now, if you create an order in Auctiva Commerce for a customer (for example a phone-in order), if the customer has an account in Auctiva Commerce we will provide the customer’s stored shipping addresses in a drop-down so that you can easily create a complete order.

– Update to the Google Merchant Center feed page.  We have updated the Google Merchant Center feed page to be more user-friendly and streamlined.  With the update the most common Google Merchant Center feed operations should be simpler and easier to perform.  If you have already set up your Google Merchant Center feeds you do not have to update or change anything as we have imported your previous settings into the new page format.  Please note that the “Overwrite Existing Feed File” option is being retired with the new page format; now each time you generate the feed the existing feed file be overwritten.

– Addition of Dashboard webpart to display the status of your Google Merchant Center feed setup.  Since Google is such an important traffic driver we have added a dashboard webpart to let you know the status of your Google Merchant Center feed setup.  The webpart will tell you if your feed is set up and if you have enabled automated nightly submission of your feed.

These fixes and updates have been deployed live and where applicable Help and or FAQ documentation has been updated on the Auctiva Commerce Help Site.

Thank you -

Chris

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I am pleased to announce that we recently released a major upgrade to the Auctiva Commerce search function.  We are now utilizing a full text search which provides much more robust and efficient search capabilities.  Your buyers should now find it much easier to locate the items they are looking for in your store(s) – hopefully leading to greater sales for you!!  We are going to continue to work on refining the search function and will be adding further upgrades in the future.

Happy Selling,

Chris

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Google has recently introduced a new policy that will require you to verify ownership of your Auctiva Commerce website in order to continue to upload items to Google Merchant Center. For details about the new policy please view the Google Merchant Blog post. You have to complete the verification process by May 18th to avoid problems with your Google Merchant Center products.

To comply with the new procedures you first need to verify site ownership with Google Webmaster Tools, and then claim your site in the Google Merchant Center. To verify site ownership you need to generate a verification code at the Google Webmaster Tools site, and then apply it to your Auctiva Commerce store. The verification code is a long string of random characters and numbers. Once you have the verification code, login to your Auctiva Commerce merchant admin and navigate to Marketing > Search Engine Optimization (SEO) > Meta Data & Google Integration. Paste the verification code in the Site Verification text-box and click Save Verification. Make sure you only paste in the verification code itself without the surrounding quotes or other text. If you have previously verified your Auctiva Commerce site ownership with Google Webmaster Tools you do not have to re-verify.

After you have verified ownership of your Auctiva Commerce store via the above procedure you need to login to the Google Merchant Center and claim your site. To do so sign in to your Google Merchant Center account and click the “Claim this URL” link on your General Settings page.

Thank you -

Chris

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I am pleased to announce that Auctiva Commerce has been updated to include the following features of fixes:

– Correction to Email List feature to prevent creation of an empty record when adding a user to an email list.
– Correction to not include handling fees (if enabled) in the shipping total on the Checkout page.
– Correction to not display a system ID on the buyer’s view of the order details page.
– Correction to correctly notify the merchant when a buyer adds a note to an order.
– Correction to use the correct country code for Russia in shipping calculations and within the Auctiva Commerce merchant admin site.
– Correction to customization panels to correctly save links that have been customized.
– Correction to remove trailing spaces from image URLs that are included in the tab delimited product import file.
– Correction to the Vendor Notification email template to correctly send the email to any applied CC or BCC addresses.
– Correction to allow for refunds when the base currency of the store is not set to United States Dollar (USD).

– Update to send detailed discount information to PayPal so that it appears on PayPal as well as Auctiva Commerce.
– Update to Product Popularity and Sales Over Time graphs on dashboard to improve efficiency and page load.
– Update to allow special characters to be included in the Name field when performing a bulk upload.  ADD LINK to Help doc.
– Update to merchant admin user messaging to make more consistent across pages.

These fixes and updates have been deployed live and where applicable Help and or FAQ documentation has been updated on the Auctiva Commerce Help Site.

Thank you -

Chris

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Similar to Google, PayPal also has a series of acceptance logos that you can incorporate into your site to let your customers know you accept PayPal. They can be found Here. Note that these are all securely hosted at PayPal, so they can be used in the header or footer w/o causing security exceptions in Checkout.

Thx,
Chris

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Want an easy way to let your buyers know you accept Google Checkout?  You can easily create a securely hosted Google Checkout Acceptance logo within your Google Checkout account and include it on your Auctiva Commerce store.  Google provides a Google Checkout Acceptance logo code snippet specific to your Google Checkout account in the Tools > Acceptance logo section of your Google Checkout account.  Just copy the code provided by Google and place it on whichever portion of your Auctiva Commerce site you desire – the footer, for example.

Note that if you want to center it you need to move the Google script code within the DIV they provide and add a bit of CSS – I used the following setup to include and center the logo on my test store and it worked like a charm with the Wood Deco theme.

<div style=”margin: 0pt auto; width: 200px;” id=”googleCheckoutLogo”>&nbsp;<script src=’https://checkout.google.com/buttons/logos?merchant_id=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&loc=en_US&f=png’ ></script></div>

If people click on this logo they will be directed to a Google Checkout page about your store; this page will include any Google Checkout buyer reviews of your store from previous transactions.

Thx,
Chris

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By now probably everyone knows the importance of utilizing Google Merchant Center feeds to promote your store’s goods and services, but did you know you can integrate your Google Merchant Center account, your Google AdWords account, and your Google Checkout account to display Google Checkout badges next to your items in Google Product Search and Google AdWords?  This is a powerful promotional tool which increases conversion rates in both Google Product Search and Google AdWords.  This is a highly recommended practice for all online sellers that offer Google Checkout.

Google has provided an Instructional Article and a Demonstration Video which explain how to set up your Google accounts to display the Google Checkout badges.   Note that it will take a few days for the badges to appear after completing all of these steps.  For sellers that accept Google Checkout I highly recommend that you set up your accounts to display the Google Checkout badges – it should help you to create sales and increase your click through rate on any Google AdWords ads you may have running.

Happy selling -

Chris

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There will be an approximate 1 hour outage for Auctiva Commerce on February 18th starting at 11:00 PM PST. During this time, users that attempt to access your store will be directed to a webpage informing them of the outage.

What we are doing: This outage is necessary to perform database cleanups and updates in order to improve performance for Auctiva Commerce.

Services affected: All Auctiva Commerce merchant admin and public storefront sites.

Thx,
Chris

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Display this widget on your blog or even place it on a friend’s site to reach a new audience. It’s easy!

To access the Auctiva Commerce Store widget, simply log into your Auctiva Commerce Store, hover your mouse over the Marketing tab and select Widgets. Customize your widget with the background and text colors you want and then click the “Get Widget Code” button. This will generate a snippet of code, which you can paste into the desired Web page so your widget will display.

** Please note this widget uses JavaScript, which some sites do not allow.

This is the first version of our Auctiva Commerce Store widget and, as a result, we’ll continue enhancing it in the coming months so you can get even more out of this new tool. And don’t forget that developments on AMP will also continue to give you more ways to drive traffic to your store.

If you have any questions about the new Auctiva Commerce Store widget, or any other aspect of your Auctiva Commerce Store, please contact our Customer Support representatives. They’re always available and happy to help.

Enjoy our store widget!

Thx,
Chris

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