New Feature: Import Customers in to DPD

  • Jason@DPD
  • November 19, 2012
  • No Comments

Vendors can now import customers for product stores. This is handy for when you have buyers through another marketplace who you want to track and send product updates to through DPD, or buyers who purchased through another shopping cart before you made the switch to DPD.

You can only create a purchase for a single item with the import customer feature, but you can create as many single item purchases as you need for any given customer if you need records for multiple item purchases.

Once a buyer is imported you can use all DPD features such as the Send Product Update and Customer Newsletter features to communicate with your buyers.

[box]Please note: The import buyer feature is not available for DPD free trials. This is to prevent spammers from creating DPD free accounts and importing email addresses to send spam using our email features.[/box]

The import buyer feature uses a simple CSV (comma separated value) spreadsheet to import customer and purchase records in to DPD. The only required fields are the product ID that was purchased and the buyer email, although many optional fields are supported like name, price, discounts, shipping, taxes and more.

Full details on supported fields and formats as well as a template CSV file to perform the import is available in our knowledge base at the Import Customers page.

Update: Edit Purchase Customer Info, Set Default Payment Method, Custom Field Tweaks

  • Jason@DPD
  • November 5, 2012
  • 1 Comment

In today’s update we’ve released two new features and a tweak to our new Custom Fields feature related to free checkouts.

Edit Purchase Customer Info

You can now edit a purchase and change the name and email associated with that purchase. If the customer email that you’re changing the purchase to exists in your account already, we’ll automatically merge them. If they don’t, we’ll create a new customer record.

Additionally, for tangible orders you can edit the shipping address for the order. Of course, this only applies to orders with tangible goods and not downloadable orders.

This, along with the existing ability to change a customer record, should allow you to resolve any issues where a customer changes their email, typo’s their info, etc.

Set Default Payment Method

Most vendors allow for checkout through multiple methods, for example Stripe and PayPal. If you prefer to mark one processor as the default option to encourage buyers to use that method you can now set the default.

To set a default method, edit the payment method (found under Payment Methods in the left menu) and check the default box.

We add a star indicator to show which processor is default:

In the cart, that processor will be selected by default during checkout:

So, you can now encourage people to use in-cart credit card checkout, the processor where you pay the lowest fees, etc.

Custom Field Tweaks

Previously custom fields that were marked as required were not properly requiring an input for free checkouts. This is fixed, so all checkouts, free and paid, will require input on custom fields that are marked as required when creating them.

Other small tweaks:

  • Removed unused styles to speed page loads
  • Tweaks to new form styles for cross-browser compatibility
  • Small change to PayPal Express method for reliability
  • Fixed 404 error when editing default price points instead of editing the product record

Update: Admin Interface, Delivery Page Tweaks, Squashed Some Bugs

  • Jason@DPD
  • October 30, 2012
  • 1 Comment

This week’s update deals mainly with updates and improvements to the admin interface for vendors.

Admin Interface Update

We add a lot of features to DPD at a rapid pace. As a result, sometimes our admin interface gets a bit cluttered, has mis-matched form styles, and other inconsistencies that drive us nuts and make it harder to use for you guys.

We’ve converted all the forms and UI elements to use the excellent Bootstrap CSS library and Less. You’ll find that all the forms, buttons, page headers, and other elements have a more consistent appearance. It’s also less complicated than our old form styling, so we’ll be able to add features easier in the future. That’s good for everybody!

Delivery Page Tweaks

We removed the “Thank you for your order !” line on the delivery page. People wanted to customize it, remove it, and everything else, so we opted to remove it and let you put your own thank you message in one of the two available text boxes on the delivery page, if you so desire.

We also added a new Theme option for the delivery page- you can now choose to show the invoice link on the delivery page for all orders, just paid orders (free deliveries will have no invoice link), or not show the invoice link at all. This was by popular request, and the default is to “show for all orders.”

You can get to the new invoice link option by logging in to DPD, going to Themes in the left menu, editing your current theme, and going to the Delivery page options. You’ll see the new selection there.

Bugs and Tweaks

We Updated our uploader last week and got rid of the Java based uploader. We’ve had a couple bugs crop up related to it and fixed them.

By vendor request, We added more download time limit options to the pulldown on Store Preferences.

3 Things Independent Writers Need to Successfully Launch an E-Book

  • Jason@DPD
  • October 25, 2012
  • No Comments

It's not over when the writing is done.
Every author, writer or content creator has the opportunity to directly interact with the target audience today. In the past, it’s been necessary to write something and submit it to publishing companies and hopefully catch a break at some point on the way to becoming a famous or at least a somewhat successful writer.

Doing the actual writing is a process in itself, but the end of the writing and editing process is only the middle of the journey. Today, the writer has a few more duties to take on in order to become successful.

Here are three things writers need to successfully launch an e-book.

1. An Interested Audience

You might think this is a bit backward in concept. After all, aren’t you supposed to do the writing and then the audience will form around the book?

That’s true, but only to a point.

In the past, the publisher did quite a bit of work to build audiences for writers. In fact, there were audiences that followed particular publishers because they trusted the publisher to bring in writers that would be appealing to audience members.

As an independent, though, you are responsible for building an interested audience.

The time to start building your audience is now. Even if you don’t have a product to release at this point it’s time to start building your audience.

Look to connect with people in social media. This can involve social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but even more important is an email list. Put up a free blog or a basic website and find ways to get people sign up for an email program.

Perhaps you can provide serials or short stories each week as your write your main novels. Or if you’re writing a how-to e-book you could create blog posts each week. This content can be used to build an audience before you release your full-length material.

A popular DPD feature is to create a free product, like a sample chapter or serial story, and collect customer info through the DPD free purchase process. Buyers give you their name and email and we send them a download link to your free content. You can then either email these prospective future customers through the DPD newsletter feature or export them to 3rd party mailing list managers like MailChimp, Aweber, and more.

2. Invested Partners

There are established audiences out there and by tapping into these audiences you can grow your audience faster.

Other writers have audiences. Publishers have audiences including online publishers such as blogs, review websites and more. Your goal is to find the people out there that have similar audiences to your target audience.

Most people think this is limited to starting an affiliate program and paying a commission. While money is a very good motivator for some people, that’s not the option to generate invested partners.

Another way to use partnerships to your benefit is to get others invested in the success of your e-book.

This could include quoting people in your book. Maybe you review something someone else created in your e-book. There are many ways to get people involved in the work. Building partners is a great way to build your audience faster and when more people are invested in your work the more people you’ll have (besides just yourself) to promote the e-book.

3. Automated Processes for Fulfillment

Any time you have the opportunity to automate a process you should take it. You’ll save time, which will be precious because you’ll want to continue writing and creating while building your audience, which takes lots of work especially early on.

The fulfillment process is important. You want to make sure that when someone is ready to make a purchase of your e-book that it’s a smooth process. You’ve already put the work in to get them to the point of purchase that any issue at this point will be extremely frustrating to you. At best it will be a mild inconvenience for your customer and at worst you’ll lose the sale.

An automated checkout and digital delivery process like DPD will handle everything from collecting customer information, calculating the taxes, and processing the payment to sending the customer a unique, secure download link for your e-book.

If you’re ready to sell your eBook then go get your DPD 30-Day free trial and see how easy it is to get started.

Weekly Sales Summaries, Product Uploader Improvements, Purchase List Improvements

  • Jason@DPD
  • October 24, 2012
  • 1 Comment

Today we’ve released a minor improvement update for DPD that tweaks existing features and adds a new weekly sales summary email.

Weekly Sales Summary

Each vendor using DPD will now receive a weekly sales summary email every Monday morning that includes a summary of all sales (and DPD service updates) from the past week.

Vendors can disable the summary email in their profile by going Account > Profile in the top menu bar. If you’re currently getting the per-sale notification emails from DPD and think you’re geting too many but still want to stay on top of sales then the weekly sales report might be right up your alley!

As with all new features, we’re looking for feedback on the sales report emails. We’ve already received some very good feedback and we’ll continue to gather more, then make updates based on what vendors want to see. Send us a ticket and let us know, or leave a comment below.

Product Uploader Improvements

We’ve done two changes to how you upload products in DPD:

1. We’ve improved the default uploader and removed the size limit cap. You can now upload any size file using the main uploader.

2. We’ve dropped the alternate Java based uploader. It caused a lot of support problems, put people off with the security warnings from Java, and we just generally hated it. With the improved default uploader we don’t need it anymore, so it got the axe.

As always, you still have the option for FTP upload and we still recommend it for larger files and bulk product uploads. We’ve added a link to the FTP upload tutorial on our video tutorial site, DPD University.

Purchase List Improvements

Finally, we’ve made a small tweak to how the purchases are displayed on the purchase list, and added a filter so you can view purchases by their status in DPD (active, pending, refunded, etc.).

This change was made in part to clear up a discrepancy between the dashboard sales figures, which counted only active sales, and the purchase list, which previously included all sales of any status and in part because it’s just better.

The Truth About Chargebacks and Disputes on Digital Deliveries

  • Jason@DPD
  • October 24, 2012
  • 10 Comments

We often get asked as a pre-signup question for DPD if our system will help vendors fight chargebacks and disputes from buyers. Usually vendors have been burned in the past by unscrupulous buyers downloading their product and then doing a chargeback, leaving the vendor out of luck.

We deliver terabytes of downloads like games, music, video, graphics, and ebooks for thousands of vendors, so we’re in a pretty good position to spill the beans on this one.

They want to know if anything can prevent chargebacks for digital orders.

The short answer? No.

Why You’re Going to Lose A Chargeback

PayPal

PayPal has built their business on security and safety for buyers. This makes them nearly 100% biased toward siding with buyers when it comes to chargebacks and disputes. This is not the court system where vendors are innocent until proven guilty. In every case we have ever heard about (and trust me, we talk to a lot of vendors) PayPal seems to start with the logic that “The seller is wrong.”

We have never heard of a single case from any of our thousands of vendors where they won a PayPal dispute even with IP addresses and download logs. If a customer disputes your charge through PayPal you will lose the money, period.

Edit: A couple vendors have responded and said that they won a PayPal dispute in cases where the person who filed the dispute didn’t actually follow up on the dispute process, so PayPal decided in the vendor’s favor. So hey, at least if the person that does the chargeback is lazy you might have a chance!

We’re a PayPal partner. They’re our #1 payment processor in use with DPD and they probably wouldn’t like that we wrote this, but it’s the truth.

Just about everybody who is buying stuff online has a PayPal account. If you don’t accept PayPal then you’re turning away a huge number of sales. PayPal knows this, so they have very little motivation to change their dispute practices.

Credit Card Processors

For Visa and MasterCard the credit card processor dispute and refund polices are controlled by the issuing bank so the enforcement of chargebacks vary broadly. One chargeback might be handled by Wells Fargo and another by Chase or Citibank.

In the vast majority of cases we have heard about the only way they will side with you in any dispute case is if you can provide a tracking number and proof of delivery for the order.

By tracking number we mean a USPS, UPS, or Fedex tracking number in the US (or other carriers internationally). By proof of delivery we mean “signature required” where the person who ordered the product actually signed for the delivery. Letting UPS leave it on the doorstep without a signature doesn’t count for proof of delivery- “The neighborhood kids must have stolen it! I didn’t get it!” works for a dispute.

For Discover and American Express the policies are set by the credit card company. From what we have heard with other vendors, American Express seems to be more willing to hear the vendor’s side of the story, but as with all internet transactions the deck is still stacked in the buyer’s favor. Unfortunately, we really don’t have enough experience with Discover to offer valid feedback on them.

The trump card for all disputes? Simple- the buyer only has to assert that the item was not as described. Easy. The credit card company says you didn’t sell them what they thought they were getting, the buyer get’s their money back, and that’s it. They win the dispute.

What can you do about it?

Sadly, not much.

However, a tactic that has been said to work by some vendors is this:

Buyers are looking for instant digital delivery and you’re looking for peace of mind from chargebacks. A simple solution to this is to bundle your instant download with a tangible good. When a customer makes an order of your digital/tangible bundle, they get the instant delivery they are looking for and you ship them an item (which could be just a sheet of paper with download instructions, or a CD with a copy of their order) via the cheapest method you can with proof of delivery. In most cases in the US, that’s Postal Mail with signature confirmation.

When a dispute comes up you can reference the proof of delivery and hold off the “I didn’t get it” claims.

Of course, this comes at a price. Instead of just hanging out and collecting payments for your instantly delivered download without any action on your part you now have to mail something out in a timely maner. But, if you’re plagued with chargebacks it might just be a viable alternative to eating the lost sales.

[box]The information in this post is based on our real world experience talking to and supporting the vendors who use DPD to sell downloadable products. We welcome any outside experiences or tips in fighting chargebacks and reversals![/box]

Update: Cart Custom Fields and Other Tweaks

  • Jason@DPD
  • October 11, 2012
  • 6 Comments

Today we’ve released an often requested feature- custom fields for the DPD cart and checkout.

Vendors can now create required or optional custom fields for the cart complete with field type (text, checkbox, select, radio, textarea), label, and description.

To see an example of custom fields, add the DPD demo product below:

[box]
Demo Cart Product: $5.99

Example showing custom required and optional fields



Add to Cart
[/box]

The contents of custom fields are displayed with the purchase record in the DPD admin. We’ll soon be adding the ability to populate custom fields with input from your website, and send the custom fields via the DPD IPN system to your own scripts and programs.

Just like everything else in DPD, creating a custom field is easy with no coding required. Simply go to Custom Fields in the left menu for the store you’d like to add the fields to checkout, click the “Add New Custom Field” button, and fill out the form:

Other Tweaks and Fixes in this update:

  • Added a subscription signup complete email with their username and login URL
  • Optimized purchase csv export to prevent an out of memory condition for very large exports
  • Fixed an error that sometimes occurred on cart/remove action
  • Updated the way tax and discounts are calculated to comply with GST/PST/VAT requirements

Sep 21 Update: PDF Stamping Improvements and Features to Save You Time

  • Jason@DPD
  • September 21, 2012
  • No Comments

In this update we’re releasing an improvement to PDF stamping and a number of small features and requests designed to save you (and us!) time by giving you the ability to do some new things yourself, without contacting us and waiting for a response.

PDF Stamping Page Range

PDF stamping now has the ability to specify a start page and end page for the stamp. This is for when you have a pretty cover that you don’t want stamped, but want to stamp every other page. Or when you only want to stamp page 37. Or 23-42. You get the picture!

To set a page range to stamp, simply enter the start and end pages. Page numbering starts at 1. Leave the end value blank to stamp all pages until end of document, or specify a start and end range stamp only a few pages in the middle.

Change Your Own Username

DPD automatically sets your username to the email you use to sign up. Sometimes, people want to change their username to a different email for various reasons. Now you can!

By going to Account > Profile, you can now change your DPD login username along with your email, password, and everything else you’re used to.

Manual Unsubscribe from Newsletters for Customers

The DPD newsletter feature is wildly popular- we send tens of thousands of emails a month on behalf of vendors to their customers. In every email that goes out, DPD automatically includes an unsubscribe link at the bottom so that if your customers don’t want to receive email from you, they can unsubscribe. We do this for CAN-SPAM law compliance and because it’s the right thing to do.

Even though every single email has an unsubscribe link, for some reason vendors keep getting asked by their customers to unsubscribe them manually. Yeah, we don’t know either. But now that’s ok, because vendors can now manually unsubscribe customers from store communications!

To unsubscribe someone, go to the Customer list for your store in the left menu, find the customer and click on their email address to open the Customer page. You’ll see a small unsubscribe link there.

Better Coupon Errors on the Cart

There are a ton of different reasons why a coupon can’t be used. The product might not be coupon eligible, conditions required for the coupon like cart total or number of items in the cart might not be met, or the coupon might be invalid. Previously, we showed a generic error when a coupon couldn’t be used. The problem is, we had a ton of vendors asking us why their coupon was “broken” and it was a real pain to figure out the exact reason why a coupon was not applying for both vendors and us.

Now, coupons give a more specific error message explaining why they’re not being applied.

Better Sale Notifications for Vendors

Sale notifications from DPD to you guys to let you know you’ve had a sale have been improved. We now include the items in the order and buyer information. Nothing ground breaking, but should save you guys from having to log in and see what was sold. Or, as the vendor who requested it put, it keep them from having to log in and look while “traveling around the world with a residual income from selling PDF files”, which we think is just awesome.

Other minor changes since the last update:

  • Fixed a problem when customers had an item in their cart that the vendor then deleted, causing a cart error.
  • Fixed an error on the conversion tracking integration when no customer is available
  • Small tweaks to PayPal Express Checkout payment method
  • Added an optional keycode label to the theme > delivery page options
  • fixed some typos in the vendor area

Stripe Payments now available in Canada

  • Jason@DPD
  • September 19, 2012
  • No Comments

Stripe is by far the easiest credit card processor to get set up with but until today it’s only been available for US merchants.

Today Stripe added Canada to their list of supported countries

Starting today, Stripe is publicly available for use by any individual or business based in Canada. It’s the exact same Stripe that we offer in the US: instant approval, all major card types accepted, the ability to accept payments from anyone in any country, and simple, flat pricing, without monthly fees.

They also restated their goal to support businesses and individuals anywhere in the world, which we think is just awesome.

You can read more on the Stripe blog: Stripe in Canada!

Announcing Sage Pay Direct Support

  • Jason@DPD
  • August 17, 2012
  • 3 Comments

DPD now supports Sage Pay Direct (formerly Protix), one of the most popular payment processors in the UK. DPD has implimented the Sage Pay Direct method to accept all supported credit cards directly from your DPD cart and checkout.

Supported Cards Include:

  • Visa
  • MasterCard
  • Delta
  • Solo
  • Maestro
  • Visa Electron
  • American Express
  • Diner’s Club
  • JCB
  • Laser Debit Cards



In short, DPD supports all card types supported by Sage Pay Direct.

Sage Pay Direct Checkout Flow

Sage Pay Direct means your customers check out directly in your DPD cart without going to a hosted checkout flow. It also means you can choose to offer PayPal, 2CO, or any other alternate payment method in addition to direct credit card checkout.

Based on the card type entered by your buyers, additional fields (such as the issue date for Maestro cards) will be shown when needed.

Using Sage Pay Direct with DPD

Adding Sage Pay Direct is like any other payment method with DPD-

1. Select the store you want to add it to
2. Go to Payment Methods in the left menu
3. +Add the Sage Pay Direct method and configure

Enter your SagePay vendor name to activate the payment method. IP addresses for DPD’s servers are provided for you to authorize them for transactions in your SagePay account.

As always, let us know if you have any questions or comments!