Introduction to AbleCommerce 7.0

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For more than 17 years, AbleCommerce has been evolving into a sophisticated, feature-rich ecommerce application.  Having one of the first commercially available shopping cart systems, AbleCommerce's name in the eCommerce industry is built around product excellence, stability, and well written code.

We have always had a strong commitment to our customers, so thanks to the feedback of merchants around the world, AbleCommerce keeps growing into one of the most sophisticated eCommerce  systems available today.  There's nothing like the experience we have to offer.  AbleCommerce software, now in it's 7th generation, has been completely re-designed for ease of use, manageability, and usability.  For version 7, we've focused on providing a quick and easy deployment process, incorporating lots of great new features, and using the strictest security standards required by Payment Card Industry (PCI) and Payment Application Best Practices (PABP).  

AbleCommerce includes some great new improvements and additions since our last version:

  • One-Page-Checkout (proven to increase sales)

  • Post-order credit card processing such as capturing payments, authorizations, refunds, and voids, all from the AbleCommerce order administration.  

  • Automatic image re-sizing on upload with support for three standard image sizes.

  • Executive Dashboard with your current sales, product, category, and traffic graphs.

  • Enhanced inventory management with backorder capability.

  • Product options may now have color swatches associated with them.

  • Display Featured products, New products, Recently Viewed, Related (used to up-sell), and Top Selling products automatically.

  • Product Reviews with the ability to moderate the publishing of them to your site.

  • Integrated gateway support for Recurring Billing (Subscriptions).

  • Products now support manufacturers, variable prices, hidden prices, featured, cost of goods, unlimited images, subscriptions, two types of templates, and similar products to "push" to the customer on checkout.

  • Redesigned store templates allow customers to sort by name, by price, by manufacturer, price, or featured.

  • Enhanced My Account page: Edit Addresses, View Orders, Mailing List Preferences, Manage Product reviews and Currency.

  • For business to business, there is a one click re-order feature from the invoice page.

  • New Shipping Coupons may offer free shipping on selected shipping methods.

  • Store email notifications for all features that require it.

 

  • Fully supports the new PABP Visa/MC standards.

  • 15 store Themes to choose from.

  • Block users by IP, edit password security setting and change the credit card encryption string (PABP).

  • Completely re-written for Microsoft .Net 2.0, 3.5, or 4.0 in C#

  • Ajax support for many retail store and administration functions for an enhanced user experience.

  • Quickly skin AbleCommerce store theme to match any site look and feel.

  • Support for new XML site maps for Google, Yahoo and MSN.

  • Google Base, Yahoo Shopping, and Shopping.com Feeds

  • Handle multiple email lists and allow your customer to opt-in and opt-out.

  • Quick shipping estimate on the basket page.

  • Automatic currency rate conversion with multiple providers.

  • Public and Private Order Notes with notifications

  • Reports:  abandoned baskets, who's online, taxes, category popularity, and more.

  • Sortable shipping and payment methods.

  • Kit management has been drastically improved.  Now you can use a master kit that updates multiple products at once.

  • Digital Goods management has also been improved to make it easier to find products and orders with digital goods attached.

 

What's Inside AbleCommerce?

At the core of AbleCommerce is the CommerceBuilder(R) engine, a set of compiled .NET assemblies that provide an object framework for ecommerce transactions.  The objects provide a friendly interface to link web scripts to the database.  This framework is extremely flexible and well documented to make it simple for merchant developers to create a truly custom shopping experience.   

CommerceBuilder is written completely in C#, one of the most widely used .NET languages.  Our version  7.0 is designed specifically for use with the .NET 2.0 framework.  It is also written to work properly within ASP.NET Medium trust, which is necessary for many common shared hosting environments.

On the scripting side, we have employed a new web design framework built on extensions of ASP.NET Themes and Personalization features.  Using this framework, merchants can make many modifications to the store without sacrificing the ability to upgrade to new versions of AbleCommerce.  It also makes it easy to create, share, and install new themes that can completely change the look, feel, and behavior of a store.

Getting Started

For those who want to get started as quickly as possible, then we recommend the Quick Start Guide.  It will familiarize you with the global store settings, and most common setup tasks like shipping, payment, tax and email.

  1. Quick Start Guide - a three page guide that will take you, step-by-step, through the most common start-up duties.

  2. Customization Guide - a 30 page supplementary guide that explains how to customize your store.

  3. Site Map - easily find available documentation on features.   

 

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