IndieLite Credit Card Processing
The deadline for IndieLite stores to switch to their own credit card processor is Friday, July 30. Take a look at this guide for more information. ABA also held a two-part webinar on the topic. View part one here and the part two recording was just posted here.

Help With Slow Web Pages
If you feel your site has been sluggish lately, you may want to take this as a cue to give it a tune-up. One piece of low-hanging fruit is optimizing your image files. There are two parts of this: file format and dimensions. Not all formats are equal when it comes to performance on the web. PNG files tend to be large in size and load very slowly. Converting these to JPG using a free tool like Adobe’s PNG to JPG converter will easily cut your file sizes in half, if not more. Adobe requires a free account to do unlimited conversions, and after the first image you will need to click “Open image” and then “Download Image”, being sure to select JPG if it is not already the default.

Managing your image dimensions is also critical.  The optimal time to do this is prior to uploading, but for existing content you can use the file browser on your IndieCommerce site. 

1. Go to your user page (https://[yoursiteULR]/user)
2. Click the file browser tab
3. Select the image
4. In the toolbar, click “Resize”. 
5. Set your desired dimensions and deselect the option to create a new file
6. Save

This will change the image in place so you do not need to update the content to reflect the change. Please note, this is different from the “Height” and “Width” options in the content editor. That will not change the file, only the way it displays, and is not recommended. You may also wish to make use of Image Styles to automatically resize images based on content type. If you need additional assistance, please email [email protected]. 

No Waiting List For IndieCommerce & IndieLite Websites
The huge increase in online sales during the pandemic created a high demand for IndieCommerce (IC) and IndieLite (IL) websites last year. It’s been well over a year and online sales revenue and traffic remain very high with sales over the past 2 weeks up over 418% when compared to the same two weeks in 2019 (pre-covid). 

Customers are coming back to your physical store, but with online sales remaining strong, there is a tremendous sales revenue opportunity for stores who do not have an ecommerce enabled website. If you are looking for a new website for your bookstore, now is the time to get started. For more information, contact [email protected] .