Content slider
Use the new content slider to setup animated content sections with your own background images and text. Visitors can use arrows or page icons to navigate between slider content sections.

Edit any page, click the add button and choose the content slider from the design/layout component section.

Google fonts directory - customize your site with new fonts
Most newer web browsers now support the ability to download fonts, giving you more control over how your site text looks. Google has setup a font directory to easily allow you to use new fonts on your website.

In the text & styles area, you can now choose from a selection of many different font styles from the Google font directory. To choose your additional fonts, click the font drop down and click the more fonts link.

Use caution when selecting additional fonts. Adding more fonts to your site can cause your site to load slower, so be sure to only select fonts that you are using on your site.

Sidebar configuration
The new sidebar configuration window provides easier access to sidebar minimum width and other options. A new icon has been added to the top sidebar to open up the sidebar settings window. You can set the minimum sidebar width as well as enable/disable sidebars while editing the page.

Design library
More color layout options have been added to the design library. To view more options, go to the design library, find a design and click the color icon to preview the design in many different color schemes.

Ecommerce

• Sidebar links mode - expandable tree format
• Sidebar links mode - display categories as section titles
• Option for full path navigation (breadcrumb links on top of all product pages)
• Easier to move products/categories in and out of the hidden products area
• Customize all labels/text for shopping cart and checkout pages
• Configure gift certificate expiration
• Customize css/style for the product sub category and links display

Multiple file upload (drag drop) for Chrome and Firefox
When using Firefox or Google Chrome, you will now be able to multi-select and upload files. This is useful for setting up photo galleries or uploading files via the file manager. The upload form also includes a drop box. You can select files form your computer and drag them to the drop box to automatically upload them to your website.

 

PREVIEW : Layout builder (advanced feature)
Get more control over your design with the new layout builder designs. Customize the backgrounds, margins and padding for different areas of your layout (quickbar, logo, banner, menu bar, content areas, sidebars, footer). This is an advanced feature that requires good knowledge of web design/css.

 

PREVIEW : Web developer tools (advanced feature)
Use the web developer tools to customize your website. This is an advanced feature that requires good knowledge of web design/css and web programming.

 

• Install custom template templates
• Create custom layouts for products
• Upload your own menu buttons
• Customize your menu styles, photo gallery styles and more.

Design
New layouts and background styles have been added.

Blog
The blog has been updated to allow you to enter a blog summary. If you have long blog posts you can enable the blog summary to be displayed on the main blog page. To enable the summary feature click the blog settings tab.

Blog RSS feed enhancements
From the blog settings page you can enable the site blog feeds. This option will add this blog feed to your main website feed. The main website feeds are seen by visitors in the browser toolbar as a clickable RSS feed icon.

Updated mobile admin pages
The mobile admin page style has been updated. The ecommerce reports have been added to the mobile admin console.

RSS feed component
The RSS feed component will display a RSS news feed from another website on your pages. You can now set the number of feed entries to be displayed. Use the customize style option to customize the feed display.

Page editor
Updated text/image components. These components are now easier to edit and modify. Add captions and border colors to standard text component images.

Quickbar
Add social networking links to your quickbar. Setup links to your facebook and twitter pages as well as your site mailing list and RSS feed pages. The quickbar now has the option to add a Google translate drop down to your site. Visitors can switch the language they view your site in and Google will translate the site contents.

Social networking
Use the social networking links component to add graphic buttons that link to your Facebook and Twitter pages. A new 3d social networking icon set has been added.

Google menu
Access adwords, search engine submission and webmaster tools/site map verification.

Search - Advanced HTML
Set your preferred domain name for search engines. This option tells the search engines how to setup links to your website. You can choose the following forms... domain.com or www.domain.com

Ecommerce
The site builder 2 store manager pages have been updated to include the product/order search field on every page. The shopping cart product detail links will now include the product name on the URL. This can help with search engine rankings and also makes it easier for visitors to identify product links.

• Option add the product name to the URL for product detail pages
• Google base export
• New gateways (Payment Gateway, RealEx Payments)
• Property on product to set product as not discountable (coupons/discounts - do not apply to product)
• New ecommerce button style

Misc

• Next/prev links have been added to the bottom of the file manager.
• The disk space usage page now displays the amount of SiteBuilder Media™ space being used.
• Drop down menu added to view tab to easily access the website and mobile website.
• Set the preferred version of your domain name (www.domain.com or domain.com) for search engine indexing (Cannonical meta tag)
• Added options for email based approval of message board posts

Account settings (site access)
From the my account page you can now manage your site availability. Click an option to set your entire website to under construction.

Did you know Americans spent $155.2 billion dollars in online transactions in 2009? Many of those sales are done near the holiday's and peak on Black Friday or Green Monday (the first Monday in December which is usually the busiest online shopping day of the year). Now is the best time to get your store ready for the rush.

1. Create a promotion to drive sales - you can create a coupon that gives a vistor a discount for ordering over a certain amount on your site.  This leads to people being more willing to spend more (be sure to use the related products/upsell feature to prompt people on products they may want to buy with their purchase).

2. Use rewards to get them to come back - Use the rewards feature to give customers an incentive to shop and to come back.  Send them an email using the mailing list to let them know they have rewards available.

3. Setup a Facebook page for your store. Let your customers know about it by putting a link on your site.  Get your most loyal customers onto your Facebook page talking about you and reward them for it (discounts or gift certificates for the most loyal customer)

 

One way to spruce up your site for seasonal occassions is to use our header graphic library.  We have a cache of different holiday themed headers you can switch out on your site.  Visitors like sites that are festive which can increase your return shoppers and increase your sales.

 

Today we are launching our redesigned website for QuickBizStores.  QuickBizStores provides a complete ecommerce management platform.   The redesign website includes an updated look, social media integration as well as our new system blog.  Check back with out blog for update to date information, QuickBizStore updates, Ecommerce Tips, Marketing information and more.

All QuickBizStore sites are designed for search engines performance.  Visit the QuickBizStores marketing and SEO center to learn more about maximizing your website search engine performance.

The first step in optimizing your website is to determine which keywords/search words you are targeting.   These are the words/phrases that potential visitors will type when searching for your site.  You want to make sure that the most important keywords are used throughout your website.

• In your page content
• Page/link names
• Page titles

After you have your pages setup with your keywords you can use the Google sitemaps generator and use the search engine submission feature that is included with your store.

Blog
The blog has been updated to allow you to enter a blog summary. If you have long blog posts you can enable the blog summary to be displayed on the main blog page. To enable the summary feature click the blog settings tab.

Blog RSS feed enhancements
From the blog settings page you can enable the site blog feeds. This option will add this blog feed to your main website feed. The main website feeds are seen by visitors in the browser toolbar as a clickable RSS feed icon.

Updated mobile admin pages
The mobile admin page style has been updated. The ecommerce reports have been added to the mobile admin console.

RSS feed component
The RSS feed component will display a RSS news feed from another website on your pages. You can now set the number of feed entries to be display. Use the customize style option to customize the feed display.

Quickbar
Add social networking links to your quickbar. Setup links to your facebook and twitter pages as well as your site mailing list and RSS feed pages.

Search - Advanced HTML
Set your preferred domain name for search engines. This option tells the search engines how to setup links to your website. You can choose the following forms... domain.com or www.domain.com

Ecommerce
The site builder 2 store manager pages have been updated to include the product/order search field on every page. The shopping cart product detail links will now include the product name on the URL. This can help with search engine rankings and also makes it easier for visitors to identify product links.

Misc

• Next/prev links have been added to the bottom of the file manager.
• The disk space usage page now displays the amount of media space being used.

Mobile web pages (BETA)
More and more internet users are using mobile devices such as the iPhone or Android. This release will include support for adding mobile optimized pages. Customers can create new pages that are designed to work on advanced mobile devices.

The mobile support is not for all mobile devices. It is designed to work with advanced mobile smartphones such as the iPhone and Android based devices that have full HTML support (we are not supporting WAP based phones).

To add mobile pages to your site, go to the page list and click the mobile website button.

Blog enhancements
New customization options have been added that let you customize the styles, fonts, colors of many of the blog display elements. You can also customize how many blog posts are displayed on the first page. You can set the system to show all the post from the last 7 days, last 30 days, or you can specify the number of posts to display.

Site feed/RSS auto discovery: Blogs can now be set to show up in your website feed. Go to the blog settings page and enable the "Add blog to site feed" setting. This setting allows browsers and search engines to more easily find your blog.

Blog summary: You can now set the main blog page and your RSS feeds to show a short summary of the full blog post. Go to the settings page to enable summary display and then edit your blog posts to add the blog entry summary.

Ecommerce - Rewards
With the ecommerce rewards system enabled, you can give your customers discounts for shopping at your website. Customers will earn reward points for making purchases at your website. They can login to their accounts and redeem the reward points for credit that can be used on future purchases. You can configure how points are converted, which products are included/excluded and set specfic products to be worth more/less points.

Form builder data
The form builder has been modified to allow you to view your form data on your website. All data will now be saved in a forms database. To view form data, you can login to your website, click the form data link and select the form that you want to view.

The form data csv file has also been updated. The csv data file for newly submitted forms will contain the form data fields in the file header. This will make it much easier to use/import the file into other applications. The form data file will also contain all data fields such as radio buttons and checkboxes. Each time you change the form field data structure, a new csv file will be created.

Secure forms upgrade
With the secure forms upgrade you can use the form builder to collect form information over a secure https:// page. The data that is submitted is saved in your site admin. You can then login to your site to view the form data over a secure link.

• When visitors browser to a page with a secure form they will be redirected to a https:// version of the page
• For data is not sent in the form email. You must login to your website to view form data
• The secure form cannot be used to collect credit card/billing information

AppDb upgrade
Use the AppDb feature to setup a searchable/sortable data table. You can define your own custom fields when setting up the data table. To create a new AppDb go to the page list and click the AppDb page type.

Social networking
Social networking The social networking icons can now be added to the bottom of the product catalog detail pages. Social networking icons allow visitors to share the product page/information on their social networking pages (twitter, facebook...) To add the social networking icons to product detail pages, view your website, click the settings button and then click the social networking link.

Google Buzz has been added to the list of social networking icons.

Design

• New groupbox styles
• Advanced css menu settings (align right, margin/spacing, menu bar settings)
• Animated text/css menus
• Setup up to six groupbox styles

Misc updates

• Image tools: A slider has been added to the main resize image page allowing you to easily reduce the image size by moving the slider.
• Footer styles: the advanced padding/border/margin settings have been added to the footer styles area.
• Image gallery/rotator: all of the image gallery/rotator modes now support the image description display.
• Product search: the product search from within the store manager now allows you to change the product category/login after clicking on the edit link from the search.
• Ecommerce order notes: The new append to notes button allows you to enter time stamped updates to the order notes area.

FireFox 3.6 file upload/drag drop
Firefox 3.6 supports the HTML5 enhanced multi file upload. When the advanced file upload option is enabled, you will be able to use the Firefox 3.6 upload features. When you browse to select files to upload you, will be able to select multiple files in the file open dialog box.

Drag/drop upload: A drop files box will appear next to the file upload/browse button. To upload files via drag/drop, open a file/explorer window. Select the files you want to upload, click the files and drag the files to the "drop files" area in the browser window. The files will be uploaded to your website.

 

Ecommerce - product image display
The product thumbnail image feature has been enhanced. The images are now easier to setup. With the site builder preview/flash upload enabled, you can upload multiple thumbnail images at the same time for a product. The new thumbnail option displays the thumbnail preview images directly below the main product image on the product detail page. When a thumbnail image is clicked, the main product image will change to display the larger image for the thumbnail. This option lets customers view more product images directly from the product detail page.

Ecommerce reports

• Profit/cost report
• Sales by state
• Sales by country
• Updated graph/chart style

Rotating banners and overlay text
The banner/header system has been enhanced to support rotating banners and custom overlay text/HTML. The rotating banner feature enables you to setup a sequence of banner images. The header area will cycle through the banner images fading in and out between each image. Other options include banners that randomly display, each time a page is viewed.

In addition to multiple banners, a text/HTML overlay can be setup that goes on top of each banner in the sequence. You can set the text, size and the position of the overlay. One use of the overlay text would be to create clickable text/image links that are in the banner area.

To setup rotating banners and overlays, go to the design area and click the "header & images" link. Then click the "rotating banners/overlay" tab.

Customize fonts and styles

• Text/css menus
  Customize the colors and style for text based menus. Customizations include font color, style and background color for the regular menu, selected menu and hover over menu. (for this feature to be available you may need to reselect your layout or reselect your menu button style)
• Forms
  Customize the style for your website forms. Adjust the font size, colors, borders and spacing of your form fields/labels.
• Product catalog display
  The product customizations allow you to set the borders/backgrounds/colors/fonts/styles for over 20 different areas in the product catalog display. The customizable areas include the product title, product links, labels, price fields, description text, title areas and more.

Tabbed accordion view
The new accordion mode displays a vertical list of tab names with the tab content below the tab
name. The update also includes an option to set the font size for the tab and accordion text.

Countdown timer component
Add a countdown timer to your website. The dynamically updating timer displays the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds to the date that you specify. You can set a destination page that users are taken to when the counter expires. Edit any page, click the add button and choose the countdown timer from the standard/HTML menu.

Map button
A map button has been added to the user account details page and the order detail page. Click the map button to open a new window that displays a map of the users contact address. For orders the shipping address is also added to the map window.

Mobile admin
Access basic information and reports from your mobile phone. View website traffic statistics, view user account/contact information and view store orders. For more information, go to your main site admin page, click the "my account" link in the left side menu and then click the "mobile admin" link.
learn more...

Misc updates

• Set the font size for tabs in the tabbed content component
• Updated image manager resize and crop features to work in FireFox
• Added new view to image manager to see files
• Added option to center align the main menu
• Popup calendar for date selection (blog, calendar, coupon editor)
• Text editor 2.0: background preview - allows you to see how your text will look on dark or light backgrounds

Design system

• New logos
• Updated banners
• Gradient maker (background images)
• Layout properties - updated page for selecting page width

Site builder preview - misc updates

• Misc graphic updates and adjustments
• Added drop down menu to page properties button

Ecommerce - product images display
The product thumbnail display has been enhanced. You now have the option to display thumbnail images directly below the main produc image. Visitors can click a thumbnail to view the image without having to open a popup window. To enable this feature go to the shopping cart settings page.

• Enhanced product thumbnail image display
• New report : sales by state
• New report : sales by country
• New report : sales by profit/cost
• MapIt - view customer location and shipping address on a map

Rotating banners

• Setup rotating banners : load a sequence of images that automatically fade in and out for each of your page banners
• Setup text/HTML overlay on each banner image. This feature lets you customize the text on top of the banner and setup links in your banner area
• To configure rotating banners, go to the design area of the site builder. Click the header & images tab and then click the rotating images tab.

Image management

• Updated resize/crop tools (works with FireFox)
• New option to view/select images with image previews in the file manager

Menu

• Center align the main menu (may require that you reslect your layout or reslect your menu style)
• Menu customizations : new option to customize the text/background colors and style for the text based menus

Text and style customization

• Product display : customize the fonts, colors and style for the product catalog display
• Forms : customize the fonts, colors and style of forms on your website
• Tabbed content box : customize the font size for the tabs

Tabbed accordion view
This new mode for the tabbed content box displays each of the tabs as a vertical list. You can click each of the section titles to open the accordion section.

Site builder preview - misc updates

• Misc graphic updates and adjustments
• Added drop down menu to page properties button

Misc update

• Text editor 2.0 - new option to help edit text on dark and light backgrounds. The background preview link (located at the bottom of the text edit area) allows you to preview what your text will look like on dark and light backgrounds. This option does not change the background color.
• Popup calendar for date selection (blogs and events calendar)
• Misc system optimizations
• Countdown timer component

Design system

• New logos
• Updated banners
• Gradient maker (background images)
• Layout properties - updated page for selecting page width

Ecommerce

• Updated store home page
• Support for editing coupons
• Links from website to store/product management pages
• Multi currency (get estimate of price in a different currency). Requires that you add currency selection to the store sidebar component.
• Require consent checkbox during checkout. Add box with custom message that requires shoppers to check the box and agree before continuing with their checkout.
• Option to verify email address (enter 2 times) during the checkout process

Multiple gift certificates and coupons
Customers can now use multiple gift certificates when checking out through your website. The system will still only allow one coupon but allows gift certificates to be used with the one coupon.

Design system

• Quicker design updates - design updates are displayed without the page needing to be reloaded
• Overlay windows in place of popup windows for design element selection
• Logo changes
  • Upload/select logo while editing a page
  • Logo builder is easier to use
  • Easy buttons for logo upload or select from library
  • Link added to access advanced logo settings
• Backgrounds
  • Many new backgrounds added
  • Easily change/test site backgrounds
• Groupboxes
  • Many new groupbox styles added
  • Easier to select and customize your groupbox styles

Overlay property windows
We are replacing many of the popup windows (browser window opens up in a new window) with quick overlay windows. The overlay windows open inside your current browser window.

Social networking
We have added several new components that interact with many of the social networking websites.

• Twitter feed. The twitter feed component displays the contents of a twitter feed on your website. NOTE: If twitter experiences any downtime, the page containing this component will load much slower.
• Share my site/social networking links. The share my site component adds links to many of the top social networking websites directly to any of your pages. These sites include twitter and facebook.

Landing page/tracking pages
Create landing pages to track referrals or links from other websites. Give the landing page a tracking code. When visitors go to the page the code is tracked in the visitors session. When the visitor places an order or submits a form on your site the tracking code is included.

Mailing list tracking
With the mailing list manager any links that you add to the email will automatically have a tracking code added to the link. This tracking code will allow you to track orders and form submissions that are received from visitors clicking on a link from your newsletter.

Form builder auto response emails
Setup an auto response email to be sent back to visitors when they fill out a form on your site.

Other/misc updates

• Block IP address - go to the advanced settings page to setup IP adddress blocking
• File manager support for back button to navigate file manager pages
• 2 new link paragraph components

Help/tutorials

• The tutorials page has been redesigned to make it easier to browse the available tutorials