Znode Buzz

Znode releases major version of Storefront 6.0

After a year of innovation, months of development and hundreds of hours of extensive product testing, we are very excited to release Znode Storefront 6.0 - a ground breaking e-commerce platform. I am confident that this product will help online retailers increase their ROI and Online Revenues using unique innovative marketing strategies.

Try out the new Multi-Store demo sites that are now live on znode.com - Click Here

Exciting New Features

Rich Web 2.0  Multi-Store Demo

The demo store that ships with Storefront 6.0, Multifront Edition has a completely new look and feel, illustrating the power of Storefront. This store highlights three separate site designs, showing the ability to quickly and easily create multiple storefronts. This template provides a solid starting point for your own web 2.0 enabled store that is branded exactly to your business.

Faceted Navigation 

Faceted Navigation allows catalog administrators to define product tags that are displayed on the Category page. Customers can then select the product tags that are of interest to them and see only those products that match their criteria. These tag selections are arranged so that customers will always have products to choose from when they make their selections. This ability for the customer to quickly define what is important to them means that they can get to products faster reducing abandonments and increasing cart values.

Product Quick View

Using our new Quick View feature, Customers can see product details and add items to the cart right from a category or search page. Quick View provides the full product description, alternate product images, color swatches, related items, customer reviews as well as other features. This shortens the purchase path for customers by allowing them to go from the category page directly to the shopping cart. 

Newly Redesigned Admin

Our already easy to use administrative interface has been completely redesigned to make it even faster and more intuitive. While the look of our Admin is completely new, existing users of Storefront will find many familiar touch points that allow them to transition to the new interface in just a few minutes.

Also included in this release are:

• Mini Shopping Cart which visually displays the products in the customer's cart on every shopping page
• An improved Recently Viewed Items section allowing customers to quickly get back to products they are interested in
• An extendable workflow for order processing that allows managers to approve all orders
• .NET 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 supported right out of the box.

We are very excited about this new product release. We hope to continue our quest for innovation and excellence in the e-commerce space.

Sneak preview of the new demo store

When Multifront v6.0 is released in January 2010, it will include a brand new multi-store demo out of the box. The demo store has been designed by a leading agency with rich UI features and special attention to usability.  

The new demo store will feature powerful capabilities including Personalized Navigation, Rich AJAX user interfaces, Intelligent Cross-Selling, Multi-Store Navigation (like Gap/ Old Navy) and much much more!

The design of this store will significantly enhance the end user experience and increase conversions for online retailers.  Solutions Developers can use this default store as a starting point to build world class Storefronts.

Znode Community Gets an Upgrade

Things just got better for all you followers of everything Znode. We just upgraded our community portal to Typepad to give you a better experience.

Now you can easily browse by category for content specific to developers and partners. You can also link directly to the Znode Facebook  and Twitter  pages.

We’re continuously improving the experience and adding new content, so keep watching for new posts on Znode news, products and events. Don’t forget to add Znode Community to your favorites in your browser of choice. Or, go to Znode.com and click on Community. 

Setting project references in Znode Storefront's Visual Studio Solution

Some customers have reported issues setting library references in Znode Storefront to point to a project reference instead of a DLL resulting in build errors during compile. 

We are implementing changes to the Visual Studio solution that should fix this issue when version 5.4 is released.  

In the meantime we recommend that customers leave the libraries referenced out of the Web/Bin folder. This is how the Storefront is built out of the box so no action should be required to fix this issue in most cases.

Building Znode Storefront for 64-bit processors

We recently had a customer contact us with problems getting ZNode Storefront running in full 64-bit mode. In order to precompile an ASP.net application DotNet type reflects the bin folder assemblies. In the case of a 64 bit library being run on a 32 bit machine this will result in a failure to compile. See the following posts for more background:
 
http://forums.asp.net/p/1386237/3027009.aspx

Our tested solution for this issue is to simply compile directly on a 64 bit windows machine using the aspnet_compiler in the Framework64 folder.  

Another option may be to compile on a 32 bit server with AnyCPU as the platform build type. Then once the site has been deployed to the 64 bit system replace all the Znode.* libraries in the web\bin folder with X64 targeted binaries. The Web code should automatically work in 64 bit mode because AnyCPU was targeted and the library dependencies will be set as 64 bit. Note that this approach has not been tested so your mileage may vary.

Znode Middleware Services (using WCF)

I wanted to talk about an interesting product that the Znode team has been dilligently working on for the past several months. This product is a e-commerce middleware that uses the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) in Microsoft .NET 3.0. This product will enable rapid integration between Znode Storefront and virtually any back-office or 3rd party system using a highly scalable, enterprise ready architecture.

The Znode Middleware Service will allow access to key storefront functionality such as Order Management, Inventory, Catalog, Content Management and more using a highly structured API that can be easily extended to your specific requirements.

The Middleware services can be hosted on load balanced web servers for scalability - this will reduce the resource requirements on the web servers hosting the storefront UI. WCF has the advantage of being able to expose the services using different types of standards including SOAP, .NET Binary, ATOM, or any future specification. These services also implement security using best practices and allow for a wide range of configurations.

The Znode Middleware Service is expected to be released in early September 2008. Stay tuned!

Windows Vista SP1 update

Customers who applied the Vista SP1 started getting a memory exception during compile. We have issued an emergency patch that fixes this issue.

Please click on this link to download the patch: http://kb.znode.com/node/138

Visual Studio 2008 support

A number of customers have asked when we will begin supporting Visual Studio 2008. Though we dont "officially" support VS 2008 yet, we have verified that Znode Storefront can be safely migrated to Visual Studio 2008.

Note that Visual Studio 2008 allows you to target multiple .NET Frameworks (2.0, 3.0 and 3.5). We recommend that you set all projects to target a .NET 2.0 build till we officially test Znode Storefront on .NET 3.5

Click the link below to download instructions on converting your Znode Storefront project to Visual Studio 2008

Critical update to Znode Storefront version 4.4

We have released a HotFix for Znode Storefront version 4.4 that fixes several issues. One of these issues is an intermittent exception thrown in the Application Start event. Please click the link below to read the details of this update and download the patch.

http://kb.znode.com/KB4401

New Pricing & Promotions Engine

We are currently overhauling the pricing model used in Znode (expected to be released in Jan '08). I thought I would let our readers know about this in advance so we can solicit some feedback. The goal is to create an "enterprise class" promotions engine that can satisfy complex requirements.

For instance here is an example of a promotional campaign: A manufacturer wants to offer 20% off on all T-Shirts during Fall. Shipping is free on orders over $50. If dealers login, they get an additional $5 off on each product. Customers can also use an additional coupon to get an additional 5% discount. If customers order more than 100 T-Shirts they get a different base price on the shirts over which all the above promotions are applied.

Sounds complex? Well, with our new promotions architecture, the above scenario can be implemented easily.

Here are some of the changes we will be implementing:

(a) The Product table will contain 3 pricing columns - RetailPrice, SalePrice and WholesalePrice. If the sale price exists then it will be used to override the retail price. The wholesale price will be used if the current user profile is marked for wholesale pricing.

(b) The SKU table will contain corresponding pricing columns - RetailPriceOverride, SalePriceOverride, WholeSalePriceOverride. These values will override the product table values (if specified). This will allow manufacturers to have a different price override based on product variations (such as "color")

(c) A new ProductTier table is being introduced to add Tiered Pricing. This will allow you to add different pricing levels to a product depending on the quantity ordered.

(d) A new Promotions table is being introduced to manage site wide promotions. This will allow you to address the following promotions:
-- Apply $ or % off to the entire order
-- Apply $ or % off to a specific product
-- Apply $ or % off to shipping
-- Require coupon codes to be entered to avail promotions