This month marks the official end to the QuadCommerce version 1.x stores.  We have just completed the upgrade of the last round of 1.x stores to the latest version of QuadCommerce.

Once a work horse in the QuadCommerce ecommerce services offered, it is now time to put Version 1.x out to pasture.  1.x has been end of life for development for years and has been surpassed by the version 2.x series.  Even 2.x is getting long in the tooth and we are recommending that store owners start planning on the move up to  the latest 3.x versions which are being actiely suppoted and continually developed..

As you can see in the charts, four years ago 1.x  was a major slice of QuadCommerce pie. Today its now a fond ecommerce memory.  (note: These charts only show Quadsimia hosted stores.  While it does show beta releases, it does  not show custom coded QC solution stores -.)

As QuadCommerce evolves, your ecommerce store can too!   Each release works better and has more ecommerce features than the last.    Remember, with QuadCommerce behind your ecommerce store updates are free and uprades are usually just a nominal data migration charge. 

Contact us to see how easily we can get your QuadCommerce store upgraded to the lastest version.

Development has started on bringing the QuadCommerce ShopKeeper to the iPhone.   Store owners will now be able to check on the perfomance of their stores through a series of ecommerce reports that can quickly and easily be brought up on their iPhones.

This feature has been in beta and is being prepped for production by th QC dev team.  An estimated date for release in not currently set but will be posted as the release draws closer.

sshh.... the beta development has begun on a ShopKeeper for the iPhone....

In the previous post, we explained what the Product Mold was in QuadCommerce.   We will go a bit further wih this post and answer some common questions we receive on product molds

[Q] What is a mold again?

A product mold is, quite simply, a bunch of default settings for creating a product.  Because QuadCommerce products can have dozens of different properties/settings, you can set them once in a mold instead of doing it over and over every time you add a new product.  Molds are not products and do not appear in your online store catalog.

[Q] Do I have to use Product Molds?

[A] No.  Product Molds are completely optional.   If your product catalog has many similar products then you may want to use molds to save time adding products to your store.

[Q] How do I create a new product form a mold?

[A] On the Add New Product page in the ShopKeeper, one of the first things you can do is select a mold to base the new product on.

[Q] Does changing the mold change the products  that were built from it?

[A] No. Once the product is made, only updating that product wil change it.  Changing the mold, will only affect all products added after the mold was changed.  Deleting a mold does not affect any products.

[Q] What is Copy Product?

[A]  Copy Product allows you to take any product and make a copy of that product which really is a new product with all the same properties as the one you copied.  This is a quick way to also build your catalog.  

[Q]  Mold  vs Copy Product?

[A]  The main advantages to using a mold versus copying a product is when you have many products that are similar and want to be able to track the original settings that the products were iniially based on.   Copy Product while a great time-saving feature in its own right  requires that you keep track of which product you used to create a copy  and what you changed.   

In QuadCommerce, you can build product molds to base your products in your online catalog off of.   

A product mold is used to set default values for a type of product., so when you go into the ShopKeeper to add a new product, you can select the product mold and fill in many of the values automatically at once. 

Remember products can have dozens of settings applied to each of them in QuadCommerce. including:

• descriptions
• images
• prices
• keywords
• custom templates
• documentation
• shipping boxes
• and more...

Being able to set many of these to defaults  is a great time-saving feature when you have many products that only have a few variations.

To create a Mold, in the ShopKeeper go to Catalog -> Molds -> Add New Mold.   Build you mold  and save it.

Once saved, you can go to add new product and apply the mold to the product you are creating.   The new product will take on all the default values from the product mold.  You can then customize any of the settings that are qunique for this product.

Molds are not products.  The mold itself does not appear in your catalog only the products do. Product molds are OPTIONAL and do not have to be used in creating your ecommerce product catalog.    In newer versions of QuadCommerce, there is also a Copy Product feature which works similar to molds.

Everybody loves a good sale.  So why not take advantage of this and use your QuadCommerce store to draw in new customers with sales?

Sales are a very cool feature in QuadCommerce.  It's quick and simple to create sales, add products to them, and turn the sale off when its over.  (You can even save the sale for the next time you want to offer it.)

To create a sale with your QuadCommerce store, login to your Shopkeeper.and go to the Features -> Sales -> Add New Sale.

First thing is give your sale a Name by putting it in the corresponding form field.  (We'll call ours 'Moomlight Madness" for no particular reason...). 

Fill in the optional Comment if you want to note what ths sale is for.  This is just for the ShopKeeper to view; a simple reminder to self.

Then fill in the Value.  The actual value that you put in will depend on the type of sale this is.  If its a Dollars or One Price sale then you will put in a monetary amount.  If its a Percent type, then you will fill in a percentage (1-100).

Types of Sales:

1. Dollars Off - subtract the value from the price of the product.  Example: $5,00 Dollars off sale on a $12.00 product will have the product on sale for $7.00.
2. Percentage Off -  subtract the product price percentage from the original price.  Example: 25% off sale on a $10.00 product will have the product on sale for $7.50.
3. One Price - the price of the product is the monetary value of the sale.  Example: a $2.00 one price sale on a $5.00 product will have the product on sale for $2,00, a $10.00 product on sale for $2.00, and a $12.00 product on sale for $2.00.   Get the idea?  One Price.

After. setting the value and type of sale, set the Sequence of the sale.  The sequence determines what sale will take precedence when a product is part of more than one sale.  The lower the sequence the higher the precedence for that sale.

The last field is Available and determines if the sale is currently running or active in your ecommerce store. 

Press the Add Sale button and there you go...you've created your sale. 

Now, all you have to do is Add Products to your newly created sale.  Use the Add Products tab on the Sale Screen to search for products and add more products to the sale, or remove products from a sale.

Here is a peek at a new ecommerce feature "One Price Sales" that is in the current beta development and scheduled for release in the next version of QuadCommerce.

Zones are a powerful way to set  your ecommerce store's custom shipping and sales tax policies.    In the ShopKeeper, you can define customer locations or "zones" that determine how to calculate these charges on an order.  During checkout, the customer information is checked to see if he falls within a particular zone.  If he does, then any tax or shipping policy set for that zone is applied to the order.

The most important thing to remember about zones is that they are built independent of the shipping or taxes.  The zone is then used when creatiing a shipping or sales tax policy.  While your store has many options for custom shipping and sales tax polciies, this is really beyond the topic of zones and we'll reserve that for a future posting.

So,  back to Zones....

What constitutes a Zone?  A zone is created by  assigning sectors to it.   Zone sectors are geopolitical boudaried areas and can be any of the following:

1. Country
2. State / Province / Region
3. US County
4. US Postal Code

A zone can be assigned one or more sectors and it can have a single or different types of  sectors.   This grouping of sectors you biild is then given its own descriptive name and "Voila!" you have a zone.  You can have zones, for anything from a municipality or city to a county/region to an entire country.  It's all under your control.

When using zones, during  the checkout process, the customer's order  info is determined to see if falss within any of your zones.  It always matches the smallest sector (and its zones) first  before moving on to match with  larger ones.  This way you can have a city policy inside a state policy or a multi-state policy inside a county policy.

Let's assume that all necessary zones have already been created in a QuadCommerce store and go through an example.

Example:  a customer who is ordering from Utica, NY, 13502 in the Unites States would match,   the Utica zone based on the 13502 ZIP code he has provided.   While it is true that  the customer also matches the Oneida County zone,  the New York State zone, and the United States zone,  QuadCommerce matches him against the smallest zone sector first.  (The Utica NY zone would most likeley contain all the Postal Codes for Utica.)

Now,  assume that there was no Utica, NY zone.   The same customer would then match the Oneida County zone as this is the next smallest sector that matches the order info.  Pretty simple, huh?

Give us a comment if you have any questions on QuadCommerce Zones. 

Yes, the rumors are confirmed true.  QuadCommerce is now "tweeting" ...  

I'm still a bit reluctant  to bring "tweeting" into discussions amongst peers, as I expect that this will lead to talk about black and white cats named Sylvester.    Personally, I'd rather say like  "I just posted a 140 character blog entry to update customers on QuadCommerce using Twitter -a free service that lets you keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick frequent answers to one simple question.".

 But we have (nameless) individuals around the office who like to see how many times they can use the word 'tweet' in daily conversation, so I'm doing what I can to accept this fact.  

"Did you tweet today?"

"How did the tweeting at the client's go yesterday?"

"Are we out of artfiticial tweetner  for coffee in the kitchen?"

"It's a little chilly in the Network Center, I might go put on a tweeter."

Now, we can't really tweet about QuadCommerce now using Twitter, can we?  Because if you knew we were tweeting already then you wouldn't need us to tweet about it.   And if you didn't know, you wouldn't get the annoucnement.  (classic chicken and egg scenario)

And so it goes here on our Ecommerce Blog .... 

catch our tweets at http://twitter.com/quadcommerce for quick updates on the latest ecommerce news and software development from QuadCommerce.

As the QC Development Team feverishly codes the latest features and enhancements into the upcoming 3.3 release (did someone say March?) you can occasionally catch them between lines of code talking with clients about the ecommerce software.

The feedback they continually receive is that QuadCommerce is one of the most feature packed ecommerce solutions available. ( I think they even get more excited when they get to go through a feature comparison to show a client that she can still do everything that their old software does and so much more).

You probably already know where the current ecommerce features in QuadCommerce are on the website, but did you know that the team documents  the newest features and optimizations for the upcoming release in the QuadCommerce ChangeLog?

which brings us back to our original question.... Your ecommerce do that?.

Sounds pretty simple, huh?   Now with QuadCommerce, it is simpler than ever to run your ecommerce store. 

QuadCommerce is now being licensed as software.  You can license the software and run it on your own servers for a one time cost.   This new offering is part of the Client Hosted plans.
  
In addition to giving you the option to host your own ecommerce store, QuadCommerce still provides its great Managed Solutions.   Managed solutions are where Quadsimia will maintain the hardware and software on our own servers and the only thing you have to worry about is processing customer orders with your store!

The new  QuadCommerce Pricing info shows what ecommerce plans are available and their costs.  You won't find more cost-effective ecommerce pricing for what you get with QuadCommerce's plans.

Finally, we have enhanced our Client Support with toll-free and email support packages.  Support is an option to your store,  but we highly recommend it.  Support gives you immediate access to the QuadCommerce professional team of developers and technicians who can help you with your ecommerce problems.  

Check out the Ecommerce Support page for new support plan pricing.

We're pleased to launch a new ecommerce support site for Quadcommerce.

The website at wiki.quadcommerce.com  contains ecommerce documentation, manuals, FAQs and more, for the version 3 release of QuadCommerce.

Looking for a quick ecommerce how-to, detailed troubleshooting tips, or other documentation?   Then just  Wiki this Way!

We all know the world needs its superheroes, but does the Internet need another blog?.

The answer is no.   So  here we are ...  just in time with the Ecommerce QC Blog. -  a blog about using QuadCommerce to meet your online selling needs and ecommerce topics in general.

I can already hear some of  you ... "Hey, wait a minute, didn't you already have an ecommerce blog.? In fact wasn't it called the "Ecommerce QC Blog" before!!"  

Yes, we did actually.  That's why I answered no to the Internet needing another blog question.  We are taking an old blog and making it better. And that's what the Internet really needs --- better blogs.

Our old  blog mostly discussed earlier versions of QuadCommerce that have since been declared End of Life.   Instead of declaring the blog EOL, we decided to clear out the old content and make way for the new.

So watch out bad blogs...

It's a new year, and a new start for the blog.