Having been active within the DNN marketplace for years now , specifically the ecommerce sphere we like to think we have a pretty good grasp of not only what the market wants but also what makes a great product. So we are proud to announce with the release of the Resource Management Pro module in December 2014 we now have three DNN modules that can be used to cover 99% of your ecommerce needs.

Resource Management Pro

Turn your website into a fully functional resource booking system, great for selling resources where the customer is required to pick a start and end date e.g. appointments, classes or renting physical assets. Admin has full control over the number of spaces available and when a resource can / cannot be booked e.g. don’t accept bookings 2 weeks into the future or public holidays etc.

Event Planner & Registration Module

Want to sell events securely on your DNN site, this is the module for you. Great for selling events that have a defined start and end date e.g. holidays, attractions, etc. Complete with calendar, list, map and detail views allowing a user to quickly find the events that are available to purchase. Control the number of places available for each event and allow users to be wait listed for sold out events.

Cart Viper

The complete ecommerce solution, sell anything from physical to digital goods along with events. Numerous shipping options (UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc) and all major payment gateways supported (PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, HSBC, Ogone, Barclays, etc). Too many features to list!

As well as the modules specific features, all three modules allow:

• Take online payment safely and securely, fully PCI compliant.
• Numerous tax & vat options.
• Advanced SEO and searching.
• Fully responsive using Twitter Bootstrap version 3.0.
• Fully customizable layouts and support Razor scripts.
• Whether your system has an inventory of 1000 or 100,000 items our modules will scale as your requirements do!
• Independently certified by DNN as Azure compatible.
• Backed by our years of experience and support , check out our numerous 5 star reviews here and here.
• Life time upgrades.
• Free community support.
• Fully documented user guides.
• Free 14 day trials.

Whatever your requirements we have both the module and necessary expertise to deliver your solution on time and within budget, if you need any further information or clarification on any of our modules please contact us!

The Cart Viper demo site was updated a while ago and we’ve had positive feedback from the DNN community. The site uses Twitter Bootstrap 3 and some razor scripts to demonstrate how easy it is to create great looking ecommerce sites using Cart Viper. With only a small amount of customization you can make a great looking ecommerce site which works great on mobile, tablet and desktop screens.

A number of people has asked us to release the skin and files we used to make the site. So in the blog post we are going to step through the process of how to install the files and give you some pointers where you can further customize the demo.

To get started we need to make a home page, store page, my account page and then just add the store admin page to the admin menu. Lets get started with making the changes!

Skin

The skin used on the demo site is a custom design we had created then we converted this to a DNN skin. The skin file just needs unzipped and then copied to the folder /portals/_default/skins

We need to also copy over the containers these need to go into /portals/_default/containers

Our skin contains a design used for the homepage and then a second design used for all the other pages in the site. The skin is design using Twitter Bootstrap 3 so we can then be responsive when viewing the site on a mobile device. It also means we can enable the responsive mode of Cart Viper to make all the store front responsive too.

In the Site Setting  - Appearance we set the skin to CVDemo - Main and we also set the container to the CVDemo - No Title container.

The navigation menu used by the skin is a custom one we created using the DDR menu and a simple razor script. The script is located in the folder bootstrapNav inside the skin folder.
We are using some code to get all the top level categories in Cart Viper and then we output these into the menu. We also have hard coded a link to a contact page which is just a DNN page on the demo site.

On the home page of the site we define the skin to use for this page to the CVDemo - Home skin so that gives us the different look to the rest of the pages within the site.

Search and Mini Cart

At the top of every page we have the Search Input and Mini Cart control. These are not in fact Cart Viper modules, these are just two simple razor scripts that we have added to the header pane using the Razor Host Module which is part of the standard DNN install.

Firstly copy over all the /RazorHost files in download at the bottom of the page to the folder.
We’ll explain some more about all the files as we setup the home page of the site below.

/DesktopModules/RazorModules/RazorHost/Scripts

So just add two Razor Host modules to the pane at the top of the skin and then we just set one module to use the script CVSearchinput.cshtml and the other module to use CVMiniCart.cshtml. We have created a pane for each control namely searchInputPane and MiniCartPane and its those where you should place Razor Host modules.

We are also going to set both modules to display on all pages of our site, so that these two controls are available on every page.

Also if you look at the demo site, you’ll notice we have a link to the cart, wishlist and my account. This is done using the same idea. Just add a Razor Host module to the HeaderPane and define the script as CVHeaderLinks.cshtml then assign that module to all pages in the site.

Latest, Featured and Best Sellers

There are some other items we are going to add to the home page which give us some extra functionality when a customer first lands on the page.
We have a Latest items, Best Selling items and Featured items. All three of these are creating using Razor Host modules and three scripts we have wrote that pulls the products from Cart Viper.

Add three Razor Host modules to the home page then just set the scripts to use as

• CVBestSellers.cshtml
• CVFeaturedProducts.cshtml
• CVHomePageLatest.cshtml

The products for each of the scripts comes from a category we have defined in the CV back office. We have a root category called _Meta which we have made sure in our other scripts is never rendered to the store front. We then have a sub category in there which maps products to the razor script.
It might sound complex but its very simple once you look at the razor scripts and the code we have written.

CV Template

We have made a lot of changes to the templates used in Cart Viper and added some razor scripts into the folders that the templates use. To set up those you just need to turn on Portal Templates and Responsive in the Store Admin – Store Info page.

Once these are set we can just copy over the files in the folder CV_ResponsiveTemplates into the folder /Portals/X/CVStore/ResponsiveTemplate 
Note X will be the portal ID of the portal you are using.

Please take a look at the html template files and the scripts sub folder to learn more about how we are making the store front.

Category Menu

On the product details page we display a category submenu which lists any subcategories contained within the currently selected category.

This again is a Razor Host module which we have added to the store page. The name of the script to use is CVCategorySubMenu.cshtml.

Going Further

We never intended to give the skins and files used on the demo site, so we recommend that you try out all the changes and make sure they match your requirements and you use the files as a jumping off point for customizing your store further. With that in mind we have a couple of ideas where you could extend the templates and design.

The navigation menu we use on the skin contains a hard coded link to a contact page, this could be changed to have some code which adds dynamicaly other pages defined within the portal.
You could just edit the razor script /Skins/CVDemo/bootstrapNav/CVNav.cshtml to do this.

On the product details template it would be good to add a related product selection, this could be as simple as using the name or keywords of the current product and doing a search against the catalogue for matching products then rendering those to the page.

On the cart page you could add some razor script to attempt to upsell some special offer item based on the contains of the cart.

Download

Download all the files for this blog post. CVDemo.zip (2.0Mb)

We are happy to announce version 3.2.0 of Cart Viper the DNN ecommerce solution is now released , this version is packed full of new features:

• Include order details in the export orders to CSV file.
• Admin view additional orders by same customer.
• Template the "add to cart" confirmation message.
• Stripe payment gateway support.
• Epay payment gateway support.
• Replace existing Silverlight product image upload control with a jQuery version.
• Allow wildcard searching.
• When logging in on the "my account" page send the user straight to start of the checkout.
• Razor support in the email templates.
• Allow customers to store addresses in an address book to use for future orders.
• Allow admin to add additional order statuses.
• Various other minor enhancements and bug fixes.

As always Cart Viper comes with a free 14 day trial and a full road map for the future!

With online sales now accounting for a larger than ever percentage of an organisations total sales it stands to reason that every step possible needs to be taken to ensure ecommerce sites are fully functional 24/7.

Cart Viper understands these concerns and have a number of support packages in place to give you the peace of mind knowing that there will be a member of our team on hand to answer any questions or resolve any issues you may have.

We offer a number of paid support offers to suite every budget and organisation type:

Standard Support

• Access to support forums 
• Email contact with developers
• All emails and posts will be replied to in a prompt fashion during UK business hours Monday - Friday (8am - 6pm GMT) excluding UK public holidays. 
• Priority will be given to standard support customers over community support customers. 
• Hot fixes released for bugs.

Enterprise Support

• Access to support forums.
• Direct email contact with developers.
• All emails and posts will be replied to in a prompt fashion during UK business hours (8am - 6pm GMT) 7 days a week excluding UK public holidays. 
• Priority will be given to enterprise support customers over community and standard support customers. 
• Hot fixes released for bugs 
• Discounted rates on all custom development work.

Use coupon code SUPPORT to receive a 25% discount on all our support packages, so don’t delay as this offer is only valid until 30th April 2014!

One key area that owners of ecommerce stores need to be focus on is lowering cart abandonment rates, this means lowering the percentage of users who assemble a cart on your store but ultimately fail to complete the checkout process.

This is a hugely frustrating problem for store owners as the customer has found and engaged with your store but ultimately backed out at the last moment leaving the store owner with no sale to show for their hard work in SEO and marketing.

A recent study by Econsultancy / Toluna found that 25.6% of users surveyed would abandon their cart if they were forced to register for an account with the website:

 

When setting up an ecommerce store the owner will typically disable anonymous checkout forcing the user to create an account because:

• Create a relationship between customer and store.
• Easier to communicate any shipping / order issues to customer.
• Customer more likely to engage with store in future (products reviews, purchase related products, etc).
• Join store email list.

However adding this additional barrier to checkout is not always the best long term strategy for your store, simply because customers do not like creating an account with a store they may only shop with occasionally.

With that in mind Cart Viper the dnn ecommerce module has a number of settings that allow you to tailor the checkout experience to suite your needs:

• Disable anonymous checkout – user must register for an account before being allowed to checkout.
• Allow anonymous checkout – user can checkout without registering for an account.
• Auto-create user account – user can checkout without registering for an account, but Cart Viper will automatically create them a user account once their order has been placed and email them the login details.

As you can see Cart Viper has every option covered and is the most feature rich ecommerce module available for DNN, please take the free 14 day trial or contact us to discuss how Cart Viper could work for your ecommerce project.

Earlier in the month we released version 3.0 of Cart Viper, this contained one of the most significant improvements to Cart Viper - responsive layouts. This fixed a serious short coming with earlier versions of Cart Viper, now with this feature we can format correctly regardless of the size of screen the store is being viewed on.

We already have a head full of ideas for release 3.1 but we want to hear back from you, what features would you prioritize for this release? Perhaps you are using the store and there is a killer feature you think is missing or you tried the store but selected a rivals store based upon some missing functionality?

Either way we are throwing the road map open to the community, please share your ideas with us here or if you prefer email us directly to discuss nigel@cartviper.com. We do value your opinions and are always willing to listen on how we can do things better!

Since the release of version 1.4.0 of Cart Viper the DNN shopping cart we have supported the ability to inject skin objects into our template system. We have previously blogged on how you could write your own skin object and provided some sample code to get you started, but today we are going to highlight some real world examples and hopefully give you some ideas that will take your Cart Viper store to the next level!

A newly launched Cart Viper site that has made use of skin objects is the Kaiwaka outdoor clothing store, when we were tasked with creating their website there were 3 items that we could not achieve by modifying our existing templates / CSS alone.

1) Display a banner image based upon the current selected category:

  

2) Display a product summary when hovering over the product image on the product catalog page:

3) On the product details page display brand and color images specific to the selected product:

The 2 key points to remember when working with skin objects are:

a) They can be loaded on any Cart Viper template.

b) By implementing the interface ICartViperSkinObject in your skin object code, Cart Viper will automatically set either the category or product object that the skin object is loaded in ready for you to access in your code.

Its that simple really to take a standard Cart Viper store and really take it to the next level, all with the power and flexibility that skin objects gives you, we hope this post gives you some inspiration for your sites, so download the sample code and let your imaginations run wild!

If you have any questions about skin objects or anything Cart Viper / DNN related please let us know

Since we released version 1.6.1 of Cart Viper the advanced ecommerce solution we have been busy working on new exciting features that will make up release 1.6.2. Based on user feedback we have identified a series of features that were missing not only from Cart Viper but all the other DNN shopping carts, so with these advanced features we are positioning Cart Viper as the market leading DNN shopping cart.

A few of the new exciting features are:

• Product catalogue localization – allow the customer to select the language to display your products and categories in.
• Product and category workflow – define that all changes to products and categories should be subjected to approval by a moderator, including automatic email reminders if moderation does not occur within a given time period.
• Ability to rollback a product or category to any previous version.
• Allows products to be tagged using DNN taxonomy.
• Azure support.

For a full list of features that will make up release 1.6.2 please click here, we are always open to suggestions so if you feel there is a great feature we are missing please let us know.

In the rush to put your website live and start taking orders its easy to drop the ball on a simple task, as the old saying goes “You only get one chance to make a first impression”.

With that in mind we have compiled a short checklist of items you should verify before you put your Cart Viper DotNetNuke ecommerce store live:

1) Ensure that the page within your store that contains the “Cart Viper My Account” has the below permissions so “All Users” can view the page. This ensures payment gateways (Paypal, etc) can inform Cart Viper that payment has been successfully taken:

 

When setting up the Paypal Standard provider the Secure ID setting is optional and it not the same as your Paypal account page, the correct value can be found in you profile within your Paypal account.

If you are getting an email from Paypal to say you have received payment but don't get one from Cart Viper or see the order in the back office then this is an indication that the IPN is failing and the points above should be the first things to check.

2) Test the SMTP settings on your DNN installation are valid, these settings are located in:

host –> host settings –> SMTP

We use these SMTP settings to send the various emails the store generates, if you receive an error when clicking “test” please contact your ISP to rectify this:

3) Check the default portal alias for your store has the www.mydomain.com as the primary domain rather than mydomain.com. To check this go to:

admin –> site settings –> advanced settings –> portal alias

If the www.mydomain.com is not listed, simply add this new domain and mark this as the default alias:

4) If you are using a payment gateway that collects the customers credit card information directly on your website (Authorize.net, Paypal Pro, etc) ensure that there is a valid SSL certificate for your website installed on the server and that the page with the “Cart viper my account” module is served over HTTPS.

This can be set at the DNN page level or within the Cart viper my account module settings:

     

Note if you are using a payment gateway that requires an SSL certificate and it is not configured correctly we will output a message informing you of that and your customers will be unable to checkout.

5) Within Cart viper it is possible to allow Google analytic ecommerce tracking, if you are going to enable this setting it is very important that you also add in the Google analytic tracking code to your websites skin. Without this tracking code you will receive javascript errors on your website and the add to cart functions will cease to work. Page 38 of our user guide explains this in more detail:

In our experience the above 5 are the most commonly over looked items when stores are being moved from test to a production environment, if you think we have missed an important aspect or have an idea how we can improve the process please feel free to add it to the post.