Release notes v1.70 – v1.73

In recent months, the NextChapter team has been working on new innovations. New functions are available in the e-commerce platform, we have expanded the Order Management module and we have added new features for mapping and filtering to the PIM module. Below you will find the release notes of Q3.

Ecommerce platform

The central e-commerce platform has undergone quite a few updates.

Product videos

In addition to photos, you can now also add product videos to the product images on the product detail page. This allows you to visualize your products even better. The product videos play immediately, work for all devices and you can decide for yourself in which position you place the video within the product images without affecting the image for the category page.

'Online only' label for drop shipment products

From now on you can inform customers even better about the products that can only be purchased in your webshop via drop shipment and which products you also offer in the physical store. You can now do this with a special 'online only' product label. The 'online only' label is displayed automatically and in real time based on the current stock and stock location of a product. This also works at variant level (such as sizes and colors). When the stock changes and possibly the stock location of a product, the label automatically changes visibly in your webshop. In this way, the consumer clearly sees the availability of a product when planning a store visit.

Set up promotion module and promotions for amount

The extension of our product and cart promotions module allows you to set a minimum or maximum amount for promotions. For example, 'order for at least 50 euros of brand x', or 'this promotion is valid for products that are cheaper or more expensive than 10 euros'.

Exclude dropshipment products from webshop promotions

In principle, you only want to give promotions and discounts on products from your own stock. It is now possible in the promotion module to exclude the products that you offer via dropshipment partners from certain promotions.

Redirect visitors from certain countries to a specific page

In our country-redirect service (IP lookup function) it is now possible to redirect visitors from every country in the world to a specific page/URL on the webshop in a specific language, in order to inform them in a targeted manner.

Instagram tokens automatically

We have now permanently automated the tokens that Instagram normally requests over and over again so that your social commerce activities can continue without providing your data again.

Catch bots in Forms

It is known that spambots go to webshops and abuse forms for nasty things. We have made improvements to our forms so that we can immediately catch emails from spambots and store them separately. In the NextChapter backoffice it is now visible which bot activities there are.

Import and link external order list

It was already possible to upload an order list within the customer account and add it to the shopping cart. It is now also possible to import external order lists into a customer account, and the user will also receive an email when this is done. This feature is useful for B2B webshops anyway, but can of course also be used in a B2C webshop.

Turkish language added

The NextChapter webshop frontend is now also available in Turkish.

Order Management

More and more of our customers choose to process orders via Order Management in the NextChapter platform, instead of from their ERP system. We have made several improvements to Order Management to make it work even better and give you more control over your entire order processing process.

Improved status information of the order process

It is now even easier to view order statuses. Information icons in the back office provide even better insight into the status of orders, shipments, returns, refunds, (credit) invoices, etc. The user experience for customer service and for order and return processing has been greatly improved.

Split shipments

It may happen that you cannot fully deliver an order with multiple products in one go. It is now possible to split shipments, so that you can send part of an order immediately and deliver the rest later.

Shipping confirmation email from stock location

At webshops that work with multiple stock locations, consumers can now also receive a shipping confirmation from the stock location after the order confirmation, containing specific contact details of the supplying store/location.

PostNL carrier module improved

For large or 'expensive' orders, you want to be able to send insured or registered mail. You can now choose those options for shipments via PostNL from the NextChapter back office.

Track & trace for return labels in PostNL integration

When you send the return label with the order via the NextChapter PostNL module, we can immediately import the track & trace link for the return and show it with the shipment in the back office. As soon as the customer uses the return label, the status of the return can be followed via the returns track & trace link. This is useful for customer service when they receive questions from customers about the status of their returns.

Mapping

In PIM, imported article data can be 'mapped' to specific (property) values. In this way, article data is automatically enriched to 'beautiful' and consistent product information.

Filtering

PIM has various parts in which you can filter article data and then take actions. To make the user experience of PIM even better, we have added dynamic filters. This way you can determine the type of search filters per part.

Email Send Improvements

We have made improvements to the email sending from the NextChapter platform. By working with modular capacity at the email provider, it no longer matters whether NextChapter sends a hundred or 1 million emails at the same time. This way we guarantee the speed, delivery rate and scalability of all emails from NextChapter. Think of service emails, transaction emails and marketing emails such as the 'Gentle Reminder' and 'Back in stock' emails.

Integrations

Data converter – easily import your product data

NextChapter eCommerce has (since 2019) a relatively unknown tool, the Data Converter. You can see this as a kind of service bus that can convert incoming data to outgoing data. Simple example: if we receive the product names in capslock for incoming products, we can set this neatly via the data converter so that we import clean data into the platform.

The data converter can be linked to external systems (such as ERP) and can be used to automate the addition of new articles from, for example, an Excel spreadsheet or XML. Not only product data, but also data about stock, returns and shipments can be automatically sent to the platform with the correct (adjusted) values ​​and in any file format. In the import process, mapping, cleaning and supplementing, for example, SEO (meta) data is done automatically. This tool ensures that the quality of incoming data is significantly improved or perfected.

Other improvements

Marketplaces

Our customers have recently again successfully used the option to link marketplaces from NextChapter, including Amazon France and Bol.com.

Store locator

We have made improvements in usability by better structuring large amounts of content.

Shipments Reporting

We have added a report with which you can print an overview of the shipments.

In addition to Article code number, also EAN

We have added an optional field to display an EAN code in addition to the Item number on the Product detail page.

Extension order XML fields

We have expanded our generic order XML with additional fields such as for services such as gift wrapping.

bugs

All issues in all applications have been resolved and live, making the platform error-free.

What's Next?

Do you have questions about the implementation of new functionalities on your webshop? Please feel free to contact us.