March 2022
Your March 2022 update features many more additions and improvements to the new Checkout Basket including contacting your customers about their abandoned baskets, and some quality of life improvements to Products & Services.
Checkout - Email your customers about their abandoned baskets
If you have already made the switch to accessplanit’s new Checkout Basket you can now start sending abandoned basket emails to your customers!
According to Moosend and Sale Cycle the typical shopping basket drop-out rate can be as high as 70-80%! That is a lot of lost potential course bookings!
Your potential customers may be put off as they’re “just looking”, they do not have time to book just yet, or they want to check your reviews before committing! By emailing these customers shortly after they abandon their basket, you have an opportunity to demonstrate that you are the best in the business (include some past course feedback), leave a reminder for them about you in their inbox, and give them an easy opportunity to quickly pick their booking back up!
Abandoned Basket emails can be set up to send automatically by using your accessplanit platform’s Workflows functionality.
When you are designing your email, make sure that you include the following to entice your customers back!
Brand your email - by including your company name, logo, and colours, not only are you reminding the customer that they wanted to book a course, you are also sending them a reminder them about you!
Personalise the email - by including the customer’s name, it shows them that they already have a relationship with you.
The contents of their basket - this is perhaps the most important part of the email! The merge field ‘@@BasketItemSummary’ will automatically display a table of the customer’s basket so that they can see exactly what they have left behind!
A quick link to access their basket - a snappy link or button that is very easy to find is an important element of the email so that your customers can directly access their basket without needing to leave their inbox.
You may also want to include quotes about your training, or current discount codes to reassure your potential customers and seal the deal!
For best results, we recommend creating two Workflows for your abandoned baskets:
The first should send between 1-2 hours after the basket is last updated
The second should send 1 day after the basket is last updated
Checkout - Usability Improvements
In this update, we’ve made several great usability improvements to the Checkout Basket.
Usability is so important within an online shopping basket, as a difficult to use basket not only frustrates potential customers (and administrators!), but it can also drive them to shop elsewhere. While the Checkout basket is already very easy to use, these usability enhancements make the shopping process even more streamlined!
Updates to the Remove option
We have added an ‘x’ to the ‘Remove’ link in our shopping basket and changed the text to red, making it easier to find on the page without looking like a call-to-action for your customers!
In addition, when this link is clicked, a prompt now appears asking you to click again to confirm that you wish to remove the course. This prevents courses being accidently removed from the basket.
Updates to the Previous Step option
We have changed the ‘Previous Step’ link to a button, making it easier to find and bringing the style in line with the rest of the basket.
Updates to Password Validation
The Password options in your registration form now automatically show your password requirements, so your customers know instantly what they need to include in their password!
The text below automatically changes to green as your new customer meets the requirements, letting them know their password is strong enough.
Clearer Net & Tax for Discounts
Your discounts will now always show with the same tax status as the other items in your Checkout basket.
For example, if you advertise your cost inclusive of VAT, then your Courses, Products & Services, and Discounts will all include VAT in their cost in the basket
If you if you advertise your cost exclusive of VAT, then your Courses, Products & Services, and Discounts will all exclude VAT in their cost in the basket, with the VAT then added at the end in the summary.
Mandatory Setting indicator
The mandatory settings in the payment step of the Checkout Basket now all have an asterisk to indicate that they are required, so your customers know up front what information they need to provide to complete their booking.
Checkout - New Configuration Options
One thing we love here at accessplanit is building out the configuration options available to customers. Configuration options mean that you can tailor your platform (and your basket!) to suit your needs, and your customer’s needs!
In this update we have added in the following additional configuration options:
Choose your date format
To change your basket’s date format, head over to the Checkout Options page and make your selection from the ‘Date Format’ option.
Please note that your selection here does not affect the Date of Birth option in your registration form, this will continue to be displayed as ‘Day’, ‘Month’, ‘Year’:
Include time zone
If you run courses across multiple time zones, or you have customers attending your courses from various time zones, you can now include this information alongside the date of the course within the basket.
To include the time zone, head over to your Checkout Options page and check the ‘Include Time Zone’ checkbox.
Set your Terms & Conditions
There is a new option available in the Checkout Options page where you can amend your Terms & Conditions and your platform’s Privacy Policy.
Each Training Provider can have their own Terms and Conditions for their Courses, however there is only one Privacy Policy per platform.
Your Terms & Conditions will be available to your customers on the payment step of the Checkout basket, and your Privacy Policy is displayed at the bottom of your registration form.
Updates to the Branding Options
There are lots of branding options available for you to brand-up your Checkout basket! In this update we have regrouped and renamed these options to make branding a much easier task.
Set the default country
If most of your customers come from the same country, i.e. The United Kingdom, The United States, Sweden, then we can now set the ‘Country’ drop down boxes to be automatically populated with this country. This will save most of your new customers a few clicks!
Please get in touch with a member of the accessplanit team if you would like to have a default country set up.
Please note, that this default country also applies within the administrator view of the platform too, so when you are adding new Users or Accounts, the default country will also be populated within their addresses.
API Feeds - Venue Capacity now available
The Venues API Feed now includes the Capacity field.
This is very handy for integrations that need to know the size of the venues, such as resource management platforms.
Read more about accessplanit’s API Feeds.
Product & Services - Usability Improvements
Within this update there are several quality improvements to the Products & Services module.
Product & Service Image
There is a new ‘Image’ option available for each of your Products & Services.
accessplanit is currently building in support for selling Products & Services within the new Checkout basket, and this image will be displayed in the basket alongside the product information. Stay tuned for updates on this!
Training Provider Label
There is a new column available in the Products & Services DataGrid displaying the name of the Training Provider offering that Product & Service.
This new column is especially helpful if you have multiple Training Providers offering similar Products & Services!
Not only can you display this option in your DataGrid, you can also use it within your DataGrid filters to only show Products & Services for certain providers at a time.
Mapping Products & Services to Courses
When linking your Products & Services to Courses, you will now be prevented from selecting Products & Services that do not have the same Training Provider as the Course.
Previously you were able to select from all of the Products & Services, but you would have been stopped when trying to save. Now you are shown at the earliest stage which Products & Services can be included to save you some time!
🤗 If you would like any support with any of the new features or changes please get in touch with our Customer Support Team.
🤔 If you have any ideas of how we can improve the product further, please log these on our Product Portal.
Finally, if you would like to be a part of our product development process, you can join our Product Loop Club! Read more about our Loop Club.