Latest Shopster Release

Ahh.. Friday afternoon after a mid-week launch. The perfect time to reflect on what went right, what went wrong, and what can wait till Monday... :)

So, in case you haven't received the latest Shopster Newsletter, a major release went out mid this week. I worked on two key features, the ability to export order data out of the Shopster system, and into your own data analysis application (a.k.a. Excel), and the ability to reactivate your account.

Before now, to reactivate your Shopster account, you had to call customer support. Now, you can do so by simply trying to log in again with your email address and password. The system will tell you if your account is currently cancelled, and ask you if you want to reactivate.

Currently, if you reactivate through the automated system, you get an additional 1 week trial. Note that there is a limit on the number of times you are allowed to reactivate, so please don't abuse this system thinking you can cancel and reactivate every week for free service.

For the order export utility, we had to made some hard decisions in how the data should be formatted for export. Currently, the system lets you export order data out for the last 3 months. You can choose to export out in Excel, PDF, or comma delimited format (CSV). An interesting report is the Product Statistics report which gives you summary product information over all your orders in a given month. If this feature is well received, I hope to be able to offer more analytical reports for export, rather than just raw data.

For the first time, a Shopster e-Commerce subscriber can export out their customer's full information related to an order, including the email address, billing and shipping addresses, and contact information.

If you are a e-Commerce subscriber, the reports are available through:
Storefront Channel, Manage Store, Download Reports

If you are a Product Source subscriber, the reports are available through:
Product Export Channel (or eBay Channel), Manage Orders, Download Reports

Now that the release is out the door, I'm going to have to address the backlog of business intelligence requests sitting in my Inbox.