WebWidgets October Newsletter

GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR GIFT MERCHANTS NEXT MONTH

In our November newsletter, we will be promoting a selection of your gift websites as great places for Christmas shopping. We will also be gifting shopping vouchers to all our live web hosting customers. We hope this will encourage shopping at each others online stores, rather than the malls and chain stores this year.

Web Widgets will purchase these vouchers from our gift merchants in return for hosting credits. If you agree to supply us with up to 20x $10 vouchers, then we'll give you up to $200 worth of hosting credits.

We don't want to preference any one of our gift stores over any other, so WebWidgets customers will be given the choice of which participating store they want a voucher for. There will be a limit of 20 vouchers per participating store, on a first come, first choice of voucher basis. We have recently developed the voucher redemption widget, so should you wish to participate, we will automatically create the $10 vouchers and credit your hosting account with $10 each time we issue a voucher. Maximum participation of each store is $200.

This is a great way to gain 20 new customers and communicate with approximately 1000 newsletter readers. To participate, just send us an email with your short advertising message.

Shopping Cart Updates

The first update to note is the quantity in stock now reduces automatically when an order is placed. It is important to update your quantity in stock amount if an order is not paid for. The "quantity in stock" default is set at 9999. This quantity means that you have unlimited supply of the product, and no quantity
information will be displayed to the user for the product. eg for wrapping paper, gift cards etc.

Shipping and freight options are now more manageable and you can now prioritise freight options so that the most common one is at the top of the list.

Minimum and maximum order quantities can now be set on a product by product basis, and quantity selection formats can be hidden,
combo or numeric field, depending on your needs. We have added also added a "remove" button to the shopping basket.

We have enabled "out of stock" messages and the ability to block orders of out of stock items. This functionality will only appear if you have "opted in" in the shopping cart setup area.

We have also added an out of stock report to the new "REPORTS" area of Web Widgets shopping carts so that you can quickly determine which
products are low in stock.

Catalogue Options

For those of you with shopping carts or catalogues, there are now some more advanced options in the catalogue manager. You can select the most appropriate gender, minimum age and maximum age for people who might be interested in your product. The more specific you are about selecting these options, the more likely your gift/product will be available to people who search on megamart by age or gender.

Vouchers

You are now able offer a voucher system through your ecommerce website. There is a Vouchers tab in the shopping cart for adding new vouchers. There is a voucher redemption option in the SHOPPING - SETUP - DISPLAY OPTIONS area, or this is automatic once you add at least one voucher. Once the above is done, there is a voucher redemption area at the checkout, which copes with multiple vouchers.

Fields Options in Survery Forms

The "more options" area in the fields menu of the form page designer tool bar has been improved.
You can now more easily add dropdowns, radio buttons and checkbox lists to questionaire/survey forms.

Spam

Spam is a problem for many people. We have now implemented enhanced spam filtering, which we expect will reduce spam. We blocked 3400
spams within the first 8 hours. Please let us know if you are not receiving emails you are expecting; send us an email with details of who sent it, who it was sent to, and at what time. We will want exact email addresses.

Often you can receive several emails to seemingly random addresses on your domain name. It is a good idea to delete any "catch all" email forwarding rules in Web Widgets, under "My Web Addresses", domain name, email. If you delete your catch all email address, make sure you remember to add all the forwarding rules for the prefixes you do use, eg info@ or sales@.

Paypal

Paypal are now supporting NZ$ transactions with competitive fees. If you don't currently support credit card transactions on your website (or you are currently using the Web Widgets special, or you are only supporting overseas currencies), you should instead change to a paypal account. Please go to www.paypal.com to signup for a business account, then select NZ$ for your primary currency. Please pay the $3 they charge to verifiy your account to enable all the features. Once you have completed the signup, please login to Web Widgets, edit shopping, setup, payment options, Paypal, then enter
your registered paypal email address there. Paypal will send you an email when transactions are completed.

Quick Tips

For quick reference, four how-to tips from the items above:

Add A Voucher: Click Voucher tab in shopping cart area.
Change email forwarding to minimise spam: Under My WebAddresses, Domain Name, Email, delete "catch all" email address and specify only the email addresses you use in the forwarding rules area.
Specify catalogue options for targeted product market: Add new product, select appropriate Age and Gender for your product market.
Design questionnaire or survey form: "add a new page", "question form, survey", edit to add your information. Select "more options" under the Fields dropdown box. Enter question name and select question type. Add possible options to Value/Options boxes. Save and Publish Changes.