View from inside the viper

Mobile DotNetNuke Ecommerce Store

  February 12, 2013 16:55
by Nigel

Working in conjunction with our friends over at ITX we were tasked with allowing Cart viper to provide a mobile DotNetNuke ecommerce store for the Cathedral Company website.

The key requirement for this project was that when viewing the Cathedral Company website on a mobile device the layout would be optimised for a mobile viewing. One of the new features in version 6.1 onwards of DotNetNuke was mobile support, this allowed DotNetNuke to detect if you were viewing the site on a mobile device and then if necessary redirect you to a mobile optimised rather than the standard website.

With this great feature at our disposal we set about creating a series of modules that could display Cart viper categories and products that were optimized for mobile viewing. The end results gives the user a mobile friendly experience when viewing the site on their mobile device allowing for quick page loading times when browsing the store categories and products, but not sacrificing functionality or user-ability.

Site when viewed on mobile device:

photo photo

Site when viewed on non-mobile device:

standardSite 

With the increased number of customers browsing and shopping from their mobile devices this is a must have for ecommerce solutions, if you are interested in learning what mobile functionality Cart viper can offer your DNN site, please drop us a line.



Providing First Class Support

  February 5, 2013 10:05
by Nigel

Here at Cart Viper we understand that without first class support no matter now great your product is it will fail, customers need to have 100% confidence in you to quickly assist with any issues they may have. Along with the confidence the product continues its development life cycle with new and innovative features added and enhanced that will ultimately translate to more sales for your store.

We like to think we have a great balance between an excellent product and customer support. We recently spent some time working with Debt - Proof Living and they had some kinds words to say about the quality of our work:

“We have been so pleased with Cart Viper. The level of customer support the Cart Viper team has provided is beyond exceptional. It's difficult these days to be able to find developers who are able to understand what you need from not only a technical standpoint - but also from a business and marketing perspective.

Nigel and Mark are able to understand and provide support on both fields. We've worked with them on creating a few custom additional add-ons and the pricing has not only been reasonable but the job is always completed in a timely manner. They don't rest until everything is set up correctly and it works exactly how you intended. I highly recommend the Cart Viper platform and we are very satisfied in our experience thus far.”

Max Halberg, Director of Digital Marketing for Debt-Proof Living

Cart Viper offers different levels of support ranging from community to enterprise to ensure there is a support option to fit any budget and support level your organisation requires to ensure instant response to your queries and questions.

If you would like to discuss which support plan would best suit your organisation please drop us a line.



Innovative Cart Viper Sites

  January 29, 2013 18:51
by Nigel

Here at Cart Viper the advanced DotNetNuke ecommerce solution we value innovation and taking the basic Cart viper template and token system and pushing it to its limits. By utilizing the token system and skin objects feature Cart viper supports it is possible to create highly customized, innovative and styled ecommerce solutions.

The below sites highlight how writing a skin object can add additional functionality to your site to make it stand out from the crowd, improve usability and ultimately sales:

www.cerez.co.uk

ceres

www.imaginz.co.nz

imaginz

www.purplecateducation.com

purplecat

www.electrocorder.com

acksen

www.startwithwhy.com

startswhy

In many cases we worked together with the website owner to produce the end result, if you have a requirement or want to highlight your innovative Cart viper solution please let us know.



Cart Viper Release 1.6.1 – Admin reply to product reviews.

  January 18, 2013 18:05
by Nigel

Cart Viper the DNN ecommerce solution has supported customers leaving product reviews since version 1.0, however in release 1.6.1 we have added in the ability for the store owner to respond to product reviews and have the admin comments outputted along with the product review.

This new feature increases the ability for the owner to communicate with their customers and encourages a more social aspect to your store.

Responding to a review is straightforward simply select the review you want to reply to from the review admin section and you will be greeted with the below UI:

admin review reply

Once your reply has been saved it will then be outputted below the original customers review:

review response

The admin reply is purely driven by CSS, so you are free to format this as per your needs to match the look and feel of your existing site. This as well as numerous new features are available in Cart Viper 1.6.1 that comes complete with a free 14 day trial.



New Payment Gateways Added in Release 1.6.1

  January 10, 2013 17:51
by Nigel

Along with the many great new features in version 1.6.1 of Cart Viper the advanced DNN shopping cart we have integrated into 9 new payment gateways!

The new payment gateways we have added support for are:

Combined with these we have also added support for 2 new currencies:

  • New Zealand dollar
  • Philippine Peso

All the above features were requested by clients and highlights how flexible and extendable Cart viper is. If you have a requirement for a new payment gateway, currency or any other feature we do not currently support let us know and we would be happy to discuss these with you.



Cart Viper 1.6.1 Multiple Shipping Providers Support

  January 9, 2013 20:00
by Nigel

One of the great new features of version 1.6.1 of Cart Viper the advanced DNN shopping cart is the ability to support multiple shipping providers. The advantage of this is you could enable any combination of the Cart viper shipping providers and then the customer can select which provider they would like to use when they complete their order:

  • Default (Cart viper internal shipping bands)
  • FedEx
  • UPS
  • USPS

Configuring this option is straightforward, simply select the shipping providers you would like to enable from the shipping admin complete all the relevant settings for the shipping provider and select “Shipping Provider Is Active”

Screenshot_1

Once completed the customer will be presented with the below options when they checkout, giving them the ability to select the shipping option they prefer:

Screenshot_2

Stay tuned because over the coming weeks we will be bloging on more of the great new features in release 1.6.1.



Cart Viper 1.6.1 Released

  January 4, 2013 12:20
by Nigel

Here at Cart Viper the DotNetNuke ecommerce solution we hope you have had a great vacation, now the new year is upon us we are delighted to release version 1.6.1 of Cart Viper the most feature rich and best supported DNN shopping cart. This version is bursting at the seams with 80 new features and enhancements, some of the highlights are listed below however click here to view the full feature list for this release:

  • Support multiple shipping providers e.g. UPS, FedEx, USPS and let the customer select which one they would like to use at the point of checkout.
  • Google product feed support.
  • Add “buy now” price to events, so they can either be rented on a given date or purchased now for the buy it now price.
  • Define if a digital download attracts shipping costs.
  • 9 new payment gateways! including Barclays EPDQ, Virtual Merchant and Sage Pay forms.
  • Allow admin to respond to product reviews.
  • Upload an unlimited number of product datasheets.
  • Allow admin to define the units of measure the store will use e.g. CM, MM, LB, KG
  • Create shipping bands based on zipcodes.
  • Define zipcode’s that the store will not deliver to.
  • Allow customer to optionally select a delivery date and time.
  • Support New Zealand dollar and Philippine Peso currencies.

2013 is going to be a busy year here at Cart viper we have already got a full feature list for our next release if you think there is a feature missing from that list please contact us and we would be happy to add this.

Please take our free 14 day trial and as ever any feedback good or bad please let us know!

Best regards

Nigel.



Cart Viper Silverlight Image Uploader Control

  March 5, 2012 16:07
by Nigel

Back in version 1.5.1 of Cart Viper the DNN shopping cart we implemented a new feature that allowed the store admin to upload multiple product images simultaneously.

To achieve this we created a Silverlight control, a trade off we had to make when we implemented this feature is that if you are using version 6 of IIS the Silverlight mime type will not be there by default (version 7 onwards has this in by default). This means that the control cannot be rendered to the page and when you go-to the product image upload section you get a blank screen.

In order to fix this you need to add the Silverlight mime type to IIS, the following link provides a great example of how to achieve this under the section “Using the IIS Manager User Interface in IIS 6.0 in Windows Server 2003” – note upon completing the steps an IIS restart may be necessary.

Once you have completed the above the image up-loader control should then be rendered to the page allowing you to upload multiple images simultaneously and making managing your store with Cart Viper even easier!

CropperCapture[4]



Cart Viper Release 1.5.1 Available Now!

  January 9, 2012 15:27
by Nigel

Here at cart viper the advanced DNN shopping cart, we have just released version 1.5.1, in this release the new features include:

  • Upload multiple product images simultaneously when editing a product via advanced Silverlight control.
  • Integration into Ogone payment gateway.
  • Integration into Mollie payment gateway.
  • Integration into Buckaroo payment gateway.
  • Integration into Paypal Payflow Pro payment gateway. 
  • Support Singapore dollar (SGD) currency.
  • Optionally redirect to a custom page after user has added an item to the cart.
  • Setting to auto-create a user account on your DNN site if user checks out anonymously.
  • Allow multiple DNN roles be added to a product, each with their own expiration limits.
  • Allow admin to define how long / how many times a user can download a digital download after they have purchased it.
  • Optionally define minimum subtotal value before user can checkout.
  • Bug fixes and minor improvement

If you have any comments or suggestions for future releases please contact us and we would be happy to discuss your requests.



Cart Viper Features Version 1.4.1

  November 4, 2011 16:16
by Nigel

Following on our discussion of new features of version 1.4.1 of Cart Viper the DNN shopping cart we are going to discuss a few of the smaller features that have been added:

Import product data sheet via CSV file:

In version 1.4.0 we added the ability to include a data sheet for a product, we have now extended our .CSV product import to allow you to import the product data sheet location. Importing the data sheet field is straight forward, you simply add the column “PDFDataSheet” then reference the datasheet relative to the portal root folder.

CropperCapture[14]

The above example shows a valid .CSV import file, in our example our sample.pdf is located in the below folder on our server:

Portals/PORTALID/datasheet/

Before the import occurs you should either ensure the PDF is already on the server either by uploading via the “Admin File Manager” or by using FTP to place the PDF on the server then clicking “Synchronize files”.

Template Driven Mini Cart

In order to give you more control and flexibility of the look and feel of the Cart Viper mini cart control we have now made this control template based as per the other Cart Viper controls.

The benefits of this are:

  • Each portal can have their own customized different mini cart.
  • Content can now be easily injected into the cart e.g. images, text, hyperlinks, etc
  • Skin objects can now be injected into the mini cart control

The below screenshot shows the basic Cart Viper mini cart template and a number of the token that are supported:

CropperCapture[15]

Category Description Now Supports Full HTML Content

We have now extended the category description to support full HTML content. By using the standard HTML editor you can now enter any HTML content for a category description and have it output on the product catalogue page:

Admin interface

CropperCapture[16]

Example Output

CropperCapture[17]

These features were made based on client feedback if you have any suggestions please contact us.