Network Upgrade
We have completed the upgrade to our internet connection. This will give you and your customers both a faster service and, with our multiple internet corrections, more resilience.
Credit and Debit Cards - 3-D Secure
Did you know that GroovyCart supports Credit and Debit Cards!
As an added level of security against fraud, we've recently enhanced Credit and Debit Card handling on GroovyCart to support industry standard '3-D Secure' authentication to achieve higher coverage against fraud losses.
This means that your customers can pay using their cards with more confidence, and it protects you against fraud.
If you want to know more about how to sign-up to use Credit and Debit Cards on your shop, or more about '3-D Secure' then click here or contact us at support@groovycart.co.uk
Groovy News - Summer Newsletter
Welcome to the summer edition of Groovy News, our quarterly newsletter to keep you informed of what's new on GroovyCart.co.uk
Here are some of the exciting new features we have added in the past few months:
1. Homepage Customisation
2. Colour Changing
3. Buyer Feedback
4. Shop Rating
5. Linked Websites
6. Product Hiding
7. Shop Statistics
8. Larger Images
9. Order Streamlining
Don't forget about Referrers - if you encourage someone to open a shop with us you can share in the reward! (See our help page to find out how http://www.groovycart.co.uk/groups/groovycart/wiki/7ada6/Referrers.html )
1. Homepage Customisation
We have a new way of editing your homepage that is far more flexible
than the old way but still very easy to use. You can easily add dynamic areas to your homepage such as a "What's New" box. Those on the Gold upgrade package can now use the <img> and <a> tags to put images and links on their homepage.
2. Colour Changing
We have now made it far simpler to change the colours on your shop. Rather than giving you a handful of colours to select from you can now select any of the 16 million colours. This tool is super easy to use and very flexible too. You can also select from a list of pre defined colour styles to make it even easier to quickly get your shop up and running.
3. Buyer Feedback
Buyers can now leave feedback after their order has completed. The feedback consists of a '5 heart' rating and a comment. You can read the feedback via the Admin Panel and reply to the customer if you wish. You can even choose to display individual comments on your shop.
4. Shop Rating
Some potential customers are reluctant to buy online due to lack of trust in security. To overcome this hurdle we have introduced a 'Shop Rating' system; each shop on GroovyCart will have a 'Shop Rating' made up of 5 stars.
The number of stars a shop has is determined by nine measures:
* Statistical factors; eg. age of shop.
* Measures under your control; eg. choosing to display feedback and logging in regularly, ie. every 4-5 days.
It is not compulsory but we do recommend it to encourage new purchases. Check your admin panel to see how you can increase your rating.
5. Linked Websites
It is useful to know where your customers are coming from so to keep track of this and measure promotion through other sites such as Google or Twitter, shop owners can now see how much of their traffic has been directed from elsewhere.
6. Hiding Products
There is now a simple method to hide products from your customers (for example; products that have been sold but the order not completed). You will find this in your Admin Panel next to the 'Add Product' feature.
7. Shop Statistics
This will show you useful statistics on your shop for the last 30 days.
Including; page views (daily), unique visitors (daily), top products (weekly) and comparison with other shops.
8. Larger Images
Those on the gold upgrade package will now have larger thumbnail images in the grid view of their product list.
9. Order Streamlining
We've reduced the number of steps when progressing an order, meaning less work for you and more flexibility. The 'Order Closed' state has been replaced with 'Order sent' as the final step. For example; when a customer has paid with PayPal you can select 'order sent' when the payment is automatically received.
Lots of love,
The GroovyCart Team x
p.s. if you want to unsubscribe from GroovyCart newsletters then use the Advanced Settings from your shop Admin Panel.
GroovyCart Limited - Online Shop Provider
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Ratings, Feedback and Linkers...
We've enhanced GroovyCart...
Order Status Change
We've reduced the number of status change steps for order progression and added more flexibility. This will mean less work for you. The 'Order Closed' state has now disappeared, and the final order state is now 'Order sent'. For example, if an order is made using PayPal Standard payment method then you simply have to select "order sent" after the payment has been automatically received - nice and easy!
This change only impacts new orders, any existing 'in-flight' orders will follow the old order progression work-flow.
Buyer Feedback
Buyers can now add feedback after their order has completed. The feedback consists of a rating and a free-format comment. You can read the feedback via the Admin Panel and reply to the customer. You can even choose to display individual comments on your shop.
Feedback will only be requested from customers on orders placed after 2nd August.
Rating of Shops
One reason why some potential customers are reluctant to buy on-line is lack of trust. To overcome this hurdle we've introduced 'Shop Rating'.
Each shop on GroovyCart will have a 'Shop Rating' made up of 5 stars. The number of stars on your shop is determined by nine measures. Some of the measures are under your control, e.g. whether you choose to display feedback, and others are controlled by your shop history, e.g. how long your shop has been open.
Don't panic. You don't have to do anything. However, we think 'Shop Rating' will encourage potential buyers to make a purchase so have a look at your rating on your Admin Panel and see how YOU can increase the number of stars on your shop. A simple way to increase your star rating is to turn on the rating widget!
Linkers
Ever wondered where your customers have come from? Want to measure any promotions on Facebook, Google or Twitter?
Using your Admin Panel your can now see where your customer have come from.
Hiding Products
There is now a simple method to hide products from your customers on the Product List page.
'Images on the shop homepage' you say?
As of today you will see two new buttons on your Administration Panel page.
View Shop Stats
This will show you statistics on your shop for the last 30 days.
Including:
- Number of page views each day.
- Number of unique visitors each day.
- Top products each week.
- A review of your shop compared to other shops on GroovyCart.
- Other Miscellaneous information.
Change Your Homepage
We have a new way of editing your homepage that is far more flexible than the old way but still very easy to use.
First you select a template, this will have a number of empty boxes in different positions depending on the template, and then in each box of the template you can place different objects. You can add objects like Whats New / Promotions / your own text.
By clicking the HTML/Text button you can enter your own HTML code using any of these tags: <p><strong><style><span><h2><h3><div><br><hr><table><tr><td><font><em><blockquote>
Any shop that has upgraded to gold will also be allowed to use the <img> and <a> tag allowing them to put images and links on their homepage.
Bigger Images
Also, you may have noticed that gold shops using grid view now have much larger images. This was a small, less publicised change we made the other week.
What you wanted us to work on next
Thank you to everyone that voted in our poll. Thanks to you we will start work right now on providing stats about visitors to your shop.
Here are the full results of the poll:
Here are the full results of the poll:
Look out for more questionnaires in the future, because if you didn’t get what you wanted this time you may be able to get it next time
2008 Christmas internet buying trends
Now that 2008 is over, I thought it would be interesting to publish the sales behaviors over the Christmas period.
Here is a graph of all orders taken on all GroovyCart shops in the month of December:
Things to note:
Christmas day was still relatively busy (and the server didn’t even get a holiday like the rest of us), it was only slightly less busy then an average day.
That whopping big peek on the 18th just happens to coincide with the last posting day for second class post, methinks that many of you are last minute buyers like myself.
In our typical week Sunday is normally the busiest day, but over this Christmas period Sundays was fairly mediocre, this may have been because it was a popular day for people to go out high street shopping.
I hope you all had a great holiday.
Lots of love, The Groovy Team.
January Sales
I hope you have all had good pre Christmas sales, and to help you do even better in the January sales we have given all gold and silver shop owners the ability to run promotions on their products.
January Sales
This will allow you to easily add discounts to individual items or whole categories either as a percentage or money off.
The ability to edit a sales promotion will be added in a future upgrade, but we wanted to get this out as we are aware that Christmas and the January sales are looming. We also hope to add the ability to give promotional codes to your valued customers to allow discounts to individuals.
Search bar widget
Another feature that we snuck in is the ability to add a GroovyCart search to your browser.
If your browser has a search bar in the top left, then when you are at the GroovyCart homepage then click the drop down and select ‘Add GroovyCart Search’, and this will add GroovyCart to the list of search engines you can select.
This will bring more customers to your shop and make it easier for you to find your favourite shops.
Groovyness Happened!
Well we have released our new homepage and checkout pages, and I would love to know what everyone thinks about them.
We have been looking forward to showing you the new homepage for a long time. It should help direct more customers to your shop, and with the help of the new checkout pages it will be easier for your customers to buy from you.
Some important messages that you should know:
Shops with a space in the name:
If you originally had a space in your shop name then any links that you made to your shop will still work!
Google Checkout users:
Shops using Google Checkout should read this page, this will allow you to synchronise your orders between Google and GroovyCart.
Lots of love
- The Groovy Team
A Spanking New Homepage
"Ah Déjà vu" I hear you say, last time we said we were redoing the home page we just recoloured it. But this time it really is shiny and new. So in the coming weeks don’t be afraid if you come to our site and you think you are lost in the wilderness of the interweb, you are really with us at the GroovyCart homepage.
Features
We have really focused on helping shops to get customers with this new homepage. So this homepage will include functionality such as a shop search and a product search that will search everyone’s shop, bringing more customers to you.
As well as making everything Groovier and easier to use.
Other Developments
New Checkout
You will also see that we have greatly improved the ordering process, now customers using PayPal or Google Checkout will not need to register their details with us but can order their goods with just one click.
There are no major changes for shop owners to learn, but the whole of the customer side is much easier to use.
Christmas Widget
The featured products widget will be changed temporarily to a Christmas widget, so you all need to make sure that you have this widget turned on.
I hope you have fun with all these new things we have added!
Lots of love,
- David
New Features – Referrers and Events
This week we have introduced two new features to GroovyCart, you may have seen the new events system, but you may not have noticed our new referrers system.
Referrers
The referrers system allows you to make money by telling people about GroovyCart. If someone told you about GroovyCart you can select them here.
Introduce someone to GroovyCart and every time they upgrade we will pay you 25% of what they paid us. That could mean you would make £5 a month!
Also when you upgrade, we will give all the people you have referred 10% of the days you bought.
Events
The Events system will give you a great overview of all the actions that have happened on you shop, and is a great way to quickly get up to date when you first log in.
Instant upgrade
Another feature we added is the ability to instantly upgrade to a gold or silver account using your PayPal account, so you can start using the new features straight away.
PayPal Pro
We have also added the ability for you to use your PayPal Pro account as a payment method. This will allow you to take credit card transitions directly into your PayPal account.
Technorati
You can also subscribe to this blog on Technorati or via our RSS feed.
Hints & Tips for Selling on GroovyCart.co.uk
We’ve posted some "Hints & Tips for Selling on GroovyCart.co.uk" onto the GroovyCart Wiki, where you can add your own ideas simply by clicking on the ‘Add a new comment’ link at the bottom of that page:
Newsletter: 2
GROOVY NEWS 2
GROOVYCART Group on facebook
We have started a GROOVYCART group on facebook for shop-owners,
customers, in fact anyone who has an opinion on GroovyCart.co.uk.
Come and join us and have a say!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15911699316
We have added a button to allow you to see all your products on
Google. This is on the View/Edit/Delete Products page from the
Admin Panel.
You Can Now Send Newsletters to Your Customers
Gold band shops can now send Newsletters to their customers, or to
guests that have subscribed.
It's easy, just select the Newsletter link on the Admin Panel, type
in your Newsletter and hit send. There's even a test button which
allows you to send the Newsletter to yourself for proof reading.
List or Gallery Format
Currently, products are listed down the page in list format. Now
Silver and Gold shops can choose either this list style or the new
gallery style which lists thumb-nails across the page.
Security and Digital Certificates
To ensure that your personal information is secure and not
"snooped", we are now using digital certificates to encrypt the data
between your computer and the GroovyCart server.
You'll spot when the digital certificate is being used as a lock
will appear on your browser and the URL will start with "https"
instead of "http".
Whilst talking about security it's worth mentioning that we encrypt
your personal data at database level. This means that if the backup
tapes were stolen or left on a tube-train they can't be read !
Stats
your shop pages. On the right hand side of your Admin Panel under
the Logs/Stats box you will see a count of your visitors in the last
30 days.
Questionnaire
We hope you are enjoying using GroovyCart and are keen to get your
feedback, both positive and negative. If you have any suggestions
on improvements or features you would like to see, please let us know.
We would appreciate your comments.
Please click here (http://www.groovycart.co.uk/Admin/
Questionnaire.php) to login and fill in a short questionnaire.
Lots of Love from the GroovyCart team.
P.s. If you do not wish to receive further emails then you can
unsubscribe using the Advanced Settings from the Admin Panel
Wooo First Post
Well I thought now would be a good time to make my first entry in the blog, and let you all know what we are working on here at GroovyCart.
New homepage
The most noticeable thing I have been working on is a new homepage that will be ready to go live in the coming weeks. So this is a warning not to get too scared when we change over and you think you are lost in the vast abyss of the internet, you will be at the right website, its just we will have changed the colours to reflect our new logo. It is still work in progress, but I can show you a preview of what it should look like because it is unlikely to change dramatically between now and the next update.
For historical reasons I will also put up an image of what is now referred to as “The old home page”.
Site update
Some of the more observant of you may have noticed that on Friday (25th of April 2008) we sneaked out a small update to the website.
This included two main features as well as many other small changes:
Now anyone has the ability to report pages to the GroovyCart team to notify us of any problems or content they do not like via the Report Inappropriate Content button at the bottom of every shop page. .
Also for any silly people that have forgotten their shop login name/password (this includes you Mum) there is now an automatic feature to have a reminder sent to your E-mail address.
See you all at the next blog update.
Newsletter: 1
GROOVY NEWS
Thank You
Firstly I would like to say a big THANK YOU to all the GroovyCart shops that helped us in our Trial period.
I am happy to say that the trial period has come to an end without any hitches. Thanks for all your help and suggestions - Carry on sending them in!
GroovyCart will continue with a FREE Bronze service with upgrade days available for Silver & Gold services. You can view the prices and features for these levels here.
I would like to welcome THE DOLLY SELLERS! to GroovyCart. It was great to see all your shops springing up over the weekend.
Features
Customers are now more likely to find your products - Google Base Feed
We now have a daily, automatic, direct feed to the Google Search Engine. This will ensure that google is bang-up-to-date with any new products you list in your shop and ensures that customers are more likely to find you. This feed is in addition to the more usual Search Engine “Crawlers” which regularly visit GroovyCart to capture content.
Google has restrictions on the type of content that can be included in the daily feed, e.g content of an adult nature. We have added a new tick box so you can exclude all your inappropriate products. i.e. your nude Sindys’ ! Only joking, lol.
User Agreement
There has been a change to the user agreement, really just taking out the words trial as this is no longer applicable but you may wish to read them.
We have uploaded our first tutorial video onto Youtube click here to view. It was supposed to be a 50 second video, David did his best to comply but despite his quick talking was unable to deliver, it is now down to 3.15 mins, good try David. Hope you have better luck with the second one.
View all shops page
You may have noticed that we have made a slight change in order to tidy up the ‘View Other Shops’ page, we no longer display shops that are in the OFF mode. You may prefer to switch your shop ON with a Welcome message on your Homepage, informing future customers of who you are and what you intend to sell. Please bear in mind that if you leave your shop open and not stocked for too long customers may get fed up with returning and assume it’s inactive.
Security Software Upgrade
We have a security upgrade which needs applying, this should be straight forward and only take an hour or so, to cause the minimum inconvenience we plan doing this at 4am (date to be arranged) I apologise to our overseas shops for whom this may not be quite so convenient.
Questionnaire
We would appreciate your comments. Please click here to login and fill in a short questionnaire.
Lots of Love from the GroovyCart team.
P.s. If you do not wish to receive further emails please let us know and we will cross you off our list of friends.