Available between 7th - 12th December 2017 to REC+ users


INVITE SYSTEM

The Invite system can be used to send out emails to invite people to use your site. This allows them to accept the invite and set up their own password.


Use Case Examples


1. Ecommerce Migrations

Use this when migrating users from another system to REC so that you can set up new, secure passwords as the passwords on the old system can't be imported due to differences in encryption methods which will then ensure passwords are on the latest level of encryption provided in our system. 


Handling Guest Checkout Users

When importing users, consider using the status column to part-approved to allow the user to use the guest checkout system without a password, rather than accept an invite and have to enter a password. 


2. Prospecting & Premium Content 

You can use this in the CMS version to invite a list of prospects to join the site to see premium content pages hidden behind a login, as set up in Page Manager permissions.


3. Setting Up New Admins

Rather than setting up a new admin's password when you add them and then sharing it via email or Skype (which is less secure), add them without a password and then send them an invite so they can set up their own password instead.


How It Works

  1. Invitees need to be manually added or imported into the system as users as follows:
    • Add/edit in User Manager on the user record > Status & levels > tick Send Invite Email which will automatically send the invite email on Save
    • Import users via the Import system, ensuring the CSV contains a new invited column which is set to 1. No email is sent yet.
  2. Send invites via the Invitations program
    • This sends an invite email to all imported users  
    • This then sets the invited field to a 2 in the INVITE column, which you can then see if you export the data
  3. Invitees accept the invite and can then set their own password and takes them to the User Home screen (or the Admin Console for Admin users)
  4. If invitees fail to accept the invite then when they try to login a message is displayed to say they need to accept the email invite that was sent to them and it automatically re-sends the invite email to them


Setting Up The Invite Email


1. Set up the following site definitions with the email subject and other messages:


Site Define Value (visible to the user)  Description
EMAIL_USER_INVITE_SUBJECT
You're invited to join our site.
Subject line of email sent when user invited to site
USER_INVITE_NOT_YET_ACCEPTED
You have been sent an invite to join our site! Please check your inbox or spam folder. Contact us for further assistance.
Message shown on login page when invite not yet accepted
ENTER_NEW_PASSWORD
Before you can continue, please set a new password:
Text for entering a new password after login with forgot password / invite system


2. Set up your content to go into the body of the email via Page Manager on the system page email_user_invite


Make sure to test everything prior to using the system for sending live invites.



REPORTS & EXPORTS LAYOUT CHANGES

The Reports and Exports programs have undergone a cosmetic facelift, plus there is a new filter bar to find reports.



NEW REPORTS

These reports pull their information from your Google Analytics report, so ensure this is set up first via the Connect program. You can select by date ranges and other filters, such as page types, categories and manufacturers.


Top Pages Report

This displays the top 100 most viewed pages on your website with stats to show how engaged users are on each of the pages and the top 3 countries sending visitors (tip: hover over the flag to see the name and number of visitors). Use this information to optimise content and SEO for better results.


Average time on page is a good indicator to see which pages users are dwelling on. Lots of visitors but low time spent on page suggests an issue with content or pricing on a page. 


A lower Bounce rate is  better, typically aim for it to be below 40% (unless it is a specially created landing page with self-contained call-to action, in which case a high bounce rate does not matter as they have everything they need all on one page).


Page value is calculated by Google Analytics factored on the number of visitors and the number of purchases made or Goal values achieved. For CMS pages this will normally be zero unless you have set up goals and values.



Top Products Report

View your top 500 most popular selling products with the facility to select by specific categories or brands. You can enter a date range which will then produce a comparison with the same period in the previous year so you can see the year-on-year revenue change plus identify which products are being viewed but not purchased so you can check for issues with pricing, descriptions, photos etc. A fantastic report to include in your monthly management analysis.



Top Manufacturers (aka Brands) / Top Categories Report

View sales grouped by manufacturer / brand to see which brands are most popular, or by category for your most popular categories.

You can sort by revenue or quantity sold to see what's shipping the most.



Revenue Sources & Form Responses

Available for marketing clients to view the different sources driving revenues or replies to your forms, directing you to the detailed information on the Marketing Console.


SESSION COOKIE CHANGE 

We have changed the session cookie so that users can now see their incomplete shopping cart baskets for up to 30 days after they have closed the browser. This will help to increase conversion rates for returning users who abandoned the shopping process and can still see the products in their baskets when opening a new session.