http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/articles/13-landing-page-tricks-increase-conversion

• Start using open web technologies—such as the HTML5 canvas — right away, even technologies that aren't supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8.
• Take advantage of JavaScript performance improvements to make your admin area faster and more responsive.

FAQ

Will this happen to users visiting my store?

What is Google Chrome Frame?

Which browsers and OSes does Google Chrome Frame support?

Does Google Chrome Frame handle the display of all websites when I install it?

If I install Google Chrome Frame will it break any websites I use?

Do I need to be an Administrator to install Google Chrome Frame?

In closing...

We have issues!

1. “Blocker” bugs (i.e. stores cannot take payments)
   - These are usually handled as soon as they are reported and very rarely make it onto the tracker.
2. Critical bugs (i.e. Stores can take payments but bug is affecting sales or major functionality is broken)
3. Paid development work
4. Other bugs (i.e. cosmetic / non-critical)
5. Feature requests - When you submit a feature request or work is added to our tracker for you as a feature request (or “enhancement” as it is known on the tracker) you may see the following block of text in our reply....

Normally this work would be chargeable but as a gesture of good will on this occasion we will carry out at no cost to you. Please understand that the work will be carried out if/when we have any spare capacity and the work will be carried out on a "best efforts" basis. This means we will need you to help by testing changes and reporting any problems. It also means we will be unable to commit to any deadlines and paid work will take our team's priority. If you happy to proceed on this basis please indicate you have read this note in a written reply, if you want a quote and a hard deadline please let us know and we will provide one.

New Stuff

For Merchants

Google Shopping

The entire Google Shopping sync has been completely redesigned to ensure that it now works reliably 100% of the time.

As a result all stores that were using the old FTP method (that has not been working since last September due to required fields implemented by Google) have now been migrated to use the new system.

By default such stores will be configured on our Multi-client account and products will be pushed to Google automatically.   You may receive an email from Google informing you that we have “claimed” your domain.  This is nothing to worry about and you should not re-claim it yourself unless you intend to configure a “Custom Integration” with Google shopping in the Version 3 admin area.

Please note that although we will push your products to Google, Google may still reject them if you have not yet filled in the required “unique identifiers”.

Jirafe

No, not the animal... it’s a new e-commerce analytics package that we’ve integrated into stores.

You can activate Jirafe analytics on the Addons page in your admin V3.  Once activated you will be able to view your ecommerce analytics data on the Statistics page in your admin area.

Postcode Anywhere

Ever wanted to have one of those “lookup your address” type features on your store?  Now you can with Postcode Anywhere.

You can activate this feature through the addons page in your Admin V3 area.  This will automatically register you an account with Postcode Anywhere.   Once registered you must purchase credits from them in order to perform address lookups.

Once activated your checkout page will include the Postcode lookup controls on the address fields automatically.  Contact our support team if you would like the look / colours of this to be altered.

Facebook Stores

Yes!  They’re finally here!  Now you can display your EasyWebstore within your Facebook page.

This uses your existing store and CMS so all your sales, products, etc are managed through exactly the same interface as you currently use.  Better still, it’s all tracked via Google Analytics/Jirafe too!

Contact our sales team for information about how to get this enabled for your store!

For Designers

IFRAMEs

Any page on a store can now be displayed within an <iframe> by appending “?ContentOnly=true” to it’s URL

Twitter Bootstrap CSS Framework

Twitter Bootstrap 2 has been added to the Global Files directory.  You can include it in your template by specifying...

@import '../../../Files/bootstrap/less/bootstrap.less';

...at the top of your CSS area.

You will have full access to all of the .less mixins and variables defined in the Twitter Bootstrap .less files.

For the Javascripts you will need to include jQuery and turn on it’s noConflict mode.  Then just include...

<script src="../../../Files/bootstrap/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

... immediately after the jQuery include

For more information on Twitter Bootstrap click here

For Developers

New API Method: GetProductsBySearchTerm

http://www.easywebstore.net/api/docs/ME-Merchant_Api-GetProductsBySearchTerm.htm

New error messages

Many of the methods on the API will now return more useful error messages if something goes wrong.  As usual, if you get an error that doesn’t make sense please contact us and let us know so we can address it.

Bugs that went *splat*

For Merchants

• Now able to view “On hold” orders from Orders menu in V3.
• Pressing [Enter] in store front forms should now behave correctly in all cases.
• The “Custom Checkout Fields” box in V3 Admin now renders at the correct size.
• Pressing Enter in Order Search in V3 admin now behaves correctly
• Continue Shopping link on cart pages now correctly returns to previous category
• Fixed an issue where in some circumstances you would have to click “Checkout now” twice to make it work
• Google +1 buttons now specify the URL to be +1’d in Teasers correctly
• Customer “Order History” will now correctly show only orders that have been checked out (no more carts shown)
• Google Checkout will now, again, correctly charge VAT on shipping when needed
• Numerous Excel Uploader fixes

For Designers

• Fixed AddToCartRelatedProductsAsOptions renders an empty control when RelatedProducts field contains non-existent product codes.
• ShoppingCartPaymentButton attribute "Text" now working as intended
• Custom DocType tags are now honoured correctly
• dotLESS parser will now correctly look in the SupportFileLocation for @import’d .less files

For Developers

• Fixed DateTime out of range error when creating new product on API with a .Net client

Getting this new system to work reliably has been a much bigger technical challenge than we had first anticipated but our team have risen to it and beaten it into submission.

From this point forwards any changes to products will cause those products to be updated in your Google Shopping feed within 15 minutes of the edit being saved.  In addition, any changes to global values such as shipping or sales tax will trigger a re-submit of all of your products.  We now pass all shipping information to Google for each product and each shipping method.

Known Issues

Some merchants have reported products still labeled as "expired" in their Google Merchant Centre.  On investigation it has been found that these products are actually live in Google Shopping Search and the "Posted on" time shown on the product details page in the Google Merchant Centre is correct.

We are continuing to investigate this issue but as far as we can tell it is not affecting the products actually being listed and is simply a reporting problem in the Google Merchant Centre.

Calls to this number are charged at local call rates.

The old numbers will still get you through to us as well for the time being but they will eventually be decomissioned.

We have now completed our move to the new office and phone and live chat support should now be back online.

As indicated in the newsletter we have two new guys in the team now training on the front line support so you should always be able to reach us on phones or live chat if needed.

We have investigated this and found that it appears to be a reporting error within the merchant centre and images are actually being downloaded to google shopping results correctly.

Based on various posts from other merchants on Googles forums it appears that this issue is not limited to EasyWebstore customers and we anticipate Google will be fixing it in due course.

This is found o the Specifications tab of products in version 3 and can be rendered on product details pages.  If you wish to use this feature please raise a support ticket to request it be added to your template.

If you wish to use this feature please submit a support request via ticket/email to have it's styling added to your template.

The issues were due to a strange behaviour in the code to redirect pages.  This also caused a number of other issues in the admin area as well.

The fix is now live and all stores should be operating normally again.