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During the latest Boot Camp @ HQ, our clients enjoyed a first glimpse of our newest products. If you weren’t one of the lucky ones who attended our sold-out event, have no fear; you can read all about our new products here or you can check out http://blog.solidcactus.com for the new products webinar held by Scott Sanfilippo.

Product Scroller

The first of these products is the Product Scroller. Every online merchant wants to show as many products as possible on their website. Sometimes, though, this causes your homepage to be overpopulated and can cause the need for customers to scroll down the page to see all you have to offer. Product Scroller keeps your products within that prime real estate known as “above the fold”. This product is also customizable for your colors and borders to match your site. And, it’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendly!

Dynamic Sales Page

Dynamic Sales Page is another of the great new features. Shoppers love a bargain but don’t want to scroll through pages of products to find one. The Dynamic Sales Page places all of your sale items in one place. It used to be that populating a sales page was quite a chore–a lot of cutting and pasting item ids in hopes of not missing anything. With the Dynamic Sales Page, any item in your store that has a sale price is automatically added to the Sales Page, thus eliminating the need to cut and paste all those items into a new section page! Easier shopping for your customers and easier populating for you…sounds like a win-win situation, don’t you think?

Recession Buster features

The next products are the Recession Buster features: Recession Buster Quote Form and Recession Buster Dynamic Pricing. Solid Cactus first used Recession Buster on its own website. The Recession Buster was such a hit with our clients they were asking us how they can purchase the feature for their own websites. We believe you have to give the people what they want, so here it is…Recession Buster for your website! The first is the Recession Buster Quote Form which gives your customers the ability to negotiate a price online. Customers are asked on the Quote Form to submit their budget for a particular item and an e-mail is sent to you with that request; you only need to respond to that e-mail with an acceptance, denial or even a counter-offer. Even if the result is not a sale, you’ve captured their name and e-mail address and you can continue to market to that potential customer.

The second Recession Buster feature is the Dynamic Pricing which works like an online auction. Your customers can make a bid on a product based upon the price you set, and the bid can be accepted or rejected based upon the pre-set amounts you decide. You can also limit the number of bids that can be placed. You don’t really want customers bidding until they find the perfect price so you can, for example, limit the number of bids to three or four. After the set number of bids, if the customer hasn’t met your required amount, you can let the customer know what price you will accept, and the customer then has the option of accepting that offer. You’re still giving a discount and still making the sale.

Store Locator & Driving Directions

If you own a brick and mortar store or sell your products via resellers, this next product is for you! The Store Locator and Driving Directions allow your customers to find your brick and mortar store without leaving your website. Store Locator allows your customers to search for your store by zip code and desired mileage. With Driving Directions, customers can obtain directions to your store from your website; they don’t need to venture to a mapping website.

Randomly Displayed Testimonials v2.0

Randomly Displayed Testimonials v2.0 is another of the products rolled out at Boot Camp. Randomly Displayed Testimonials allows your customers to read the great testimonials you receive from happy shoppers. The testimonials rotate while your customers shop, and if they see one they like they can click “Read More”; they are then taken directly to that testimonial on your testimonial page.

Mega Drop Down menu

Mega Drop Down menu allows your customers to view sub-sections and sub-sub-sections on your website. They can view images of your products, you can flag sections that have sale items, and you can set the number of columns that appear, too. It’s a great way to show your sub-sections when your customers hover over a section. All the deeper sub-levels are now visible.

Solid Cactus, Inc. has designed or redesigned more than 3,000 e-commerce sites. Solid Cactus is an Inc. 500 company and was named one of the "Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania" in 2006 and 2007.

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