JUST SOME NEWS - LEEP SYSTEM CHANGE

If you are not a firearms retailer, you can stop reading and go on with your day 😀.


As many of you already know the ATF made a change to the LEEP system (the NICS check) which essentially broke our Chrome extension.  The ATF is not kind enough to let us know up front about changes they are introducing to the web site, so this caught us by surprise as much as it did you. 

WE ARE WORKING ON A SOLUTION AND WILL RELEASE AN UPDATE SOON!

Please do not submit a ticket, we are aware of the issue and working on resolution. The update introduced tabs to what used to be a single screen so as you can imagine it caused the extension to break.


What should you do in the meantime?????   Remember the good old days?  You will have to type  the information in, or copy and paste one field at a time.  We know it's painful and a fix is imminent, but we need a few days to program, test and verify.   

We appreciate your patience and we can assure you we are on top of the situation.

And yes, we have a general coreSTORE update being released...very soon... a few fun enhancements.

Why websites are integral to a successful business.

We've all done it.  You hear about the latest product, whether it be a phone, computer, or a new treadmill.  But, you want to research it and put your hands on it before making the purchase.  What is the first thing you do?  You try and locate a local business that carries the item, and the vehicle you use to conduct this search is invariably the internet.  The local store that has a web presence will be the business that makes the sale because they have chosen to extend their physical presence and meet the customer where most consumers begin the purchasing process.

In 2019, e-retail sales accounted for 14.1 percent of all retail sales worldwide, with $3.5Trillion of that business conducted in the U.S. alone, and experts predict that number to reach over $4Trillion in 2020. With these predictions made before the current pandemic, that number could be much more significant. With over 2Billion online customers worldwide conducting around 51% of their purchases online using a mobile device, it is no wonder the mad rush of businesses from all industries to establish an online presence.

I believe a business website will be as common as an email address very soon.  If you currently run or operate a business with no web presence, do yourself a favor and check into setting up a website.  Meet your customers where they are at the beginning of the purchasing process. Online.

We've attached a couple of articles highlighting the importance of staking your claim online.

If you are looking for a solution to extend your brick and mortar to the online marketplace, Coreware can help.  Let us know if you are interested, and we will get you set up with a solution that works for you.

This article is from last year, and not surprisingly, it is even more relevant.

How Small Businesses Used Websites !n 2019

The following article lays out some excellent points about having a website.

Why Every Business Needs A Website


How to highlight products in the local store

There has been some confusion about how the location filter works.  Clients having a single store location were expecting that filter to only show results from their local store, and hide distributor results, but that is not how it was designed; the filter always shows distributor results because they are available to be shipped to that store for pickup.  Because of the confusion, we made a change to hide the location filter for dealers who have only a single store location.

For clients who have only a single store location, or who have multiple stores, but want to customers to see local inventory first in the search results, you can do one or both of the following:

1. Turn on Location Availability Texts, which will show text like "Available in-store today" prominently on the search results and the product details page.  You can turn this on in Client Preferences.  Click Add, select "Show Location Availability" from the dropdown list, and change the client setting dropdown to True.  Once that is done, you may want to customize the text and appearance of those messages. This is done in Orders > Coreshop setup on the Fragments tab.  Filter the list of fragments by the word "available" and set each of those fragments to "customize."  They will then appear in Website > Fragments as HTML that you can edit.

2. Add a Search Multiplier for your local store location(s).  You can do this in Products > Settings > Locations.  Near the bottom of the page on the Details tab, you will see an item called Search Multiplier.  It defaults to 1.00, which means that the inventory location will not affect the results of a customer's search.  If you want to force your quick ship products always to be displayed first when a customer searches, you can change this number to 100.00.  Note that there are several places where a search multiplier can be added, which may affect your search results in unexpected ways.  To see how the system calculates search relevance, you can use the report in Products > Product Relevance.

Need more help?  Submit a ticket to Coreware support at https://help.coreware.com.