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| Seamless Reporting for New Ability Financials Clients Three companies have joined the ranks of satisfied Ability Commerce clients, with their recent successful live launches of Microsoft Dynamics™ GP, an enterprise-level accounting solution designed to provide comprehensive financial analytics. Burden Sales Company, a supplier of factory-direct and surplus equipment, launched the new accounting solution in early September, as did Trailblazers, retailers of car and truck add-on accessories. Online housewares and appliance retailer Living Direct launched their new accounting solution October 1. These three growing multichannel merchants are also now enabled to perform real-time, advanced financial analysis on their order management data with Ability Financials. Ability Financials software is a seamless, Microsoft-certified integration package which moves information between order management systems and Microsoft Dynamics GP, allowing robust reporting. The newest addition to our accounting-software client family is Maggie Sottero, designer and manufacturer of high-fashion bridal gowns. Our talented and experienced implementation team anticipates a rapid live launch for Maggie Sottero—watch the newsletter for an update. |
| New Client News-Recent Sales We're pleased to welcome our two newest clients on board: Casual Male and Medals of America. Casual Male Selects Ability Amazon Interface 
Casual Male Retail Group, which operates more than 500 retail stores in addition to their web channel, has purchased Ability Amazon Interface to streamline operation of sales via Amazon.com.Casual Male will use the interface to automate feeds between their own order management systems and those of Amazon.com, thus reducing the cost of fulfillment for such orders and improving fulfillment speed and accuracy. If you're not familiar with the Ability Amazon Interface, be sure to check with your Ability Commerce support representative about the possibilities Amazon.com offers for your business. Amazon’s tremendous reach maximizes visibility for your unique merchandise, as well as offering opportunities to grow your list (for example, did you know you can include your own catalogs and mailers in packages sent to your Amazon customers?) We’re ready to help, either by implementing our easy-to-use interface, or by offering full-service marketing and customer care for all your Amazon.com orders. New Ability SmartSite for Medals of America 
Medals of America is the latest online merchant to choose Ability SmartSite as their web solution. Medals of America operates www.usmedals.com, and has been doing business since 1976, creating customized service medal displays, ribbon displays, official military insignia and related commemorative merchandise.Our implementation team is already hard at work helping Medals of America gear up for a live launch early in 2010. We're proud that the Medals of America team has selected us to help them in their important mission to make it easier for our veterans and current personnel to display the medals and awards they’ve earned in brave service to the United States. |
UK-Based Rimmer Brothers "Goes Live"
We're thrilled to announce the live launch of our first UK-based web site! Rimmer Bros. saw an immediate increase in average order size, with the launch of their new ecommerce website on August 10th, using Ability SmartSite™ ecommerce software.Rimmer Bros. is a leading mail order provider of British automobile parts. They offer 22 catalog titles specializing in Classic Triumph, MG Rover, Land Rover, Range Rover and Rover SD1 automotive parts and accessories. Rimmer Bros. was founded in the early 1980s, and has grown to be one of the leading organizations of its kind in the world, supplying parts worldwide to an ever-increasing list of customers in more than 100 countries. Rimmer Bros. can now effectively merchandise their products and create on-the-fly upsell promotions for consumables and other accessories. For example, an easy-to-update marketing banner area in their shopping cart was used to feature disposable workshop gloves as an add-on product. The first week, the promotion resulted in twelve times the sales as the previous average volume for that item. "We are very excited to see the impact from the new ecommerce website now that it is live," said Richard Caunt, General Manager at Rimmer Bros. "We are now able to meet the demands of our customer base and provide a great shopping experience for them." Please check out the press release for more information about the launch. |
| Ability SmartSite 7.01 Feature Spotlight - File Upload Wizard You’ve asked for more automation in your site content management—Ability SmartSite 7.01 delivers! The ability to quickly tie items to groups via bulk file upload has been added to Content Management. This facilitates more automated and rapid additions to Content Management. Version 7.01 includes the capability to tie items to groups using the File Upload Wizard. Future enhancements will further extend the capabilities of the File Upload Wizard, so be sure to speak to your Ability Commerce support representative today and let us know if you have other item information that takes up too much of your marketing time with laborious manual data entry. We’ll use the information we get from all our clients to prioritize which tasks are added to the File Upload Wizard first. Using the File Upload Wizard As always, your Version 7.01 release notes contain complete instructions on how to use the File Upload Wizard, but here are a few tips to get you started. The File Upload Wizard is located in the Setup section of Content Management. You can access it via the left sidebar navigation (expand Setup to see the new File Upload Wizard option at the bottom) or via the following path using the top navigation: Content> Setup> File Upload Wizard. The File Upload Wizard window appears similar to the following illustration:  Using the File Upload Wizard is very simple; no selection is required at this time for the Upload Type and File Type dropdowns (they are displayed for use in future expansions of the file upload functionality only). How the New File Upload Functionality Works for Group Items Associating your items with relevant groups in Content Management allows the items to be displayed appropriately in your menu structure. Previously, you needed to associate items manually, one at a time, with groups. The File Upload Wizard now allows you to tie items to groups via a spreadsheet, making the process much faster and more automated. Tips for Creating a File for the Upload Wizard To use the File Upload Wizard to tie items to groups, you’ll first need a comma-separated-value (CSV) file containing the appropriate information. Layout is very simple. The file must consist of two columns, one column for the items, and one for the groups to which you wish to associate them. The column containing the group information can use either the Group Description from Content Management (GroupDesc in the data tables) or the Group ID (GroupID in the data tables), which is the unique numeric identifier of the group. The column containing the item information can use either the Item Number (ItemNo in the data tables) or the ItemID (ItemID in the data tables), which is the unique numeric identifier of the item. (Ecometry users please note: the ItemID is not the same as the EDP number or EDPNo.) Make sure you don’t have duplicate lines in your file. A "clean" file with correctly formatted, unique lines will ensure proper upload and mapping of your data. The system will help by scanning for duplicates and other data formatting problems, but you will save time and reduce the risk of processing errors by reviewing your data in the file and “cleaning it up” as much as possible prior to upload. The group information column and the item information column are the only two columns which may be pulled in via this process; however, you may, if needed, use a file which contains other data. If you use a file with additional columns of data, be sure to "skip" those columns as you perform the upload. (Again, see the release notes for complete information on how to skip columns and use the File Upload Wizard.) |
| Look for Checkout Redesign in Ability SmartSite 8.0
Attention Ability SmartSite clients: watch for the completely redesigned checkout pages in the upcoming Ability SmartSite 8.0 release. As part of the support benefits of Ability SmartSite, you automatically benefit from our research into shopping-cart best practices and conversion-to-order enhancements. The result of our latest research includes a more intuitive cart process, featuring improvements to the design features that already worked well (like guest checkout and "you are here" navigation gauges), plus all-new enhancements like easier-to-change text labels and error messages, to help tweak all your form fields and errors, guiding more of your shoppers to complete their purchases. Here's a sneak peek at a layout sample for the redesigned order recap page:  Of course, our support experts are ready to help you upgrade to Version 8.0 as soon as it's released, and will help you tailor the new cart pages to match your own site’s look and feel, so that it works best for your customers. Watch your inbox for news on the new release very soon! |
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Ecommerce Tools Free Tool – Ecommerce RFP Template Ability Commerce has created an Ecommerce RFP Template to help retailers get an "apples to apples" comparison of ecommerce software functionality. Get the RFP Template here. Whitepaper – The Skinny on Screen Resolution Determining what screen resolution to design your ecommerce website for is a balancing act. The ultimate goal is a site that improves user experience and boosts conversions. This paper provides considerations about screen resolution when redesigning your site, and current best-practice advice from the experts at Ability Commerce. Get the whitepaper here. |
In the news... Weekly B2B Column by Terry Jukes, Ability Commerce President AllAboutROIMag.com Rimmer Bros. Announces New Ecommerce Website Ability Commerce Releases Ability SmartSite™ 7.0 (28k .pdf) Ability Commerce Names Patrick Reineke Director of Technology (31k .pdf) Ability Commerce Earns Certified for Microsoft Dynamics Accreditation (31k .pdf) |