Quick Shopping Cart Developers' Blog

Our blog has a new home!

2009-05-14T23:11:00Z

Our blog has moved to a new location. Please click here to see our latest posts and leave comments.

Introducing Background Image Replacement!

2009-03-17T14:36:00Z

We recently introduced the Background Image Replacement feature to Quick Shopping Cart (QSC). This feature lets you replace any of the images in your selected template, allowing you to achieve a far greater level of customization. For example, prior to this upgrade many of you inserted your logo images into your Storefront Header. Unfortunately, many of our templates don’t work well with your logo, so your choice of templates to which you could add your own logo was limited. Now, with the Background Image Replacement feature, you can incorporate your logo right into the template by replacing the template’s main image with your logo.

Using this feature is simple. Select Background Images from the Storefront menu, and you’re presented with all the images in your template. To change an image, simply select it, and click “Change Image.” After you select an image and click “Ok,” you can choose how you want the new image to be formatted. Your options are:

Original – Use the image you selected in its original size and format.
Scale to Fit – Size the image so it's equal to or less than the original image's dimensions while preserving the aspect ratio. This option will prevent the image from becoming distorted, but it may not take up the full area that the template image took up. The template image’s original dimensions are listed as the “Available Space” below the image.
Stretch to Fit – Make the selected image the exact same size as the original template image. This option will not respect aspect ratio and can distort your image.
Tile – Keep the selected image in its original size, but force it to repeat vertically and horizontally.
Tile Horizontally - Keep the selected image in its original size, but force it to repeat horizontally.
Tile Vertically - Keep the selected image in its original size, but force it to repeat vertically.

Note that you aren’t locked into a format once you choose it—you can always come back to the page and change the formatting for that image.

The feature also gives you the ability to completely clear out a template image so that no image is displayed. You can accomplish this by selecting the image and clicking “Delete Image.” Finally, you can easily undo any customization you make by selecting an image and clicking “Revert to Original.”

We have also added pre-defined custom header images for certain templates, which you can select from the Templates tab. If a template has pre-defined custom images, the header image displays as an attribute on the template and you can click it to change it. If you select an image from the Templates tab, the change is reflected on the Background Images page. Note that changing your template wipes out any background image customizations you have made, but changing the color scheme of your template does not wipe them out.

This feature has also been integrated with the “My Saved Skins” feature. So, every time you save a skin, your current background images are saved as well. Consequently, if you load a skin, any custom background images you had when you saved that skin are reloaded. And don’t forget that every time you change your template, we automatically save a skin for you.

This Background Image Replacement feature is a great way for you to customize your site, so check it out and see how you can personalize your site’s appearance.

Introducing Affiliate Marketing!

2009-03-16T15:45:00Z

Now, you can partner with two affiliate marketing companies, LinkShare and ShareASale, to increase your store’s exposure on the Internet.

The basic concept:
Affiliate marketing companies help you find sites willing to advertise your store. These advertisers, or affiliates as they’re called, post a link to your store on their site. In return, the affiliate receives a commission if a shopper follows the link and ultimately places an order.

Getting started is easy:
We take care of all the technical aspects; You just need to sign up with one of the affiliate marketing companies, set your commission rates, and upload your marketing links (links to your products, etc). Once you’ve completed the setup process, the affiliate marketing company helps you find affiliates that are a good match for your store.

We take care of the rest:
We recognize when a customer comes to your store from one of your affiliates. If that customer completes an order, we send a commission notification to the affiliate marketing company and they initiate the commission process.

Check out your affiliate marketing results:
In Quick Shopping Cart, we mark orders placed by customers who came to your site through an affiliate so you can track how many orders your affiliate marketing campaign is generating. The order’s source code is set to LinkShare or ShareASale, depending on which company you’ve selected. You can view all your orders, broken down by source code, using the “Total Sales By Source Code” report.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to reach new customers. And, because you get to choose the affiliates that link to your store, you know they will be a good match. This means you can generate specific, well-targeted advertising for a relatively low cost. More importantly, you only pay your affiliates when a shopper comes from their site and actually completes an order. So, you’re only paying for real results.

This new feature will really help you generate more sales. To get started, select Affiliate Marketing from the Promotions menu.

International Shipping!

2009-02-26T01:04:00Z

International Shipping!

International shipping has arrived. You requested it... we delivered. There are many considerations which you should be aware of when shipping overseas. This article will describe how you can enable your Quick Shopping Cart to ship internationally.

International Checklist

The following is a checklist to consider when configuring International Shipping:

Configure which countries you will support (Merchant Supported Countries). This is the fundamental step that drives others.

Exclude products that will not or cannot ship to foreign countries.

Configure a Shipping provider capable of shipping internationally.

Review any "Free Shipping" coupons to see if they apply to other countries.

Preview and Publish

Each of these items is described below.

Merchant Supported Countries

You (the Merchant) have the power to pick and choose which countries you want to sell to. To pick your countries, select Preferences from the Storefront menu and go to the "International Shipping" section.

The countries in the Available list are available for your site to support. The countries in the Selected list are the countries that your site currently supports. The Selected countries appear in the Country drop-down control on the Billing/Shipping Addresses page in your storefront's checkout process.

Add Countries by selecting one or more countries in the Available list and click [>>] to push these into the Selected pane. To remove countries, select one or more countries in the Selected pane and click the [<<] button. To select more than one country at a time, hold down the Control (Ctrl) key on your keyboard while you click on countries in the list.

Click the Save button at the bottom of the page to save the countries you have selected. You have now configured the countries to which your site can ship.

You can always test your settings before you publish by opening the Preview window. This allows you to see what these new settings will look like before you publish. After publishing, your site can ship to the new countries.

Excluding Countries for Products

Depending on what you sell, you may not want to ship, or are prohibited from shipping, some of your products to certain countries. Quick Shopping Cart provides the ability for you to prevent products from being shipped to certain countries.

Select Products from the Catalog menu and then click the product name that you want to edit. Go to the International Shipping section and click the Modify selected countries link to display the list of countries that your site supports.

After clicking this link, you can select countries where this product should not be allowed to ship. After publishing your selections, your storefront prevents customers from shipping this product to the excluded countries.

Remember to press the Save button to store your settings.

Shipping Options

In order to actually get the products to the international customers, you will need to configure a shipping carrier that is capable of delivering your product to the customer. Currently, there are two shipping options that support international shipping: UPS and Custom. To modify your shipping options, select Shipping from the Processing menu and then select Edit or Enable next to the option you want to modify.

UPS

In addition to completing the normal UPS configuration, you must select one or more of the following International UPS Services:

UPS Worldwide Express
UPS Worldwide Expedited
UPS Worldwide Express Plus
UPS Saver
UPS Standard

Custom

In addition to completing the normal Custom Shipping configuration, you can apply surcharges for specific countries or regions to provide a more granular level of control over shipping charges. The following picture shows how you can add surcharges to specific countries or regions to cover more expensive destinations than those in the continental US.

Coupon Configuration (Custom Shipping only)

If you have "Custom" Shipping enabled, some Free Shipping coupons can be very costly if you ship from the US and are shipping to another country. These coupons by default will not apply to other countries unless you enable them.

Quick Shopping Cart allows you to apply Free Shipping coupons to non-US countries. After ensuring you have Custom shipping enabled, select Coupons from the Promotions menu and then click the Add New Coupon link.

Storefront

After all of your settings have been saved and published, your International Shipping configuration is complete. There are some changes to the checkout process to be aware of.

Address Pages

When the shopper selects a different Country in the address page, the following changes automatically occur:

Shopper is presented with an updated State/Province list relevant to the country;
Shopper gets Postal Code and Phone Number hints (that will pass validation);
After submitting, validation errors will occur if either the postal code or phone number does not match the style that the country requires.

Exclusions

If you excluded any products from shipping to certain countries, these countries are identified on the product's detail page:

As a reminder to the shopper, these same countries are identified in the customer's Shopping Cart:

If the customer attempts to ship a product to a country that you created an exclusion for on the Products page, a validation error will appear at the top of the page and will not allow the customer to proceed with the purchase until the items are removed.

Review and Publish

As with all other Quick Shopping Cart functions, you are encouraged to preview the changes frequently before publishing. You can preview your work by either clicking the [Preview] button in the upper right corner or refreshing (F5 Key) the preview window if it is already open. When you feel comfortable with the configuration, publish.

Country Additions

Quick Shopping Cart will periodically add countries to its list of Available countries in the "International Shipping" section on the Storefront > Preferences page. If you visit this page, you may notice new countries that you can select for shipping.

Media Gallery FAQ

2008-10-27T23:39:00Z

Hopefully, you all are enjoying the new Media Gallery. Many of you have been asking for this feature, and we feel it has the potential to greatly enhance your storefronts. As you've probably noticed, this new feature completely changes how you use and manage images within QSC. We want to make your transition to this new feature as easy as possible and have therefore added several help articles explaining the Media Gallery in detail. But we realize that many of you have questions beyond the scope of the help articles. So, here are some Frequently Asked Questions about the Media Gallery. Hopefully, you'll find your answers here.

I use gif images to prevent my product thumbnails from being scaled down too small, can I still do this?
With the new Media Gallery, we've built in a more intuitive way to control how your images are scaled. You can now choose whether you want an image to be scaled or full-size, and you can do this with any image format, not just gifs. To determine whether to scale an image, enter the product's Media Gallery, drag an image to the thumbnail slot, and then click the arrow next to the Thumbnail title. You are presented with two display options: scale to fit and full size. To attain the same functionality that you achieved using gifs, select the full size option. You can come back to the product whenever you want and switch the option that you've chosen.

I use gif images in other parts of my site to prevent scaling, is this still necessary?
No, it's not. Now, you can use any valid image format and keep the original upload size of the image. When the image is uploaded, you are presented with the option to scale the image or keep the full size version. To keep the original size of the uploaded image, select full size. The one caveat is that the maximum image size is 1024x768. If it's any larger than that, we'll scale it down to be within those dimensions.

Why do I see three copies of each image in my Media Gallery?
We imported all of your existing images into the Media Gallery. For many products, you may have used the same image for the thumbnail, standard, and zoom images. In our system, these are three distinct images with different dimensions, so we added them all to the Media Gallery. If you have duplicates and want to get rid of them, just keep the version with the largest dimensions. Those of you who have used different images for thumbnail, standard, and zoom won't see these duplicate images.

There are a lot of images from existing products in my Media Gallery. Do I need to keep these images or can I delete them?
You can delete the images from your Media Gallery without affecting your products. We added the existing product images to your gallery so that you could reuse them. However, if you don't plan on reusing them, feel free to delete them from your Media Gallery.

When I upload images, I'm asked to add titles and tags. What are these for and how do I use them?
We added the tags and titles to help you manage your images. You can search the Media Gallery for images based on tags and title. Use tags to group images together. For example, if you sell clothing and apparel, such as shirts, shoes, and hats, you could tag all your pictures of hats with the term "hats." Then, in the Media Gallery, if you search for the word “hats,” you'll only see images that have the "hats" tag or that have the word "hats" in the title. You can assign multiple tags to an image by separating them with a comma. Titles and tags are completely optional, you don't have to add them if you don't want. When importing images from existing products to the Media Gallery, we used the title of the product for each image's title and we tagged each image with the product's part number and the term "small," "large," or "zoom."

Will changing the default product images update all products currently set to use the default product images?
Yes. The next time you publish, all products set to use the default product images will display the new images.

Is there anyway to set the default display option for thumbnails of new products?
Yes. This option is available on the Preferences page under the Storefront menu option. The option is under the Media Gallery Preferences section. This option will be used as your default option for all new products.

Customizing Your Storefront With QSC Advanced CSS, part 2

2008-04-21T20:34:29Z

This is the second article in a series for Power Users and Web Site Designers on one of Quick Shopping Cart's newest features: Advanced CSS. Using the Advanced CSS feature, you can override and extend almost any style in your chosen template, ensuring that your storefront truly reflects your desires and the needs of your customers.
A question we frequently receive is, "How can I change my site header to the same image as my other website?" In this article, we show you how to customize your header background image, header font styles, and more. If you haven't read the first article in this series, you can review the information about using the Advanced CSS feature.

Customizing Your Header

You may have another site with a custom header that you or your designer have created, and now you'd like to use that header image with your storefront. Let's look at how to make this simple change.
Here is the before/after sample:

The top example is the header image that comes with the theme we've selected (in this case, Retro Sign - A). The bottom example shows how we want the header to look. We've tweaked the main text and replaced the background image with one of our own making.
Here's the CSS code:

#header-content {
     background-image: url(sample_header.png);
     height: 118px;

}

.titles h1.company-name {
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-weight: normal;
}

The first block sets the header’s background image to our new sample_header image, and then adjusts the height to accommodate the new design.
The second block targets the company name text in the header and changes it to a serif font family, setting it apart from the original design.

Disappearing Act

So far, we've focused on how to change the appearance of certain features in Quick Shopping Cart. You can also completely remove a component from your site. You can accomplish this action by selectively hiding parts of the storefront using CSS. However, using this feature is confusing if you forget that you've hidden part of the site.
The basic technique to hide a component is to add a CSS “display:none;” style line for the component you'd like to hide. For example, here is the CSS to hide the breadcrumbs:

#breadcrumbs {
      display: none;

}

With this style line, customers don’t see the breadcrumbs when navigating through the site - there won't even be an empty space where they used to be. It's like they never existed. Here's another example:

.category-list {
      display: none;

}

This line hides the list of categories in your sidebar.

We’ve provided a few examples of storefront components that can be customized using the new Advanced CSS features in Quick Shopping Cart, but the possibilities for customization are countless To dive deeper into what can be done with CSS, you need to look at the storefront code to see what’s going on Fortunately, there are tools to help you look at the storefront code.

X-Ray Vision

The Firefox Web browser supports a wide range of extensions to make designing and developing your Web site easier. One example is Firebug, an extension that lets you see the HTML, CSS, and Javascript that make up the page.

As an example, here’s the Product Details page with the product name highlighted as seen with Firebug (click to enlarge view).

The left pane shows the HTML structure with the selected element highlighted. The right panel shows the CSS code for that element, allowing you to see how the element is styled. You can even experiment with the look by editing the styles in Firebug in real time. The sample site we used for this and the previous article was built using this process. We highlighted an element to customize, experimented with the styles, and then wrote it into our Advanced CSS.

Learn more:

Firefox
Firebug
Firebug screencast
W3Schools on HTML
W3Schools on CSS

Want More?

In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we introduced some powerful tools to help you dig into your storefront. We looked at techniques to customize different parts of your storefront, including background images, custom buttons, custom header, and hiding parts of the page.

Want more? Add a comment letting us know what other parts of your storefront you’d like to polish up, and we’ll see about addressing the request in a future article.

Customizing Your Storefront With QSC Advanced CSS, Part 1

2008-04-01T20:29:00Z

The latest release of Quick Shopping Cart brought with it a new level of customization for Power Users and Web Site Designers: Advanced CSS. Using the Advanced CSS feature, you can override and extend almost any style in your chosen template, ensuring that your storefront truly reflects your desires and the needs of your customers.
In this, the first of two articles on the new Advanced CSS feature, we look at a couple specific techniques that you can use to customize your storefront appearance beyond the designs QSC currently provides. For this article, we assume that you have a basic understanding of both HTML and CSS, and of how they work together to style a site.

To start writing your custom CSS, select the Storefront menu, then Advanced CSS. Enter any CSS style you'd like to override the site's default style, select the Active checkbox, and then click Save. At any time you can de-select the Active checkbox, and your site will revert to its default state without losing your custom CSS.

Background Images

First, let’s address adding background images to your site. Background images can be used to highlight information on a page or just add that extra bit of "flair" to the design. For example, you can add an attractive gradient fade to the product name on the Product Detail page.
You can see the applied style in this before/after view of the product title on the Product Detail Page:

This is the gradient image:

Here is the CSS code that adds the image to the headerstyles the header on the right (background image code is in bold):

.product-detail-header h2 {
     font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
     font-weight: normal;
     font-size: 2.5em;
     background-image: url(rem_store_grad.png);
     background-repeat: repeat-x;
     background-position: bottom left;
     padding-bottom: 10px;
     border-bottom: 2px solid #552906;

}

You can host your background image anywhere that is accessible from the public web, such as a WebSite Tonight account, an Online Photo Filer gallery, or any public Web host. To get the address (URL) for your image, view the image in your Web browser, right-click, and select either "Properties" (Internet Explorer) or "Copy Image Location" (Firefox). In Explorer, select and copy the URL for the image, then close the properties window.
You can now use that address as the value for the "url" in the sample code above.

Buttons

We’re frequently asked, "How can I customize my storefront ‘Add To Cart’ buttons? I don't like the browser buttons." Well, here is a technique for creating a fast-loading, image-based button that includes a mouse-over highlight in modern browsers.
First, a useful before/after:

On the left, you can see the default look of the Add To Cart buttons (in Firefox on Windows). On the right, the new look with normal and hover (mouse-over) states side-by-side.
Here is the image we use for our new buttons:

That's one image, and it has both versions of the button. We'll use a CSS technique to change which part of the image is shown when the customer moves the mouse over the button, although this is dependent on the Web browser used to view it.

This is the CSS code that renders the new buttons:

/*
      input.content-product-button is the add-to-cart button on product listings
      .product-options-table input.btn is the add-to-cart button on the product detail page
      .featured-item-button is the add-to-cart button on the featured product

*/

input.content-product-button,

.product-options-table input.btn,

.featured-item-button {
     height: 25px;
     width: 107px;
     background-color: transparent;

    background-image: url(sample_add_cart.gif);

    background-repeat: no-repeat;

    background-position: 0 0;
     font-size: 0px;
     border: none;

}



/*
      The mouse-over feature works in IE7/Windows, Safari/Mac, and Firefox, but not IE6

*/

input.content-product-button:hover,

.product-options-table .btn:hover,

.featured-item-button:hover {
     background-position: 0 -25px; 

}

The tricky part of this code is that last style line. By setting the background-position to -25px, we move the image up to show the darker hover state when the customer hovers over the button. With this style, the browser only needs to load a single image, which can help speed page loads. Also, we set the width and height of the button to the size of the button image, and set the font-size to 0 (to hide the default text in the button).
In our next article, we look at overriding fonts and colors for specific elements, and see how to use your custom CSS to move elements on the page.

An Updated Guide to Integrating Your WebSite Tonight and Quick Shopping Cart sites

2008-03-28T17:00:00Z

With the latest releases of Quick Shopping Cart® (QSC), we've been including templates and themes that match templates in our WebSite Tonight® (WST) product. By applying the same template to both applications, you can maintain a custom Web site in WebSite Tonight and run a matching eCommerce site with Quick Shopping Cart, giving your customers a more seamless and enjoyable shopping experience.
We've also released a feature of our navigation editor that allows you more customization control to closely tie your different site accounts together. We take a look at this feature in this article.

Select Your WST Site Template

Start with your WebSite Tonight site. In WST, from the Design menu, select Template and Color to select a template. It may take a few minutes to find a template that is available for both WST and QSC. Here I've chosen "Global" in WST; its counterpart in QSC is "Global 2 – A,"

Customize the navigation
After selecting a template for your WST site, you can customize your navigation to allow customers to more easily move back and forth between the two sites.

From the Design menu, select Page Designer and then double-click the menubar to open the Edit Navigation window. Click Add New Button. Under Type, select URL. Enter the URL of your published Quick Shopping Cart site, and then enter a label. I’ve used "Store" for this example. Click OK to save your changes. Publish your WST site.

Select your QSC site template

Now, let’s customize your Quick Shopping Cart. In QSC, from the Storefront menu, click Templates. In category menu, select New. Locate the template you used for your WST site. In this example, I used "Global 2 –A," which is the corollary to WST's "Global" theme. Once you've selected the template, click Save.

Customize the QSC menu

After selecting the template for your QSC site, you can customize QSC's menubar to link to your WST site.
From the Storefront menu, select Menu Customization. In the Main Menu, click Add to open the Menu Item editor. In the Page menu, select WebSite Tonight. Because you should enter a label that matches your WST site, which defaults to "Home Page," it is best to enter “Home” or "Home Page" in the label field. Then, in the WST Account menu, select the WST account that you're linking to. In the Target menu, specify which window or frame in which you want the page to open.

Note:

If you purchased your WST site in a different Go Daddy account than the account with which you purchased your QSC site, your WST site will not display in the WST Account menu. To remedy this issue, in the Page menu, select Custom, and enter the URL that points to your published WST site. Click Save, and then publish your QSC site.

Your WST and QSC accounts now display the same template and are linked. If your users click Store on your Web site, they are taken to your QSC storefront; and if they click Home Page on the storefront, they are returned to your Web site. This same technique could also be used, for example, to link from the WST site to your QSC Contact page.

Our Sample Sites, Together

QSC Favicon. Getting a hold of the little picture

2008-02-18T23:56:19Z

Quick Shopping Cart now supports favicons: the cool little images that display in the address bar and browser tabs when you go to a Web site. For example, Google’s favicon is a "G" icon that displays in the address bar. Also, these icons show up when saved to favorites and can show up in Internet Explorer (IE) if you save them to your desktop.

Now that this feature exists, you can create and upload an image that represents your site. Since IE only supports icon ".ico" types, we recommend you create an icon file that's 16x16 in size.

Using an existing icon

If you already have an icon, you can simply upload that image to QSC and publish. If you have a WebSite Tonight site, you may already have a usable icon. Just go to your site's root and append "/favicon.ico" (for example: www.coolexample.com/favicon.ico). If the browser displays an image, right-click that image, and save it to your file system.

Creating a new icon

Follow these suggestions to help ensure success when creating a favicon:

Create with an icon editor.

You can find many professional and free utilities by simply running a Web search for "Icon Editor" using your favorite search engine. For development and testing purposes, we created test icons using the free image creation utility: http://www.gimp.org/

Create a clean 16x16 .ico file.

Favicon images display best when saved as a 16x16 pixel size. Most editors can scale existing images to this size, so you could use an existing image as a starter.
While we support many file types, an .ico file is the most widely supported (the only type supported by Internet Explorer) and is most easily viewable by your customers.

Use Transparent Background

The ,ico format allows for transparent background and therefore displays the most cleanly, regardless of the color scheme settings of the browser displaying it.

Publish icon files infrequently.

Remember, your customers’ browsers cache your old icon and probably never know it has changed. These customers only see the change after their browsers’ cache has been cleared or after the site information has expired. New customers have no problems seeing up the newer icon.

Upload instructions.

New Features: Advanced CSS and Saved Skins

2008-02-18T17:43:00Z

Greetings. I want to take a moment to introduce two new features available in Quick Shopping Cart® 2.3: Advanced CSS and Saved Skins. The goal of these two features is to allow you greater control and flexibility over the look and feel of your site.

The Advanced cascading style sheets (CSS) feature provides you with a new level of customization for your cart. With it, you can add your own CSS styling throughout your site. This advanced feature goes beyond the level of customization allowed by the “Customize Colors and Fonts” feature. However, to use it, you must be familiar with CSS. You can start learning about CSS at www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

One great way to get started in the use of advanced CSS is to customize your background with an image. Instead of a simple solid background color, you can have any image accessible via a URL as the background for your site. The basic syntax for this is:

body
{
background-image: url(image location);
}

There are many other options to style the background image, as well. For example, to make the image repeat, add the background-repeat option To lock the background in place relevant to the actual content on your pages, use the background-attachment option. You can also combine styles. For example, to have a site with a background image that repeats and doesn’t scroll, you would add the following lines to your advanced CSS:

body
{
background-image: url(image location);
background-repeat: repeat;
background-attachment: fixed;
}

Be aware that if you have SSL enabled and choose to customize your background in this way, your customers may see a security message stating that the page contains secure and insecure items when they go to check out. This behavior is browser specific and cannot be controlled by Quick Shopping Cart®. One possible solution to this situation is to ensure that the image URL is secure by verifying its URL begins with https instead of http. This is just one example of the many customizations you’ll be able to achieve using the advanced CSS feature.

Another new QSC feature is My Saved Skins, which allows you to save snapshots of your site's graphical layout. When you create a new skin, your site's template, color theme, category page style, product page style, custom fonts and colors, and advanced CSS are backed up. Creating skins gives you the ability to confidently try new look and feel options, since you can always reload a previously saved skin. Moreover, you can save up to 50 skins, so you can build different skins for specific occasions. Using the My Saved Skins manager, you can create new skins, apply a skin, update an existing skin, rename a skin, and delete a skin.

Remember, saving a skin takes a snapshot of your site's current settings. The skin’s settings do not change unless you overwrite it using the My Saved Skins manager. When you overwrite a skin, all settings for that skin are replaced with the site's current settings. So when using this new tool, back up your current settings and explore the many new templates we’ve added.

Quick Shopping cart 2.3 release

2008-02-15T23:47:25Z

Greetings,

Quick Shopping Cart 2.3 has recently been released and contains the following features.

Improved Tax support:

We've added support for more tax rates down to the zip code level as well as creating the option to exempt certain products from tax. You can activate this feature by going to the State-based tax within the processing tab and then adding in rates for the applicable zip codes for your situation. Additionally, you can now choose whether or not shipping is taxable.

Improved Themes / Customization of CSS stylesheet.

Actually we should boast a little here. Two of the largest user requests we've received that relate to themes have been for the ability to create and use your own CSS and to save and edit different versions of your storefront. We have an in-depth post from one of our engineers, as well as six new help articles to better explain this new functionality and what it can do for you.

Favorite Icon support

Most of you have noticed the icons that often display to the right of the URL in the address bar mirroring the graphical identity of a Web site. Indeed, many of you use them within your stores’ companion Web sites. We've added the ability to use favicons in QSC. A detailed blog entry on how to make the most of this feature is located here.

Thank you all once again for you support, and please keep your feedback and suggestions coming.

Regards

John

QSC team

QSC owners now have a forum.

2008-02-08T20:48:00Z

Just the other day someone on the blog asked:

“Why in the hell don't you have a forum for the QSC customers??? I have a new question everyday! I don't want to wait 2 days for a reply!”

I considered this question and after about 23 milliseconds came to the only correct answer: we do need a QSC forum. Therefore, I'd like to introduce QSC owners to their own section within Go Daddy Connections..

What this forum is.

The Quick Shopping Cart Forum is a place for QSC customers to gather and discuss the program, how they use it, challenges they've overcome, and any tips and tips they’ve picked up along the way. Running a small business requires that you take on various roles, many of which are full-time jobs in the paid world. At any given moment, you might be a graphic designer, copywriter, postal clerk, or customer service representative. Add to this list a bit of Web design, photography, and accounting, and you’ve got an average Monday. :) So, if you've solved a problem that someone else may benefit from reading about or have one that someone might be able to solve, we’d love to hear from you. The forum is lightly moderated and predominantly self-policing; the rest I leave to your good judgment.

What this forum is not.

The Quick Shopping Cart forum is not an official support venue. We have 24-7 phone and email support for all our applications. For any pressing or time-sensitive concerns, those avenues would be your best bet.

I'm starting out with a few basic topics, but we’ll open more focused areas as the need arises. Thank you very much for your feedback, and I hope you enjoy getting to know your fellow store owners.

John

QSC Team

QSC A value added workaround

2008-01-22T22:52:00Z

Greetings and salutations.

Today's entry is on a workaround for tax-exempt items. We’ve received requests to accommodate a tax-exempt status with Quick Shopping Cart. While we don't have a specific category for this, there's a workaround that some of you may find useful. Those who have some untaxed items and thousands of taxed items can stop reading now. Additionally, this solution is primarily applicable for those who conduct most of their business within one state.

The Problem

Many states have items that are tax-exempt based on the nature of the item, the purchaser's intended usage, and many other local factors that would drive a developer to drink more decaffeinated beverages before trying to untangle the tax code for each city, county, and state.

Obviously, I'm not a tax professional, and the workaround doesn't guarantee anything, but you can use the following method to create tax-exempt sales on one or more of your products. This method is merely a suggestion and we are not responsible for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided in this blog article

The Solution

There are several tax options within the Processing > Taxes screen. The one that we're interested in is VAT (Value Added Tax). Presently VAT is our only per product tax attribute. The remaining flat tax and state tax options are applied equally over all products.

Here's how to create an exempt item. First, switch your taxation type to VAT and save the setting. We are now at the part where people who have thousands of items should stop reading.

Go into each of your products and set the VAT percentage to your current state tax limit for all items you still want to collect tax on. For exempt items, leave the VAT at 0.

Issues: Won't this apply tax to that item regardless of the state businesses are in?

That's indeed a problem, and although it has a workaround (a coupon for the % off the purchase that equals your state’s sales tax rate ), it's not a very elegant one. However, it could work for you.

Please note these workarounds are not a substitute for us revising and extending features within future releases; we provide workarounds to give immediate assistance to our current users.

QuickBooks® Integration Improvements

2008-01-02T17:26:00Z

Hello, my name is Craig. I am a software developer on the Quick Shopping Cart® team, and I’ve been with GoDaddy.com® since May 2007. Prior to joining GoDaddy.com, I helped design and develop software for federal law enforcement agencies. As a member of the Quick Shopping Cart team, I want to provide our customers with the best ecommerce solution on the market. One area of Quick Shopping Cart that I’ve been involved with is QuickBooks® Integration, and we’ve recently made some improvements that you may not be aware of.

QuickBooks Integration Improvements

Our improvements focused on making the integration more robust and reliable. For example, when updating QuickBooks, we flag and skip sales receipts that would previously have caused the update to fail. At the end of the update session, you’re notified if any invoices were skipped. This notification is displayed in the “Status” pane of the Web Connector and on the QuickBooks Integration page in Quick Shopping Cart. If you receive such a notice, contact our customer support and we can work to resolve the issue with you. Generally, this only occurs when there is a problem with the integration setup or a particular sales receipt, so most of our users won’t experience it.
We’ve also enhanced support for unattended operations and automatic updates. Unattended operations allow the Quick Shopping Cart Web Service to update your QuickBooks company file even if QuickBooks isn’t open, and the automatic updates feature refers to the “Auto-Run” option inside of the Web Connector. Now, you have the ability to indicate whether or not you want to allow unattended operations. You can change your preference in the QuickBooks Integration: Edit Configuration page. Automatic updates work hand-in-hand with unattended operations. If you want to perform automatic updates, make sure you enable unattended operations; QuickBooks may close when the updates run. Also, if you enable the Auto-Run feature, we suggest setting the service to run every couple of hours instead of every few minutes.

A special note on unattended operations: if you’ve set up multiple users for your QuickBooks company file, you probably had to indicate which user you wanted the Quick Shopping Cart Web Service to “connect as” when QuickBooks isn’t open – make sure the user you select has the privileges to access the Chart of Accounts and input sales receipts. Also, regardless of the user you selected, if QuickBooks is open, the Quick Shopping Cart Web Service will have the privileges of the user that opened it. This is QuickBooks behavior that we don’t have control over, but we are investigating the issue and will provide a help article soon on how to troubleshoot problems that may arise because of it.

Those are the major changes made to QuickBooks Integration; I hope they serve you all well. I’d also like to take this chance to encourage you to make sure your QuickBooks Web Connector program is up-to-date. Currently, the latest version is 2.0.0.107. You can see which version you are running by opening the Web Connector, clicking Help, and then clicking About QuickBooks Web Connector. If you have an older version, go to: marketplace.intuit.com/webconnector/webconnector.aspx to download and install the latest version.

Quick Shopping Cart 2.2 release

2007-12-21T15:36:00Z

Greetings and salutations,

Quick Shopping Cart Version 2.2 made it into the wild and contains several new features.

On Safari

With the addition of Safari 3.0 support to the administration section of your Quick Shopping cart, you can now use Safari with QSC.

Website Tonight link integration.

For people who use both QSC and our Web site builder, we've made it easier to create a common navigation between the two programs.

How do I get it?

To set up this relationship, log into your QSC store, select Menu Customization from the Storefront menu, and then click the Add button. Select WebSite Tonight from the Page list and enter the label for the hyperlink to your WST site. Select the WST site and specify the window or frame in which you want the site to open. We default to none, which replaces your storefront with the front page of your Web site. You can set the order in which this link displays and preview the page prior to publishing your storefront with these changes.

Instructions on how to set up the reciprocal link within WST can be found on their product blog .Note both QSC and the active WST site must be in the same shopper account.

Continue Shopping

Many of our store owners asked for an option to link back to their main site from the cart summary page,just prior to the purchase process. We’ve added the ability to “continue shopping.” You can customize the label and specify the destination URL for the hyperlink.

How do I get it?

Select Preferences fro the Storefront menu. Select Override Continue Shopping Destination and enter the URL you want to use.

Fixed items

Update Yahoo!/Overture conversion tracking to support a new ID. Read more about this in our help system ( links to article). Basically, you must change your conversion tracking information; however, your legacy Yahoo!/Overture ID will continue to work for the time being. Any other updates to this screen require you to provide us with your new Marketing ID and Yahoo!(r) Server information.

Per a user’s request, we updated new order email to include phone numbers. There are many more small changes you may notice as you navigate through your account. Until next time, keep your suggestions and comments coming.

John

Using Coupons as Gift Certificates

2007-12-19T20:09:00Z

Quick Shopping Cart Gift Certificates.

Many people requested gift cards as an option within their store. Although we have this on our road map, it's not going to come in time for the holidays.

One of the challenges to providing a store for different business models is to give features generic names, which may belie its underlying ability. One such area is our coupons feature, accessible through the Site Promotion menu, which we can use to create a gift certificate that works as a gift card.

I'm not going to pretend this is a full gift card implementation, but we've found that this system works for some of our owners, and, at the very least, we can kick off a discussion on how a future gift card system might function.

When you get down to it, a gift card is a unique coupon. With an additional piece of manual processing, it's quite easy to create a single use gift card that fulfills most requirements for a gift card to redeem within your store. I'm not going to go into how you create and disseminate the coupon, for example, you create a product called Gift Certificates and include attributes that define the values you want to offer, and then the user provides any personalization within the “special instructions” box during checkout. You can print the coupon and mail it to the recipient.What matters is this: the user has the certificate, it can be used one time, and, if it gets lost, you can deactivate it prior to issuing a substitute, should you be so inclined.

Add the coupon.

Assign a unique code. The more obscure, the better, but try to stick to characters that aren’t easy to confuse, such as O and 0. For example, use Whee-23-12. Within the description, use either the specific person, or, if you have general coupons that anyone can redeem, use something more suitable. I strongly suggest adding the recipient’s name, where possible, to make it easy to search for a lost coupon.

Set this coupon to active, fill in the amount requested, and check on the minimum purchase. For a certificate, this is usually “not required.” How happy would you be to receive a discount coupon versus a gift certificate? Same mechanism, same paper, but nowhere near the same effect.

Set the dates for which you want this to be active. Your local state may have specific rules for these, so, before restricting this range, find out what's permissible. Now for the important part, set the Maximum number of uses to one. If you want to add notes on the circumstance of the sale, do so, and then save the coupon. Next, get this coupon, er, gift certificate, to the user, and they can shop to their heart’s content.

Management:

What if it goes missing?

To look up the name it was issued to, use the search feature within the coupon section. We're assuming they don't have the code, since they could just use that. When you've located the coupon, check that it has not been activated, and set the coupon to inactive prior to creating another one. The old coupon is now worth the paper it was printed on.

Can they use a partial Gift Certificate?

While there's no automatic process for this scenario, here are a couple of suggestions on how to accommodate such. If the buyer adds $15 to the cart and pays with a $25 certificate then they will have a shortfall. You can avoid this situation by setting the coupon to require a minimum amount equal to the gift certificate. Or, process the certificate and create a new one for the remainder.

Hopefully, this entry falls into the same category. Please let us know if you have success with this idea or if you've created a different workflow.

Do we validate? Parking, no. Xhtml? Yes! 2.1 released

2007-12-13T17:18:00Z

Greetings

The 2.1 release of Quick Shopping cart was released on December 11th and while most of the work was “under the hood” there's a couple of visible changes I'd like to bring to your attention .

Xhtml Validation

We've added a Verify button to any of our input fields that accept HTML to ensure that the code is xhtml 1.0 compatible. If it's not we’ll let you know, and even point out the section that fails, otherwise you will be rewarded with a dialog congratulating you on your mad markup skills. We're still allowing you to proceed through the warnings to post non compliant code though it’s advisable that you resolve any errors before enacting a change that could break the display of your shopping cart.

Inventory choice: When is a sale a sale?

That’s a question that many of you asked us to reconsider. With the 2.0 release a change was made to the point at which we decreased the inventory for an item to the invoice creation. This was in response to our store owners that had shoppers visit their store, fail to complete the order, e.g. no sale was made yet we took the item out of stock prevent resale until the owner intervened. This makes sense for people with larger inventories or that sell items that cant be reordered. The inverse was that people with limited stock of unique or limited inventory could now easily oversell when anyone used the pay and call method. Both points of view are valid and this choice is now included within the program.

You can locate this choice by going to your Storefront tab > Preferences > Order Preferences

Templates / Invoice

We've also fixed many template issues and chances are if you reported an issue it's been resolved within this build. One additional change is within the invoice section where Payment status no longer shows on the invoice . This stems from an internal label we were using “incomplete” which was a status for the store owner being carried through to the invoice. We're still working on many of the requests we've had on this blog, and through our feedback link in the program, so keep them coming .

Regards

John
QSC
Team.

Mark my word, err… images.

2007-12-03T20:10:00Z

After all, you have an image to protect. One of the great things about the WWW is that people get to see the results of your creativity, work, and skill. This is excellent if you make furniture, restore cars, or sell any tangible item or service online. But, it’s not so convenient when the item for sale is often directly reproducible with a screen capture, right click save, or a myriad of devious, though readily circumvented, techniques. I’d like to qualify this line from the help files linked to below.

“NOTE: The securest and safest method of protecting valuable digital images is to refrain from sending them through the Internet or posting them online.”

That does make it rather hard to showcase your work doesn’t it? It’s almost worth putting Photoshop(r) back in the box, dusting off your developing reels, and breaking out the developer Roxanne. But wait! You don’t need to put on your red light as Photoshop and similar image editors can get us out of this, err…fix.

We’ve updated two articles that speak to this concern, within the help system for our Online Photo Filer program. The information is generally applicable for image content no matter where it ends up.

http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=2246&topic_id=337

http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=2269&topic_id=337

A change in the way that we handle comments to our blog.

2007-11-07T03:18:00Z

Greetings,

We’ve upgraded the commenting procedure within the blogging application we use (GoDaddy.com ’s Quick Blogcast) to more effectively counter comment spam.

The first time we receive a comment from an email address unknown to Quick Blogcast, we issue an email asking the sender to confirm their address before passing the comment along. Once the email address has been confirmed, the comment will display to the owner.

This is not a retroactive measure, so if you’ve already posted to any of our blogs with your mail address, please be on the lookout for this confirmation.

All your Google® Base are belong to us.

2007-10-29T17:29:00Z

Google Product Search.

What is it?

Google® Base is an online database where users can submit their documents, images, sounds or anything they wish to catalog for the general public to search. Your shopping cart has a catalog, they (Google) want to organize the world's information and make it universally useful so I think I can see the beginning of a beautiful friendship here.

Formally known as Froogle™, the database has had a name change – it’s now referred to as Google Product Search and is a part of Google Base.

Why do I want it?

More exposure for your products.

If adding your inventory to the leading search engine - therefore making it easier for people to locate your products – isn’t your cup of tea, then I'd like to address the 99.98% of people that have their mugs held out for a refill.

How can I get it?

First you will need to have an account with Google. If you don't have one, a quick search on Google will help you out. :) When logged in, click Post multiple items with a bulk upload file, and proceed through the steps provided by Google® for creating a bulk upload file. Note this file -must- end in .xml and you -must- use the same name within QSC. More on that later.

We use the bulk upload method via FTP, and for this to function, you have to set up an account with Google.

At this stage you should have: a Google account, a filename ending in .xml, and a username and password for your Google Base FTP account.

Head back over to QSC and from the Site Promotion menu, select Froogle Data Feed and enter the information from the prior steps: FTP account information, the .xml filename, and if you wish, a source code so you can track the sales generated by the Google products search. Select Yes to enable the data feed and unless you choose otherwise, from this screen all of your products will be added to Google.

A note on the filename: it has to be exact and end in .xml. For example, filename.xml is not the same as Filename.xml. It can take twenty four hours for this to appear with Google. If you've not seen anything appear after this time, go back into the Froogle Data Feed and check the last upload status for clues on what may be wrong. Failing that, we're a phone call or email away.

I have it! Now what?

You want more than having all your inventory readily accessible to the leading search engine and their users? Of course you do, but alas, I'm all tipped out for the day.

Getting the most out of the Special Instructions option in your Quick Shopping Cart

2007-10-08T17:49:00Z

Greetings,

One of the interesting parts of my job is reading through the product surveys, blog comments and talking with people about their website and business which are often one and the same for many of you. One size doesn't fit all and trying to provide a system that can accommodate unique businesses,although with a lot of commonality has really driven that point home. Another item that I have noticed is that our initial choice of name for a feature often limits it's true usage which I've seen with the template names on some of our other programs being taken literally as “only use this if you happen to be a teacher, or are getting married”

One of the options within QSC that is often overlooked is our “Special instructions” field which allows you to gather information from your customers that may not have a natural fit within the rest of your product options . While the name may not be very descriptive, or even useful, for your store it can be changed E.G If your store provides goods only to the local market, you could change this to “Delivery instructions” which let's the buyer know what information is expected of them.

How to setup this feature.

You can enable and change the description of the special instruction boxes by going to Storefront > preferences and then scroll to the bottom of the page. Amend as needed.

Where this appears:

The buyer will be asked to fill out this section on their way through checkout

Where you see the results

You will be able to retrieve this information within their order when you process it.

Thank you for your ongoing feedback and if there's any feature we have that you would like to see an entry address let me know.

John
QSC Team.

Quick Shopping Cart ver 2.05 release

2007-09-19T20:24:00Z

Quick Shopping cart 2.0.5

The latest build of Quick Shopping Cart 2.0.5 has made it out into the world today. Our focus this time was on polishing up the templates, further improvements to speed and stability and we've added conversion tracking for Traffic Facts users which can be located in Webmaster Tools > Conversion Tracking and then add in your Traffic Facts ID.

Template Fixes

All the bugs have been weeded out of the “Flower Power” as well as the pun-free improvements made to Vintage Paint, Orange Peel, Health and Fitness,Golfer's Dream, and Solid Neons so if you were having issues they should have “automagically” corrected themselves . The same goes for the product options that weren't updating in accordance with the page color.

Inventory choice ( what we didn't get to )

Of late there were many requests to change the manner in which the inventory items are decremented in your cart. E.g After payment is made or when the order is made. Both are equally valid and rather than revert the selection to the pre 2.0 ( upsetting all those that thanked us for it) it's going to be included as a choice in a future version .

Thanks you all for your feedback and we hope you'll keep it coming.

The bottom line on underline styles.

2007-09-18T22:17:00Z

Quick Shopping Cart (QSC) allows users to customize the underline property on a variety of page elements. This may lead to confusion over how underlining will be applied and often it looks like the style is not being applied correctly.

It could be expected that while setting, say, the Quick Search box to "underlined", but the Quick Search header to "no underline" would leave the header unaffected, but the box text underlined. However, this is not the case. Instead, the header text remains underlined.

E.G

This is a test. This paragraph has a style of "text-decoration: underline".
This sentence has a style of
"text-decoration:none". The preceding sentence is still underlined.

This is a test. This paragraph has a style of "text-decoration: underline". This sentence has a style of "text-decoration:none". The preceding sentence is still underlined.

Another example

This is a test. This paragraph has a style of "text-decoration: underline".
This sentence has a style of
"text-decoration:overline". The preceding sentence is still underlined. as well as overlined.

This is a test. This paragraph has a style of "text-decoration: underline". This sentence has a style of "text-decoration:overline". The preceding sentence is still underlined. as well as overlined.

Explanation

According to the CSS Spec: (we're just the messenger's here - hold your fire
The 'text-decoration' property on descendant elements cannot have any effect on the decoration of the ancestor.
The browsers have decided to interpret this line, which I find confusing, to mean that the text-decoration (none|underline|overline) on a child (contained html element) cannot override the effect produced by its parent element. The specification says:

When specified on an inline element, it affects all the boxes generated by that element; '''for all other elements, the decorations are propagated to an anonymous inline box that wraps all the in-flow inline children of the element, and to any block-level in-flow descendants'''.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, this means that any underline setting on a box will override any "no-underline" setting on a element inside that box. Make sense? If not drop us a line via the comments. While we can't change the way the browsers interpret this we can sympathize with you that they do and hopefully have cleared up one more formatting faux pas that many of you have inquired about.

Linking To Your Main Site With the Shopping Cart's "Home" Button

2007-08-17T22:43:00Z

Many customers have inquired how to link back to their main site from the cart – more specifically, how to make the "Home" button on the cart return to the main site, thus providing their customers with a seamless shopping experience. With the release of 2.0, this is now extremely easy to implement. Here’s a step-by-step implementation that shows how to link back to my Website Tonight® main site from my Quick Shopping Cart® storefront:

1. Open the "Menu Customization" screen from your Admin. Select Storefront>>Menu Customization.

2. Change the label name of your current "Home" page. In my example, I renamed it "Main Store".

3. Add a new menu item, name it, define the URL (your destination page), and select how it will appear (e.g. new window pop-up, existing screen, etc). In my example below, I set the URL to the home page of my main test site and the Target to "New Window" because I don’t necessarily want them to go away from my shopping cart altogether.

It’s that easy! Now you can see my shopping cart built with Quick Shopping Cart®. The "Home" button link now takes my customers back to my main website (seen in the next picture). The former QSC "Home" page is now labeled "Main Store":

Links back to my main website built with Website Tonight®:

Quick Shopping Cart® 2.0 Release

2007-08-10T06:40:00Z

Hello to all our Quick Shopping Cart Owners. With much anticipation we released Quick Shopping Cart version 2.0 on Thursday, August 9th. This release introduces many of the features and enhancements that you have been requesting for the Storefront and we are very excited about the doors it opens up for you, the Quick Shopping Cart owner, to customize your site. This blog article will serve as a foundation article from which we will be adding our own comments into this thread with more tips and hints on how to get the most out of your new Storefront.

So, what is new in Quick Shopping Cart 2.0?

Storefront Customization

You now can customize the Header, Footer, invoices, and navigation menu (including adding your own buttons with your own links). We have introduced the notion of "site variables", which correspond to the fields in the Storefront Information page, to help you customize the html ready message blocks and these variables are available to be inserted into your text at the click of a button. We've increased the flexibility in the Preferences, so you can rename some of the labels (for example, rename Special Instructions to something of your own liking).

Theme management and customization

We upgraded the technology behind our storefronts from a tables based layout to a css based layout. This enables greater customizing of your colors and fonts and now you can tweak the format of practically every aspect of your template. We have also introduced a new category style (Style 6) which provides you with 3 columns of products underneath 2 columns of categories.

We are releasing 10 new template styles with this release that take advantage of the css styling. You'll see these templates listed in the "Generic" category. The 43 existing templates (now referred to as the "Classics") are still there and we retrofitted them to the css technology. We have another 40 or so templates being created, and these will be released in batches over the upcoming weeks. As we release a new batch of templates, they will be in the "New" category as well as their proper category. So, look in the New category to see the latest templates.

Storefront Performance

Your shoppers should notice a significant improvement in speed when navigating around your storefront. Note that actual results for your storefront will depend on many variables like internet connection speed and bandwidth.

Other

The usability of the PayPal checkout has been improved. We have enhanced the verbiage and graphics on the last page of the checkout to add clarity to the shopper on the steps they need to take in PayPal’s site to complete their QSC transaction. We are hoping that this will help alleviate the concerns that your shoppers are having about leaving QSC and going to PayPal and will result in more completed transactions for you.

We have updated the Help program and integrated it into the Online Help Center used by all the Go Daddy® products. Removing the Help from being inside the QSC application now means that we can do updates and add information to the Help with a minimum of behind the scenes effort. Our goal is to keep building out the Help to make it more useful for you, so if there are topics that you would like more information on, please let us know.

Also, stay tuned for the ability to view your full checkout process in Preview mode. That feature is almost ready and we will roll that out in the next few weeks with one of our template point releases.

We hope you enjoy the new Quick Shopping Cart 2.0 and we look forward to your feedback.

Best regards,
Rob

Providing Multiple Product Images Using Online Photo Filer (R)

2007-02-21T21:52:00Z

Currently, QSC only supports 1 thumbnail, 1 standard, and 1 zoom image per product. Many people wish to have more images in QSC for either different product options such as color, or perhaps different views such as front, side, back, etc. One way to provide additional product images is to host them in an alternative location, such as Online Photo Filer (R), and provide links to the images in your product description.

In Online Photo Filer (R), you can upload and store photos and sort them according to any method you see fit. If you want to provide links from your QSC site to images in Online Photo Filer (R), you have a couple of options.

To link to a group of thumbnails for presenting a gallery of images pertaining to one product:
In Online Photo Filer (R), you can navigate to the gallery that you wish to link to.
Once on that page, you will see a link that says: "Permanent link to this page".
Copy that link and then enter your QSC account and navigate to the product that you want to add the gallery link to.
In the description field, enter an anchor tag like this: (replace XXX with the copied URL)

<a href="XXX" target="_blank">More Pictures</a>

Save your changes when you are finished. Remember, you must publish your storefront for the changes to appear on your site.

To add specific links to alternate product views:
Open the product in the QSC product editor.
In another window, navigate to the particular image in Online Photo Filer (R) that you want to link to.
Once on that page, you will see a link that says: "Permanent link to this photo".
Copy that link and enter an anchor tag in your QSC product description like this: (replace XXX with the copied URL)

<a href="XXX" target="_blank">Front View</a>

Repeat as desired. For example you could have four image links:
<a href="XXX" target="_blank">Front View</a>
<a href="XXX" target="_blank">Top View</a>
<a href="XXX" target="_blank">Side View</a>
<a href="XXX" target="_blank">Back View</a>

Or color samples:

<a href="XXX" target="_blank">Product In White</a>
<a href="XXX" target="_blank">Product In Red</a>
<a href="XXX" target="_blank">Product In Black</a>

Save your changes when you are finished. Remember, you must publish your storefront for the changes to appear on your site.

QSC in 2007

2007-01-30T22:28:00Z

Greetings to All. My name is Rob Speers and I am the new Development Group Lead for the GoDaddy.com® Quick Shopping Cart®. I started with Go Daddy® in early January of 2007. I have been in software and technology for the past 4 years and in project management for 14 years. Immediately prior to Go Daddy I was working with the software development group of an international e-learning company here in Scottsdale.

We collect feedback from the use community in a variety of ways, and this users’ blog is a good place for you to post comments. We would like to hear about the things you like, the things you don’t like, and what you think needs to be added to help you increase your productivity with the application and increase your sales with your customers.

Our goal for 2007 is to continue to build out the functionality and feature sets of the Quick Shopping Cart® to bring you the tools you need to be successful in your businesses.

Good luck and good selling!

Rob

Importing products into Quick Shopping Cart

2006-12-11T16:00:00Z

Hello , my name is Tony. I am a Java Developer on the Quick Shopping Cart® team. I have worked for Go Daddy® for two years as a Java Developer and have been on the Quick Shopping Cart development Team for the last 6 months. In the last 6 months I have learned much about this product and E-Commerce in general and I look forward to sharing this knowledge.

I have been a software engineer in Phoenix for the last 8 years and have coded in Java for the last 4 years. Before Java, I mainly worked in C/C++ on Unix platforms. Beside a degree in CS, I also have a degree in History from Arizona State University and at one time considered becoming a History Professor.

I look forward to hearing any and all comments sent to us as that will help us to improve this product into a best in class Shopping Cart. Please fell free to contact us via email, blog or telephone and let us know what you think of our product as well as what we can do to improve Quick Shopping Cart.

One of the requests we have received is a better explanation of how to Import Products via the Excel® Spreadsheet provided by Quick Shopping Cart. The following is an explanation of how to do this.

Importing Products into Quick Shopping Cart

Quick Shopping Cart allows you to use a Excel spreadsheet to add, modify, and delete products from your catalog. To import your product catalog, you must use the provided template. You cannot use other file formats or Excel spreadsheets to upload your products. The following is a detailed set of instructions for importing products.

Log in to Quick Shopping Cart.
If you plan to add new products, use the Catalog Manager to create the categories you will be using.
From the Catalog menu, click Import/Export Products.
The Catalog Manager window displays.
Click Export Products. Open the Excel file.
From the Action list, select to Add, Modify, or Delete a product.
NOTE: You cannot add a product that already exists, and you cannot modify or delete a product that doesn't exist.
In the Part Number column, specify the Part Number for the product. The Part Number must be unique, and is required.
From the Manufacturer Name list, select the name of the manufacturer. Only the manufacturers you set up in your catalog are available.
In the Title column, specify the product title. The Title is required.
In the Short Description column, specify a short description of the product. The Short Description is required.
In the Long Description column, specify a long description of the product. The Long Description is required.
From the Category list, select the category name that you want to associate the product with. NOTE: When modifying the product, you cannot change the Category.
In the Cost column, specify the product's cost.
In the List Price column, specify the price you want to list the product at. The List Price is required.
To indicate you do not charge shipping for the product, select No.
To indicate you do charge shipping for the product, from the Shipping list, select Yes, and then complete the following:
1. In the Weight column, specify the product's weight, if any. This must be a numeric value containing two decimal points e.g. 12 3/4 lbs converts to 12.75.
2. In the Length column, specify the product's length, if any. This must be a numeric value containing two decimal points e.g. 1'6 3/4" converts to 18.75.
3. In the Width column, specify the product's width, if any. This must be a numeric value containing two decimal points e.g. 1'6 3/4" converts to 18.75.
4. In the Height column, specify the product's height, if any. This must be a numeric value containing two decimal points e.g. 1'6 3/4" converts to 18.75.
From the Featured list, specify whether or not you want to feature this product on your category pages.
From the Discontinued list, specify whether or not the product has been discontinued. Items that are discontinued will not display on your storefront.
To indicate the product is not being tracked as inventory, from the Inventoried list, select No.
To indicate the product is being tracked as inventory, from the Inventoried list, select Yes, and then do the following:
1. From the Allow Backorder list, specify whether or not you want customers to have the ability to "back order" the product.
2. In the Inventory Quantity column, specify the current inventory quantity.
3. In the Inventory Threshold column, specify the threshold you want to use as a trigger for sending you an email notification about the inventory level.
To indicate that the product always ships in its own package, select Yes.
Save the Excel file.
Return to the Quick Shopping Cart window.
If necessary, return to the Catalog Manager window. Access the window from the Catalog menu by clicking Import/Export Products.
In the Import File field, click the Browse button.
Locate and open the Excel file, and then click Upload Products.

To update your storefront with the changes, publish your storefront.

What happens to my uploaded images?

2006-12-08T16:30:00Z

Greetings, my name is Greg, I’m a lead developer on the Quick Shopping Cart® team. I have been with GoDaddy.com® for a year and a half and have worked on enhancing the product and implementing new features. My team’s goal is to make Quick Shopping Cart the best in its class. As we progress towards our goal, we will be sharing tips and tricks for using Quick Shopping Cart to its fullest potential.

What happens to my uploaded images?

You can upload images to your Quick Shopping Cart to display as your store logo, category, and product images. Quick Shopping Cart allows you to upload JPGs, animated GIFs, transparent GIFs, PNGs, and BMPs.

You can also showcase your products by uploading large images that allow your customers to zoom in and out while viewing a product (see the Interactive Image Viewer section).

The following is a list of images, with JPG format max. dimensions and where they will be displayed, that can be uploaded into Quick Shopping Cart:

Image	Max. Dimensions (In Pixels)	Displayed
Logo	150 X 75	Header on each page Top of invoices
Welcome Message Image	300 X 300	Home Page
Category Thumbnail	60 X 60	Category Page Style: 1, 2
Category Image	175 X 175	Category Page Style: 3, 4
Product Thumbnail	60 X 60	Category Page Style: 1, 2, 4 Featured Product Search Results
Product Image Standard	175 X 175	Category Page Style: 3 Product Page Style: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7
Product Zoom	400 x 400	Product Zoom Window
Product Interactive Image Viewer Preview	365 X 466 ( minimum)	Interactive Image Viewer
Product Interactive Image Viewer	N/A	Interactive Image Viewer

Uploading JPG Format Images

When you upload a JPG image, Quick Shopping Cart will compare the dimensions of the image to the appropriate type from the above list. If necessary it will reduce the image, keeping the aspect ratio, until both dimensions fit within the specified dimensions.

Uploading PNG and BMP Format Images

When you upload PNG or BMP image, Quick Shopping Cart converts the image to JPG format and resizes it according to the JPG dimensions.

Uploading GIF Format Images

When you upload a GIF image, Quick Shopping Cart does not resize the image. This will require that you manually set the image height and width in an image editing program before uploading the image. You can upload an animated GIF, which the storefront displays as animated, and you can upload transparent GIFs so that the background color shows through the transparent areas.

Uploading a GIF image for the logo will allow the image to span the entire header, beware however that this same image is also used on invoices so you will need to test for both locations.

Interactive Image Viewer

To display images in the Interactive Image Viewer, you must upload images at least 365 pixels wide and 466 pixels high in JPG, PNG, or BMP format. You must also select Interactive Image Viewer from Product Image Enlargement in your Storefront Preferences.

Here is a Quick Shopping Cart site that is showcasing their products with the Interactive Image Viewer.

Remember, this is a live site, so completing the checkout process will place an actual order.

http://www.shop.polyuniqueonlinecraft.com/splashPage.hg

Tip: An image with larger dimensions will allow for a more dramatic zoom.

Product - Quick Form

You can only upload the Standard Image, Quick Shopping Cart converts the image to JPG format and makes two copies of the image (Thumbnail and Zoom) and resizes them according to their JPG dimensions. To provide a separate file for each image size, you can switch to the Advanced Form.

Uploading GIF Format Images

When you upload a GIF image from the Product Quick Form, Quick Shopping Cart makes a copy of the image, converts the image to JPG format and resizes it according to the JPG dimensions.

Quick Shopping Cart 1.9.4 Updates

2006-11-15T22:56:00Z

You told us what you wanted, and we listened! Here are some changes that were made to Quick Shopping Cart® in the 1.9.4 release:

Reduced requirements for password strength

Login accounts for both shoppers on the storefront and Administrative application users now have reduced requirements for password strength. Passwords can now be a minimum of 7 characters and no longer must contain a special character. While the password rules still comply with industry security rules for eCommerce, I think removing the special character requirement should offer some relief.

The new requirements: Passwords must contain at least 7 characters and comprise at least one letter and one number. Passwords are case sensitive.

Guest checkout more prominent

The sign-in screen that displays during checkout has been redesigned to make it more obvious that shoppers do not need to log in to complete checkout. Specifically, we moved the "Continue as guest" choice to the top of the page.

Thank you for using Quick Shopping Cart, and I wish you successful selling.

-- Cindy

Using QSC Webmaster Tools Integration

2006-11-02T21:01:00Z

Greetings! I'm Kristof, a lead developer on the Quick Shopping Cart® team. While I have only been with Go Daddy® for just over a year, I have been developing software for 9 years. Prior to joining the team at Go Daddy, I had been designing and developing Java applications for the defense industry. My goal is to improve Quick Shopping Cart by adding value-added features and improving the performance of the system. One of the new exciting features we've added is the Webmaster Tools Integration.

Google® Webmaster Tools

The Site Promotion Manager portion of the QSC admin console has a section for configuring your site to work with the Google Webmaster Tools suite. This section is accessed by clicking the Site Promotion menu item and selecting Webmaster Tools. The page has multiple input fields and is designed to make it as simple as possible to enter pertinent information that Google uses in searching and indexing your site.

The first field is called "Title." As the name implies, the text entered here will be used to construct the <title> tag in the <head> of the pages rendered on your storefront. The actual <title> tag is created for you dynamically by the system, so you only want to enter the actual title and leave the markup creation to the QSC system.

The next two fields are "Description" and "Keywords." These are used in the construction of the description and keywords <meta> tags. Again, as with the title field, the actual tag construction is handled by the system, so you will only want to enter the actual keywords and description text, and leave the tag creation to the QSC system.

Site Verification

The fourth field is "Google Webmaster Tools Verification Meta tag Content." For more information about Google Webmaster Tools, please log into your Google account and click on "Webmaster Tools."

To begin the integration with Google Webmaster Tools, you must log into your Google account. Once logged into your Google account, you will click on the link "Webmaster Tools." This will take you to the Webmaster Tools "My Sites" list. To add your site, you simply type your QSC URL into the into the "Add Site" box and click "OK."

This will take you to a summary screen about your site. You will see a yellow box that says "Next Step: Verify your site." You will click on this link which will bring you to the verification method selection screen. From the droplist, you will select "Add a META tag" and Google will generate a tag that looks like this:

<META name="verify-v1" content="KPE+qvMhBQan1+DxdmyP4rFN/w391NdKsCpdaUbW/og=" />

In another window (keep the Google window open), launch the QSC admin console's Webmaster Tools integration by accessing it from the Site Promotion menu. We will construct the actual meta tag for you, so we are only interested in the content portion from the string above. In this case, it would be:

KPE+qvMhBQan1+DxdmyP4rFN/w391NdKsCpdaUbW/og=

Simply copy and paste that portion into the QSC field "Google® Webmaster Tools Verification Metatag Content." Then, you will save the form and publish your site. You must publish your site to complete the verification process. Once you have published, return to the Google window and click the "Verify" button. You will be taken to a screen that says "You've successfully verified http://yourdomain/."

Uploading a Sitemap

The last field is called "Google Webmaster Tools Sitemap." This is a file input field used to upload a valid Google sitemap xml file to QSC. For more information about Google Sitemaps, please see the "My Sites" section of your Google account. If you need a tool to generate your Google Sitemap, you can use Traffic Blazer®. A link to Traffic Blazer is provided on the Webmaster Tools screen in the QSC admin console.

Once you have a valid sitemap xml file, you simply click the "Browse..." button and select the sitemap file. When you click "Save", any existing sitemaps will be overwritten. The sitemap will be written to your storefront on the next publish, and any subsequent sitemap updates will also require re-publishing. To view your currently published sitemap, you can navigate to the URL noted below the file input field.

One you have uploaded a sitemap to QSC and have published your storefront, you need to let Google know about the sitemap. In the My Sites screen in your Google accout, you will see a link that says "Add Sitemap." Click that link and select "General Web Sitemap" from the subsequent form. You will also enter the URL of your sitemap, which should be the same as the example that Google provides on the form. Then click "Add Web Sitemap" and it will take you to a screen that says:

"You have added a Sitemap to http://www.best-widgets.com/. Reports may take several hours to update. Thank you for your patience!"

That's all there is to it! You have now made your QSC site more Google friendly thereby increasing the speed and efficiency with which your site is indexed and searched.

We have tried to make integrating with Google Webmaster Tools as simple and seamless as possible. By supplying QSC with the required information, you can enhance your Google search relevance and enable access important information regarding how the Google search engine returns your site in search results.

Get More Accurate UPS(R) and United States Postal Service(R) Rate Quotes for Multiple-Item Orders

2006-10-20T04:08:00Z

With Quick Shopping Cart(R) version 1.9.2, you can configure UPS and US Postal Service shipping to calculate the rates per box instead of per individual item. This will generate more accurate shipping rate quotes for customers who order multiple items in one order.

To do this,

Enable UPS or US Postal from the Processing --> Shipping menu.
For Rate Method, select Multiple products ship in the same package.
Indicate whether you want to charge a handling fee once, for the entire order, or to each package.
Select the maximum package weight you want to handle.
Define at least one shipping box by clicking Add in the Shipping Boxes section and defining the length, width, and height of each box.
Save the shipping configuration.
Make sure that each shippable product in your catalog has Charge for Shipping set to Yes, and that you have defined the weight and dimensions for each product.
Publish your store.

When your customers check out, Quick Shopping Cart will look at the length, width, height and weight that you have defined for each product, and will create virtual "packages" using the box sizes and maximum weight you specify in the shipping configuration. The dimensions and weight for these virtual packages will be sent to the rate servers to get a quote for the entire order.

When you go to the Quick Shopping Cart Order Manager to process the order, you will see multiple packages, each with its own fields for tracking number and ship date. If you want to package the actual order differently from how Quick Shopping Cart packaged the virtual boxes, you can click Edit next to a box and add or delete contents.

The Order Manager also displays a "How was this calculated?" link that defines each virtual box, its contents, and the rate quote for that box.

Tips:

If you use a lot of padding or other packaging material in your packages, you will need to account for this by adding to each product's length, width and height. This will allow the packaging formula to take padding, peanuts etc. into account.
If you have certain items, such as items that are very fragile or for some reason always ship in their own box, select the Ships in own package checkbox in the product shipping configuration. This will remove this item from the pool of items to be packed in a virtual box, and get a separate rate quote for the item.
At this time, UPS and US Postal rates in Quick Shopping Cart only service US shipping addresses. To collect shipping fees for Canadian orders, you will still need to use the Custom Shipping option.

Give the new shipping configuration a try!

Thank you for using Quick Shopping Cart, and I wish you successful selling.

-- Cindy

Welcome to the Quick Shopping Cart® Developer Blog!

2006-09-06T21:21:00Z

Hello, my name is Cindy and I lead the terrific team of programmers who work on the GoDaddy.com® Quick Shopping Cart®. We've created this blog so we can share tips on how to get the most out of Quick Shopping Cart, cover topics in eCommerce, and showcase some Quick Shopping Cart stores. We value communication with our customers and see this blog as another avenue to reach out to every Quick Shopping Cart merchant.

I'm proud of what the team has accomplished in the year that I have been working on Quick Shopping Cart. We've integrated with QuickBooks®, implemented site promotion features like coupons, free shipping and meta tag support, provided storefront preferences such as the ability to display zoomable images with the Interactive Image Viewer, added support for the FAST TRANSACT® / VeloCT payment gateway, added support for Google(TM) and Yahoo® advertisement conversion tracking, integrated with Google(TM) Webmaster Tools, and much more.

We've got lots of exciting plans for Quick Shopping Cart feature development. I'm interested to hear about how you use Quick Shopping Cart today and how we can help you maximize your profits by designing new features.

Thank you for visiting the Quick Shopping Cart Developer Blog, and I wish you successful selling with Quick Shopping Cart!

-- Cindy

Quick Shopping Cart Blog Comment Rules

2006-09-06T00:17:00Z

This is a moderated blog to discuss Quick Shopping Cart (R), its features, development, uses and eCommerce in general. If you have comments on a feature you would like us to provide, how to improve an existing feature or or just want to let us know how you’re using the program we’re looking forward to chatting with you.

Support issues

This forum is only for Quick Shopping Cart. We're unable to answer support requests or billing inquiries about other GoDaddy.com (R) products. (So please do not send any account information within your comments.) If you require immediate assistance with Quick Shopping Cart, contact us via one of the methods listed in our support link contained within the sidebar.

Moderation

All comments that are on topic and constructive will be posted. Normally comments and trackbacks will appear within 5 days of being posted, but please allow us more time for inquiries that require additional research. If we require further information about a comment prior to approval, we'll contact you -- provided you have submitted a valid email address.

Content

We don't allow obscene, racist, sexually explicit, inflammatory, or derogatory language, and may either edit the comment prior to posting, or refuse to post the comment entirely. Commercial advertising, links to sites irrelevant to the topic will be removed from comments/trackbacks prior to posting.