miles design - graphic design & web design

Business Catalyst has released 3 major feature updates since June. Below are my highlights for business owners:

Free additional mailbox storage

As part of BC's ongoing efforts to provide customers with the best email platform possible, they have upgraded the standard mailbox size to 5GB of storage, up from 2GB. There's no additional cost and there's nothing you need to do to implement these changes. The upgrade has already been completed, allowing both new and existing sites to take advantage of the additional storage.

Blog improvements

Similar to other blogging platforms, BC now allows customers to change a blog post author by selecting it from a list of site admin users. Additionally, site users can now enter a short biography and profile image that can be included in the blog post layouts using the: {tag_blogpostauthorbiography}, {tag_blogpostauthorpictureurl} and {tag_blogpostauthorpicture}. The user can change both user biography and avatar from My Account interface, while site administrators can update them from the user management interface.

Site settings

BC are starting to consolidate some of the site-wide settings in a new section called Site Settings. With this release, they're enabling you to define Facebook, form security (Captcha) and shop settings. In future releases BC plans to allow customers use this interface to update site timezone, country and other global settings.

• Shop settings: you now have the ability to set the shopping cart lifetime (lets you define how many hours a cart content is kept in the system for returning customers) and the ability to enable/disable the productfeed.xml which you can use to publish your products on product directories like Google Product Search.
• Captcha settings: this is used to enforce server side check on Catpcha for the Refer to a Friend, Campaign Subscription and Comments forms. The forms built with our web forms engine have this setting incorporated and they check for Captcha only if you've added the field when you've created the form
• Facebook settings: this is where you can enable Facebook login for your site and enter your Facebook application details (URL, App ID and App Secret Key)

Customisable SEO Friendly URLs for Web Apps

Continuing the work on this feature, BC has now added support for customisable URLs to the Web Apps module. To take advantage of this feature for your web apps, you will need to enable it from Admin > Search Engine Optimization settings page. The new URL will look like:http://www.yoursite.com/webapp-name/webapp-item-name. The web app item URL part is automatically generated from the web app item title and can be modified when editing an web app item. Similarly, you can edit the web app url, which can be edited from the manage web app screen.

 

Customisable workflow notifications

One of the most requested features on BC's wish list was to give site administrators a way to customise workflow notification emails to include relevant information or to have it translated in the site user's language. BC has now provided a solution that offers the ability to customise those workflow notification emails from the "Customize System Emails" area.

This notification template will work for all workflow notifications and can be customised by adding different tags, changing From: address or email Subject: fields. Configuration window will be similar to other system emails. 

Further enhancements to the customisable workflow & order notifications:

• Made the new layouts available through FTP. Starting next week, you can use Dreamweaver or any other FTP tool to grab the files and edit them, as well as doing bulk transfers between sites.
• Added new tags to Packing Slip and Package Label layouts: {tag_shippingattention} has been added in the Packing slip template while {tag_invoicenumber}, {tag_shippingattention}, {tag_shippingdescription} and {tag_shippinginstructions} have been added to the Package Label layout.

Read the Knowledgebase article

Order status change notifications

This is an essential e-commerce feature for keeping paying customers up to date with the status of their online order. We want to make sure that when an order status is changed, the customer will be notified of the new order status. For example, when an order is shipped, an automated email is sent to that customer with a proper notification.

 

The e-mail message template used for customer notifications will be available in the System Emails section. The system will generate an email template for every order status and will allow partners and site administrators to pick which order statuses will require a notification. By default, no status types will have any associated notifications set.

Read the Knowledgebase article

AWB tracking number and tracking URL support in orders

One piece of information missing from the Business Catalyst order system was the ability to save a tracking number (AWB) and an URL to the shipping provider web page so that customers can access information about their shipment status in the My Account section or through an order notification email. The June release will enable the following workflows:

• Site owners can assign a tracking number (AWB) and tracking URL to the order once the shipping providers picks up the package. The Update Order user interface now includes these two fields allowing site owners to manually include this information; Automation integration with shipping providers is planned for a future release.
• Administrator/Partner can use this information in Order notification emails layouts and site front-end layouts to make it available to site customers.
• Once the changes are made on the site, customers will be able to track their orders effortlessly. 

Read the Knowledgebase article

Recursive modules (modules inside modules)

You now have the ability to display modules inside modules, including the ability to insert modules inside content holders. Other examples include (but are not limited to):

• Being able to put products or catalogs inside blog posts
• Being able to insert any module inside a web-app list or detailed view (webform module, catalogs/products, literature items)

Other updates

• Social integration updates: BC has improved the social integration support by adding two new modules: Facebook Activity Feed and Facebook Send. Additionally, all social modules are now available in the Insert Module menu from Admin and in the Dreamweaver extension as well.
• Alternate email address: BC has added an additional email field for every user, that will be used to send forgot password emails. This is particularly useful for those users hosting their business email with BC and had to go back to their partner or BC's support team to recover their password. Starting with this release, you will be able to receive the email on a secondary email address at your choice.
• Remove related DNS records: when you remove a domain name or its "www" counterpart, the system will automatically delete all related records (redirects, mail records, etc.) after requesting and receiving a confirmation.
• Added subscribe & unsubscribe to newsletter confirmation pages: this will prevent automatic mailing list subscription or unsubscription to mailing caused by search bots indexing web mail; as a consequence, instead of automatically subscribing or unsubscribing users to mailing lists, BC has added a page requiring users to press a button to confirm their action. You can modify the page content and appearance by updating two additional System Messages layouts: Subscribe Confirmation Form and Unsubscribe Confirmation Form.
• Payment gateways infrastructure updates: payment infrastructure updates for enhanced security and reliability.
• Updated the WYSIWYG editor to the latest version which includes better support for iPad and lots of bug fixes.
• Forum subscriptions: users can subscribe to forums and receive notifications every time a new topic is opened. The email notification template allows you to use topic subject and forum name in the email notification subject, making it more easy to filter and read.
• Updated social integration: added support for Facebook activity feed and Facebook Send as well as updating the Like module to add support for Facebook send.
• Packing slip and package labels: site administrators or drop shipping suppliers now have a way to print packaging list and package label for each order received. Also the templates for both the packaging list and package label can now be customised. Read KB article
• Email marketing: campaigns with 20 or less subscribers are now automatically approved by the system
• Extended FTP support: With the June release BC has extended FTP support by making email campaigns and content holders available through FTP.
• Device specific site wide templates: BC's multi-screen support has just got better by allowing you to define device specific site wide templates. Each template now has a default version for desktop screens and two additional ones (tablets and smartphones). When displaying a page, the system will automatically use the template corresponding to te detected device, if that template has been defined. If no content is defined in a template, the system will fallback to the immediately higher resolution templates (phone falls back to tablet which falls back to desktop).

We've been busy over the past few months launching some fantastic new Business Catalyst websites. From design & web development through to web development only, we have implemented feature-rich websites that enable clients to manage their own website content, send email marketing campaigns, sell products, publish latest news & events and much more. Click on the images below to launch the websites.

We're happy to announce that during mid-late January, Business Catalyst introduced new plan names and streamlined their monthly pricing.

Under the new structure, the Websites Starter plan has become the "Starter" plan and was reduced by AU$7/mo for all new sites.

The Websites plan has become the "Business" plan and was reduced by AU$7/mo for new sites. This plan now also includes Email Marketing (with 1,000 newsletter credits per month). Existing "Websites" and "V2" clients have also automatically received the bonus Email Marketing feature. (Note: New features and monthly pricing only applies to new customers. Existing clients do not qualify*)

Finally, the "Full Solution" plan is now simply referred to as the "Pro" plan and was reduced by AU$5/mo for the 1-User plan. 5-User and 10-User plans have also been reduced by AU$10/mo and AU$15/mo respectively, upon site upgrade.

See our Business Catalyst products & plans page for more details.

*Important: Pricing changes are only applicable to new sites. Existing clients on older plans will not receive this new pricing. The BC accounts team will not accommodate requests to manually change any existing site to the new pricing structure.

Business Catalyst has launched a new and improved Knowledgebase. The new Knowledgebase introduces a range of requested features, including enhanced navigation options.

You can access the new Knowledgebase at kb.worldsecuresystems.com



Other new features include:

• A Flash-free landing page featuring small business owner focused "Getting Started" tutorials
• Category based "Browse by topic" navigation
• A dynamically generated "Recently updated" section
• A new set of 6 white-labeled "Getting Started" videos for SBOs
• Search auto-completion based on popular search phrases (start typing "w" for instance, and you'll see suggested searches such as Web Apps and Web Forms)

We hope you find the improved Knowledgebase helpful.

Starting 29 April 2011, the existing (2.60) version of Triangle extension will not be able to login to Business Catalyst servers due to a change in authentication protocols.

To allow you to continue using Triangle, Business Catalyst have released a new version (2.61) and made it available for download from here.

To improve deliverability of email campaigns from your online business, Business Catalyst made the following improvements to the system:

1. Created a global black list for email campaigns: bounced emails due to "mail box unavailable" or "user does not exist" errors will now be recorded in a Global Black List and the system will block from sending campaigns to that email address for 45 days unless the recipient verifies via double opt-in.
2. Block list emails report: the email campaigns report page will display how many recipients are black listed due to invalid email address and also have the link to open a report to show the email addresses that are invalid. Users can unsubscribe those invalid email addresses using the action drop down at the top of the results.

For more information visit:
http://kb.worldsecuresystems.com/893/cpsid_89341.html

Earlier this year Business Catalyst experienced a series of incidents that caused significant problems for a large number of customers. They had issues with their hosted email services followed by stability problems on the legacy Sydney data center.

In light of this, BC are issuing a full month credit for all paid sites that were hosted on the legacy Sydney data center, and those that were using internally hosted email services.

To be more specific, the following sites will receive a full month credit:

• All paid sites hosted on the AU data center that have been upgraded on or before January 31st
• All paid sites using the internal Business Catalyst hosted mail service across all data centers, which have been upgraded on or before January 31st 2011
• All customers that were affected by these incidents will receive an email announcing the full month of credit.

In addition, BC has made some updates to the site Admin Console to help customers understand the period for which the credit has been applied. Go to Home > My Account.

To issue the full month of credit, BC will skip a month of invoicing for websites with monthly billing, and simply postpone the invoice for one month for sites on annual billing. If your site is billed monthly, no invoice will be generated between 15 Apr and 15 May 2011. If your site is billed yearly, the next due invoice will be postponed by one month.

Since the series of incidents, BC has managed to solve all email issues by shifting to an externally hosted email provider and migrating all sites from the legacy Sydney data center to a new location.

Once again, we apologise for the inconvenience caused by these outages and thank you for your support. If you have any other questions, please submit a Support Request via your Partner Portal or contact us.

The website and branding refresh for Pinetrees Lodge on Lord Howe Island is now complete. Pinetrees have provided so many amazing photos, how could you not produce something spectacular! View the new site at http://www.pinetrees.com.au

As 2010 draws to a close, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my valued clients and suppliers for a busy and successful year and wish everyone a safe and happy Christmas and New Year.

Our office will be closed from 23 December 2010, returning 17 January 2011. For any urgent enquiries over this close-down period please email info@milesdesign.com.au. I look forward to working with you in the New Year!

Best wishes
Rob Miles

There are various issues you may encounter when using the email marketing features of Business Catalyst. This article from BC aims to explain some of these issues and their causes.

Why are my emails bouncing?

Bounces can be caused by numerous issues. The first thing to look at is the number being written in the bounce report.

550 series errors are caused by non-existent or incorrectly spelled emails. If you have imported a large list it's very likely some of your emails are invalid and as such you will find this number appearing in bounce reports. It is important you unsubscribe these individuals as servers view this as an attempt to "phish" for valid email addresses. If you have a large number of these bounces you may find that your overall marketing suffers as the server starts refusing your emails!

4xx series errors often are temporary deferments caused by excessive server load on the recipient side. Our mail server will most likely send out the email but this report will not be updated upon completion. The bounce report is written once and includes the first wave of tries from our marketing servers.

Though such heavy bounce rates are not a regular occurrence, there are a few steps you can take to help us and yourself with email deliverability. The first thing you can do is evaluate the campaigns you send and make sure that:

• There are no broken images
• Your messages maintain a ratio of 80:20 images:text and no higher. Full image emails are often content filtered as spam immediately
• You monitor your bounce lists for 550 5.1.1 errors and remove these non-existent users from your email lists
• Have your customers white list your email address and list you as trusted senders in their email clients

My customers say they aren't receiving my emails!

There are numerous reasons for this, most of which have to do with the first question! However, there is also a chance that the mail application of the client, whether it be a web based system or local client application, is sending your mailing to the spam filter. Along with the suggestions above, you should always include language on the signup page and on emails that indicates to your client that they should whitelist your server and emails to achieve better marketing performance.

Why is nobody opening my emails?

They most likely are, but they are probably not registering. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, be sure you have selected to send an HTML version of your email.

In order for the system to register an opening, the email client needs to download the images from the email or the user needs to click on a link and go to your website. The tracking code is attached to the images. If your newsletter does not have an image in it, the system will insert 1px x 1px image into it for the recording purposes. That image download is then recorded by the system. The image download is what causes the reports to reflect that the email campaign message was opened. The problem is that the email clients don't do this by default to prevent spammers form identifying the legitimate email addresses. In Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, Mail and most other clients, you often have to specifically click on "Download Images" (or something along those lines) link. So, for all those customers that end up viewing the newsletter without downloading the image, the system will have no way of recording the opening.

Finally, some clients just don't like HTML emails and will default to the plain text version of the mailing. For example, many older Blackberry models do not display HTML unless written in a very strict fashion or at all!

Why is my email going to the spam folder?

This ties into the first two issues discussed. Inbox placement is a tricky issue and is due to a multitude of factors. Follow best practices and engage your customers with calls to action for whitelisting and you will find success.

Why is my campaign not going out or seems delayed?

Typically you will find that campaigns are sent out within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. However, campaigns can take up to 24 hours to finish fully broadcasting. Keep in mind that reporting is only available once the broadcast is "finished" but this does not necessarily mean sending hasn't begun.

How can I stop a campaign from going out?

If you go into your campaign and choose "Save Draft" then it will revert to a draft state and no longer be sent at its scheduled time. As long as you do this before the time is reached this should work for you.