£100k Award for Magnolia Box & Artistic.ly

The team got some good news last week when it was confirmed that we've been awarded £100k match funding from the Technology Strategy Board to help us develop a new website called Artistic.ly.

Artistic.ly will be a social marketplace for artists to connect with consumers. It takes all of our experience of working with large institutions and opens it up to the individual.

Artistic.ly will allow artists to upload digital images of their works and transform them into high quality prints. Our team will take care of everything else from marketing, manufacturing, fulfilment and customer care.

In terms of content, Artistic.ly will initially be focused on street art and illustration and we already have a team of ‘Artistic.ly Ambassadors’ working to ensure that the right artists are involved from the start.

You can read the full TSB’s announcement to find out about the other great companies they are also funding.

New delivery note functionality

Announcing the release of our much anticipated PDF delivery note functionality. Now our much loved manufacturers can quickly download delivery notes with every order by simply clicking on a link within their order notification e-mails. The delivery note will contain all of the elements expected of a white label system including the store logo, address and order information.

Match art to over 4,000 paint colours using our new Colour Search

We have recently upgraded the colour search functionality provided to all Magnolia Soft stores.

Instead of the previous colour picker, where you needed a PhD to select a colour choice, we now have a predefined grid of colours with a much clear UI to help speed up the consumer's colour selection.

We have also stored the names, codes and RGB values from the world's most popular paint manufacters. There are over 4,000 different paints stored in the system enabling a wide variety of colour searches:

Using the paint tools you can find matching, contrasting, toning and harmonising artwork for your home. It's perfect for interior designers or those wishing to find some artwork to compliment their latest Farrow & Ball colour scheme.

To try out our new search facility visit http://www.magnoliabox.com/colourSearch.

It can also be found in our advanced search section under Colour Search.

New sub-category menu format

We've recently updated the way sub-categories are displayed on category pages. Sub-categories were previously shown as a simple list, but are now arranged in columns for better readability.

Up to 16 subcategories are shown initially (4 rows of 4 columns). For those categories with more than 16 subcategories, a simple "More categories" link is included so that customers can view/hide the full list.

Sibling categories are still shown, although since sibling links tend to be of secondary importance, by default they are still formatted in the old "list" style which saves space on the page. We use the term "siblings" to describe the categories that at the same level of the category tree as the currently viewed category.

This is purely a user interface change with very little change to the underlying semantic mark-up. SEO should not be adversely affected.

Both of these groups of sub-category and sibling links on the category page can turned off through your admin's store settings if they are not required or relevant to your store.

New Print on Demand Product Videos

We've just released a series of product videos to help provide more information to prospective customers about our print on demand trade and retail products. We have an overview of our print on demand facilities in the UK. There are also product videos for our major lines:

• Canvas prints & framed canvas prints
• Fine art prints
• Framed pictures
• Postcards & greetings cards

You can check them out all the videos on either You Tube or Vimeo.

Cooliris Now Available as Embedded Wall

Alfa Romeo Official Fine Art Prints is the first of our stores to benefit from the embedded version of the very cool Cooliris wall.

We have long offered the full-screen Cooliris image browsing experience through the "Start slideshow" button and Firefox plugin on sites such as Bridgeman Art on Demand. However, we can now offer the same interface within just a small area of your site. Customers can quickly scroll through many images, zoom in, go to the product page, watch a slideshow, and so on.

The image selection shown on the wall is entirely controlled through your store admin site.

If you're interested in embedding a Cooliris wall into your MagnoliaSoft store, just get in touch.

Delivery Pricing

We have recently rolled out an updated delivery administration tool, so this a good time to recap how delivery works and how you can manage your prices.

How is the total delivery price for a basket calculated?

In your MagnoliaSoft store, you may have products fulfilled from multiple sources. For example, you may have framed prints shipped by Printer A, pre-printed products shipped by Printer B, and canvases shipped by yourself.

Because of this potentially wide range of products available from each printer, we use "per-shipment" and "per-item" charges to calculate the basket total; the same method as many other online stores that have a large and varied catalogue.

For your customers

Your customers pay delivery according to the following:

[Maxiumum per-delivery price of the items in the basket] + [Per-item charge for each item of that type in their basket]

For example, consider the following charges:

Product type	Per-delivery charge	Per-item charge
Large canvas	£5.00	£2.00
Medium framed print	£3.00	£1.00

For a basket containing 1 x large canvas and 2 x medium framed print, the delivery amount payable by the customer would be:

• £5.00 per delivery charge
• £4.00 per item charge
• Total of £9.00

This is calculated from the biggest per-delivery price in their basket, which is the large canvas charge (£5.00), plus the per-item charge for each item of that type in their basket (1 x £2.00 plus 2 x £1.00)

For you as a store owner

Potentially, a customer's basket may contain items shipped by different printers, so as a store owner you need to be aware that you will be charged for each item separately by each fulfillment partner. In other words, you will be charged whatever per-delivery and per-item cost prices are applicable for each item in the basket.

Using the above prices and basket as examples, then, you would be charged £12.00.

Managing trade/cost prices for items you ship yourself

As the fulfillment partner for these products, you can input your own trade delivery prices. To do this, you will need to use the Edit by country page in the admin:

As a printer, you will want to look at the following editable columns on this page:

1. Delivery time (in weekdays)
2. Cost prices (both per-shipment and per-item)

Some points to bear in mind:

• If you do not deliver a particular item to a country, do not enter any prices/delivery times for that item. If there is no delivery price set, then customers will not be able to complete their order - the country will not appear in the dropdown list of possible delivery countries, and they may see the message "Unfortunately, we cannot deliver your order to this country".
• Delivery times are in weekdays.
• If you do not know the estimated delivery time for any time, leave the delivery time empty or enter zero.
• Any selling prices left blank will be assumed to be "sold at cost".
• All prices exclude tax.

Not only are these cost prices your own cost price when we calculate your order margins, but if you also fulfill orders for other stores on the MagnoliaSoft network these prices are those stores' cost prices for your delivery service. This is, in effect, what you "charge" these stores to send out the items.

You can of course edit the selling prices of your own delivery charges on this page too, in much the same way as if the products were shipped by another fulfillment partner. Which brings us to...

Managing selling prices, or products shipped by others

You may also have products in your store that are fulfilled by other partners on the MagnoliaSoft network. For these items, you use the same delivery admin page...

...but you will only be able to edit the two right-hand columns, in other words:

1. Selling prices (both per-shipment and per-item)

Again, some points to bear in mind here:

• Any selling prices left blank will be assumed to be "sold at cost". (See below)
• All prices exclude tax.

Sell at cost

Selling at cost is the default setting for all stores - delivery charges are passed on to the customer at zero margin. You can enable/disable this for any product item by clicking the checkbox on the main form.

As for previous functionality updates, we never "release and forget". We already have some plans to make bulk editing easier for both printers and store owners, for example, so watch this space.