As you all know RPMWare keeps getting better and better because we’re always adding features, making things work more smoothly and adding more product lines. We’re on version 1.5 now. There are over 80,000 lines of code and millions of records in our database and we’re just getting started. We’re gearing up for v2.0 and we want your feedback.

Below is a very simplified version of our to-do list for your review. Please let us know what is most important to you and your business. If you have a feature request you don’t see below let us know and we’ll add it to the list. Also, give us some feedback on what you think we’re doing well so we can keep it up. Based on your feedback we’ll set the development schedule and timeline for v2.0.

Big Stuff

1. Templates (Let Clients Define HTML - Completely Customizable)
2. Content Management System (CMS) / Blog
   1. Clients can create page templates
   2. Clients can add as much content as they want to each page
   3. SEO Friendly URLs
3. Easily Support Multiple Services (Websites, Website + Profile, etc.)
4. Add/Edit Customers & Orders Thru Backend
5. Google Checkout
6. Product Group View
   1. Arrange Items / Sort Order (Bestselling, Featured, A-Z, Z-A)
   2. List View - Grid View
7. Product Reviews
8. Product Tagging
9. Product Addons (e.g. Filter Cleaning Kit for Intake)
10. Related Products
11. Filter Results by Specs
12. Callouts - Add Images / Text to specific Ecommerce Pages
13. FedEx Live Rates
14. Reporting
    1. Order Totals
    2. Best Customer(s)
    3. Best Item(s) - Most Viewed, Most Sold
15. Visitor History (You Recently Viewed…)
16. Marketing Pages
    1. Page Name, Page Body, List of Featured Products
    2. Put items in specific order
17. Bread crumb navigation
18. Brand Showcase (Specific page when clicking on a brand)
19. META Tags
20. Wishlist
21. Customer Login Area (”My Account”)
    1. Recent Orders
    2. Address(es)
    3. Reviews
    4. Tags
    5. Shopping Cart
    6. Wishlist
22. Client Added Description - Client Adds to Manufacturer Description
23. Limit based on Model / Submodel
24. Document Discounts
25. Customize Order Confirmation E-mail
26. Featured Brands / Groups / Items
27. Download price sheets
28. Estimated shipping time per brand, group, item
29. Ship from zip by brand for drop ships
30. Shipping discount by brand

Little Stuff

1. Upload different types of multimedia (files, video, sound)
2. Clickable tracking numbers
3. Explain what CVV2 is
4. Vehicle select flickers
5. SQL Polling (Specs Table, Vehicle Details Table)
6. Change Order Status
7. Reset Password (Admin, Customer)
8. Delete Customer Level
9. Universal Parts on ItmGroupDetail.aspx (hard to tell you are looking at a universal part)
10. Tax Shipping (Y/N)
11. Checkbox to send email or not on order status changes
12. Froogle (Google Base) Feed
13. Add CC Type in Order

Please send you suggestions, comments, etc. to kyle@rpmware.com or leave a comment on the blog. Thanks!

We just pushed a new feature we’ve been working on for a while live and I’m sure you’re gonna love it.

Beautiful, keyword packed, search eangine friendly URLs. The screenshots below will show you the before and after.

This is the single best thing we can do to boost your ranking in the search engines. Over the past 30 days about 40% of your traffic came from the search engines; we’re hoping to significantly add to that with this new feature.

Your old URLs still work so any links you have coming in will continue to work without any issues.

We also updated the sitemap files to include the new URLs. The search engines will automatically download the new file the next time they index your site. You can speed the process up to informing them you have a new file to pickup.

As always please let all your questions, comments and concerns be heard. Go check out the new SEO URLs.

Now that we have Google Analytics up and running again let’s put some of its features to use. Measuring your conversion rate is a simple way to gauge your site’s performance.

To get it setup login to your Google Analytics (GA) account and click Edit in the settings column.

On the next page you will see “Conversion Goals and Funnel.” Click edit next to G1 (you can configure up to 4 goals). You should see a page like this:

The Goal URL is: /Store/Account/OrderConfirm.aspx.

Next, assign a Goal name and make sure it is active. If you want you may define a funnel to track your visitor’s path to checkout.

Finally make sure the Case sensitive checkbox is not checked and that Match Type is “Head Match.” Hit Save Changes and you are ready to start tracking your conversion rate.

Remember as with all business metrics you must take each with a grain of salt. You conversion rate isn’t the only thing to watch. Your traffic counters, pages per visit and time on site are also important metrics. Our industry is notorious for horrible conversion rates. I’ve been working with automotive websites a long time and have never seen anything much higher than 1.00%. Typically customers are going to check you out online, call with some questions, think about it for 3 days, check with the wife or parents then put in their order. Unfortunately it’s not as cut and dry as a book from Amazon.

Let me know if you have any questions and be sure to swing by for live support this Thursday. We’ll have a ton to talk about this week.

We just pushed a new feature live. You can now limit the makes of vehicles available on your site. Want to specialize in Hondas, Nissans? Turn off all the other makes and those will be all your customers see.

First, select the vehicle makes you want to display on your site. By default they are all enabled. [Items / Set Applications Active Status]

Once you submit your selected applications RPMWare will prompt you to recreate the XML file that powers the search by Year / Make / Model drop-downs. Follow the instructions and you’re all set.

Soon we will expand this to specific models in each make so you will be able to specialize in specific cars like the EVO or Supra. If you have any questions, as always, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Wow it’s late. Lots going on down here in Florida. Some good news before I hit the sack. Google Analytics is working. If you haven’t done so already get yourself a FREE Google Analytics account and add your account number in the admin area (Settings / Basic Configuration).

Once you do you’ll be able to track visitors, page views, time on site, conversion rates and a myriad of other metrics to help your online business. Let us know if you have any questions.

Please pardon our dust as we upgrade the admin area of your websites and add some much needed features. Don’t worry, everything will work as it normally does all weekend; however, you may notice some things moving around.

After getting started on a couple of requested sitemaps it quickly become evident I needed a better way. So, stay up a couple hours later and it’s done. Your sitemaps are available at: http://yourdomain.com/Sitemap.aspx If you have any questions please let me know. You can read more about sitemaps in this Wikipedia article. Also make sure you submit your sitemap to each of the supported search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and MSN). All this information is also available in your admin area under XML.

Overnight and this morning we pushed the first phase of our new release public (the front end). We’ve listened to your critiques, comments and suggestions and rebuilt the front of the website to address them.

Search

Every site now has keyword search. It will search your Brands, Categories, Product Groups and PartNumbers. Currently it does not search the vehicles. We did this by choice to limit the number of results but if you have strong opinions one way or the other on that we’re open to your suggestions. Try It

Product Groups

You no longer have to select a vehicle to see parts under a group (although you still can). When a vehicle is not selected the site will prompt you to select a make to see all parts available for that make. When a vehicle is selected the site will show results for that vehicle high on the page next to the product image as well as allow browsers to view all the available parts below. See It

Google Sitemaps

Ask and you shall receive. Anyone who wants one can have one, but you have to e-mail me as it is a manual process right now. We’ll integrate it into the admin area soon. First come, first served, please allow 48 hours turnaround. kyle@rpmware.com

Better Description Formatting

We’ve implemented a wiki engine to parse the descriptions and output clean html. You may or make not notice it, but all the product descriptions look much nicer.

Bug Fixing

We’ve knocked out 99% of the bugs we are aware of. There are still a few stragglers that are vexing us (Google Analytics is one); however, you should notice a much smoother and faster browsing experience. If anything does bite you please let us know.

Data Audit

The data audit is officially done. If you see any issues or inaccuracies please let us know.

This week should be jam packed. We have our latest release coming out as well as a full data audit.

We’ve been talking about a data audit for some time now, but what is it?

Every item in RPMWare is linked to a specific vehicle. There are about 60,000 items, 140,000 fitments and 46,000 vehicles in RPMWare. There are also about 1.5-2M “links” connecting all those items to all those vehicles. Managing that becomes quite a feat and over the past 6-9 months we’ve made a few mistakes. The data audit is meant to fix those mistakes by going over all those links with a fine tooth comb.

We’re able to do most of this automatically, but some items require a human touch. For these we are stepping thru one-by-one to ensure everything is as close to 100% accurate as possible. Here’s our progress so far:

1 [x] ACURA2 [x] HONDA3 [x] INFINITI4 [x] MAZDA5 [x] MITSUBISHI6 [x] NISSAN7 [x] SCION8 [ ] SUBARU9 [x] TOYOTA10 [x] ALFA ROMEO11 [x] AM GENERAL12 [ ] AUDI13 [ ] BMW14 [ ] BUICK15 [x] CADILLAC16 [ ] CHEVROLET17 [ ] CHRYSLER18 [x] DAEWOO19 [x] DAIHATSU20 [ ] DODGE21 [x] EAGLE22 [x] FERRARI23 [ ] FORD24 [x] GENERAL MOTORS25 [x] GEO26 [ ] GMC27 [x] HUMMER28 [x] HYUNDAI29 [x] ISUZU30 [x] JAGUAR31 [ ] JEEP32 [x] KIA33 [x] LAMBORGHINI34 [x] LAND ROVER35 [ ] LEXUS36 [x] LINCOLN37 [x] LOTUS38 [x] MASERATI39 [x] MAYBACH40 [ ] MERCEDES-BENZ41 [ ] MERCURY42 [x] MERKUR43 [x] MG44 [x] MINI45 [ ] OLDSMOBILE46 [ ] PLYMOUTH47 [ ] PONTIAC48 [ ] PORSCHE49 [x] ROVER50 [ ] SAAB51 [x] SALEEN52 [ ] SATURN53 [ ] SUZUKI54 [x] UNIVERSAL55 [ ] VOLKSWAGEN56 [ ] VOLVO

We expect to be completely done with our audit and new release this week. Stay tuned.

We recently added Google Analytics and some of you are reporting some issues with it. We’re on it and we’ll post again as soon as we have a solution. Thanks.