SearchFit Ecommerce Shopping Cart v8.10 Released
We are proud to announce the release of SearchFit v8.10. The newest SearchFit version contains many new features and changes, but just a portion of them are discussed here. Please visit the SearchFit forum to read the full release notes. In this article, we’ve included some of the stand out features including Dependent Options with Inventory Control per Option, New Product Feeds and Mega Menus. Other items in the article include some feature highlights from SearchFit v8.6 – v8.9. Many improvements and new features have been introduced into SearchFit with these releases. We hope that our current customers and those considering the SearchFit ecommerce platform will benefit from these with increased traffic, usability and conversion rate.
SearchFit Feature Highlights in SearchFit v8.10
Dependent Options with Inventory Control Per Option
You now have the ability to control what combination of options a customer can select. For example, if you sell Blue and Red T-Shirts in sizes Small and Large, but your Small Blue T-Shirt is out of stock, you can now prevent customers from ordering that particular combination. The new Dependent Options System allows you to specify certain option combinations that are or are not possible to select. You can also track inventory per Option so that any product/option combination that is out of stock will not be selectable.
New Product Feeds Available: PriceGrabber & NexTag
PriceGrabber and NexTag join the list of automated Product Feeds available in SearchFit. The full list of available product feeds can be seen in the SearchFit Control Panel | “Product Feeds” screen. Now you can automatically build, customize and deliver your product feed to Price Grabber and NexTag at a specified interval.
Build Automated ‘Mega Menus’ Using the SearchFit Website Menu Template
The SearchFit website menu template has been enhanced to allow you to create “Mega Menus”. A mega menu is a horizontal dropdown navigation where each dropdown may contain multiple columns of information. The new Website Menu Template attribute “group-every” allows you specify how many links should be included in each column. Mega menus have been shown to offer better usability compared to multi-level dropdown menus.
SearchFit Feature Highlights from v8.6 – v8.9
Import Data into Any Field in Your DataBase with Enhanced Importing Functionality
The product import engine has been enhanced to allow store owners to specify special columns in the import file that would target arbitrary database product fields. This way, additional product fields can be updated even if they are not allowed to be specified on the product import form. The header of these special columns should be in the format {$product.fieldName=
Automatically Add Canonical Link Tags to Your Product Links
In SearchFit lingo, a “Product Link” is a duplicate product. Beyond that, a Product Link shares a common set of attributes with its master product, such as price, sku, etc. This way, when you edit the price of the Master Product, the Product Link is automatically updated. Other product attributes can be differentiated between the Master Product and the Product Link, such as descriptions, images, name, etc. This is useful when you have the same product in multiple categories and want to customize each Product Link to better match its parent Category. SearchFit now has the ability to add Canonical Link tags to the detailed product pages corresponding to all your Product Links. These canonical link tags let search engines know the URL of the Master Product and help you avoid being penalized for having duplicate content.
SearchFit is now Integrated with the StoneEdge Order Manager
The SearchFit Stone Edge integration supports Orders Import, Real Time Inventory, Customer Import, Product Import, Order Status Updates. StoneEdge streamlines and automates the process of managing orders, customers, inventory, shipping, drop-shipping, and credit card transactions.
Google Base Feed Enhanced to Support Google Taxonomy
Help Google Base to better categorize your products. The SearchFit Google Base Feed has been enhanced to support Google Taxonomy. New screens have been implemented to allow the store owner to automatically download the google taxonomy entries. The taxonomies can be assigned to category types, categories, and products. The assigned entries will be automatically provided to google during the feed create and submit. Made the feed generation to split feeds into 100k products or less per file. Product extra images are now included in the feed. Allowed google base filtering by category type and category. Ability to customize the feed suffix file name to easy track the target feed problems in the google emails.
Integrated with Bing CashBack
Bing CashBack has two parts, a product feed, and an order feed. Your products will show up in the Bing search engine and have their CashBack offers displayed based on the product feed (found at Marketing/Product Feeds). When a customer originates from the Bing CashBack program and completes a purchase of a Bing CashBack enabled product then SearchFit will automatically report the order to Bing. The order feed submits all eligible orders to Bing in a once a day batch. Read More about SearchFit Bing CashBack integration.
Integrated with Interactive ShipWorks
ShipWorks connects to SearchFit. It downloads your orders and makes it easy to create shipping labels, manage customers and emails, and update the online status of each order. Streamline your order processing and CRM with this powerful application.
Improve the Product Display on Your Category Pages with Quick Look
Implemented Product Quick Look feature that allows visitors to mouse over the product images on the category pages and have a quick look at the details of the product with a click of a button while staying on the same page. The product details appear in a panel that can be closed, or used to purchase the item.
Enhance Your Product Option Layout with Image-Based Inputs
Implemented the new Product Option Group Layouts: a) CheckBox as Image per Option b) Radio Button as Image per Option. For example, if you are offering color-based options, then you can create an option display where customers click on a color swatch instead of a standard radio button.
Enjoy A Huge Time Savings with The Ability to Automatically Resize Images
Just import a high-resolution version of each of your Product Images and SearchFit can automatically create all the necessary sizes. This includes the product images that appear on your Category Pages, Checkout Pages, Detailed Product Pages and Sitemap. Also included are the “Extra” images that appear in your image galleries. The New “Images” tab on the “Configure Products” screen allows you to specify the dimensions of each image type.
Improved Reporting Between SearchFit and Power Search
View reports that show how much revenue your site is earning from products that customers find using Power Search. SearchFit now automatically provides PowerSearch with orders data to allow PowerSearch to build sales reports based on the searches and placed orders. The new Power Search report is titled “Daily Sales By Searches”.
Easily Create Custom, Automated Product Displays With “Intelligent Product Groups”
The “Product Groups” feature has been enhanced to allow the store owner to create unlimited Intelligent Product Groups. Intelligent groups are dynamic groups where the selected group type specifies what products are to be included in the group. The intelligent groups can be created for all or specific category types and for all or specific categories. Store owners can specify discounts, create social apps,and generate individual intelligent groups. The supported intelligent product group types are:
- Best Selling Products By Qty
- Best Selling Products By Revenue
- Best Selling Products By Profit
- Most Recent Products (New Arrivals)
- Top Ranked Products
- Most Ranked Products
- Most Profitable Products
- Products On Sale
Connect With Your Customers By Creating an Automatic, Customized RSS Feed
The new Marketing/RSS Feeds feature allows the store owner to create unlimited RSS Feeds using any intelligent product group. This means you can have an RSS feed containing your most recent products, top selling products, etc. Customers can add your RSS Feed to their RSS Feed Reader to receive updates whenever your feed changes.
Showcase Your Products with Alternate & Enlarged Images using Photo Albums
Add an enhanced product display to your detailed product pages with SearchFit photo albums. SearchFit now allows you to store a set of alternate product images called “Extra Images”. These images work with SearchFit’s automatic image sizing feature. SearchFit offers a set of premade gallery types that makes setup quick and easy. Developers can use the SearchFit Photo Album web service to make a completely custom gallery layout.
