A lot of time and effort has gone into development lately. You have all seen the newest Admin area by now and perhaps you have noticed some changes on the front end as well. As always, our development is influenced and directed by YOUR wants and needs furthering RPMWare’s ‘ground up’ approach to customer service.

The latest RPMWare release include a feature many people have been requesting for quite some time: Part Number Specific Images! Not only will RPMWare continue to provide Part #s, Vehicle Applications, Group Images and Descriptions - we now support Part Number Specific Images.

Customer shopping for a Perrin BOV, but wants to see the ACTUAL product they will receive? Well now they will! Although the *entire* RPMWare catalog is not yet supported with Part Number Specific Images, we are working day in and day out to link the 1000’s of images we have to current products.

As always, some Brands have more images then others, but we will continue to hound manufactures for the best and most up-to-date information available.

Will continue to add images as we receive them, but so far we have Part Number Specific Images for the following Brands: AEM, Alta, Braille, Defi, FUELAB, GReddy, HKS, Injen, Magnaflow, Perrin, PLX Devices, Prothane, Samco, Skunk2, Thermal R&D, Vibrant.

As always, please e-mail me matt@rpmware.com with any requests, comments or suggestions!

I just read about an interesting new service called UserVoice. Basically it is an online voting system for feature requests, bug fixes, suggestions, product line requests, etc.

The uses for us are obvious; however, it could be harnessed by your shop in interesting ways as well.

• What products do you want to see on special?
• Which cars should we focus on?
• What technical articles are you most interested in?

Find out what the customer wants and give it to them. Sounds simple, yet it’s much harder to actually accomplish.

Well I’m taking my own advice. I setup rpmware.uservoice.com and am opening the floodgates for your suggestions, criticisms, comments, requests, anything you want to throw out there.

Before you get started I have a few requests:

1. Be specific. “Add more product lines” is not a good suggestion; “add Bully Dog Performance”
   is a good suggestion.
2. Before you post make sure your post doesn’t already exist. If it does vote or comment on the first post.
3. No tech support or customer service. We’re happy to provide both by email, IM and phone. We want to respond as quickly as possible to those requests and I’m not sure we’ll be checking UserVoice as often as we check our phones, IMs and emails.

In what is our biggest release since launch and the longest I’ve stayed up consecutively in quite a long time RPMWare Inc. is pleased to release v1.3 of it ecommerce software developed specifically for performance shops. The upgrade took exactly 1 minute and 27 secs at 7:24AM EST. No data was lost.

OK, Enough corporate talk, let’s get down to what’s new and improved.

Customer Area

Select Vehicle Page - When your customers select their vehicle they are no longer redirected to a huge list of parts. Instead they are sent to an intermediate page to narrow their search by brand or category. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Administration Area

Administration Area Revamp - The basics are the same, but we’re continuing to improve our interface and the look of the site. We think you’ll be able to find everything a little easier now. We’ve also made some performance enhancements and added a ton of new features…

COUPON CODES!! - By popular demand (see we really do listen). You can setup pricing for entire brands, groups or just items only accessible by the coupon code you specify. The race season is upon us so make most of your marketing campaigns. (Coupons are also a great way to skirt MAP policies … but you didn’t hear it from us).

PRICING LEVELS!! - Have a group of loyal retail customers? Wholesale customers? Define a pricing scheme just for them. Once they login to the site they will instantly see THEIR price for the products you sell. It’s a great way to build loyalty (e.g. XX Racing Gold Member) or build your wholesale program.

New Ways to Set Pricing - Before you had to specify a brand or group discount. Now you can setup percentage discounts (10% off), fixed discounts ($10 off) and fixed pricing ($10) all the way down to the item level. Also when setting percentage discounts only the available prices (MSRP, Jobber, MAP) will show as options.

Active Status All the Way Down - You could always turn off brands or groups. Now you can turn off items as well. In our next release you’ll be able to shut off vehicles (the ones in your search by year, make, model dropdowns) too.

Order History and Order Tracking - You can now add Order History and Order Tracking to your orders. That should have been there from day 1 huh? Well now it is.

New Exception (Error) Handling - If something goes wrong on your site we’ll know about it before you do. We’ve configured e-mail alerts for every possible error to ensure your site is always operating at its full potential.

Settings - Gone are the slow loading tabs. In are quick easy links with fast loading modules. We’ll be working over the settings area extensively in our next release.

How Are We Doing? - You’ll notice each time you logout there is a quick text-box to let us know how we’re doing. We’re in business to help you run your business so be sure to let us know what’s on your mind.

…And a TON of little things - I could never mention absolutely everything we worked on but I hit what I think is most important. I’m sure you’ll find some more hidden features I forgot to call-out.

Data & Product Lines

Over the next couple days your product catalog is going to explode. We’ve doubled our database by adding the following lines: Blitz, Blox, Cusco, Edelbrock, Energy Suspension, Flex-A-Lite, GT Spec, Invidia, Koni, MSD, Nukabe, Rotora and Russell. We’ve also updated the following lines: DEI, Eibach, and Fujita5. While these lines may show in your administration area and customer-facing website they will not be 100% complete until Monday.

You’ll notice when you are setting your pricing that there are fewer brands to set pricing for. Starting now (with the exception of the lines listed above) we will only show completed product lines on your pricing and active screens. When we release new lines they will be set to non-active by default. You will be notified by e-mail and on this blog when new lines are released. At that time you can login to your Admin area, set pricing and activate the line. THERE IS NO CHARGE AND NEVER WILL BE A CHARGE TO ACTIVATE PRODUCT LINES. We just want you to decide when product lines start popping up on your website.

That’s It

We’d love to know what you think after you’ve had a chance to check out your newly upgraded website. Drop us an e-mail or a comment in the blog.

For technical questions: Kyle, Product Lines: Matt, and if you’re ready to sign up Adam.

Coding is almost complete for what we think is one of the biggest features of RPMWare … the ability to completely customize the look of your site. In the v1.0 release you will have the ability to completely change the look of your site. For those of you familiar with web design you can edit a single .css file to control the styling of every element on the page. For some examples of what can be done check out: CSS Zen Garden Each design is based off the same HTML page with a different style sheet. By editing one file you can completely manipulate everything on the page. For those with less technical experience we will also be offering over 20 configurable elements that you can select styles for. For instance you can choose a black background with white text and red title elements. It is all very simple. In addition, regardless of which customization route you choose, you will be able to select one of two navigation styles as well as choose to either use oyour header and footer or create your own. We tried to figure out how many different combinations there could be, but we got dizzy and just decided to call it “unlimited.” We’ll do a tutorial once everything is buttoned up.