What’s New

Recent updates to BSE e-commerce

BSE customers and employee-owners are a valuable voice for feedback and improvements to our site We welcome any and all feedback here: https://www.borderstates.com/feedback

Summary of Notable User Experience Updates

Vendor Integration Changes

Added a Brand Listing page

• Displays all Brands on the site in alphabetical order
• Allows for searching
• Able to filter by category
• Accessible from the main navigation banner on the header
• Has the ability to display featured brands linking to a brand storefront page (will be setup on a future date)
• Added the ability to have Brand Storefront pages (will be setup on a future date)
• Select brands will have a dedicated storefront page for their brand
• Brand related information
• Featured products
• All products for their brand
• Revised product listing page display changes
• Changed from four products wide to three products wide
• Order of information changed

Account History List Changes

• Reinstated status filter on the Order History list page
• Fixed a display issue within Firefox
• Google Analytics
  Added event tracking to Brand Listing and Brand Storefront pages
• General Site Improvements
  Customer sessions will now time out after a set duration requiring logging back into the site. The current setting is 2 hours.
• Corrected product rules not being followed in the cart for some customers
• Updated Product Listing Pages to be three product wide
• Provides consistency with Brand Storefront changes

Account History List Changes

Updated the functionality of the search and filtering on the Order History list page. This is the start to updating all the account history list pages to provide a consistent experience.
Below are before and after pictures of the changes:

Google Analytics
• Updates to add branch data into to the Google Analytics report
• Removed Wufoo form tracking
• Added tracking to the Order History filter and search sections

General Site Improvements
• Bug fixes to Solr spell check errors

For full details on this release: See Changelog

Guest Only Mode

New functionality allowing for support to place the site into unauthenticated traffic only while allowing support members to still access the site.

When the site is placed into Guest Only mode the following happens:

• Authenticated users are logged out

  • Happens after they perform an action such as navigation

• A customizable message is displayed on the log in screen letting customers know the site is undergoing maintenance

  • At this time that message is:

    1The web site is currently in maintenance mode. At this moment, you cannot sign in.

• Logging into the site is prevented unless Guest Only mode bypass permissions are set for the B2B customer account

  • This allows support users to access the site while Guest Only mode is active

• Punchout customers are able to make a connection to the site but will be brought to the same log in screen displaying the site maintenance screen

General Site Improvements

• Bug fixes to Checkout and My List

My List Enhancements

Design

• Design improvements to provide a consistent feel with recent cart and checkout changes
• Removed the main My List landing page and combined the available My Lists and list details into the same page
  • Available My Lists are on the left of the page while the details of each list are on the right

Functionality

• Ability to rearrange the order of list items using drag and drop
• Ability to rearrange the order of lists using drag and drop
• Visual indication on Add to Cart button of item being added to cart
• Ability to export list items into a CVS
  • Exported fields
    • BSE Part Number
    • Product Description
    • Quaintly
    • Unit Price
    • Unit of Measure
    • Manufacture Part Number
    • Customer Part Number

General Site Improvements

• Google Analytics
  • Updates to the search results page to be noindex, nofollow
  • Updated functionality for tracking content.borderstates.com
  • Updated the Make Payment tracking
    • Adjustments to the number of open invoices in the payment
    • Breakdown of invoices ID and amount of invoice paid
• Changes to the Product Catalog sync process to correct issues with the product’s galleryImages attribute

Google Analytics

• Improved passing of product category information
• Added manufacture information to transactions and events
• Added Make Payment information tracking
• General event tracking improvements

General Site Improvements

• Corrected ‘Check Availability’ hyperlink not displaying for some products
• Corrected loading indicator moving up the page when starting the checkout process
• Default selection for payment type within the checkout process in now “Account Payment” when a valid option for the user
• Account Setting selection experience improvements
• Invoice search improvements
• Cart improvements

General Site Improvements

• We made it easier to recognize URLs by removing odd character strings that are quirky to the human eye
• Bug fixes affecting customers who are connecting to borderstates.com via Punchout

General Site Improvements

• We made it easier to see and update your profile email
• We fixed a bug that was forcing you to reselect your default preferences
• We sped up your experience when deleting items from your cart
• We quashed some bugs related to signing out, signing in, and pricing speed

• The “Buying for” section was moved from the top to the right of the shopping cart allowing for the items to be visible sooner reducing scrolling to see shopping cart items
• Shopping cart item layout update to take up less space on the page and group the most important information together
• Plus/minus quantity change functionality allowing for changes to quantities without typing a value
• Larger images to improve the visual confirmation
• Right side bar scrolls with the user as they scroll the down and up the page
• Keeps the Order Summary in view as users scroll through the shopping cart
• “Buying for” information stays visible while scrolling
• The right sidebar moves to below the cart on smaller screens allowing the user to start the checkout process after confirming the items in their shopping cart

 

My List

• Users are now able to change the Quantity and Unit of Measure of items within a My List and save the changes.
• The user is also able to make changes, add to cart, and discard changes for when they do not want the changes to persist.
• If the user tries to leave the page without saving changes they are informed of unsaved changes.
• When updating the quantity minimum order quantities are enforced the same way they are on other areas of the site.
• The tabbing sequence within a My List now allows users to tab from the quantity field of a My List item to the quantity field of the next item. This is intended to reduce the time it takes a user to update several quantities within a My List.

 

Material Availability and Price

• Speed improvements to material availability and price loading by reducing database lookups required.

 

Site Search fixes

• Cleaned up product classification code resulting in improved search result speed
• Fixed the way search results handle short phrases “or” or “and”
• Significantly reduced number of database lookups needed to return search results

 

Fixes to Customer experience with Account context

• Fixed a bug where Account Context change sometimes did not show account info in drop down
• Improved terminology based on user feedback: “change purchase account setting” button was causing confusion and frustration

 

Here are some behind the scenes improvements that are not as noticeable on the front end while enabling significant improvements in site speed:

• Google Analytics improvements
• Updates to the link Guest Users are taken to when wanting to create an account
• Issues with icon visibility resolved
• Index Errors resolved
• Product Display Page bug fixes
• Order confirmation Code fixes
• Fixes to customer notifications in case of error
• Site Search improvements
• Multiple menu link corrections
• Mobile view fixes in “recent” activity section