IndieCommerce to Launch Major Upgrade

ABA IndieCommerce has announced the long-planned switch from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, as well as the launch of major upgrades, beginning at 1:00 a.m. EDT on Sunday, October 17. The transition is expected to end on Sunday afternoon.

Work on the upgrades, which include big improvements to the customer experience in terms of book/e-book searches and the checkout process on store websites, was begun in July by Optaros. At its June Board meeting, the ABA Board approved the hiring of the outside firm, because of limited in-house staff capacity.

Here's a look at some of the upgrades going into effect this weekend:

Major improvements to Book/E-book search

The book search algorithm has been completely overhauled. Instead of simply relying on keyword match+sales history, the algorithm will now takes the following factors into account:

o       keyword match against title
o       keyword match against author
o       popularity (sales history from Indie Bestsellers reporting)
o       publication date
o       Ingram regular discount
o       availability (Usually Ships in 1 - 5 Days and Coming Soon rank higher)
o       Local Store Inventory (boost books you have in stock)

IndieCommerce has set basic defaults, but weights for each ranking criterion can be adjusted (or omitted entirely) by store administrators.

Single “top edition” of books in search. By default, searches will return one top edition of a book, with a link to view related editions.

Related editions on the product page. A list of related editions of a book (including e-books) will appear on the product page.

Filter, sort, and advanced search. Filter or advanced search will narrow down results by title, author, format, availability, and price range, which can then be sorted.

Major improvements to checkout

Greatly improved Store Pickup/Pay at Store. For Pay at Store, customers need only enter name, email, and phone number.

Tax-free ordering for tax-exempt institutions. Tax-exempt institutions can identify themselves, including Tax ID number, and will be exempted from tax collection upon checkout. (The bookstore is responsible for vetting tax-exempt information before processing the order.)

Combined Givex gift card/credit card payment. If the customer does not have enough balance remaining on their gift card to cover the purchase, they will be prompted to enter a credit card for the rest.

E-books and print books appear in same shopping cart.

“Ship as available” option available at checkout.

Option to send orders back to Ingram. If an order is not accepted for wholesaler fulfillment at checkout, the store administrators can opt to shop it back to the wholesaler on the order edit screen.

The upgrade will also result in a number of small improvements to the system and fix some bugs.

During the switch from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, ABA IndieCommerce sites will be offline, and customers will be presented with a maintenance page. Questions about the transition can be addressed to IndieCommerce at staff@bookweb.org.