Affino 5.5.13 eCommerce Updates in Pictures

There are a number of elements within this release which add up to significant improvements for the ecommerce experience within Affino.

Predictive Searches

The biggest update in the latest release is the new Predictive Search capability. This will show users product recommendations as they type and take users directly to the product they’re looking for.

We’ve also greatly improved the search results page on the principle that less is more. It’s the same powerful search, but we now hide all the rankings and ordering info. It is possible to select just a sub-set of the total site content to search on, e.g. product pages and not help information. It is also possible to buy directly from the search results and checkout right from the search page itself.

Wish Lists

Wish Lists now work brilliantly. They have the same dynamic feel as the dynamic shopping basked does, and it is very easy to purchase directly from the wish list. All site users can have public and private wish lists and can share them with friends, family and the community at large.

Feature Scroller - Random Start

A minor change, but one which has a big impact given the promotional uses of the Flash Feature Scroller. The new ’Random Start’ option means that users are presented with a random campaign each time they hit the homepage, rather than being presented with just the latest one.

Recommendations

Recommendations have had a complete overhaul in this release and product recommendations in particular are now much more effective. Recommendations work seamlessly within the registration; the recommendations design element which can be used anywhere on the site; and when viewing and purchasing a product for displaying related and recommended products.

Topic Channels - Automated Product Category Pages

This is covered extensively and has it’s own blog post here. The key element for eCommerce is it is now possible to build dynamic product category pages which can populate themselves on-the-fly from product catalogues, presenting the latest products, reviews, news, support media and community content all around a specific category (Topic).