Ballyhoo Commerce and Ballyhoo Refresh are no longer supported. These systems were built as simple alternatives to overcomplicated e-commerce and content management platforms. However, as WordPress has matured to become more sophisticated, and our clients have expanded to more competitive markets that require enhanced functionality, we have now embraced both WordPress and WooCommerce to create flexible and advanced solutions to help our clients grow and succeed.
Version 1.9.16 of Ballyhoo Commerce includes address management improvements, the ability to store shipping references with orders and a newsletter subscription enhancement.
We recommend that you upgrade your version of Ballyhoo Commerce as regularly as possible to see the new benefits of our e-commerce system straight away. The cost of an upgrade is quoted on a case-by-case basis, please contact us for an estimate.
E-Commerce Customer Features
Newsletter Subscription Improvements
Ballyhoo Commerce has a built-in newsletter subscription feature which allows your customers, or any other visitors on your website, to sign up to receive any marketing emails or newsletters you send. Previously, the system only collected email addresses but we have now improved this feature to allow you to collect names too.
Recently we have been working closely with our customers to produce attractive newsletters that closely match the websites we design, allowing our customers to promote their products and services quickly and easily. This feature allows us to take this to the next level, personalising email communications with the customer’s name for added impact. Collecting the subscribers name is an optional feature that we can configure for you when we upgrade your e-commerce website to this version, so please let us know your preference.
Refined Customer Address Selection
At the checkout stage of the buying process your customer is able to specify a shipping address and a billing address for their order. These addresses were previously mutually available so the customer would only need to add an address once to be able to select it in either address section.
We have received feedback from our clients indicating that this technically efficient way of managing addresses was causing confusion with some customers. We have therefore improved this part of the e-commerce system to split shipping and billing addresses into separate collections of addresses.
The visuals in this section have also been improved to clearly show the available addresses in individual boxes and the process of actually selecting an address to be used in the order has also been simplified.
E-Commerce Administration Features
Add A Shipping Reference To Orders
When an order is marked as dispatched the e-commerce system will now prompt you to enter a shipping reference (if available) for your records. The decision to add this feature was prompted by the requirement of the Pay4Later payment gateway which needs a shipping reference to be returned as proof of delivery but we have plans to take this much further in future releases.
Order Downloads More Detailed
Order lists (available to download in the Order Manager) have been improved to include more detail. Each product purchased in an order will now also be listed in addition to other order details like order value, order date, shipping address and customer name. This level of detail means this tool can now be used to download a comprehensive record of the orders you receive, perfect if you use a fulfilment company to pick and dispatch your orders.
Order Status Switching
When changing the status of an order (i.e. marking an order as being paid or dispatched) the system now allows you to simply click on the icons indicating the current status to update the order without the page reloading. This makes it much easier to update the status of multiple orders in one go, handy if you have just dispatched a number of orders and want to inform a number of customers.
Minor E-Commerce System Additions
- We have made general security improvements to the system concerning the user management.
- We can change a setting in the configuration to make company name collection mandatory during customer registration, please let us know your preference when we upgrade your e-commerce website.
- We can also configure a setting to check your customer’s age during customer registration whereby the customer has to tick a box to confirm they are over the age of 18. This is requirement for some products.
- We have improved the thumbnail image scrolling on product pages to stop and start at more appropriate places, this adds a subtle polish to the way product images are displayed.
