We will be migrating you across to our new server infrastructure in the coming days and weeks and you will be informed 48 hours in advance of your migration date. 

Migration Process & Communication
When we are due to move your website, we will raise a support ticket to let you know it is taking place.
We will then advise of any followup actions required by you once the move has been completed.
We will update the support ticket when the migration has been complete.
You may need to update your DNS settings if we do not have access to these, plus FTP and Tradebox connections if in use.

Reminder emails have been sent out and full details given in the server migration document included in the original email of 12th September 2024.
 

Spotlight

These features were introduced throughout August & September.

Klarna Payments
New integration added for Klarna Payments, we previously had Klarna Checkout but now support both of their account types.
This also improves our previous Klarna Checkout integration to use their hosted payment page which helps ease PCI v4 requirements.
Admin > Connect > Payment Processors > Klarna > Klarna Purchase Service
3688

Product Export V2
We've added a new timesaving product import / export to make it easier to update (and test) your main product data from a single file rather than multiple files, including tickboxes for options, default & additional images, videos, downloads, attributes, tags, associated products, addons, components, bundling package types. There is also a debug mode which displays the first 1000 lines for you to check prior to exporting all products. Default normal and special prices can also be included, although it's likely you will use the Products Price Export for this instead as it handles more pricing options.
Admin > Export/Import Manager > Products v2
3698

Google Shopping Automated Discount support for V1 Google product feeds. 
Previously to use Google Shopping Automated Discounts you'd have needed to upgrade your feed to use the new ID formats, resulting in Google re-indexing the products as new and going through another AI relearning phase. This has been reworked so existing sites using V1 of the product feed can now also apply for using Google Shopping Automated Discounts for paid product listings (read more about this feature here). New sites can jump straight in with the v2 feed.
3736

Ecommerce & Tracking

Backorder dates on order summary
If an ordered item is on backorder, and a back in stock date exists, we'll show this for the order to help admins and customers know when the item is likely to be dispatched.
Shows in Admin > Order Manager > Order info screen, as well as Customer Home > Previous Orders > Order info screen
3692

Coupons > Exclude manufacturers
We already had a way to filter a coupon to only apply for a given manufacturer, while this new feature lets you exclude a list of manufacturers instead. 
Admin > Add/Edit Coupons > Exclude applying this coupon to the following manufacturers
3699

Users awaiting stock report now shows status and total retail value.
We've updated this report to help you see the status of products that customers were waiting to come back into stock e.g. live, draft or discontinued etc. as well as total retail value (price * qty of users)
3734

Products & variations export now exposes the RRS data (Runners Repeaters Strangers)
This lets you easily view RRS data across all your products and variation combinations em masse, so for example you can asses the impact of faster moving runners being in or out of stock and adjust production or purchasing cycles accordingly.
3738

Customer Order Analysis report improvements
We've made a number of improvements to this report screen such as adding quick links to the related Customer Sales Summary report, as well as details about when the last general admin comment was left or last prospect to see when the last interaction was. 
3739, 3741

Customer Sales Summary > Recent orders.
This adds a customers most recent orders to the top of the sales summary screen for quick reference.
3745

Google product feed v2 now automatically adds nested categories to custom label 4
The google product feeds already show the default category as the product type however if you also use categories 2-5 on products and these may be more specific, we now automatically set the custom labels of these products to the most specifically nested category (unless a custom label 4 has specially been set on the product to override it).
3752

GMC Summary > Show product RRS groups.
Easily spot / filter your products by Runners, Repeaters & Strangers when reviewing them in the GMC summary & Boost Performance area in admin. 
3742

CMS & Admin

Full width images in slices
Image slices that are expanded full width should now also have their images expand with them to make adding hero images easier.
3731

Prospect Manager > Quick Add user popup now also supports setting a customer's group.
This helps speed up the process to add customers into groups such as Trade or Dealers with customer group pricing.  
3740

API, Multi Store & Integrations

Easier product download access via API
We added a new "Include downloads with products" switch on api accounts to allow 3rd parties access to all related downloads of products. Please note you'll only want to enable this for 3rd parties you trust if some product downloads are not public. 
3707

API Accounts redesign
We've refreshed the API Accounts area to make it easier to navigate and see exactly what an API account has access to. 
3707

Multi store kg to lbs
Multi store can now automatically convert from KG to LBS when sending over products from a UK to US store.
Admin > Multi Store > Add/Edit > Weight Unit
3725

Unleashed force push > Loading bar
Previously doing a full force push of all products from a site to Unleashed would be slow and it wasn't clear how far through the process you were. We've now made this a background task and added a progress bar so you can easily track the progress of this operation.
3713

Developer

Templatable Admin New Order Notification
The email for customers' new orders was already templatable, but the email admins receive can now also be modified. You can use this to highlight specific details of the email such as delivery methods for express delivery for example. 
3729

Custom delivery method designs at checkout
We've added a new template file where you can modify the design of the delivery methods shown at checkout.
New template file: views/0-base/html/checkout/delivery_methods.html.twig
3709

 

This is a reminder that we will be migrating you across to our new server infrastructure in the coming weeks.
Your website will be unavailable during the migration process and any backend integrations should be paused from sending updates as well e.g. stock quantities.

Migration Process & Communication
When we are due to move your website, we will raise a support ticket to let you know it is taking place.
We will then advise of any followup actions required by you once the move has been completed.
You may need to update your DNS settings if we do not have access to these, plus FTP and Tradebox connections if in use.

Reminder emails have been sent out with full details in the server migration document included in the emails.

Spotlight

Price Tracking History
Daily tracking of product prices displayed on a timeline to allow you to see when changes were made.
This provides a base to add more features, such as enhanced reporting as well as introducing price drop alerts for customers. 
When enabled you can view the price changes graph above the prices on the edit product screen. Contact us to find out more.
3607

Faster report generation
Report Builder performance has been greatly improved by building reports in parallel to reduce generation time plus optimisations to some specific reporting blocks, as well as speeding up the coupons report. You'll now notice a new loading bar briefly displayed when running Report Builder reports with the screen loading in a fraction of the time.
3668

Ecommerce & Tracking

Order Manager coupon/discount icons
New coupon/discount icons are shown against orders in Order Manager wherever a discount/coupon was used, with coupon information shown on hover of the icon. Search can now be used to reveal all orders that used coupon codes (or part of the code such as the prefix). This is particularly useful for finding Google Shopping discounts as these all start with "GSD-". Read more about the benefits of running ads with Google Shopping Automated Discounts.
3660

Report Builder - selecting multiple Smart Types
New controls so you can multi-select a mix of different types of users for unified reporting, such as Trade & Dealer, or exclude a specific group of users by selecting all other groups except the one to be excluded.
3651

PDF invoice links can now be added to confirmation emails
Update order confirmation emails with the new secure order.pdf_link template tag link so users can easily download their invoice, without needing to log in. 
3687

Invoice line display customisation enhancements to match branding 
Update your website invoice to match your brand or your existing invoices more exactly, contact us for pricing. 
3686

Product & Category sort order changes are now audited
New audits to help you track when and where changes have been made.
3677, 3679

Duplicate variations detection.
Working with a large number of variations on a product can be tricky to make sure you don't end up with the same option combinations already set up. 
The system will now warn when this happens and continues to warn when you come back to the product later if a duplicate already exists.
Also, to help you find these en masse there is a check for this in the Prroduct Issues report: Admin > Reports > Product Issues > Duplicate Variation Option Combinations
3678

Integrations

Google Shopping Automated Discounts now treated as their own referral/source for traffic tracking
In order to better analyse the effectiveness of the Google Shopping Automated Discounts program, you'll now be able to see that an order came from this source and to be able to filter to just these orders in Order Manager.
3661

CMS & Admin

Page Slice buttons design
Buttons in pages built using slices can now be heavily customised with colours, sizes, padding, font sizing, alignment and more. 
Please note, if you want easily repeatable/consistent buttons across your site, changing the style directly in the CSS templates may be a better choice. However prototyping them with slices is a great option and then have a designer add in the CSS so you don't have to update each one manually.
3674

Security

PCI Password security update - require a minimum 12 characters for new passwords
This increases from the previous minimum of 8 characters to match PCI 4.0 password requirements.
UPDATE: this was initially released in July and then changed in August to only apply when using the Password Meter with additional password checks for upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Read more about PCI Compliance requirements.
Please note: Existing passwords remain untouched, this is for new passwords.
3681

SRI usage increased to secure 3rd party script use where possible on all default installed scripts

Subresource Integrity (SRI) is a security feature that enables browsers to verify that resources they fetch are delivered without unexpected manipulation. Templates on your site may need review for PCI 4.0 due to historic use of scripts. Some scripts such as Google Analytics, PayPal, Stripe & Facebook Pixel all need to be kept up to date and are currently unavailable with SRI from these providers. 
3659

Developer

Categories API now allows filtering by a given timestamp, or sorting by a specific field
Using ?since_timestamp=... you can now filter for category changes since a date, similar to how you can filter for products & orders. 
Full information about this and the rest of the API available here.
3670

InnoDB migration for visitor tables
This is a technical enhancement allowing the migration of the large visitors table on each website to the InnoDB file format to reduce backup times. This is also useful when performing any future server updates or migrations. Only performed by technical staff.
3689
 

What is PCI DSS v4 & What Has Changed?

PCI DSS v4 is the next evolution of PCI compliance affecting ecommerce websites which take payments and it is in effect now. Read documents about PCI v4 here

A significant change is that in the past your website did not need to be PCI scanned since you use 3rd parties to handle payments, such as Paypal, Stripe, Klarna, Barclaycard ePDQ etc, and the burden of PCI compliance fell onto those companies. However that has changed and banks and payment processors may now ask for your website to be regularly scanned as well due to the evolving threat landscape, which is set out under Requirements 6 and 11. There are changes to the Self Assessment Questionnaires SAQs you fill in which now mirror v4 compliance.  Read more about the SAQ changes and requirements here

Why Do Vulnerabilities Arise?

Hackers are always searching for ways to exploit websites with new methods or tools. We have extensive multi-layered security tools and processes to protect your core site from exploits, however there may be scripts that have been added to your site in the past which were secure at the time but a new exploit has subsequently been found for them. These will be flagged up in a scan and require attention to negate the vulnerability.  It's a fast-moving game, even a new script added today could become vulnerable in a short period of time, hence more regular and more comprehensive scanning requirements. 

When Do I Need To Start Adhering To The New Standard?

It will depend on when you did your last 12 month SAQ. Once that expires then you will need to adhere to the new standard, as set out below:

How Do I Do PCI Scans?

Your bank or payment processor may provide you with an approved PCI scanning system (ASV - Approved Scan Vendor) which can be used to perform a scan. Otherwise it will be necessary to purchase this service. The scan produces a detailed report which needs to be checked through to ensure there are no identified vulnerabilities on your website, including picking through false positives. This is best tackled by us since your website application and hardware infrastructure is provided by us. This includes switching some of our security tools into PCI Compliance test mode to eliminate false positives.

How Often Do I need To Run PCI Scans?

This may be needed as often as every 90 days.

How Do I Check What Scripts Are On My Site?

You can use the Script Finder program in the website Admin Centre to see all the scripts that are in use on your website. This is important if you are using embedded payment pages or forms including iframes, such as for Klarna or Paypal Commerce.

What Else Needs To be Updated?

We will have to enable HSTS (which forces the browser to always use HTTPS with your domain) and secure cookies, both are settings in the admin centre. We will also look to introduce other measures highlighted in the new standard which are not already covered. 

What Does It Cost?

We can perform PCI scans for you and interpret the scan reports. The charge for this is £105+VAT per scan request per website. This includes scan re-runs to check any issues identified in that scan are resolved. We can either use your bank's scanning tool if it's provided or a paid service such as HackerGuardian which is typically around £70 per annum. 

Script audits can be undertaken at a charge of £105+VAT.

If we find 3rd party scripts or other work that require remediation, the charge is £105+VAT per hour and would typically take a few hours to complete unless the scripting work was particularly large or complex. You would also need to test your website functionality relating to the scripting work after it is completed to ensure it is functionally working.

Other measures may need to be introduced over a period of time which may have to be charged for and we will advise of this at the time.

How To Book

Please raise a support ticket stating you require a PCI Scan in the subject line and whether you have access to PCI scanning software in the description and we will schedule in the work. 

 

.

Top Picks

Here's a roundup of the changes we've released this year so far. It heavily showcases new e-commerce features but you can see all changes in detail covering the Content Management System, sales and prospect management, tracking and of course security updates. Visit the Update page.

If you are interested in enabling these features, please contact your account manager regarding licence upgrade and implementation costs.

Google Shopping Automated Discounts / 'Dynamic Re-pricing'   
Major new feature for ecommerce stores advertising on Google

Google has launched a major new feature to help improve online product sales by dynamically lowering the price of your products shown via Google Ads compared to your competitors. The new product price is displayed on Google's Search Engine Results Pages and once the ad is clicked the price is then automatically lowered on the website product page to match. The amount of discount given can be set as a percentage across all products, or with specific prices on a per product basis. The price offered by Google is honoured for 48 hours only. Read the full article.

Free Samples
Secure more sales by offering free samples to prospective customers as trials, matching up products etc. Mark a product as a free sample with free delivery and as an addon so it doesn't show up in latest products etc. Free samples are ignored in the minimum order value checks at checkout when ordered without other products. However, if you then add a £10 item to cart, that item triggers the minimum value check and prevents the checkout from allowing the order to go through until the minimum order level has been reached. You can also set the maximum number of free samples you allow per customer order. Read the full article.

Re-Engagement Reminders
Remind new customers who haven't purchased to come back to the site, or specific groups of customers who haven't purchased in a set time frame.
Read full article.

Additional Abandoned Cart Followup Email Task
Further to the default abandoned cart followup email, you can now set additional followups such as a week or a couple weeks later as extra reminders to bring in sales. 
Read about all abandonment followup features

Send personal-looking automated emails from account managers
Make automated emails to customers appear as personal emails from your account managers. Great personal touch for increasing open rates.
We've also added BCC support & ability to BCC account managers on emails being sent to their customers so they know what's going on e.g. dropping out of a VIP Club.

GA4 Consent Mode v2
We've updated our consent mode integration to ensure we share if the user has accepted different tracking and ads based storage and personalisation permissions so that Google can respect the visitor's choice. This is to bring the cookie policy, GA4 & Ads integration up to speed with the latest rules and best practice.

Auto Discontinue Products
Set products to automatically discontinue when they run out of stock as part of improving your stock management.

Admin alert emails modernised & improved
We've redesigned all the system alerts to bring them into 2024 and emphasise important actions you need to take.

Google Sheets integration for custom sales data reporting
Automatically sync your new order data to Google sheets allowing you to build custom reports or dashboards that are automatically updated and can be viewed on mobile and desktop devices.

Back In Stock Dates report
A single screen to view back in stock dates for all products and see which have expired but haven't been re-stocked yet.

Customer Order Analysis 
Track trends over time for different groups/types/classifications of customers using this on-screen report and record sales contact actions and updates to main customer notes. Read more about Customer classifications, order analysis, sales summary and product discovery.

Customer Quotes via Manual Orders & Making Payments
We've introduced a new 'Quote order' state for orders, used when quoting via a manual order in admin so that your customer is be able to find the quote in their customer 'Previous orders' section when logged into their account, under a new Quotes tab. 

Product Sales on-screen report
A valuable report for Product Managers and Product Development staff to to compare changes in sales and conversion rates of specific groupings of products, such as a range of product IDs or product categories by date ranges.
Read about Product Lifecycle & Forecast Reporting and Product Sales Report

Product Data Quality Report
Target high value or converting products with data issues to improve their quality and boost sales. 
Read about our wide range of reporting

First Added To Cart (FATC) report
Find which items are added to cart first before buying other items. 
Read about our wide range of reporting

Switching customers between different VIP Clubs / Managing Discount Levels Automatically
Alert customers when they are switched from one VIP club to another with a new email alert using the Email Task 'Swap VIP Club', such as upgrading from a trade club to a distributor club.
Read about the VIP Club system and uses

Our Magento integration now pulls in categories, manufacturers, orders & customers.
New admin areas are now also available for Magento Integration & Magento Order States to help manage the integration and update sync'ing between a Magento instance and REC+

Page Slices Mobile Styles
We've re-designed the way you manage many of the style/design settings with additional support for changing some styles between how they look on Desktop vs Mobile, such as different paddings and text alignments. 

 

Spotlight

Google Shopping Automated Discounts / 'Dynamic Re-pricing'   
Major new feature for ecommerce stores advertising on Google

Google has launched a major new feature to help improve online product sales by dynamically lowering the price of your products shown via Google Ads compared to your competitors. The new product price is displayed on Google's Search Engine Results Pages and once the ad is clicked the price is then automatically lowered on the website product page to match. The amount of discount given can be set as a percentage across all products, or with specific prices on a per product basis. The price offered by Google is honoured for 48 hours only.

The discount given is stored in Coupon Manager > Google Shopping Auto Discount tab for all resulting visits, not just successful sales. The side benefit is being able to see the level of discount that has been offered by Google which indicates how over-priced it considers your products to be on a given date.  You can cross-reference this to views and conversion rates in the Top Products Report to adjust your price position further in the market, since you may be losing out on visits not coming via Google Ads. 

This feature is available to our marketing clients. Requires cost data to be set up on product/variation records and Google Ads Tracking to be enabled (see 3645 below). Contact us for details.

Setup documents are available on Drive to support staff only: Google Shopping Automated Discounts.
3596, 3646

Free samples
Secure more sales by offering free samples to prospective customers as trials, matching up products etc. Mark a product as a free sample with free delivery and as an addon so it doesn't show up in latest products etc. Free samples are ignored in the minimum order value checks at checkout when ordered without other products. However, if you then add a £10 item to cart, that item triggers the minimum value check and prevents the checkout from allowing the order to go through until the minimum order level has been reached.
Admin > Product Manager > Add/Edit products > Is this a free sample? (under 'Is addon')
3635

You can also set the maximum number of free samples you allow per customer order via:
Admin > Site Settings > Prices & VAT > Free Samples > Max free samples
3636

Ecommerce & Tracking

Back in stock alerts for backorder items
Users buying backorder items can now be opted into alerts to find out when it'll be back in stock.
Contact us to enable this new feature. 
3376

CMS & Admin

Modernised page urls
You can now set Page Manager pages to no longer add .html by default and ensure the urls are lower case in line with current practice by large sites.
Please note this currently only applies to Page Manager pages.
Admin > Site Settings > General > Miscellaneous > More modern page URLs.
3621
You will typically also want to have the previous .html URLS auto redirect to the new ones with this new setting:
Admin > Site Settings > General > Miscellaneous > Auto redirect to the modern URLs.
3624

Email notifications now warn if you have duplicates. 
Email notifications work based on a single rule & group combination. If you have any duplicates here, the system will prompt you to resolve this so that the system knows which to use to send the notifications.
3609

Email Manager warning about slow SMTP
We allow sending via SMTP instead of our default mail server. However SMTP emails are slower which means when sending larger email campaigns it may result in the email not fully sending due to slowness. We now show a warning about this. We recommend using Mailgun to send these emails instead, or contact us and we can help set up an API for faster email sending through most other mail providers.
3631

Integrations

Google Ads conversion code  *Required for the Google Shopping Automated Discounts feature
Increased integration with Google Ads you using Google ads conversion code complete with cart data for the thanks page via this new connect setting.
Admin > Connect > SEO > Google Ads Tracking > Tick: Enable Ads Conversion tracking on the thanks page?
Enter the "send_to" part of the code provided by Google in: Ads Conversion Tracking ID / "send_to"
3645

Unleashed order status updates now mark as "via Unleashed"
To help tell the difference between updates made by admins and those made by the system, we now append "via Unleashed" to these audits.
3604

The Orders API resource per item now contains the "extra_data" field to pass additional custom data to 3rd party integrations.
Such as for use with free samples to pass the name of the free sample item as this extra custom data.
3633

Retirement of old Universal Analytics integrations.
Google has now shut down the old UA analytics in favour of GA4. Read more here
Removed Setting: Connect > SEO > Analytics > Reporting Method
3627

Designer

Added Tiktok, Snapchat, Whatsapp & Vimeo social icons for site footers.
Admin > Connect > Social > find the new Tiktok, Snapchat, Whatsapp & Vimeo URL fields.
You may need to upgrade your site's footer/social-icons template to add these icons in. 
3644

jQuery 3.7.1 upgrade
Minor upgrade to sites using the 3.x version of jquery to keep it up to date with latest security fixes.
Please note, many sites still use 1.x versions of jquery for customisations on pages and this should be upgraded. We have a site setting to enable 3.x in a preview for testing through your web pages and processes and then you can fully enable it if no issues are found or the issues found are resolved.
3625

Modules > you can now select fields to show in the "all" table to make the screen more useful.
Enable via Admin > modules > edit > fields
3614

Thumbnails showing "Image Unavailable" now properly send a 404 HTTP header.
This is to help ensure they can be easily found and not detected as any other sort of issue.
3620

This bulletin applies to REC+ users who use Google Analytics to track their website metrics and have not upgraded to GA4. If you do not use Google Analytics or you are already using GA4 then you do not need to take any action.
 

Google officially retired its Universal Analytics (UA) platform in July 2023 and will be stopping all reporting & API access as of July 2024. 

This means that any remaining reporting connections between your websites and UA will cease to function. If you haven't already transitioned to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), it's crucial to do so now to ensure uninterrupted tracking and analysis of your website data.
 

Why the Change?

Google Analytics 4 represents a significant shift in how website data is collected and analysed. It's designed to be more privacy-focused, adaptable to future changes in technology, and better equipped to provide insights into the complex customer journeys that span multiple devices and platforms.
 

What Does This Mean for You?

If you've already moved to GA4: No action is required. Your website analytics will continue as normal.

If you're still using Universal Analytics: You'll lose access to your website data. It's essential to migrate to GA4 as soon as possible.
 

We're Here to Help!

We understand that migrating to GA4 can seem daunting. That's why we offer comprehensive support and services to make the transition smooth and seamless for your website. 

We have put together an in-depth article to guide you through making the changes.

Read how to migrate to GA4

Or if you prefer us to set this up please click Request Assistance to log a support call. Our charge for this is £95+VAT. You will need to be able to access your Google Analytics account for any changes to be made.
 

Get in Touch

Contact us today to discuss your GA4 migration needs and let us help you unlock the full potential of your website data.
 

Further Information

You can read more about this change directly on Google's support site here.

Spotlight

Re-Engagement Reminders
Remind new customers who haven't purchased to come back to the site, or specific groups of customers who haven't purchased in a set time frame.
Once enabled, this will be available via Admin > Re-Engagement Reminders and Email Tasks.
3574

Additional Abandoned Cart Followup Email Task
Further to the default abandoned cart followup email, you can now set additional followups such as a week or a couple weeks later as extra reminders to bring in sales. 
Add this as an Email Task with the event of Abandoned Order Followup and set up the rest of the details and content as required.
3585, 3588

Custom Down For Maintenance pages
We've split the down for maintenance pages out so that for database maintenance we have a static version which currently is not editable, however the default down page which you can enable in admin > site settings, can now be customised as you need.
New down-for-maintenance page & html/errors/down-for-maintenance.html.twig for the page design. 
3578

Ecommerce & Tracking

V2 variations Google product feed now supports top level products and using the same Google option combinations.
By default the v2 variations product feed shows each variation but this new feature lets you customise this.
Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > V2 product feed product split.
3569, 3575

Product Imports > optionally disable price updates
The 'Products' import can now also update base prices of products.
Note: If you're updating product details via this method but using the dedicated 'Product Price Columns (New) prices import for managing prices, you may want to ensure they don't conflict by setting the Products import to not update prices.
3601

Product Manager categories table now shows additional data
Helpful little change to show status & product counts against each category in Product Manager.
3580

Manual Orders can now set delivery directly on the Add Manual Order screen
Previously only possible on the edit order screen, you can now set a delivery method while adding the order to save time.
You can also manually set a custom name & price for delivery here or select based on a delivery method set in the admin area.
3582

Order history audits for when new and updated order emails send.
Additional tracking has been added to show customers have been sent emails. 
Please note, this is just to log that we sent the email, not that they received or read it, or that it didn't go to their spam (this extra level of monitoring is possible using Mailgun).
3590

CMS & Admin

Require setting groups for new admins
If you are using access control rules for admin groups, enable this new setting to ensure all admins are set into a group to make sure they then fall into the correct access group.
Site Settings > General > Require setting a group on new admins
3567

User Manager admins count
New section at the top of user manager to show a count of admin users. This is clickable to reveal all admins.
3565

Prospect Dashboard now available
For ecommerce or CMS sites, you can now access a new Prospect Dashboard overview screen whilst retaining your normal dashboard screen.
Access via the admin sidebar > Prospect Dashboard.
3573

Integrations

Unleashed order status sync
Automatically keep orders on your website in sync with Unleashed order status changes by enabling this feature.
When enabled we'll detect when an order is: complete and mark it as despatched on the site; mark partial shipments; if the order is deleted on Unleashed it will be set to Cancelled on the website.
Admin > Connect > Utilities > Unleashed > Sync Order Statuses
3554

Unleashed customer types
We've added 3 new defines for letting you sync the customer type on new users when sending their data to Unleashed.
Defines: UNLEASHED_CUSTOMER_TYPE__RETAIL, UNLEASHED_CUSTOMER_TYPE__DEALER & UNLEASHED_CUSTOMER_TYPE__TRADE
3576

Unleashed > You can now disable syncing tax rates per product.
If you prefer to set these directly in Unleashed, or don't want the system to sync these outside of orders, enable this feature. 
Admin > Connect > Utils > Unleashed > Sync Products with the site default tax rates. Ticked by default but can be unticked to disable this.
3586

Unleashed log filters
We've added new filters to the Unleashed logs to give you much more granular access to changes made or observed between Unleashed and the website.
3593

ShippyPro > No longer logging common errors that otherwise fill up the order history.
We generally log all issues from delivery adapters against orders in case you need to track why specific methods were available or not to a customer. 
However for ShippyPro, it would provide logs in too much detail causing the logs to fill up with less useful information. 
We now strip out common issues such as specific delivery methods not being available based on location etc. while logging real issues.
3591

Designer

Pages & Templates ajax save
Helpful improvement that retains your undo history, unless you reload the screen, and keeps your position in the content when saving changes.
We also introduced a new cleaner save notification that handles page/template errors to make these very obvious when saving. 
3561, 3570, 3572

Mobile specific heights can now be set on Page Slices
3566

Products API sorting improvements for more custom designs
You can now sort by 'updated since' & other advanced sorting options to create more custom designs. See the new ?since_timestamp, since_timestamp_field & sort fields in the API docs: https://design.reallyeasycart.co.uk/api.html#resources--products
3556

Frontend performance improvements with meta preloads.
Added link preconnects to speed up DNS & connections etc. to the 3rd party sites we pull in resources from, such as Google, cdn.js, etc. in both frontend website & backend admin.
3598

Variations on the Products API resource now exposes back in stock dates.
Available as back_in_stock_date on each variation object on products.
3587

Spotlight

Variation prices v2
By default, variations prices are the sum of the product price + option prices however this new features allows you to simplify this and instead have each variation set it's own price directly.
Admin > Site Settings > Ecommerce > Variations & Sage > Use Variation Prices, you can also preview this mode without affecting the live site however setting this up on a clone of your site may be preferable. You can migrate to this using the Products & Variations export, or use the Price Columns export. Contact us for assistance.
3488, 3492

Send personal-looking automated emails from account managers
Make automated emails to customers appear as personal emails from your account managers. Great personal touch for increasing open rates.
Use the from_name and from_email template tags in the template where needed for supporting multiple account managers from a single template.
Email tasks > add/edit > Override "from" details.
We've also added BCC support & ability to BCC account managers on emails being sent to their customers so they know what's going on e.g. dropping out of a VIP Club.
3519, 3526

GA4 Consent Mode v2
We've updated our consent mode integration to ensure we share if the user has accepted different tracking and ads based storage and personalisation permissions so that Google can respect the visitor's choice. This is to bring the cookie policy, GA4 & Ads integration up to speed with the latest rules and best practice.
Enable via Admin > Connect > SEO > GA4 > Enable Consent Mode
3543

Ecommerce & Tracking

Show customers which coupons they have available
A new area has been added to show customers any coupons directly assigned to them, such as from specific deals or through loyalty. This is templateable and the name can be set in the Site Definitions.
Enable via Admin > Customize User Area > General > Show "Your Coupons"?
3539

Price Lists email redesign
Our automated price list for Dealers feature has been redesigned to be clearer and contain more context for dealers about the price or tag changes to each product. 
The tag change detection is available via a new setting in Site Settings > Prices & VAT > Price List App > Show Product Filter Tag changes on Price List Changes email task.
3537

Pause products in Google Shopping
Pause a product from being in Google Shopping for up to 14 days rather than remove it from the feed and have to wait for Google to bring it back. This helps keep your product in the Google Shopping index but just pause it for a short time.
Admin > Product Manager > Edit Product > Main Details > Pause Google Shopping Ads
Batch Product Processor > Pause Google Shopping Ads
3499

Auto discontinue products can now be applied to specific variations
Under the discontinue tickbox on variations, there's a toggle to reveal a tickbox to mark it as auto discontinuing so that when it's stock runs out, that specific variation will be marked as discontinued.
3544

RRS Manual overrides
Use RRS Overrid to force a product to be a specific RRS group rather than have it automatically set.
Available in Add/Edit Product > RRS Override
3553

Variations version of the Google product feed.
The existing product_feed.csv works with variations to show relevant variation codes etc, however rather than bringing in each variation directly, it splits out options of a product based on a setup area in admin. This means the product feed is actually built just from specific option combinations rather than being able to simply take in your variations. 
This new /product_feed_v2.csv feed fixes this and works to bring in all variations, or can still be set to only show the first of each set combination, while also supporting the new v2 variation prices.
3496

Variation weights
The final missing piece from option combinations now available directly on variations. This requires using the v2 variation prices.
When enabled, a new weight column will appear on the variations table in admin.
The products & variations export contains a combined_weight column for the old product + sum of option weights value per variation, which you can then use to migrate over to the new variation_weight, or set this specifically per variation as needed.
3489

Imports with missing or invalid fields should now error louder.
When importing data, the last thing you want is for it to appear to work but then find out it's not imported correctly somewhere. 
Improved imports automatically fix issues where possible and errors loudly showing you more context about the issue when it can't be fixed automatically.
Found an issue during imports? Let us know so we can improve our checks. 
3509

Draft products tab in Product Manager
Find your draft products easier with a new top level tab option for them in the Admin > Product Manager area.
3511

Auto discontinued product notifications can now be routed to specific admins.
Using the Admin > Email Notifications you can now have product discontinued notifications go directly to a specific product manager.
3516

Product Filter > automatically fill out product filter blocks based on a viewed product.
If you have a lot of filter combinations, automatically populate the filters based on a product that's been viewed so that customers can easily change one dropdown and redirect to see other similar products. 
Available via Admin > Product filters app manager > Auto fill on product pages
3510

Product Filter > per block clear/reset buttons now show
When a block has a selected value, rather than having to scroll through it or use a summary block, each block has it's own dedicated clear button to the top right for customers to be able to navigate it easier.
3549

CMS & Admin

Email Tasks > filter by events and user groups
To help sites that have a large number of automated emails being sent for different events and groups of users, you can now filter these to quicker find which apply under different circumstances. 
3527

REC+ terms now exposed in admin when clicking the REC+ link in the sidebar footer
Quickly view the latest signed terms for your REC+ platform directly in the admin area.
3501, 3503

Optional additional fields for Enhanced Conversions for Google Ads
We recently released Enhanced Conversions for Google Ads which shares a secure hash of the customers email, this new setting allows sending hashes of their first name, last name & phone number. You may need to update your terms to include this. It's shared in a one way hash for Google to compare against it's own hash of customer data sent to the site via ads. Though it doesn't expose user data directly, it increases Google's ability to profile the customer and relate the to the conversion.
Admin > Connect > Enable Additional Fields for Enhanced Conversions for Google Ads
https://github.com/WildfireInternet/rec/pull/3529

Designer

Obfuscated email links / Site Update Banners
Template filters are now available for obfuscate_emails & auto_email_links. 
This is automatically in use for the Site Update Banners so that if you enter email addresses then they are obfuscated so they can't be scraped.
3491

Products templates in cart/checkout can now detect the categories of products for more custom changes. 
Using product.category_id for the default category and product.categories for an array, you can make changes to the display of these items in the cart and at checkout based on their category. 
3518

Back in stock dates now available as template tags on new & updated order status emails
Exposed as product.back_in_stock_date, you can now use this to let customers know when your product is likely to be able to be shipped.
3515

Performance optimisations to category pages.
Performance improvements were made to improve the loading speed of categories that contain large numbers of products and variations.
3513

Spotlight

Auto Discontinue Products
Set products to automatically discontinue when they run out of stock as part of improving your stock management.
Set this up via Admin > Edit Product > Main Details > Auto-Discontinue
3439

Admin alert emails modernised & improved
We've redesigned all the system alerts to bring them into 2024 and emphasise important actions you need to take.
This is templateable and you can also set a custom footer logo in Admin > Logos > add a logo for "admin-email-footer".
3442

Google Sheets integration for custom sales data reporting
Automatically sync your new order data to Google sheets allowing you to build custom reports or dashboards that are automatically updated and can be viewed on mobile and desktop devices. Contact us to find out more about this.
3471

Ecommerce & Tracking

Filter Tag ranges
Introducing a new "range between" with from & to filters for tags, for example having a range of years
Admin > Product Filters App Manager > Blocks with a type of filter tag group now have a Display type option appear for Range between, similar to Autotrader's car year style.
3472

Product Filter short description search & field name defines.
You can now change the following product field names for: product name, code, GTIN, short description and full description.
Additionally you can use the short description and GTIN directly in product filter as a dedicated field, for example if you have 2 different codes for a product and want to allow visitors to search on them in the product filter.
Admin > Product Filters App Manager > new text search options for search areas: short desc & gtin
3474

Top Products speed improvements
We've optimised this report to run much faster, allowing you to access and evaluate this data more quickly. 
3484

Designer

Sales targets improvements in the customer hub
New template tags are available in the customer hub for year & month totals.
3454

Product template tag
New tag added to detect if backorders are enabled on the site: product.allow_back_orders.
3468

Minor design improvements to the rating icons on forms.
3458

Security

Further security & spam bot blocking improvements
Additional improvements as part of our constant work to ensure the security and availability of your sites as a top priority.
3480

Security.txt improvements to bring this up to the latest standard.
This provides 3rd party security researchers a simple way to contact us if they have any security improvements to offer. 
Please remember we run multi-layered security scanning and vulnerability testing as standard.
3476
 

Yes we know that this is a dull topic to cover in a blog post, and we would rather be creating new and interesting features for everyone or cutting our toenails instead, however from time to time we do a sweep around with our clients to check on things like having HTTPS present (so people trust your site is secure) and that your email records are set up to stop spoof emails and increase deliverability especially with large email providers like Gmail, Yahoo and others tightening up on email security in 2024.

In addition businesses need to maintain their GDPR compliance, so if certain things have changed on your website then it needs a re-check.

So, we will be contacting you in the coming weeks with what's relevant to you and to book you in to have it sorted. There is a cost to do this but we will be keeping it as cheap as possible and quoting based on your individual needs.

So grab a cuppa and read on about the key areas that matter and learn some snazzy new phrases to throw around the office and impress people:

Managed SSL Certificate

A website needs to have an SSL certificate added to make it secure and ensure all the content on your web pages can be properly viewed by website visitors or, worst case, to stop them seeing a warning message saying the site is unsafe. You can check your site has an SSL certificate already by going to your website and making sure it starts with "https://" in the browser search bar. Most sites have it, but a few still don't so definitely worth making the move.

Whether you have an SSL or not it's worth having a scan of the website to identify any content / broken link issues that exist and we can then fix them.

Stopping Spoof Emails & Reducing Bounces

The immediate term here is 'SPF' (Sender Policy Framework). It's a method to prevent spammers sending emails from your domain without your permission which people then believe are authentic and get redirected to other sites to harvest their data and defraud them. SPF allows you to define which email servers are permitted to send emails on behalf of your domain. In addition, having SPF set up correctly stops emails bouncing from email services like Gmail, Yahoo and other large service providers. An SPF record therefore needs to be set up if not present or amended where it does not appear correct (which may need us to talk to your IT/email provider). 

Reaching The Next Level Of Email Security

Later in the year, we strongly recommend implementing something called 'DKIM' (DomainKeys Identified Mail) which helps ensure that the content of your emails remains trusted and unaltered during transit. It uses a digital signature linked to your domain to verify the email's source and integrity. And also 'DMARC' (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) which combines SPF and DKIM to provide a robust email authentication system. It allows domain owners to specify how email receivers should handle emails that don't pass SPF or DKIM checks.

To do that we recommend using Mailgun as the email service provider, which is built-in to your website software and let's you send 5,000 emails for free each month . It also brings greater email deliverability rates plus individual email tracking so you can check if somebody did or didn't receive an email when they ask. By the way we could set this up now if preferred, otherwise more on that later in the year and let's at least get SPF sorted.

GDPR Review

GDPR came into place 6 years ago (yes that long ago!), so if you have made updates to your website since last checking it was up to date, such as adding scripts on pages, which you may not even remember doing it was so long ago, installing pop-ups, adding extra analytics tracking, social media stuff, then we recommend undertaking a GDPR review which includes re-checking scripts and cookies via a website scan and that your policies are in place. This is one of those things that nobody ever wants to revisit, but once its' done you feel like you've had a walk through a fresh Spring meadow.

Congratulations for reading this far. Medals will be sent out shortly. Or more likely you will receive a call or email from us to agree what needs to happen for your site. If you want to get ahead of everyone else then you can always call your Account Manager to discuss next steps.

 

Spotlight

Back In Stock Dates report
A single screen to view back in stock dates for all products and see which have expired but haven't been re-stocked yet.
Available in Admin > Reports > Back in stock dates expiring
3403

Customer Order Analysis 
Track trends over time for different groups/types/classifications of customers using this on-screen report and record sales contact actions and updates to main customer notes. Once enabled, it's available via Admin > Reports > Customer Order Analysis
3427

Customer Quotes via Manual Orders & Making Payments
We've introduced a new 'Quote order' state for orders, used when quoting via a manual order in admin so that your customer is be able to find the quote in their customer 'Previous orders' section when logged into their account, under a new Quotes tab. 
To set this up, add a new Order Status using the 'Quote' state and then add an order and set it's status to be a quote. The customer can login and see the quote and make it their live cart then go through checkout to pay for it. 
3421

Product Sales on-screen report
A valuable report for Product Managers and Product Development staff to to compare changes in sales and conversion rates of specific groupings of products, such as a range of product IDs or product categories by date ranges.
3386 & 3443

Ecommerce & Tracking

Product Lifecycle now shows RRS information.
The Product Lifecycle available on Edit Product's Orders tab now shows which RRS group by product & selected variation.
3404

First Added To Cart (FATC) Report Improvements
This report can now also show not just items added first, but also second and third to cart, as well as the total added across all carts.
You can also now filter by multiple categories at once, different product groups, as well as restrict by Retail vs Trade vs Dealer orders.
Available in Admin > Reports > First Added To Cart (FATC) Report
3405, 3407, 3401

Order Manager > new filter for account manager
If you have set different account managers for specific customers, you can now filter to show customers orders for the selected account manager.
3402

New filters for Orders per User CSV report.
You can now filter these results by Smart Type and Order Count.
3428

Product audits now also show the product code
Previously these showed only the name of the affected product but now also show the code to easier see which product was updated.
3400

Order Info Reports
New switch to show prices as exc. delivery
Admin > Reports > Order Information Report > Order Modifiers > Prices Exc. Delivery
3423

Min/max order value
This can now be based on either before or after delivery
Admin > Site Settings > Prices & VAT > Order Value Range > Calculate min/max based on: Either "Total of everything" (default) or "Total before delivery".
3422

Product Data Quality report
Now offers quick links to products.
3432

GMC summary
This can now be used as your dashboard for sites using the system primarily for monitoring advertising via GMC.
3446

Duplicate user detection
The system automatically prevents duplicate users being added by email. However older sites may still have 2 records for the same user. This new admin area gives you a place to find and resolve these duplicates easily.
Available in Admin > Duplicate Users
3390

Integrations

Magento support for the Product Data Quality Report
Our support for reporting on Magento sites now extends to the Product data quality report.
3374

Unleashed stock syncs
This can now be done without overriding cost data.
Admin > Connect > Utilities > Unleashed > Update Cost on Stock Sync, defaults to enabled.
3434

Designer

Order confirm/update emails
These can now be customised by product category.
3420

Order confirm emails
These can now render the delivery description line.
3440

Twig templates can now use arrow functions anywhere
Design custom sort functions easier or use the new call() function to utilise your arrow functions anywhere you need in twig templates for even more flexibility.
3396

New remaining_options_only filter for the /product-filter-blocks API resource.
This allows you to pre-filter the options in the response.
3426

Finally, a little REC+ tip of the month...
Content editors like on pages or blog posts highlight spelling issues. Right clicking them though shows the paste or contextual edit popup, however if you hold down ctrl and right click you'll get spelling fix suggestions. (ctrl for Windows & Linux, possibly cmd on Mac)

Spotlight

Product Data Quality Report
Target high value or converting products with data issues to improve their quality and boost sales. 
Contact us to enable, then this will be available via: Admin > Reports > Product Data Quality
3364

First Added To Cart (FATC) report
Find which items are added to cart first before buying other items. 
Contact us to enable, then this will be available via: Admin > Reports > First Added To Cart (FATC) Report
3377

Switching customers between different VIP Clubs / Managing Discount Levels Automatically
Alert customers when they are switched from one VIP club to another with a new email alert using the Email Task 'Swap VIP Club', such as upgrading from a trade club to a distributor club.
3368

Ecommerce & Tracking

GMC boost performance
CSV exports added
3387

RRS report
Can now optionally show just top level products
Admin > Reports > RRS Report > Top level only? (Without variations)
3394

RRS changes can now be detected directly on product templates
This can be used to show custom messages to customers based on product RRS level
3324

Top Products report
Now shows a status if a product is live, special, draft, discontinued, restricted.  
3359

If your site has GMC connected, it shows the GMC status directly such as being disapproved warnings affecting it's saleability or if it's not found in GMC.
3357

PDF product listings
New tickbox to hide a given categories description from being shown in the PDF.
3371

Export filter tags
Manage tags across all products easily. Keep tag lists up to date with redundant tags removed automatically.
Admin > Exports > Product Filter Tags
Admin > Imports > Product Filter Tags
3362

Export product images
Manage all product images en masse.
Admin > Exports > Product Images
Admin > Imports > Product Images
3360

Standard options, standard attributes & price manager audits
New audits to help you track more changes on your site.
3388

Minor design improvements to prices tab on products.
3341

CMS & Admin

Page Slices
Additional fields can now be changed between desktop and mobile styles.
The responsive changes for slice styles now extends to height, width & background images, allowing even more custom designs 
3342

2fa Remember Me
Admins who have our 2fa 'remember me' setting enabled can now set for their browser to be remembered for 30 days to save them having to re-enter it on every login for the same browser.
3328

User Import > Joined Date Checks
During import of users, we now ensure the date formatting is correct for joined and similar fields.
3363

Expert Answers

Vote / Like Answers
Allow customers to vote / like answers to help see which are important or most helpful.
To use on expert answers, you must enable ea_likes cookie in Admin > Cookie manager
3366

Spam now flagged instead of blocked by default
Previously we blocked spam sending, however we now still send it in case of false positives. 
You can undo this by enabling the following setting:
Admin > Site Settings > General > Spam Prevention > Enable Spam Checks on Expert Answers.
3382

Integrations

Top Products report now supports non REC sites connected through Magento
3356

Designer

New order emails can now show/use category ID
For example, having more custom show/hide messages when purchasing specific ranges.
3358
 

Spotlight

Our Magento integration now pulls in categories, manufacturers, orders & customers.
New admin areas are now also available for Magento Integration & Magento Order States to help manage the integration and update sync'ing between a Magento instance and REC+
Sites not previously using REC+ for ecommerce can now pull in their products 
3297, 3308

Page Slices Mobile Styles
We've re-designed the way you manage many of the style/design settings with additional support for changing some styles between how they look on Desktop vs Mobile, such as different paddings and text alignments. 
3262

Ecommerce & Tracking

Google Ads Enhanced Conversions
Enabling this will send users sha256 hashed emails to Google to help associate their conversions in Google Ads. 
We match users emails by either their logged in user email or emails entered on any forms on the site.
Admin > Connect > SEO > GA4 > Enable Enhanced Conversions for Google Ads
3303

GA4 JS conversions
Enabling this improves how conversions are associated with sessions in Google Analytics GA4. The aim here is to minimise 'unassigned' traffic which can happen for multiple reasons but a big reason can be a disassociation between the session in GA from the JS / front end and conversions sent on the backend vs JS / front end side. 
Admin > Connect > SEO > GA4 > Enable JS Conversions for Google Analytics?
3298

Improved social visitor tracking support for instagram, tiktok, and more. 
Previously we showed social tracking for orders/forms only from Facebook or Twitter, with others being tracked and shows as a referral. 
We've re-worked this so we track many different types of social referrals into a top level Social traffic medium.  In Order Manager you can still see the exact social source either by hovering over the Social icon in the traffic column when listing Orders, or in the Traffic Source box on the actual order itself (very bottom box in the right hand column)
3304

RRS template tags for the front end products
You can now add Runner Repeater Strangers (RRS) template tags to the product_info.html.twig & order_confirmation.html.twig template files, using this you can render different messages about products on the product page such as their manufacturing lead time based on their RRS group.
3315

CMS & Admin

Hover tile effects for Flip vs Fade
New flip effect available on the hover-tile slice, a nice alternative to the default fade effect when building designs with Page Slices.
3306

Responsive admin dashboard improvements
The admin dashboard screen now flows onto smaller mobile screens better for quickly checking on stats and using the Site Banner Update area for updates on your phone for example.
3157

 

Merry Christmas!

From everyone at Wildfire we would like to wish you and your families a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!​​​​​​​ 

Thank you for using our services during 2023

It's been a busy 12 months with many new features added to our REC+ ecommerce & CRM platform including the addition of AI for content and product descriptions and translation, a raft of new page building features, customer sales classifications, enhanced expert answers, VIP Clubs, product lifecycle reports and many other features which are fully listed here plus the switch to GA4 which many customers made with our assistance

More Marketing, More Revenues...

We continued to help customers drive more revenues across paid advertising and brand build on social media. Google advertising remains king of the jungle for gaining revenue and because paid advertising is so critical, we also introduced a new automated monitoring service for Google Merchant Centre so you can ensure all of your products are available to advertise.

Price Compare...

Our essential price comparison app continues to help customers set their prices correctly in the market and this combines well with Top Product reporting to prioritise which popularly viewed products to work on first to drive up conversion.

Increased Security, Fast Performance...

Our server infrastructure remains updated and secure for combatting the ever-present threats from bad actors on the web. Whilst we seldom ever talk about this, rest assured it remains the cornerstone of our service for keeping your REC+ website secure and performant.

Again, thank you!

We'd be nothing without our customers and as always we value your custom and look forward to doing great things together in 2024.  

---

CHRISTMAS SUPPORT
Starts Friday 22nd December - Tuesday 2nd January 2024
During this period we provide technical support over the Christmas period, namely server and uptime monitoring. Regular support and project work resumes on our return.

Change Freeze Thursday14th Dec - Wednesday 3rd January 2024
We will not release any new REC+ software changes after Thursday 14th December until we return in the new year.

System Availability
You can view service status on our WildfireNet twitter account 

Raising Support Requests
Please log any calls on our ticket system as the office will be unmanned for this period or email [email protected]

Spotlight

Magento Integration for GMC.
REC now supports Magento integration so you can pull Magento product and order data into your REC instance, for reporting and monitoring using GMC Summary & Top Products reports. Contact us to find out more about this.
Once enabled, as well as new connect details in the Admin > Connect area, you can also view a log of activity in Admin > Magento Log.

Discontinued variations
Product Variations now support the "Is Discontinued" tickbox like top level products. This allows you to discontinue just specific versions of a product such as a limited edition Red variation while keeping other colours live. 
Admin > Product manager > Add/edit products > Variations > new checkbox for "is discontinued".
Also in Admin > Exports > Variations > now supports a variation_is_discontinued column which uses either, the top level product if it has no variations, or the specific variation

More GMC

GMC conversion source switcher
Via the Boost Performance tab you can select the conversion source tracker as either Google Ads or REC (recommended if you use REC for your ecommerce system). 

GMC pause tracking
Pausing a product in GMC allows you to temporarily remove it from Ads without needing to remove it from the feed entirely.
We now track this so that if you're monitoring products in promotion groups and some are paused that you'd otherwise expect to be available to buy on your site, you'll see it on the GMC summary emails & in the GMC admin area. 

Design improvements to the GMC email & loading bar.
We've reworked how the GMC email and admin areas handle differences in monitored grouped products so they display better. 
Additionally, we also now show a loading bar when re-syncing with GMC so you can see progress.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Sales Summary product group filters
New improved filters are available on the customer view of the sales summary to let customers discover more products they haven't yet purchased including a switch between showing all top products they haven't bought before vs ones just relating to makes they've bought from before.
Enable which individual groups to show in the Sales Summary via Admin > Product Groups > Add/Edit > Filterable in Sales Summary.

Product Manager > new filters
New search filters are available for Tag Groups & tags.

Refund only required state
A new Refund Only order state can now be used for where a customer requests a return but the items haven't yet been set out. If enabled on an order via Admin > Order statuses, then the system will pick this status if the order item hasn't been despatched instead of return required.  

Price list exclude switch per product
Previously to exclude a product from the Price List available to Distributors you'd need to exclude the product from Google Shopping as well, this is now split out so you can have products in or out of Google and not impact if a product is in or out of the price list. 

Product filter > new setting to hide blocks where only a single result shows.
Building off the existing setting to remove blocks where no filterable values are found, this new setting lets you also hide where there's only a single value found as that doesn't really give the user much option to actually filter. This is optional for cases where you don't want this, such as where you only add a tag where it has something, but generally we'd recommend enabling this new setting to simplify filters for your end customers. 
Available in Admin > Product Filters App Manager > "Also remove single value blocks".

SagePay renamed to Opayo by Elavon
Recently Opayo was bought by Elavon, all existing old SagePay endpoints & references are being removed by them and replaced with Opayo by Elavon. To keep sites up to date and not confuse users, we've renamed this for you and updated references ready for their migration. 

Multi Store > ability to batch exclude products from Multi Store
When discontinuing products on one store, you may not want to discontinue them on the other. To do this you'll need to disable that product's updates in multi store and this can now be done en masse at the same time as discontinuing them via Admin > Batch Product Processor > new "Exclude from Multi Store & API Webhooks?" switch.

Product groups > counts of products
You can now see counts of products in each product group and these are clickable to reveal those grouped products. 

VIP Club

Manually trigger VIP club calculation run via this new button. 
This works especially well when initially designing and building out your VIP club so that you can test it faster. 
Once your VIP clubs are live, you'll normally not want to use this as running it can trigger emails to customers. 
Available via Admin > VIP Clubs > Manually Run

Prospect Manager

User Manager comments for calls
Using User Manager for call lists? With this new feature you can quickly review existing user notes/comments and add to them on the fly. 
Contact us to talk more about this feature. Once enabled, this shows as a new column in Admin > User Manager, as a comment icon against each user in the table.

Miscellaneous

Exit Popup > Country Setting
Restrict your exit popups to only show for customers in specific countries. 
This requires your site to be using Cloudflare which provides the customers country. 

Increase file uploads from 16mb to 24mb.
This doesn't impact images, instead use https://squoosh.app/ to optimise your images. We're adding links to this service around image uploads as well to help you do this. 

Google connect/OAuth changes
In accordance with Google's branding requirements, we've re-designed the connect / sign in with Google buttons in Admin > Connect for GA, Google Ads, Google My Business, GMC & YouTube integrations. 
Our REC+ Terms, Privacy Policy & Support links are now available in the footer of the admin area of all pages. 

 

Two major new feature sets have been added to our Advanced Edition of REC+ to help track issues stopping ads appearing in Google and to increase revenues based on segmenting customers based on purchasing patterns and displaying suggested products in their account area.

Google Merchant Centre Summary & Alerting Tool

Advertising on Google? Don't miss out on sales! Make sure your products are able to be advertised on Google Ads with this essential monitoring and alerting tool.

How GMC Works 

Products are uploaded from your website to Google Merchant Centre (GMC) to then be advertised within your Google Ad campaigns. GMC has strict conditions on whether a product is set up correctly to be advertised.

What This Tool Does

This tool enables you to monitor higher level account issues and which products have issues according to GMC and send out email alerts to staff plus to be able to view them on a summary screen within Admin which is easier to access  rather than logging into GMC. The issues shown are a direct reflection of how GMC reports them. More features will be added over time.

Read more

Customer Sales Classifications, Sales Summary & Product Discovery

These features help you achieve greater revenues by better understanding your customer base in terms of their buying patterns, performance against annual targets and showing customers best selling products & categories they haven't previously purchased, plus producing customer-based reports. This feature set comprises:

Sales Classifications
Classify customers according to their sales performance and risk levels

Sales Targets 
Measure customers actual v target revenue over a 12 month period

Individual Customer Reporting
Use Report Builder to build customer-specific reports which can be printed / saved as PDFs

Sales Summary & Product Discovery
Show trade/distributor customers a summary of their sales on their account page and display other popular categories & products they haven't yet purchased 

Read more

 

Spotlight

Top Products > Custom comparison date range
Previously Top Products report would automatically calculate a comparison date range for you, this still happens but you can now override it. 
This lets you run monthly, quarterly and half-yearly reports.

Ecommerce & Reporting

Exclude options from variations
Some options on products may not mean that a product needs to be split out by variations. For example, size & colours combinations would be variations whilst a part being painted with primer does not form a variations, they are simply fixed price increases in the cart.

Product Variation Lifecycle
The product lifecycle report on the edit product screen can now be filtered to a specific variation, using this you can see trends of sales for specific option combinations of a product. 

Append content to product descriptions in a category.
Need to add some text to the bottom of all products in a certain category? This new feature allows you to do this en masse.
Available via Admin > Product Manager > Edit Category > Append content to product descriptions

Variation option combinations can now be shown to users with custom built product option templates.
Option level stock can already show on options to disable different values, but if you're out of stock of only specific variations (red in a medium size for example), then you can now make it so after selecting red, the Medium size disables automatically for the customer so they can instantly see availability. 
This is a custom template change which can be applied, contact us to find out more about this and what else is possible to improve product page designs.

 

Spotlight

Report Builder Google Ads integration
We now have reporting integration with Google Ads in our Report Builder tool. 
Using this you can add graphs of clicks, impressions, conversions, CPC, CTR, ROAS and much more. directly in your reports. 

Track in and out of stock products & variations
Available in Admin > Reports > Stock History, this new report lets you track the history of your in and out of stock items at both top product level as well as variation level. 

Ecommerce & Reporting

Run reports for specific customers
Looking to see sales details of specific big customers? Our Report Builder tool now allows you to filter to a specific customer. To make this easier, there's now a dedicated button to the top right of the user profiles to go direct to Report Builder with this customer pre-selected.

Edit Product > Orders Tab Lifecycle Date Range
By default the Lifecycle report on products defaults to the date range the product has been live on your site, but you may want to restrict this down to a specific range to see recent sales for example. 

Customer level address matching switch
On a per user basis, require their billing & delivery address/country match for added restrictions, optionally overriding the group level settings for this. 
Enable via Admin > Site settings > Ecommerce > Checkout > "Enable Checkout Address Matching Checks"
Admin > User Manager > user profile > status & levels > Address Checks

Reworked design for Report Builder > Saved Templates
Saved templates have been redesigned to be easier to use and modify with drag and drop support.

Filter by Product Groups in Report Builder
Use this to see sales growth for specific groupings of your products for example ease-of-fitment levels.

Sales Targets have moved to the top of the user profile.
This makes it easier to set these for your customers and spot them at a glance when opening their user profile. 

Purchase orders can now render product tickboxes checked by the customer on each order. 
Access `detail.options` directly as an array in the `purchase_order.html.twig` file.

Invoice PDFs can now generate with the Order ID in the name instead of Invoice ID if preferred.
Enable in Admin > Site Settings > Prices > Invoice Display > Generate Invoice PDF with Order ID instead of Invoice ID in the filename.
As part of this we also simplified the order lines CSV available from the order info screen's filename and it uses either the Order or Invoice ID following this setting as well. 

Product data validation for GTINs
Adding to our automated safety checks for product data in the system, we now monitor for invalid GTINs such as "#", "N/a" or "none" where these may have been imported by accident. Our checks run each hour so if this happens on your site, it is reported to you to fix the issue so it doesn't affect your products on Google.

Security & GDPR

Cookies
These are now re-recorded behind the scenes for sessions where the user returned with cookies already accepted. 
This fixes an issue where though initially we let you know if cookies were accepted on a session (such as against an order or form) where the user accepted them in the same session. But as cookies stick around for multiple sessions, they are now associated to those new sessions as well so you have a complete picture when reviewing sessions like this. 

Bot Blocking
Further improvements in Bot Blocking added to help block new bots from slowing down sites. 

 

Spotlight

Exit popups

Engage your customers before they leave your site with our new exit popups feature.
You can use these popups to ask customers if they want to subscribe to your newsletter or offer them a special deal before they exit.
You can set up exit popups in your admin account by going to Admin > Site Exit Popup.
PR 3036

User specific access to products

With this new feature, you can restrict access to specific products to individual customers. This is useful for offering custom items or exclusive deals to specific users.
Once enabled, you can set up user-specific access to products in the Add/Edit products section by going to the Prices tab and selecting Restricted user access.
To enable this feature, please contact us for pricing.
PR 3044

Admin 2fa on login

Two factor authentication is now available for all Admin level accounts.
This feature adds an extra layer of security to protect access to your admin account.
You can enable this feature in your admin account settings by going to Admin > Top right dropdown menu > Your 2FA Settings.
PR 3056

Expert Answers > Brand new UI

We've redesigned the Expert Answers area in the admin interface to make it easier for you to manage customer questions on a large scale.
The new UI includes helpful filters to navigate through questions more efficiently, and you can now close questions without answering them.
Enjoy the improved experience!
PR3030

VIP Club

Admin VIP Club Override
We've added the ability to fake that an admin is part of a specific VIP Club & Level so they can preview the VIP club on the front end of the site.
PR 3059

CMS

Preview blog urls
Send previews of your blog posts for review before publishing them to others without your reviewers needing to login.
PR 3051

Page Slices > new height setting
This new height only kicks in on desktop but lets you design even better layouts. This can also be combined with vertical alignment if you set a container with the height and then the alignment on the inner slice.
PR 3070

Audits added to the Customise User Area in Admin.
Similar to Site Settings & other areas, we've now implemented full audits of each change made here so it's easier to know when key features have been enabled for your customers to see.
PR 3061

Ecommerce & Reporting

Product price imports renamed
We've clarified the difference between the 2 different price imports, "Product Price Columns" vs "Product Qty Break Price Rows" and why you'd pick either method.
PR 3057

Report Builder > New table display when comparing between 2 dates.
We have a brand new display for showing each value and the % difference so you can see if your sales have gone up or down highlighted in green or red.
PR 3086

Report Builder > % ratio columns for the traffic sources.
With this change it's easier to see which traffic source makes up the largest percent of your sales traffic.
PR 3086

Report Builder > new Traffic Medium filter
The order info reports now have a traffic medium filter available. 
PR 3084

Report Builder > Charge types report
When using custom charge types (e.g. Delivery Duties Paid), you can now get a sales report in Order Information Report. 
PR 3064

Report Builder > more fields on the Ecommerce Revenue. report are now optional
Allowing you to build reports easier and not need to select "All" when running through the different options. 
PR 3052

Delivery method & region audits
We now keep audits when you add/edit and remove delivery methods and regions, further helping you keep track of when changes are made on your site.
PR 3053

Autocomplete for many areas around admin now support ID based search as well as their existing searches. 
E.g. Restricted access products lets you search on User name or email but if you type a "#" and then an ID it'll only bring up that specific customer, letting you find people easier when you have 2 customers with the same name but you know the ID of the one you want.
PR 3072

Designer / Developer Changes

Products API now exposes back in stock dates.
This is useful for any trade/distributor customers you may have that access your API list of products so they can find out when you're aiming to have an item back in stock to keep them and their customers up to date easier. 
PR 3062

Admin tips have been disabled after logging in.
These quick tips have been disabled for now, they previously showed to the bottom right of the screen but we've decided to disable them while we rework their tips and reconsider how best to help you with these.
PR 3071
 

Spotlight

Runners, Repeaters & Strangers For Enhanced Product Demand Analysis.
Introducing Runners, Repeaters & Strangers. Allowing you to easily determine the average weekly demand of your products and feed this into your procurement and manufacturing teams to optimise purchase ordering and manufacturing schedules. 
Contact us to enable this on your store. Licence upgrade required.

Email Task Analytics
Introducing Email Task Analytics. Gain valuable statistics on your automated emails, for example views and clicks for abandoned carts. Easily accessible under Admin > Email Tasks > Stats, this powerful feature provides you with comprehensive data in a simple, user-friendly format.

CMS

New Form Builder filters
These new filters to help you sort through responses including date range and traffic source/medium
You can also now group the responses to remove duplicates.

Page slices > new "hover tile" slice
When hovering over an image show content over the top of it.

Page slices > new "text carousel" slice
Similar to image carousels, these text carousels let you rotate text such as slogans or select testimonials on your site.

Page slices > new "content switcher" slice
Similar to sliders or carousels, these switchers are a 50/50 split with image to the left & content to the right, with numbered buttons to switch between each slide.

Page slices > border styles & radius
Round your slices with the border radius & optionally set different border styles to have further control over the display of slices.

Page slices > new featured slices for common uses.
Quick reusable patterns to display content such as: Articles, Services you offer, Quick Feature Overview, Team members.

Page slices > new tabs & FAQ slices
Easily add an FAQ section to your site with this new slice type or build a more interactive area with the new tabs.

Duplicate page
Quickly make a copy of a page with the new Duplicate Page button, available in Admin > Page Manager > Edit Page > new button to top right for Duplicate Page.

Page slices > gallery modals for image grids
Optionally enable modal popups on click of images in your grids, as well as control aspect ratios of the thumbnails to maintain a clean looking grid layout.

Ecommerce & Reporting

User Group Delivery Address Matching & Restrictions
Restrict delivery for specific groups to require either their full address, or just the country being delivered to is the same as the customer billing address. This lets you optionally require that your UK distributors aren't using you to dropship abroad. 
User Groups > Edit User Group > Enable Address Matching?

Report Builder exclude manual orders by default
Now possible by enabling the existing "exclude vat" site setting: Reports > Default the Order Info Reports & Report Builder to exclude VAT & manual orders

Coupon Manager search
As your store grows, the number of coupons/deals increases. This new feature lets you search through them faster by name or the coupon code.

Payment method address match restriction
Restrict payment methods to only show when a users billing & delivery address matches. Useful for selecting the most appropriate payment processor for financial inspection, for example Stripe may prefer the same billing and delivery addresses to process an order.

Unlimited YouTube videos per product. 
You're no longer limited to a maximum of 3 YouTube videos per product, now you can upload as many as needed, each displayed with thumbnails on the product page. 

Reports can now exclude restricted access products
This allows you to filter reports to exclude items restricted for sale to specific dealers only. 
Admin > Order Manager > Quick Search > Additional search filters > Restricted Access
Admin > Report Builder > Advanced > Exclude Restricted Products

Order Manager > Delivery method filter
Quickly find all orders placed with a specific delivery method quickly with this new filter e.g. all orders set to Collection or ones awaiting to be delivered through DPD for example. 

Prospect Manager

Prospect Manager > optional comment field on batch edit quotes.
You can optionally batch set a comment on multiple quotes at once for example setting which invoice they are part of.
Available under the table of quotes in Prospect Manager.

Prospect Manager > Auto watcher
When adding a quote for a customer, if that customer record has a Sales Manager set they will be automatically added as a watcher on the quote. This helps ensure your sales team are kept up to date on quotes relating to their clients.

Designer / Developer Changes

Modules > new colour type field
You can now use colour pickers directly inside modules to help make design changes per module item for example.

Meta tag character counts
All meta title, descriptions & keyword fields now have recommended maximum character counts 

Security

SPF record examples
An important piece of email security is setting up an SPF record to help ensure emails are delivered correctly and not spoofed from mail servers you don't trust.
We now show example SPF records for you in the admin area > SMTP settings to help you get this sorted for your site. 
SPF is also becoming a requirement for delivering to many email providers such as Google/gmail so it's an important step for all sites to consider.

Admin login IP checks
When logging in we now verify the IP/location you're logging in from is one we've seen from you before. 
Edit Customer > Subscribe to Security Emails

Suspended admins are now immediately logged out.
Previously suspending another user would only affect them on log in, this has now been re-worked to immediately invalidate their session in the case that they are already logged in, letting you take action right away if an admin needs to be removed from your site.
 

 

🎉 Exciting News: Wildfire Internet Celebrates 15 Years of Success🎉

It is with immense joy that we announce the milestone of Wildfire Internet turning 15 years old. Since our inception in 2008, we have witnessed remarkable transformations in the realms of Google, website development, and digital marketing. Throughout this journey, we have constantly adapted and updated our services, employing innovative software and robust security measures to ensure our clients' continued success.

When we were presented with unprecedented challenges during the pandemic, we stood steadfast in our commitment to supporting both our clients and our team. As we stride into 2023, we have proudly pioneered the integration of AI into our software, marketing services and client business strategies, unleashing the full potential of this powerful technology.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our clients for placing their trust in us over the years. We recognise that it is their unwavering faith in our capabilities that has fuelled our growth and inspired us to reach new heights. Also, our appreciation to our dedicated and longstanding Wildfire team, who are the very essence and heart of our company.

Should you seek guidance on expanding your business or enhancing its profitability, we invite you to contact us today. Our experts will collaborate with you to identify the perfect solution tailored to your unique needs.

Here's to another year of remarkable achievements and shared success!

Ecommerce Specialists

- Expert advice, software, AI and digital marketing -

Starting July 1st, Google is discontinuing the use of old Universal Analytics that all sites used and will be switching to GA4. 

You can find our migration guide here. 

 

If you prefer, we can take care of the migration process for you. 

Our charge is £95 + VAT, and we will handle setting up your GA4 account with our production-ready settings, connecting your site, and conducting thorough tests to ensure everything is functioning correctly. To request this service, please email us or contact us here with a subject line of "GA4 migration". 

We can also assist you with any Google Ads changes that may be required if you utilise this feature. 

 

If you have already requested our migration service or if you are a current marketing customer of ours, your site has already been migrated. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. 

Thank you. 

Spotlight

Expert Answer followups
Follow up with customers who asked questions about products but haven't since purchased to see if there's anything else you can help with to help bring in the sale.
To enable Expert Answers Followup Emails, go to: Site Settings > Leads & Alerts > Enable Expert Answers Followup Emails
PR 2999

GA4 Reporting
As part of the recent move to GA4, we now support Google's latest Analytics Reporting/Data APIs to pull in analytics data onto your dashboards & reports in admin. 
PR 3028

VIP Club

VIP Club reporting
We now keep track of how many customers are in each VIP club & level each day and report this back to you on the VIP club screen with new graphs to break down and compare this data by day, week or by month.
PR 3025

VIP Club level previews
Quickly preview how your changes to the VIP club levels will affect the number of users in that level before you save.
PR 3012

Track VIP Club on orders
We show a customer's current VIP club on orders in admin but sometimes you may want to know what VIP club level they were when they placed that order, in case it's since changed. If the customers current level does not match the one saved on the order, we'll add a line to the vip club message on orders to let you know the level they previously had. 
PR 3011

Toggle VIP Club summary on customer home. 
By default if you have VIP club enabled your customers will see a simple summary, however you can now disable this and instead we can use the customer hub template to create a more custom display for users around their vip club level. Contact us for pricing.
PR 3046

CMS

Sliders now warn if your content may break the slider display
Sliders can be linked to URLs but if you were to put another link inside, then this would break the display of the slider due to browsers restricting nested links. To help admins and designers, we detect this on save of a slider panel and warn you so it can be resolved. 
PR 3002

Audit search improvements
The admin comments area now has improved search capabilities for audits such as filtering on the related item ID & audit action. 
PR 3027

Ecommerce & Reporting

Product issues report > detect zero priced products
Both the site issues & detailed product issues report now alert you when you have zero priced products, even if there is a retail price but specific group prices are zero.
PR 3018

Hidden categories
Categories used only for promotions on your site can be hidden so they do not display.
Available to set via Admin > Add/Edit Category > Hide this category from the website
Categories Export > is_hidden => 0 or 1
PR 3001

Orders now report if the custom accepted cookies or not
Sometimes order counts in Google Analytics & Ads will not match the website and one reason for this can be that users didn't accept cookies and so can't be tracked. To help you identify if they did accept cookies or not, we now indicate this on a per order basis alongside the traffic source & medium and on forms.
PR 2997

Report builder > filter the ecommerce revenue report type by traffic medium.
You can now optionally report on specific traffic source/medium's such as just Ads/CPC sales in reports in Report Builder.
For example you might wish to see ad-generated revenue across different states.
PR 3048

Report builder > option to default all reports to exclude VAT.
Easily set all Report builder reports to exclude VAT.
Admin > Site Settings > Prices & VAT > Reports > Default the Order Info Reports & Report Builder to exclude VAT.
PR 3010

Sales targets export against users
If you're using the sales targets feature, the users export will now contain their sales targets for easier management & mass modification. 
PR 3007

Checkout confirm screen > Newsletter signup
As well as offering newsletter signup during customer registration, you can also prompt for this on the checkout screen as a reminder during the order process. 
Admin > Site Settings > General > Registration > Newsletter > Enable Newsletter Signup on Checkout confirm screen
PR 3028

Integrations

Unleashed > Delivery tracking
Automatically update orders on the website when you add tracking codes against orders in Unleashed. 
Admin > Connect > Utilities > Sync Shipment Tracking
Contact us to have the required scheduled task set up as well. 
PR 3031

Google Analytics > Cookie improvements
Google Analytics sets cookies when loaded, because of this we don't load their script until the user accepts the cookies in order to ensure your site follows GDPR compliance.
However, if the visitor doesn't accept cookies until the 2nd or 3rd page view, the previous URL google would be seen as internal and they would assume the user came here directly instead of via organic search or Ads. To resolve this, we now hold onto the visitors previous and entry URLs so that even if they are several pages down the line when they accept cookies, we replay the original pageview event for Google so they can track them correctly.
PR 2996

Designer / Developer Changes

Modules > New file upload field type
Similar to the existing image field type, you can now have modules attach related files such as PDF downloads. 
PR 3004

Module audits
We've now implemented audits for the Modules system so any new modules created, updated or removed will have full audits as well as changes to their items inside. 
PR 3033

Form Builder > Ajax helpers for forms
If you're building custom forms or calculators on sites and using frameworks like Vue.js, you'll want to submit the data via Ajax. We've simplified how this works and also offer a helper example ajax call directly from the edit form screen in admin.
PR 3003

jQuery upgrade
Allows easily switching from 1.x to 3.x as well as a 3.x-preview where it'll stay 1.x for most visitors but admins will see 3.x to help test the migration. 
Admin Site Settings > General > Front end Javascript > jQuery Version
PR 3019

New template keys for detecting subscribed users
user.send_emails now allows you to detect if a customer is subscribed or not, as well as user.send_emails_encrypted_id which gives you access to the hash used in subscribe or unsubscribe links for logged in customers. 
PR 3040