Today we are launching our redesigned website for QuickBizSites.  QuickBizSites provides a complete ecommerce management platform.   The redesigned website includes an updated look, social media integration as well as our new system blog.  Check back with our blog for up to date information, QuickBizSites updates, Ecommerce Tips, Marketing information and more.

Design
New layouts and background styles have been added.

Blog
The blog has been updated to allow you to enter a blog summary. If you have long blog posts you can enable the blog summary to be displayed on the main blog page. To enable the summary feature click the blog settings tab.

Blog RSS feed enhancements
From the blog settings page you can enable the site blog feeds. This option will add this blog feed to your main website feed. The main website feeds are seen by visitors in the browser toolbar as a clickable RSS feed icon.

Updated mobile admin pages
The mobile admin page style has been updated. The ecommerce reports have been added to the mobile admin console.

RSS feed component
The RSS feed component will display a RSS news feed from another website on your pages. You can now set the number of feed entries to be displayed. Use the customize style option to customize the feed display.

Page editor
Updated text/image components. These components are now easier to edit and modify. Add captions and border colors to standard text component images.

Quickbar
Add social networking links to your quickbar. Setup links to your facebook and twitter pages as well as your site mailing list and RSS feed pages. The quickbar now has the option to add a Google translate drop down to your site. Visitors can switch the language they view your site in and Google will translate the site contents.

Social networking
Use the social networking links component to add graphic buttons that link to your Facebook and Twitter pages. A new 3d social networking icon set has been added.

Google menu
Access adwords, search engine submission and webmaster tools/site map verification.

Search - Advanced HTML
Set your preferred domain name for search engines. This option tells the search engines how to setup links to your website. You can choose the following forms... domain.com or www.domain.com

Ecommerce
The site builder 2 store manager pages have been updated to include the product/order search field on every page. The shopping cart product detail links will now include the product name on the URL. This can help with search engine rankings and also makes it easier for visitors to identify product links.

• Option add the product name to the URL for product detail pages
• Google base export
• New gateways (Payment Gateway, RealEx Payments)
• Property on product to set product as not discountable (coupons/discounts - do not apply to product)
• New ecommerce button style

Misc

• Next/prev links have been added to the bottom of the file manager.
• The disk space usage page now displays the amount of SiteBuilder Media™ space being used.
• Drop down menu added to view tab to easily access the website and mobile website.
• Set the preferred version of your domain name (www.domain.com or domain.com) for search engine indexing (Cannonical meta tag)
• Added options for email based approval of message board posts

Account settings (site access)
From the my account page you can now manage your site availability. Click an option to set your entire website to under construction.

Blog
The blog has been updated to allow you to enter a blog summary. If you have long blog posts you can enable the blog summary to be displayed on the main blog page. To enable the summary feature click the blog settings tab.

Blog RSS feed enhancements
From the blog settings page you can enable the site blog feeds. This option will add this blog feed to your main website feed. The main website feeds are seen by visitors in the browser toolbar as a clickable RSS feed icon.

Updated mobile admin pages
The mobile admin page style has been updated. The ecommerce reports have been added to the mobile admin console.

RSS feed component
The RSS feed component will display a RSS news feed from another website on your pages. You can now set the number of feed entries to be display. Use the customize style option to customize the feed display.

Quickbar
Add social networking links to your quickbar. Setup links to your facebook and twitter pages as well as your site mailing list and RSS feed pages.

Search - Advanced HTML
Set your preferred domain name for search engines. This option tells the search engines how to setup links to your website. You can choose the following forms... domain.com or www.domain.com

Ecommerce
The site builder 2 store manager pages have been updated to include the product/order search field on every page. The shopping cart product detail links will now include the product name on the URL. This can help with search engine rankings and also makes it easier for visitors to identify product links.

Misc

• Next/prev links have been added to the bottom of the file manager.
• The disk space usage page now displays the amount of media space being used.

Mobile web pages (BETA)
More and more internet users are using mobile devices such as the iPhone or Android. This release will include support for adding mobile optimized pages. Customers can create new pages that are designed to work on advanced mobile devices.

The mobile support is not for all mobile devices. It is designed to work with advanced mobile smartphones such as the iPhone and Android based devices that have full HTML support (we are not supporting WAP based phones).

To add mobile pages to your site, go to the page list and click the mobile website button.

Blog enhancements
New customization options have been added that let you customize the styles, fonts, colors of many of the blog display elements. You can also customize how many blog posts are displayed on the first page. You can set the system to show all the post from the last 7 days, last 30 days, or you can specify the number of posts to display.

Site feed/RSS auto discovery: Blogs can now be set to show up in your website feed. Go to the blog settings page and enable the "Add blog to site feed" setting. This setting allows browsers and search engines to more easily find your blog.

Blog summary: You can now set the main blog page and your RSS feeds to show a short summary of the full blog post. Go to the settings page to enable summary display and then edit your blog posts to add the blog entry summary.

Ecommerce - Rewards
With the ecommerce rewards system enabled, you can give your customers discounts for shopping at your website. Customers will earn reward points for making purchases at your website. They can login to their accounts and redeem the reward points for credit that can be used on future purchases. You can configure how points are converted, which products are included/excluded and set specfic products to be worth more/less points.

Form builder data
The form builder has been modified to allow you to view your form data on your website. All data will now be saved in a forms database. To view form data, you can login to your website, click the form data link and select the form that you want to view.

The form data csv file has also been updated. The csv data file for newly submitted forms will contain the form data fields in the file header. This will make it much easier to use/import the file into other applications. The form data file will also contain all data fields such as radio buttons and checkboxes. Each time you change the form field data structure, a new csv file will be created.

Secure forms upgrade
With the secure forms upgrade you can use the form builder to collect form information over a secure https:// page. The data that is submitted is saved in your site admin. You can then login to your site to view the form data over a secure link.

• When visitors browser to a page with a secure form they will be redirected to a https:// version of the page
• For data is not sent in the form email. You must login to your website to view form data
• The secure form cannot be used to collect credit card/billing information

AppDb upgrade
Use the AppDb feature to setup a searchable/sortable data table. You can define your own custom fields when setting up the data table. To create a new AppDb go to the page list and click the AppDb page type.

Social networking
Social networking The social networking icons can now be added to the bottom of the product catalog detail pages. Social networking icons allow visitors to share the product page/information on their social networking pages (twitter, facebook...) To add the social networking icons to product detail pages, view your website, click the settings button and then click the social networking link.

Google Buzz has been added to the list of social networking icons.

Design

• New groupbox styles
• Advanced css menu settings (align right, margin/spacing, menu bar settings)
• Animated text/css menus
• Setup up to six groupbox styles

Misc updates

• Image tools: A slider has been added to the main resize image page allowing you to easily reduce the image size by moving the slider.
• Footer styles: the advanced padding/border/margin settings have been added to the footer styles area.
• Image gallery/rotator: all of the image gallery/rotator modes now support the image description display.
• Product search: the product search from within the store manager now allows you to change the product category/login after clicking on the edit link from the search.
• Ecommerce order notes: The new append to notes button allows you to enter time stamped updates to the order notes area.

FireFox 3.6 file upload/drag drop
Firefox 3.6 supports the HTML5 enhanced multi file upload. When the advanced file upload option is enabled, you will be able to use the Firefox 3.6 upload features. When you browse to select files to upload you, will be able to select multiple files in the file open dialog box.

Drag/drop upload: A drop files box will appear next to the file upload/browse button. To upload files via drag/drop, open a file/explorer window. Select the files you want to upload, click the files and drag the files to the "drop files" area in the browser window. The files will be uploaded to your website.

 

Ecommerce - product image display
The product thumbnail image feature has been enhanced. The images are now easier to setup. With the site builder preview/flash upload enabled, you can upload multiple thumbnail images at the same time for a product. The new thumbnail option displays the thumbnail preview images directly below the main product image on the product detail page. When a thumbnail image is clicked, the main product image will change to display the larger image for the thumbnail. This option lets customers view more product images directly from the product detail page.

Ecommerce reports

• Profit/cost report
• Sales by state
• Sales by country
• Updated graph/chart style

Rotating banners and overlay text
The banner/header system has been enhanced to support rotating banners and custom overlay text/HTML. The rotating banner feature enables you to setup a sequence of banner images. The header area will cycle through the banner images fading in and out between each image. Other options include banners that randomly display, each time a page is viewed.

In addition to multiple banners, a text/HTML overlay can be setup that goes on top of each banner in the sequence. You can set the text, size and the position of the overlay. One use of the overlay text would be to create clickable text/image links that are in the banner area.

To setup rotating banners and overlays, go to the design area and click the "header & images" link. Then click the "rotating banners/overlay" tab.

Customize fonts and styles

• Text/css menus
  Customize the colors and style for text based menus. Customizations include font color, style and background color for the regular menu, selected menu and hover over menu. (for this feature to be available you may need to reselect your layout or reselect your menu button style)
• Forms
  Customize the style for your website forms. Adjust the font size, colors, borders and spacing of your form fields/labels.
• Product catalog display
  The product customizations allow you to set the borders/backgrounds/colors/fonts/styles for over 20 different areas in the product catalog display. The customizable areas include the product title, product links, labels, price fields, description text, title areas and more.

Tabbed accordion view
The new accordion mode displays a vertical list of tab names with the tab content below the tab
name. The update also includes an option to set the font size for the tab and accordion text.

Countdown timer component
Add a countdown timer to your website. The dynamically updating timer displays the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds to the date that you specify. You can set a destination page that users are taken to when the counter expires. Edit any page, click the add button and choose the countdown timer from the standard/HTML menu.

Map button
A map button has been added to the user account details page and the order detail page. Click the map button to open a new window that displays a map of the users contact address. For orders the shipping address is also added to the map window.

Mobile admin
Access basic information and reports from your mobile phone. View website traffic statistics, view user account/contact information and view store orders. For more information, go to your main site admin page, click the "my account" link in the left side menu and then click the "mobile admin" link.
learn more...

Misc updates

• Set the font size for tabs in the tabbed content component
• Updated image manager resize and crop features to work in FireFox
• Added new view to image manager to see files
• Added option to center align the main menu
• Popup calendar for date selection (blog, calendar, coupon editor)
• Text editor 2.0: background preview - allows you to see how your text will look on dark or light backgrounds

Design system

• New logos
• Updated banners
• Gradient maker (background images)
• Layout properties - updated page for selecting page width

Site builder preview - misc updates

• Misc graphic updates and adjustments
• Added drop down menu to page properties button

The new system update is now available.

Design system

• Quicker design updates - design updates are displayed without the page needing to be reloaded
• Overlay windows in place of popup windows for design element selection
• Logo changes
  • Upload/select logo while editing a page
  • Logo builder is easier to use
  • Easy buttons for logo upload or select from library
  • Link added to access advanced logo settings
• Backgrounds
  • Many new backgrounds added
  • Easily change/test site backgrounds
• Groupboxes
  • Many new groupbox styles added
  • Easier to select and customize your groupbox styles

Overlay property windows
We are replacing many of the popup windows (browser window opens up in a new window) with quick overlay windows. The overlay windows open inside your current browser window.

Social networking
We have added several new components that interact with many of the social networking websites.

• Twitter feed. The twitter feed component displays the contents of a twitter feed on your website. NOTE: If twitter experiences any downtime, the page containing this component will load much slower.
• Share my site/social networking links. The share my site component adds links to many of the top social networking websites directly to any of your pages. These sites include twitter and facebook.

Landing page/tracking pages
Create landing pages to track referrals or links from other websites. Give the landing page a tracking code. When visitors go to the page the code is tracked in the visitors session. When the visitor places an order or submits a form on your site the tracking code is included.

Mailing list tracking
With the mailing list manager any links that you add to the email will automatically have a tracking code added to the link. This tracking code will allow you to track orders and form submissions that are received from visitors clicking on a link from your newsletter.

Form builder auto response emails
Setup an auto response email to be sent back to visitors when they fill out a form on your site.

Ecommerce

• Updated store home page
• Support for editing coupons
• Links from website to store/product management pages
• Multi currency (get estimate of price in a different currency). Requires that you add currency selection to the store sidebar component.
• Require consent checkbox during checkout. Add box with custom message that requires shoppers to check the box and agree before continuing with their checkout.
• Option to verify email address (enter 2 times) during the checkout process

Store home page

• Settings links are now divided into 2 sections (store setting and advanced settings)
• Graphic buttons added to the top of the store pages for quick access to store manager features

Multiple gift certificates and coupons
Customers can now use multiple gift certificates when checking out through your website. The system will still only allow one coupon but allows gift certificates to be used with the one coupon.

Other/misc updates

• Block IP address - go to the advanced settings page to setup IP adddress blocking
• File manager support for back button to navigate file manager pages
• 2 new link paragraph components

Help/tutorials

• The tutorials page has been redesigned to make it easier to browse the available tutorials

Ecommerce : phone/manual order entry
Better support for phone orders and manual order entry has been added. To create orders manually go to the store manager and click the "phone orders" link in the view/process orders section.

Ecommerce : Google checkout
Support for the Google checkout gateway has been added (open beta test)

Ecommerce : Misc

• AVS/CVV results : The order details page now displays the results for the AVS/CVV match from your payment gateway. (NOTE: for results to display, this feature must be supported for your payment gateway)
• Australia post

Design

• text/style preview on the color selection page
• new backgrounds
• color scheme generator updated - text/style preview & an option to set the background color
• text & styles - pre defined text styles optomized for dark/light backgrounds
• footer style - option to customize the footer text/links and the footer menu
• new designs in the design library

System Update: 4.14c

---

Form builder

• Support added for multi column forms. In the form field list add a column entry to set where a new column starts.

Ecommerce

• Option added to set the default product category overview and product detail layouts. Go to the store manager and click general settings to setup the default layouts.

System Update: 4.14b

---

Form builder

• Contact/Leads DB. Use this option to save a contact record in your user database with basic contact information when a form is submitted.
• Select which user groups contacts are added to.
• Option to register users for multiple mailing lists from a form.

Mailing lists/user accounts

• Setup multiple general signup mailing lists and use the form builder to create mailing list registration forms.
• Mailing lists auto response messages can now be enabled for all mailing lists.
• Navigation and links have been optimized to make it easier to access mailing list/user functions.
• The user group properties page now allows you to change the group name.
• Links on the users list pages to easily switch between groups.

 

System Update: 4.14a

---

 

• Design: 26 new page backgrounds added
• Design: new option added to find an layout by the "layout id"
• Website: The site logo/banner is now clickable. When clicked visitors will go to the website home page.
• Message board: option has been added to require users to either login or create an account to post messages. Search feature has been added to the message board.

 

System Update: 4.14

---

Blog Platform Enhancements:
The integrated blogging platform has been enhanced to provide for more flexibility and more advanced blogging features.

• New blogs styles and layouts
• Setup and manage categories for blog entries
• Blog categories and archive sections show number of posts on the sidebar link
• Set comments to display on the blog detail page or in a popup window
• Set blog sections to use site page titles or groupboxes
• New blog management page displays blog entries, number of comments and entries with pending comments

Upgraded 2.0 text editor
The 2.0 text editor has been upgraded. This upgrade enables text edit features for the following web browsers: Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. The 2.0 text editor has also been set as the default text editor for all non Internet Explorer web browsers.

Design : custom page banners
Support for customizing your site banner/header image on a per page basis. To use this feature edit any page and click the "header options" link. This option will allow you to upload your own custom banner for the selected page.

Design

• New themes
• Many new system banners have been added
• New backgrounds
• New groupboxes

Sitemaps/robots.txt enhancements
To help increase exposure in search engines, especially Google, the system will now automatically generate an optimized sitemaps.xml file as you make updates to your site. This file includes all your site pages, blog entries and product detail pages. The search engines use this file to easily index your site and to detect when your site content has been updated. The system also generates a default robots.txt file.

• Automated google sitemaps generation
• Auto generated robots.txt file for full site indexing

Ecommerce : enhanced product searching
The ecommerce product search has been upgraded to allow customers to filter search results by product category and product price.

Media Components
The system media components have been upgraded.

• New integrated flash media player supports playing .flv (flash) video files as well as many other video formats
• Easily switch between the new flash media player and the standard browser plugin media player
• New option to upload videos directly to your YouTube account from your website

Misc Changes

• Account information change notice. Anytime your account information is updated or your password is reset, you will receive a notification email.
• An option to delete user accounts has been added.
• Create categories for calendar events.
• Message board topic sorting.
• Spam filtering enhancements.
• Website settings and ecommerce settings overview pages provide an "at a glance" view of your configuration settings.

Domain manager

• View all domains associated with your account
• View domain status and expiration dates
• Register new domains or add an existing domain to your account

PREVIEW: advanced file uploader

• Easier file upload with one click and file selection
• Upload progress display
• Use multi select to upload multiple files at the same time with the file manager and image galleries
• To enable the advanced uploader, go to an upload form and click the link to try the advanced uploader
• If you have feedback or problems using the advanced file uploader, contact support and switch back to the default file uploader

PREVIEW: advanced page editor

• Quicker page editing with "in page" features
• Easily move components on the page without a page reload
• Overlay component editor makes it easy to access the component edit pages
• Component updates are instantly applied to your page without needing to reload the page
• Optimized component menu for adding/inserting and accessing component properties
• To enable the advanced page editor, edit any page and click the change link inside the section 1 header
• If you have feedback or problems using the advanced page editor, contact support and switch back to the default page editor

 

Design:

• Enhanced design manager - The design manager has been enhanced to allow you to save all of your design settings and give each design set a unique name. You can save as many design sets as you wish and then reload the design settings through the design manager.
• New templates - there are 10 new templates available in this release
• Text/css menus - enable non-graphic buttons in the menu
• Over one hundred new logos have been added to the system.
• Style support in 2.0 text editor for browser Heading styles (title 1, title 2, title3). Heading styles can be set from Design, Text & Styles, Default, Text, Text Titles

User accounts:

• User account signup form - a new form type is available that includes a company field.

Page Editor/Components:

• The page properties can now be accessed directly from the page editor. The page properties button has been added to the main site editor bar between the add page and edit page buttons. When the page properties button is selected, the properties window slides down, allowing you to change page settings, modify the page layout, assign security access and set page specific meta keywords/description.
• Page properties option to enable/disable sidebars per page
• Youtube component - have YouTube videos play within your site.
• Form builder - Support for file uploads through the form builder has been added to the system. There is a 2mb limit of upload file size. The uploaded files are sent with the form email as attachments.
• New tutorials have been added for the content rotator, file upload utility, setting up wholesale products, fonts and copying products.

Ecommerce:

• A product search feature is now available from within the store manager to allow you to search for products in your store to edit them.
• FedEx shipping labels - you will have to be certified by FedEx to use this feature.
• ACH (echeck) support Beta - support is now available for Linkpoint, Verisign, and Authorize.net. Contact support if you are interested in testing this feature.
• New coupon restrictions allow you to set which products can be used with a coupon (select specific products or exclude specific products). You can restrict the coupon to only apply to products that are not on sale. A new coupon type has been added "By X get Y free".
• VAT tax support - The VAT tax option displays the VAT tax amount along with the base product price. VAT tax display is enabled through the Store, International Settings page. The system will use the first sales tax entry in the sales tax settings to determine how to compute the VAT amount.
• Delete product images when deleting products - you are now prompted if you wish to delete the images for a product when deleting a product.
• Minimum order quantity on a product - restrict orders to require that a minimum quantity of a product be ordered.
• Support for Innovative Merchant Solutions gateway (Quickbooks gateway).
• Gift certificate balance lookup component - allow customers to look up the balance on their gift certificate.
• Customer submitted product reviews - allows store customers to submit product reviews/ratings.
• A one time setup fee option on a product - allows for a fixed setup fee on a product which does not vary on quantity of a product that is ordered.
• Order mangement enhancements - multi order move in order manager