Meet CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor 4.14.2 with Fixes and Advanced Settings

Hello!

We have released CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor 4.14.2. It is a patch release, so it fixes problems of the previous version and brings minor improvements. The full list of changes is in the documentation. Here we’ll only cover the most important changes that make interaction with CS-Cart more efficient.

Marketplace-specific improvements

Hide vendor’s features from other vendors

In CS-Cart Multi-Vendor, you can allow vendors to create their own product features. This is useful for vendors with unique products or product variations. Previously, vendors could see and use features created by other vendors. It could result in things like this:

The marketplace has a product feature called Color. A vendor wants to apply this feature to their products. But the feature doesn’t have a necessary variant, so the vendor creates their own feature. Other vendors see both features — the vendor’s and the marketplace’s. That means that the marketplace could have a lot of similar features.

We solved this problem in the new version. Now there are two types of features:

• Marketplace features that are available to all vendors.
• Vendor’s features that are available only to the vendor who created them.

If you think that a vendor’s feature could be useful to other vendors, then it needs to become a marketplace feature. To do this, leave the Vendor field without the selected value.

After the update, the vendor’s features that were used by multiple vendors will become marketplace features automatically.

Hide vendor rating

In CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Plus, customers can choose products based on vendor rating. A vendor’s rating is shown as an icon (bronze, silver or gold) next to their name. This rating affects the position of the vendor and their products in the marketplace lists. If the rating is too low, a customer might refuse to buy products from this vendor.

In 4.14.2, we are giving administrators more control over ratings. Now you can hide the rating icons by setting all ranges to zero in the Vendor Rating add-on settings.

This way a marketplace owner can help vendors with lower ratings increase their sales.

Increase conversion with common products

In CS-Cart Multi-Vendor, customers add products to the cart in different ways—not only from the product page, but also from the product list. Previously, if a product was offered by different vendors, it could only be bought from the product page. Customers had to scroll down to the section with offers from different vendors.

In version 4.14.2, we have updated the Common Products for Vendors add-on. Now a customer can add a product offer to cart just like an ordinary product.

Multi-Vendor selects the offer with the lowest price and in stock as default. But there is also a special setting in the Vendor Rating add-on. It allows you to select the default offer by vendor’s rating rather than by price.

This change will be useful to:

• marketplace owners, because the ease of purchase and adding the product to cart could increase conversion and average check of marketplaces;
• customers, because they will be able to choose the best offer among the existing ones;
• vendors with a high rating, because their product offers will be selected by default.

Vendors can add videos to descriptions

In version 4.14.2, vendors got more opportunities for editing product descriptions. Now they can add a video from YouTube/Vimeo to the description of a product, vendor or page. It allows vendors to convey useful information to customers easier. Adding a video to the description will help vendors showcase their products, tell about themselves, and increase the amount of loyal followings.

Customize the “Marketplace fees” product

There are situations when vendors need to make a payment to the marketplace. For example, pay their plan fees or some extra charges. This is handled by the Vendor-to-Admin Payments add-on. Vendors repay their debt by purchasing a product called “Marketplace fees”. 

In the new version, it will be easier to find and configure that product. You can edit its name and category directly from the settings page of the Vendor-to-Admin Payments add-on. You’ll be able to adapt it for different languages of your marketplace.

General improvements

Improvements in product bundles

Updating shipping methods after updating a customer location

In CS-Cart, when a customer location is updated on the checkout page, the new address is taken as the shipping address. However, previously, when a customer geolocation changed, the list of available shipping methods were not updated. As a result, the customer could select shipping that wasn’t available for their address. We solved the problem in the new version, and now the shipping methods change in accordance with the change in customer geolocation.

New requirement for password change

CS-Cart has a setting that requires all store users to change their password periodically. Previously, when the password expired, you could enter the same password, and CS-Cart accepted it as a new one. Now CS-Cart will require you to enter another password that does not match the four previous passwords. This behavior will help protect the accounts from theft and increase the security of the store.

Required fields for the eWay Direct Payment configuration

Previously, it was possible to create a payment method with the eWay Direct Payment as a processor without filling in the keys and password. As a result, if a customer paid for an order with this payment method, they got an error on the checkout page. In the new version, the API data has become mandatory.

Correct work of the “Phone” field in the user profile

There was a problem when entering an international phone number in the customer profile. When the “Phone” field was optional, you could not save the profile without entering a phone. The new version solved this problem.

There are more changes in version 4.14.2. For the full list, check the changelog. 

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The updates to version 4.14.2 are already available. As usual, for the first couple of weeks after the release we hand out update packages in limited numbers, but then we lift that restriction. If you don’t see this update in your Upgrade Center yet, please check the update page later.