IndieCommerce Completes Pre-Holiday Upgrades

Over the past month, ABA IndieCommerce has rolled out a series of major updates to member stores’ IndieCommerce sites. The work, done with the help of Drupal development firm Optaros, was based on a poll of IndieCommerce stores conducted in the spring, as well as feedback from ABA’s Digital Task Force, the ABA Board, and the Booksellers Advisory Council.

For the past two years, ABA staff has launched major upgrades in advance of the holiday season.  (BTW covered last year’s updates as well.)

“These features represent our continued commitment to improving the IndieCommerce product,” said ABA Technology Director Matt Supko.

Work completed in the past month includes:

• Coupon Codes: A powerful, new module allows stores to create different kinds of coupon codes for customers. Stores that want the module enabled must contact IndieCommerce staff. (Documentation and examples are available here.)

  Coupon codes cannot be applied to agency e-books, but can be used with non-agency titles.  If customers try to apply a coupon code to an agency e-book, they will not receive the discount.

• CIM Stored Credit Card Feature: Credit cards used at checkout will be saved with a customer’s account information for repeat purchases with the new uc_cim module.  Storage is done using Authorize.net’s CIM feature, which provides a reference to a customer’s credit card on Authorize.net’s servers, rather than the card data itself.  This secure feature provides all the advantages of saved credit card data without the liability of storing customer credit card numbers directly on a store website. To be eligible to use this feature, stores using their own Authorize.net account must have the CIM feature on their accounts.  All stores on ABA’s shared Authorize.net account can use the new module.

  IndieCommerce is now rolling out the new stored credit card data feature to all interested stores.  Because switching to the new CIM module requires closing out (completing or canceling) all orders on a website, stores that would like to use the new module should contact Chanthee Keokhaw to schedule the switch.

• Custom Product Bulk Upload: With this feature, custom products can be uploaded in bulk as a flat file, much like Local Store Inventory for print books. IndieCommerce staff will begin contacting stores that have expressed interest in bulk upload for custom products next week. Interested stores should contact Valerie Federici to be added to the list.

• Custom Products Now Available in Book Search: The search on a store’s IndieCommerce website now includes custom products created by the store, such as event tickets, T-shirts, and signed copies.  The search results include images when available. Custom products appear only in the main (formerly the “book”) search.  Custom products do not appear in the Google eBook search.

• New Browse for Print and Google eBooks™: A new browse function lists all books and e-books, regardless of whether they have been viewed previously on a store website.  In addition to category-based browse, customers can sort books by a number of factors, including alpha by title/author, price, and whether titles are in stock at your store. The browse function is based on BISAC codes, which are provided by publishers along with other metadata about a book.

• Destination-based Sales Tax: For states requiring destination-based sales tax, an alternative to the uc_tax module has been created that uses the customer’s zip code, rather than the store’s zip code, to calculate sales tax on taxable orders. Stores should check to see if their sites are using destination-based sales tax.