First of all, a big thank you to everyone who made it out to SAGE Conference in Las Vegas. We had a record turnout and it was really invigorating to spend the day both teaching and learning from our customers. For everyone else, we’re so excited to share with you what’s coming this year and what we previewed in SAGE CEO Eric Natinsky’s Conference session, “What’s New and Coming Soon at SAGE.”
Let’s start with a really big one. We listened to our subscribers and we heard you were interested in a drill-down option for product searches. You got it, friends! We’re adding in shiny, new drill-down options and filters for SAGE Online 15 and SAGE Web 3.5. This will allow users to further filter their search results by relevant categories. We believe this will be a big game-changer for our subscribers and we can’t wait to hear how it improves all of your searches.
Have you ever tried to search for a product in a certain color, let’s say “green backpack”, and the options that pop up are half green and half every other color in the rainbow? No more! We’re adding the new ColorSense enhancement, which will automatically display products of a certain color when that color is used as a search criterion.
Let’s say you go to search for blue aprons. Your results will display all the aprons available in blue as the main image. This is especially helpful for you to narrow down your options when you have a certain shade blue in mind (perhaps you’re looking for more of a powder blue than navy) for your client’s campaign. And don’t forget, you can always right-click on a search result and then find an array of actions to do next — like adding that product to a presentation or an order form — for an even quicker workflow.
Sometimes you search for a product, pull it up to get a closer look and it’s almost the right product, but not quite. No problem! We’re adding a similar products area to the bottom of the product detail page. Similar to your B2C online shopping experience, you’ll now be able to rely on technology to suggest related items and make your product search a more streamlined process.
What if three potential customers per day logged into your website, looked around for a few minutes, and then left without purchasing anything or making any solid contact? Not ideal, right? That’s why we’re adding the new live chat feature to SAGE Website Professional and SAGE Website Professional Plus. Customers with these SAGE Websites will now be able to boost their customer service and respond faster to potential customers with the new Live Chat. The Live Chat feature will include a full feature-set, including the ability to set business hours, configure automatic replies, and multi-task among several sessions at the same time.
We’re also adding new homepage customization and styling options, including the addition of SAGE Signature Collections, which will showcase popular products from across the industry. SAGE Signature Collections will come with the option for a lifestyle vs. carousel design theme, and products will change monthly to keep distributor websites fresh and continuously updated.
Another new feature for SAGE Website Professional and SAGE Website Professional Plus owners is the “Welcome Alert”, which is a pop-up message box that will appear once a visitor arrives at the website. These welcome alerts can be used to announce sales on items, offer discounts, or provide a place for a customer to enter their contact information.
These new Welcome Alerts will help our customers gather information on leads while making a great first impression with their modern design elements. This feature will further separate you from your competition and help you form relationships with prospects online!
Your customers are going to love this next product! Introducing SAGE Company Store Premium, which will allow promotional product distributors to sell products online through completely customizable professional stores, create an unlimited number of custom pages, manage inventory levels with real-time alerts, create packing slips and shipping labels, and see advanced statistics and reports for each store.
In addition, end-buyer customers will be able to rate products and leave product reviews in SAGE Company Store Premium, allowing for enhanced SEO. We’re confident that SAGE Company Store Premium will help you strengthen your relationships with your customers and help make ordering and re-ordering more efficient.
Watch the SAGE Online 15 recorded webinar with SAGE CEO Eric Natinksy!
These new features are really exciting and we’re thankful to everyone who made suggestions on how to continue to evolve SAGE’s full suite of products and services. If you want to take a deep dive into more of what’s new in SAGE Online 15, you can watch the recorded webinar with SAGE CEO Eric Natinsky. SAGE Online 15 will start rolling out in the next few weeks and comes at no additional cost to our subscribers. Subscribers will receive an “update available” prompt upon logging into SAGE Online as soon as the new version is available to them.
As for some of the other features and products, keep an eye out on the SAGE Blog and on sageworld.com for more announcements regarding the future releases this year of SAGE Web 3.5, SAGE Live Chat, SAGE Company Stores, and more!
