It can be tough to stay ahead in eCommerce. Competition is fierce, and other businesses in your niche certainly aren't resting easy. If you want to succeed, you need to stay on top of new trends and technology that can help your business thrive. If you don't, someone else will!
Our mission at 3dcart is to help your business stay on the cutting edge of eCommerce. That's why we frequently upgrade our software with new features and integrations, so you'll always have the latest tools. We also update existing features with new functionality whenever possible, so you'll never be held back by your eCommerce platform.
Now, we're pleased to introduce 3dcart Version 10, which includes tons of new and improved features to give you more options for growing your business.
Let's take a look at what's new in 3dcart.
Customer relationships are the lifeblood of any business, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software provides a crucial tool set for building these relationships. With a CRM, a business can track customer interactions and behavior, and get to know each customer as much as possible. Different CRM solutions can include different features, but all are geared toward helping create and maintain long-term customer loyalty through recordkeeping and analysis.
HubSpot is an extremely popular CRM solution that includes a customer database as well as marketing tools. With 3dcart's new HubSpot CRM integration, you can now import and synchronize relevant data from your 3dcart store into your HubSpot account to use with HubSpot's features. This data includes:
With HubSpot CRM, you can power up your 3dcart store to new heights by learning more about your customers and marketing to them more effectively.
With billions of people checking in on social media every day, platforms like Facebook and Instagram have become crucial new venues for eCommerce. Shoppers discover new businesses through Facebook and often look for product inspiration on Instagram. 3dcart is fully integrated with both platforms, so selling on Facebook is convenient for 3dcart merchants.
Instagram has also developed into a shopping platform. With Shoppable Posts, customers can buy products immediately as soon as they see them featured by their favorite influencer. Selling on Instagram has become so popular that customer demand has led to improved eCommerce features, like Instagram Checkout.
Just as Facebook Checkout allows customers to make a purchase and check out from a business's Facebook Page, Instagram Checkout lets them buy right from an Instagram post without needing to leave the app. This makes shopping on these platforms faster than ever before, and smart businesses are taking advantage.
That's why 3dcart Version 10 includes full integration with Facebook and Instagram checkout, so your customers can shop right from your social media accounts without needing to visit your site. All your orders are still managed right from your 3dcart dashboard.
Want to protect your products with improved warranties, offer replacement items to customers, and more? Extend is ready to help your business with custom-tailored warranties that cover your products. Extend will work with you to create the ideal solutions for your customers, and resolves over 95% of claims instantly. 3dcart is now integrated with Extend so you can easily add it to your site.
With Extend on your side, you can improve customer confidence in your brand and increase loyalty. Your business also receives a portion of each protection plan sale, meaning your order value is raised whenever a customer chooses to add the protection plan to their purchase. If a replacement product is needed, Extend pays the full retail price for the product in question, and you've earned yet another happy customer.
We've upgraded some of our existing third-party integrations with new features and functionality.
Drip is an eCommerce CRM with a strong focus on building customer relationships through intelligent marketing and usage of data. The more you know about your customers, the better you can relate to them, so data gathering is crucial. 3dcart's Drip integration allows you to connect your 3dcart and Drip accounts to make your customer data from 3dcart available for use in Drip.
With Version 10, we've taken Drip integration to the next level. Drip users can now send Shopper Activity details from their 3dcart store to their Drip account. This includes information about the customer's activity on your site.
Synchronization status is also visible in the Drip module so you'll know right away whether your data is fully up to date.
MailChimp is a popular email marketing solution many eCommerce merchants prefer for newsletter campaigns and other uses. 3dcart is fully integrated with MailChimp, and now in Version 10, it's even faster to get set up. We've added MailChimp Account Creation to the onboarding process you'd use to connect MailChimp to your store. This means that if you don't already have a MailChimp account, you can create one during the onboarding process instead of needing to make one beforehand.
3dcart Version 10 includes ways to provide a better experience to customers and more management tools on the back end.
One of the most important elements of conversion optimization is to remove as much friction for the customer as possible. Shopping on your website should be effortless. Everything the customer needs should be accessible immediately, with as few clicks as possible. The faster the customer can view their cart and reach checkout, the more likely they are to complete their purchase.
The Flyout Cart is now available on 3dcart Core themes and serves this exact purpose. Once you enable it in your store, customers will be able to access their cart within a small, unobtrusive popup on every page of your site. They can quickly view and edit their cart as needed without having to leave the page they're currently on. The Flyout Cart also includes a button that will take them directly to checkout. Shopping online has never been more convenient!
Giving your customers a lightning-fast browsing experience encourages them to stick around. Now, you can make your site faster than ever with our new Page Pre-Loading setting. This setting allows pages to start loading in the background as soon as your site "predicts" that a customer is going to visit that page. This prediction is based on whether the customer hovers their mouse over a link to the page in question.
Pages that pre-load do so in the background, so you don't have to worry about them slowing down your site. Instead, the customer will be greeted with a near-instant page load when they do click on the link they were considering.
In 2018, the European Union implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR compliance is now crucial for all websites that use customer data and want to be accessible within the EU. This naturally includes eCommerce stores, especially EU-based or international businesses. 3dcart quickly responded by introducing our GDPR Toolkit to help our merchants bring their sites into compliance.
As privacy laws continue to evolve, so must our built-in compliance tools. Our new Data Privacy Toolkit includes everything you need to meet the GDPR as well as the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). We will keep updating our Privacy Toolkit to ensure you have all the tools you need to add the necessary functions to your online store to meet compliance.
Customer Groups are a powerful 3dcart feature with many uses. They allow you to segment your customers for any purpose, both automatically and manually. You can control everything about these customer groups, including their store visibility, custom pricing, payment methods, and more.
In Version 10, we've improved on Customer Groups with the ability to assign individual payment methods to multiple Customer Groups at once, instead of one group at a time. We've also added the ability to grant access permissions to multiple Customer Groups in the same way. This makes it easier to fine-tune how you restrict parts of your site. Category access permission options are now:
Merchants using our platform now have another tool to use for customizing their pricing strategies: Customer-Specific Price Lists.
This module allows you to create a custom list of items and assign special prices to them individually. These prices will only be available to the customers you choose. Creating the price list is easy, with a built-in search feature to help you locate the products you want to add. You can search by SKU and more.
Once you've created and saved the price list, you can assign it to a customer within their Customer Record in your 3dcart store. This will give that customer access to the specific prices on that list.
You can create as many price lists as you need. Products can be on more than one price list, and customers can also have multiple price lists assigned to them. If a customer is assigned multiple price lists with the same product on them, they'll be given the highest of the prices specified for that product in the lists.
Price lists can also be imported and exported via CSV.
We've made several enhancements to 3dcart shipping, including an exciting new integration, a new way to handle in-store pickup, and upgrades to existing features.
Shippo is multi-carrier shipping software that offers a full suite of shipping features for eCommerce businesses. You can use Shippo to get discounted rates on shipping with UPS, USPS, DHL, and other carriers, and print discounted shipping labels generated from your order data. Shippo also includes shipment tracking and customer notifications, which help ease the concerns of customers who worry about receiving their orders. In case of returns, Shippo can also automatically generate return labels as needed.
3dcart is now fully integrated with Shippo so you can connect it with your store and access its advantages right away.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced most businesses to change the way they operate. Many have moved to eCommerce in one form or another. Maintaining social distancing is crucial for ensuring the safety of staff and customers alike.
One way businesses have adapted is through offering in-store or curbside pickup. The customer can order online from their favorite brick-and-mortar location, then pick up the item at a designated area within (or outside) the store. At 3dcart, we want to make this easier. Version 10 includes a dedicated In-Store Pickup module to make it as simple as possible to set this up.
While you could previously create an in-store pickup option using custom shipping methods, this module makes it much faster. The alternative setup through a custom shipping method is still available for businesses that prefer it.
Accurate shipping rates are important for you and your customers alike. Any deviation from expected rates can cause customer service issues. 3dcart integrates with several prominent shipping carriers to display real-time rates, and now we've added a feature to make them even more precise.
Our Address Verification app helps prevent mistyped addresses, but we've also upgraded it to verify whether a customer's address is residential or commercial. This affects the applicable shipping rates, so this app is another step to help ensure that the most accurate real-time rates are given at all times.
3dcart's Restrictive Shipping module lets you restrict individual products to always use certain shipping methods. This is handy in several cases, such as with perishable items that need overnight delivery, or large products that are too expensive to ship via some methods. It includes a CSV import and export feature to let you manage shipping restrictions more easily.
In Version 10, we've upgraded the Restrictive Shipping CSV import/export to also include the Product ID and the full name of the shipping method. This will make your shipping restrictions easier to update via CSV, since previously, the module only used catalogid and generic shipping method names.
Some products require a bit more care or preparation than others before they can be shipped. These extra steps are often reflected through handling charges, which apply a necessary surcharge on the specific product.
Previously, 3dcart's Handling Cost function calculated the handling surcharge based on the entire order, but now you have more control. With Version 10, you can use a product's individual shipping markup as a handling charge. This lets you apply it on a per-item basis instead of basing it on the order total.
We've increased the functionality of payments on 3dcart stores with several new and upgraded features, plus a new payment gateway in India.
All payment methods impose a small fee, but some cost your business more than others. It can be frustrating. Naturally, you want to let your customers pay how they prefer. Sometimes a customer might not even be able to use a different form of payment. But then, you have to accept that you've incurred a larger processing fee than you would have if the customer had paid a different way.
This new feature allows you to add a surcharge on specific payment methods. This way, you can recover the larger fee imposed by some processors. You might have concerns about this feature turning customers away, but don't worry. Generally, the more expensive processor fees are only a percentage or two. Customers who prefer certain payment methods are often willing to pay a small surcharge to use their favorite payment method. Or, they'll simply choose a different one if they can. Either way, customers often recognize this as one of the costs of doing business.
Do you want to give customers some extra options at checkout that don't fit neatly into an existing feature? For example, gift wrapping and accessory upsells already have their own modules, but you might come up with additional ideas that raise order value. Maybe you want to offer rush fulfillment for an extra charge, or something similar.
Our new Checkout Additional Fees module lets you add customized checkout questions that will incur additional fees on the order. The checkout questions can be tailored to the options you need, like standard fulfillment for no extra charge, or rush status that adds the fee to the order. If the customer selects the option with the fee, the additional cost is recalculated into the order total for checkout.
3dcart's Order Quotes module provides a streamlined way to offer quoted pricing to customers. Many businesses rely on quoted pricing to fulfill certain types of orders, such as custom work for a client. Our module makes it easy through a complete interface that lets merchants set up a quote and allows customers to accept and pay through your website.
In Version 10, we've improved the Order Quotes module in a couple of important ways. First, you can now use custom phone order prices within the quote system, so you can negotiate with customers more easily over the phone. Second, customers can now initiate a quote request from your website.
Customers love paying with digital wallets, like Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay. These digital wallets save their payment information for secure use on participating websites. If you've added these payment methods to your site, they can increase sales among new customers who would otherwise hesitate to give a "new" website their payment information.
With all these available payment methods, checkout can get a bit crowded. This is especially true if you're using a single-page checkout, which can increase conversions. 3dcart Version 10 organizes all digital wallets into a Wallet Payments section to keep checkout clean and help customers find their favorite payment method more easily.
Online shoppers love "buy now, pay later" options. They're a big advantage for businesses too, proven to increase order sizes. In 3dcart Version 10, we've expanded our PayPal integration to include PayPal Pay in 4, their new customer financing payment method.
With PayPal Pay in 4, customers can split their purchase into 4 separate payments placed 2 weeks apart. Your business is paid the full amount up front. All risk related to collecting the payments is taken on by PayPal.
PayPal Pay in 4 doesn't have any extra cost for either you or the customer. The payments are interest-free, and on your end, all financed purchases are rolled into the normal PayPal processing rate. It's a truly seamless way to add a "buy now, pay later" payment method to your online store.
Amazon Pay is a popular digital wallet that lets customers use their Amazon payment and shipping information on other eCommerce websites. With 3dcart Version 10, our Amazon Pay integration now uses Amazon's newest wallet template. This allows customers to choose from multiple payment methods and shipping addresses saved in their Amazon profile rather than automatically using their defaults. The upgrade also includes a new onboarding process that makes it easier to connect Amazon Pay to your store.
3dcart is proud to integrate with more payment providers than any other eCommerce platform available. We're always looking to expand our payment gateway integrations to give our merchants more freedom around the world. We are pleased to announce our new integration with CCAvenue, a leading payment gateway in India. CCAvenue accepts credit cards, debit cards, digital wallets, mobile payments, and more. With eCommerce having such a strong presence in India, our CCAvenue integration will provide more opportunity to businesses with an Indian market.
As an industry leader in SEO, 3dcart is always striving to stay ahead of the game when it comes to optimizing your site for search engines. Version 10 serves that goal in quite a few ways.
Anyone familiar with SEO knows it's a constantly changing industry. This can be annoying to business owners who need to keep refining their techniques. It's even worse when your eCommerce platform doesn't keep up to date with the latest standards. That's not an issue with 3dcart!
As part of our ongoing mission to provide the best built-in SEO features in eCommerce, we've made many SEO adjustments to your product pages and content pages. Your custom settings are untouched, so don't worry: none of your work has been lost. These improvements are on the back end so you'll benefit automatically.
Custom File Names are the unique URLs you can use for the different pages on your website. Usually you create these directly. It's a good idea to base them on keywords as well as the actual name of the page. Depending on the type of page, the "best" name is ultimately up to you and your SEO goals. But sometimes, you don't want to worry about an "SEO-unfriendly" URL on your site until you can decide on the best Custom File Name.
We wanted to smooth out the creation of Custom File Names for this reason. With Version 10, when you create a new blog post, Product, Category, Manufacturer, or content page, you'll get an automatically generated Custom File Name. This Custom File Name is based on the name of the page and will also be validated for SEO. You can still edit them yourself; this is just a shortcut.
The purpose of a 301 redirect is to help prevent broken links and support a change in URL for a page. If a 301 redirect exists for a URL, it will automatically send a visitor to a different URL. Anyone visiting an "old" link to your site will be redirected to the "new" one. This happens whether they access the link from a bookmark, another site, or type it in directly. 301 redirects are crucial for preventing harm to your SEO when you want to change a link. For example, a link may need to be changed to improve its SEO, but you don't want to lose any search engine rank you've earned with the previous URL.
In Version 10, 301 redirects are automated when you change the Custom File Name (and therefore, the URL) of a page. This will redirect any visitors who access the old URL to the new one. Automating this feature helps eliminate extra work on your part. It also makes it easier to change your URLs to be more SEO-friendly, since you won't have to create the redirects yourself.
Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a website coding initiative that seeks to improve the experience of mobile browsing by serving pages instantly. AMP-enabled pages load instantaneously when linked from Google search results. This is wonderfully convenient for visitors, and also boosts your SEO by improving customer experience.
In 3dcart Version 10, we continue to expand Google AMP to more pages on your website. Originally available only on Product Pages, it is now enabled for the Home, Category, and Blog pages.
The H1 tag is vital for SEO. It serves as the main heading of the page (H1 means "Heading 1"). Search engines strongly consider the H1 tag when ranking a page. So, you want it to include important keywords or other information. Sometimes the product or category name is fine for this without any changes.
Sometimes, though, it's not. A product or category name might be too long to make a perfect H1 heading or put the keyword near the end instead of at the beginning, which is better for SEO. That's why we've added a new H1 Tag field for Product Pages and Category Pages. Now, you can specify the H1 heading independently of the product or category name. This gives you even more control over your SEO. Plus, sometimes it just looks better for human readers.
Alt tags are essential for making your page more accessible. An alt tag serves as a description for an image, which is used by customers relying on screen reader software. Not only that, alt tags are also another often-overlooked opportunity for SEO. Alt tags "tell" search engines what is portrayed in the image, so they can rank it properly.
We have replaced the main product image's Caption field with a new Alt Tag field. This allows you to specify the image's alt tag, improving accessibility and SEO. You can also choose to leave it blank and 3dcart will automatically use the product name by default, as it did with the Caption field.
Traffic analysis is one of the best tools in your arsenal for improving your SEO. It lets you identify high-performing pages, see where your visitors are coming from, and much more. 3dcart integrates with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster to provide you with this information. In Version 10, we've also added this new module to help you put these metrics to work.
This module pulls information from Google Analytics and Google Webmaster to give you detailed information on the traffic activity on specific pages. These include Product Pages, Category pages, Blog Posts, Blog Categories, and Extra Pages.
To make it even easier to build and manage your 3dcart store, we've expanded our built-in tool set to help you with both the design and technical aspects.
So, you have a favorite 3dcart theme. You also have some design skills, and you want to put your HTML and CSS knowledge to good use. Maybe you've also dug into the Core Template Engine and you're ready for some more serious edits. But what happens if you make a mistake? Will you have to reinstall the theme (and lose all your changes) and start over? Will you have to restore from your backup theme files through FTP?
Not anymore! With 3dcart Version 10, you can now clone any installed 3dcart theme. This makes an exact copy you can edit freely without touching the original. Now, you can feel more secure about experimenting with design. You can switch freely between the original theme and your edited clone to test out your changes.
Our Page Editor is a full-featured HTML builder that lets you quickly design a page filled with multiple types of content. It makes formatting easy, without needing any code expertise on your part. It's been available for some time on central parts of 3dcart websites (if using a Core theme and sitewide HTTPS), but we've also been extending it to cover more pages.
Now, the HTML Page Editor is available on blog posts. This means you can craft beautiful, compelling blog content faster than ever before. Add text blocks, headings, images, and much more with an intuitive set of tools.
Want to make fast changes to your website in real time, without needing to go into the design tools within the 3dcart Online Store Manager? Our new Quick Edit Tab provides quick access to design tools right from your storefront. It's now easier than ever to fine-tune your website.
If you've been a long-term 3dcart store owner, you may remember the Admin Design Bar found on our older HTML4 and HTML5 themes. The Quick Edit Tab is a replacement that works with our new Core Theme standards.
We get it: sometimes you want to edit your own DNS records. Maybe you plan to change your domain name. Maybe you just want access to your ANAME, CNAME, or SRV records. Our new DNS Manager lets you access these directly from your 3dcart Online Store Manager.
Sometimes, inbound links to your site can be broken. This can be caused by a few different things. Maybe someone clicks on an old link to a page that no longer exists (and has no redirect). Or maybe another site tries to link to you, but makes a mistake with the URL, like spelling a product name incorrectly. Either way, broken links to your site will result in a 404 Not Found page for the visitor.
With 3dcart Version 10, we've made it easier to fix these broken links. All broken links that lead to a 404 Not Found page will be listed as unmapped pages within your 301 redirects list. From here, you can see the broken links people are using and decide whether to redirect them to another page. This means old URLs, that you once overlooked for a redirect, can easily be fixed. Inbound links with a spelling error can be redirected to the right page. All unmapped pages in the list include time stamps of when they were accessed, and you can also batch delete them if desired.
Internet security is on the mind of every online shopper. That's why search engines now favor sitewide HTTPS, which extends the protection of SSL beyond checkout to the entire site. Of course, not every website uses sitewide HTTPS, and you may need to link to "non-secure content" like pages or assets using HTTP instead.
In Version 10, 3dcart will now warn you if you try to save a page that uses any non-secure content (i.e. using HTTP instead of HTTPS). You can still save the page as normal. The warning is just to help you avoid overlooking any HTTP content you didn't intend to include.
Do you use the built-in blog feature of 3dcart? If you do, chances are you put a lot of effort into your blog posts. We want to make it easier for you to back them up. Whether you plan to move your blog to a new site, or just want a hard copy of all your posts, you can export them now via CSV. You can choose to download the exported file once it's completed, or opt to have it automatically emailed to you when it's ready.
To help you fine-tune your 3dcart Online Store Manager to fit your exact workflow, we've added a new feature for inventory on unpaid orders. You can now choose whether inventory gets deducted on orders in the Unpaid status, or choose to disable the inventory deduction until the order is paid. Previously, inventory was always deducted on completed orders, even those in the Unpaid status, but now you have a choice.
Product Options are how you offer choice to your customers, so we've upgraded several aspects of this feature.
Many types of product come in multiple colors. Ideally, the best way to help customers choose an item is to connect a different product image to each color. You were previously able to do this using different methods, but we've added a much easier way.
With this new feature, you can create Color Swatch product options. Each Color Swatch option can be connected to a different product image. When a customer selects the color, the product image will update with the associated image. Now the customer can see every color option equally, and will never have to guess.
Do you sell products as a pack or case? Do you also sell multiple options or variants of these products? If so, these situations often don't play nice with each other. With the new Mixed Pack Product Option Type, however, these problems are over.
This new feature allows you to let customers choose different product options within a single pack or case. Now, you can let your customers build their own sample packs, or access "by case" pricing without needing to choose multiples of the same item variant.
Product Option Templates allow you to quickly add Product Options to multiple items by linking them to a template. This is a crucial feature for online stores that frequently add products requiring the same types of options.
In Version 10, we've upgraded the Options Template feature to allow you to link products to multiple Option Templates simultaneously. Now it's even faster and more convenient to use templates to add Product Options.
3dcart's rich suite of promotion and coupon management tools lets you customize your promos as you see fit. We've given promotions yet another boost in Version 10.
The more control you have over your marketing promotions, the better. That's why 3dcart allows coupon stacking. When you create coupon codes, it's up to you whether you allow customers to use more than one at a time. You can choose whether a coupon is stackable or non-stackable. Stackable coupons can be used with others, while non-stackable coupons can't.
However, sometimes you might want to ensure a certain coupon can be used regardless of other coupons. In Version 10, we've added a new setting: Override Non-Stackable Promos. This setting will always allow the coupon to be stacked with another, even if the other coupon is set to Non-Stackable.
Product subscriptions have become extremely popular in eCommerce. Customers love being able to "set and forget" a subscription to automatically purchase specific products on a regular basis. These can be items that need replenishment, or other types of recurring orders like subscription boxes. 3dcart's Autoship™ Recurring Orders module provides a complete set of tools for setting up customer subscriptions.
One available option in Autoship™ is to allow any promotional discounts the customer used when they signed up to apply to subsequent recurring orders. Previously, percentage-based discounts didn't adjust to account for any price changes to included products. With Version 10, however, we've upgraded promotion handling to calculate based on price changes that occur during the subscription. The promotion details will also be carried over and shown within the Promotion section of the order, the confirmation email, and the invoice. Not only will recurring promotions be more accurate, they'll also be more visible to customers, which helps encourage them to keep their subscriptions.
As you can see, we've been hard at work in our continuous development of 3dcart. Our goal is to bring you the best eCommerce platform in the world so you can build and grow a successful business in any industry. As always, the latest 3dcart version will be rolled out behind the scenes with no action required on your part, and all stores should be on Version 10 as of now.
We're excited to introduce you to everything in Version 10, and we look forward to even more new ways to enhance eCommerce for you!