The NextChapter eCommerce platform is constantly being improved and innovated. In the January 2025 Release Notes, we have again listed a number of important improvements & optimizations for you.
We are also continuously working on product development. Keep an eye on our blog, LinkedIn page and newsletter so that you don't miss any of our new developments. Want to know more about the release notes or their implementation in your webshop(s) and channels? Feel free to contact us.
We have done a lot of innovations in the past few months in various areas, such as:
1. OMS, PIM, CMS
2. Marketing features
3. Frontend Features
4. Integrations
5. multiˣ connector
1. Manually creating orders for customers in OMS It is now possible to create an order for a customer directly from the OMS in the NextChapter backoffice. This can help you achieve more conversions.
For example, via customer service, when there is contact with a customer on chat, email, or phone about a product or placing an order. By immediately creating the order for the customer, you cater to their needs promptly and also secure the conversion for yourself.
After creating the order, the customer automatically receives a payment link via email. After payment, these orders are processed automatically in your regular order handling.
2. Transactional API
The transactional NextChapter API is widely used by external parties—such as your POS or ERP system—to integrate with the NextChapter platform. Therefore, NextChapter consistently dedicates time and attention to maintaining and expanding the API. Recently, new endpoints have been added to the API, such as CreateOrder, which allows orders to be sent from an external platform to NextChapter. Existing endpoints are also continuously enriched with more data.
1. Segmentify: AI powered personalization Segmentify is a personalization platform powered by AI, designed for product personalization and personalized email marketing. It also provides valuable insights into the performance of your marketing channels and campaigns in terms of conversions, costs vs. revenue. Segmentify is now part of the NextChapter ecosystem.
2. MailBlue
New to the NextChapter ecosystem is the integration with Email Service Provider MailBlue. Newsletter sign-ups, products, orders, and customer data are exchanged for the purpose of email marketing and automation.
3. Retail Rocket personalization
The extensive integration that NextChapter has with the Retention Management Platform Retail Rocket is continuously being expanded with new positions on the webshop, where product and content personalization can take place.
Frontend Features
1. Displaying External Orders in OMS & My Account
Businesses aiming for an omnichannel sales approach strive to provide customers with a unified user experience. A crucial aspect of this is visibility into all purchases, regardless of where and how they were made. Now, customers can view all their orders in the "My Account" section, including purchases made in physical stores, pop-up stores, marketplaces, online webshops, or those created by employees through systems like ERP.
Additionally, your team can also view a comprehensive overview of external orders in the NextChapter OMS.
2. Pick-up Points via Bringly
NextChapter has been integrated with Bringly for some time. The advantage of a multicarrier platform like Bringly is that it allows you to ship, print labels, etc., with various carriers. Thanks to the seamless integration between NextChapter and Bringly, working with Bringly's benefits within the NextChapter OMS is straightforward. Pick-up points, such as DHL pick-up points and Budbee lockers, have now been added to the integration.
3. PostNL Pick-up Points in Belgium
Just like in the Netherlands, customers can now pick up their packages at PostNL locations in Belgium.
4. MultiSafepay
a) If you use MultiSafepay for payments on your webshop, you can now offer your customers the option to pay with Apple Pay. Apple Pay was previously available at NextChapter through other payment service providers.
b) NextChapter and MultiSafepay now exchange more information, aiming for better data provision in the MultiSafepay backoffice. Naturally, only data serving a purpose are exchanged, and this process is GDPR-compliant.
5. ChannelEngine, Gateway to Marketplaces
The NextChapter integration with ChannelEngine for sales on marketplaces continues to expand. Over the past few months, many more marketplaces across various European countries have been added, such as Douglas, Leen Bakker, Metro, Otto, Mediamarkt & Saturn, Digitec Galaxus, Wehkamp, Limango, Secret Sales, Refurbed, and many more.
6. Homepage Product Rail Scheduling
Schedule the product rail on your homepage in advance. Manage your homepage effectively and strategically for marketing campaigns or assortment changes.
7. ReCAPTCHA in All Forms
The reCAPTCHA technology, previously applied only to newsletter sign-ups to prevent bot submissions, has now been extended to all parts of the NextChapter platform where a reCAPTCHA may be useful.
8. Bulk Deletion of Accounts
Some webshop owners periodically want to delete customer accounts, perhaps because these are from old customers or because new accounts are regularly created in the shops. You can now permanently delete accounts in bulk from the CRM.
1. Order reporting
The order reporting section within the CMS has undergone significant improvements:
a) Order reports from NextChapter can now be downloaded for a period of up to 12 months.
b) The performance and speed of generating reports have been enhanced.
c) The user interface for downloading reports in the CMS has been simplified. d) Additional fields have been added to the order reports, specifically optional fields. If you use optional fields in the checkout process (fields that you can name yourself, beyond the standard checkout fields), you will now see these in the reports as well.
2. Expanded Testing Environment
At NextChapter, you always have access to your webshop on the staging environment (test environment). This allows you to review changes on the test environment before going live. NextChapter also uses this environment to prepare new webshops and redesign existing ones. The majority of components in the CMS are already manageable in the staging environment. Additional components such as menu blocks, footer blocks, and notifications have now been included.
3. Distinction Between Manually and Automatically Created Items
The data in the CMS mostly comes from the NextChapter PIM (product data), occasionally from the POS system, or other systems. In such cases, the data in the CMS is marked as "imported." In some instances, data is also manually entered, such as articles, brands, product groups, and other items. Therefore, a distinction in the CMS is now clearly made via a column that indicates whether the data was manually entered or not. You will find this distinction in Categories, Brands, Articles, Product Groups, Attributes, Attribute Values, Suppliers, and Delivery Times.
ACA XPRT
The existing integration with ACA XPRT has been significantly expanded through a full API integration. This integration now supports a complete linkage between NextChapter and XPRT, including the management of products, inventory, orders, shipments, returns, and more. This expansion allows users to maintain a seamless and efficient workflow, as all critical e-commerce processes are fully integrated.
1. Product API
The API related to product information has been expanded. The GetProducts endpoint for items has been enhanced with extensive filtering options for brands, categories, properties, etc.
2. Price per Marketplace Channel
Prices for marketplace channels may differ from other channels. You can now import and export prices per marketplace in bulk. This functionality is also accessible in the interface, and prices per marketplace channel can be updated via the API.
3. Exports
a) Typically, variants missing a price are blocked in exports from the PIM. However, there are cases where this might be desirable. Thus, this choice is now also available.
b) The export interface has been cleaned up so that only choices in the definitions that are available in your PIM are shown. For instance, if a field such as a marketplace field is not populated, it will not be shown in the definition.
4. Accounts
Data security is a crucial issue in e-commerce. NextChapter continuously focuses on security. The following updates stem from this focus:
a) If a user logs in with their username and password, and then logs in on another device with the same credentials, the user will be logged out on the first device. This ensures that an account can only be logged into once at a time.
b) Internal logging related to logged-in accounts and concurrently logged-in accounts has been expanded.
NextChapter constantly focuses on maintaining and improving technology. You might not notice this in daily use, but it results in a well-functioning and reliable platform. NextChapter continuously works on updating our apps to the latest technologies, refactoring existing code for better performance, improving user interfaces, and keeping the platform clean. There is also a continuous focus on security, including in areas such as code, applications, and hosting.
A smoothly running webshop within the NextChapter multiˣ suite consists of various processes that connect NextChapter products with each other and with external systems. These processes ensure the correct exchange of data, such as article data, inventory, and transactional data with external platforms like ERP systems. These processes are very important but often operate in the background for you as a webshop owner. Therefore, NextChapter is developing the multiˣ connector: a dashboard that provides a clear overview of all your technical processes. The multiˣ connector overlays your existing processes, allowing you not only to gain insight into what is going well and what isn't but also to rerun or add processes if desired. The multiˣ connector is under development and becoming increasingly rich. If you want to know if it's interesting for you, please contact your account manager.
NextChapter focuses non-stop in every release on platform maintenance in the broadest sense of the word. This ensures technical stability and quality, obsolete components are updated or removed, existing code is improved, underlying technology is upgraded to the latest versions and the highest security and privacy requirements are met with great care. All with the goal of a worry-free, stable platform of high quality and strong performance.
Error-free
Problems and bugs in the platform are always solved by us immediately. That is why the NextChapter Platform is completely bug-free.
Contact
Do you have questions about the Release Notes or their implementation on your webshop(s) and channels? Please let us know.