Coming Attractions: Five Enhancements to the InOrder Shopping Cart

We hope you’re enjoying the enhancements we’ve been adding to InOrder over the last few months. We’ve got even more planned for Q2 and Q3 this year that will specifically add lots more functionality to the InOrder shopping module.

Our goal is tighten the shopping cart integration to the back-end ERP. The tighter this integration, the better your competitive edge will be, and the lower your website management costs in the long run.

But, before we get into the coming attractions, let’s talk for a minute about upgrading your shopping cart and software.

Some of our customers worry when they consider the effort required to upgrade to a new release version of their shopping cart.

If you’re like many of our customers, you take our default cart and customize it to your business. Then, when an upgrade occurs, you do this work all over again – from scratch! This process can take weeks or even months.

We have a much, much easier process for you.

Think “version control software”

Here at Morse Data we’ll customize and update clients’ carts for them. What we’ve learned over the last few years is that using a source control system (also known as version control software) to “merge” a previously customized shopping cart with a newer version of the “default shopping cart” is far more feasible than our customers believe it to be.

We use StarTeam Advantage from Borland, a top-of-the-line system from which we run our entire company. Using this system to manage our own updates plus our clients’ updates has saved us a tremendous amount of work with regard to future updates (although the initial setup does take some extra time).

You may want to invest in StarTeam Advantage or you may need a simple “freebie” application. If the latter, take a look at this Smashing Magazine post where you can read a review of seven systems.

Have questions about how to better manage your cart updates – or want to hand the whole thing over to us? Give us a call. We’re here to help.

Coming attractions for InOrder ERP Software

Look for these future enhancements, which will begin to roll out in Q2.

1. SolrNet Search Integration – SolrNet is a sophisticated open-source search engine offered by many shopping carts. With this functionality, you can offer your customers eBay/Amazon-type searching. To learn more, read Solr’s tutorial page.

2. Content management from the InOrder desktop – This enhancement will allow non-technical users to update and manage shopping cart content for inventory items sold on the web. In addition, you’ll be able to track, store and optionally display for more information about each product on the Web with the ability to rename more field labels and access an unlimited number of super-sized user defined fields for inventory items and inventory hierarchy groups.

3. Inventory Browse “Facet Filtering” – This allows you to further categorize your products so that web customers can filter their shopping and only see products that apply to them. Some InOrder users are already doing this but these changes will allow more of you to take advantage of this capability if you’re not already.

4. User defined Cross-sell/Related Items types – Instead of just having a list of cross-sell items (or “related items”) linked to each SKU, you’ll have different lists of other products that are related to each SKU for different reasons. Each of these lists might be in a different place on the website.

For example, a customer is online looking at a product called “table” and sees a section callout, “Items you might also want with this item,” that lists chairs and stools. The customer also sees a section, “People who bought this product also bought” and it lists tablecloths, candlestick holders, and candlesticks.

You can also add a section called “Related Maintenance Products” on a less important section in the fine print of the product details. This section lists the proper type of cleaner and scratch remover for the table.

You get the picture. With this enhancement, you can create these types of lists for each item sold on your website that, when present, appear in pre-determined places on the site based on what product is being viewed.

5. Ratings and Review enhancement – We’re especially looking forward to this enhancement as it will allow unlimited types of Reviews to be configured, including a “Q&A section” for each item or product group as well as Image Uploading for the proud owners of your products.

The Ratings and Reviews enhancement will be truly integrated to the backend ERP system, making it so your customer ratings and reviews are tied in with other contacts through customer service and with any of your marketing efforts.

We’re committed to fast-paced improvements for our shopping cart offerings. If you have an idea of how to improve our real-time cart, let us know!

Share on FacebookShare on LinkedInTweet about this on TwitterShare on Google+Email this to someone

No Comments

Leave a response

1 (888) 667-7332

Contact Us

Literature Downloads


Contact

Corporate Headquarters
Morse Data Corporation
16 Pierce Street
Dover, NH 03820
Toll Free: (888) 667-7332
Phone: (603) 742-2500
Fax: (603) 742-8178
Technical Offices
Morse Data Corporation
9661 W. 143rd St. Suite 200
Orland Park, IL 60462
Toll Free: (800) 860-9515
Phone: (708) 873-0010
Fax: (708) 873-9967

About