In today’s update we’ve added the ability for vendors to create sub-user accounts for employees or assistants to help manage your products and/or customer service functions.
Currently sub-users are supported for product stores only.
Vendors create sub-users from their profile menu:
Sub-Users have two available permissions:
Customer Service: Includes access to Customers, Orders, and Coupons modules.
Product Management: Includes access to the Product modules and can edit all aspects of products (or delete them). Can also send product updates, add product keys, replace uploaded files, etc.
Sub-users can have one of the above permissions or both. Sub-users will never have access to your store settings, payment processors, integration setup, account billing information, etc.
Managing Sub-Users:
Vendors can activate or deactivate sub-users, edit sub-user account information (email, password), and change permissions at any time.
Sub-users will see a different dashboard view based on their permissions.
We encourage any vendor looking to add sub-users to create a test sub-user on their account and see exactly what each permission level can see and do in the DPD admin.
We’ve updated our privacy policy to make it easier to understand and to comply with new and evolving laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into effect this year.
Our updated policy gives you more information about your rights about your personal information. It also gives you more details on how we share your data.
We also updated our policies on cookies and similar technologies used by DPD and our partners (like Google Analytics) to give you updated information about what information we may collect.
These changes are effective as of January 1, 2020. You can follow this link to view our Updated Privacy Policy.
As with anything new, there are always a few rounds of tweaks and fixes as issues are found so here is a fresh hot batch!
Translation Fixes
Some of the field placeholder text (what’s shown in the input fields) and validation errors (the red text that says X field is required) were not being translated properly.
We fixed that! Check out these sweet Chinese placeholders and errors-
In addition, we added translations for some previously untranslated strings in the “pre-cart” pages like EULA, up-sell, download activation, etc.
Some Image and Spacing Tweaks
The images on one of the index layouts were not fluid, meaning they didn’t scale with the screen size. Evidently Fluid is the new Responsive. So, we made them very fluid.
The user text boxes where vendors can place content below the page content on the cart and checkout pages was too darn close to the page content, so we padded those bad boys out by about 20 pixels. It just looks better not scrunched up.
Somehow, a Google+ logo from our design mockups made it in to the production hosted product page. And by somehow I mean “I personally forgot to remove it and checked that bad boy right in to production.”
This is funny because Google+ hasn’t been a thing since April 2nd, 2019. My bad. We removed it.
Fixed a Stripe Refund Issue
This is kinda technical, but we changed the way we process Stripe transactions for PSD2 compliance with the v4 cart. Vendors were having issues doing a refund with this change, so we issued a fix and have the problem resolved. You can now give all the money back that you want if that’s what you’re in to.
We Welcome your Feedback
As always, we welcome your feedback on the new v4 cart. We’re correcting any issues that pop up as they come in and we’re all hands on deck during this release cycle, so please don’t hesitate to share feedback!
We’ve released version 4 of the DPD cart and checkout in Beta with a modern mobile friendly theme, one page checkout, and PSD2 compliance.
Modern Design
The v4 (Beta) design has been optimized to scale for screen and mobile devices and features a clean, light, modern design.
Non-technical people can select custom colors from the theme page like our other themes, and for those who want to dig in you get layout HTML and custom CSS access. The v4 theme is based on Bootstrap 4 so it should be familiar to most developers and designers.
True One Page Checkout
The v4 cart has a true, one page checkout with no additional pages for shipping, tax, custom fields, etc. That means your customers will go to one page, fill it out, and click complete order to be done!
The exception to this is of course when you use a 3rd party hosted processor like PayPal Standard or Express- they’ll go to PayPal to complete their transaction and then return to the DPD Cart. Even so, we’ve removed extra page loads for shipping and tax calculation which should significantly shorten the checkout experience.
SCA / PSD2 Compliance
The v4 cart has full SCA / PSD2 compliance for UK merchants using Stripe and PayPal Standard, Express, and Pro. This is the optional “Verified by Visa” and other card brand specific authentication that some cards require.
Try the v4 (Beta)
We’re calling this a Beta because it’s brand new and, like all brand new things that involve thousands of lines of new code, there may be a few bugs.
However, we’re making it available for use and feedback in your DPD accounts and it’s easy to give it a try:
Log in to DPD
Go to Settings > Checkout
Click the purple button to go to Theme
Add a new theme using the green button in the top right
Select the v4 (Beta) theme
Test it out, customize what you like, etc.
When you’re ready to make it live, click the “Use this theme” button to switch.
Please note- switching themes will preserve all your checkout settings (custom text areas on each page, which fields are displayed, tax and shipping options, coupons, etc.) but if you’ve made any layout or custom CSS customizations you’ll need to redo them for the new theme as it uses new versions.
Give us Feedback
We want to hear your feedback on the v4 cart. Once we’ve gathered feedback and corrected any issues or bugs that arise, we have plans to release a number of other themes based on this checkout flow- a compact theme, a dark theme, etc. to give everyone options.
We want to make sure the base code is solid before moving forward with that though, so please- give us your feedback good or bad on the new v4 (Beta) theme! You can comment here or drop us a support ticket!
We’ve been working hard to make DPD easier to use and understand. We’ve recently updated our admin to a new, more logical layout with option consolidation and organization, and we’re adding new support tools to guide you along the way.
On-Page Guides and Tours
We’ve started adding on-page guides and tours to explain how to find things, what each item on the page does, and to help people accomplish common tasks we regularly get support questions about.
To open the on-page guides, click the little flag icon in the bottom right corner of the page:
A menu will open with the guides and tutorials available for that module:
These guides and tours appear right on the DPD page, highlighting fields and buttons and giving you extra information on what each thing does and how it’s used:
If you’ve decided I’m too boring and just want to bail out of a guide you can always click the “X” icon in the top right corner at any time.
Right now we’re working to add guides and tours to the top level page (usually the list page) for each module, so as you go to Products, Orders, Customers, etc. in the left menu you should see the icon.
If you don’t see an icon for a specific module we don’t have any guides available for it yet, but we’re working on it!
On-Page Knowledge Base Links
We’ve added links to most modules that go directly to the KB section that relates to that module. This should save everyone time looking up help or waiting for a support response.
For example, the KB link on the Products page links directly to the Working with Products page in the KB (which we’ve also reorganized to line up more cleanly with modules in DPD).
If you have advanced questions that aren’t answered by the on-page guides or just like reading through documentation that reads like stereo instructions then this is the link for you.
Live Chat / Support Tickets
Our dedicated live chat guy Chase is available Monday – Friday, 9AM – 5PM Eastern for live chat (except when he gets cranky and we have to let him go to the bathroom or eat).
You can get to the Live Chat interface from the orange tab in the bottom right corner of the screen:
If live chat is not available you’ll see a “Submit Support Ticket” message that will let you…. submit a support ticket. We’ll reply just as soon as we can!
We hope these changes make it easier to use and get help with DPD! We’re always looking for feedback on our changes, so drop us a line or post a comment and let us know what you think!
Now that our new admin is out the door and stable for everyone in this DPD update we’re adding some features and tweaks requested by our vendors!
Added Ability to Disable Sale Notifications for Free Checkouts
You can now disable sale notifications for free checkouts by turning them off from the vendor profile. Basically, you can get no notifications, notifications for free and paid checkouts, or just notifications for paid checkouts.
Sale Notifications ON + Free notifications OFF = only paid notifications
To get to the profile go to the top right corner of the screen in DPD and select vendor profile from the menu.
Added Product Update Emails for Tangibles
Some vendors used product update emails to communicate with buyers about tangible item pre-orders, production updates, etc. so we made them available for that product type.
Just like every other product type, you can send a product update from the product’s details page by going to Products in the left menu and then clicking on the product name.
Added Text Areas on Portal index and Portal Login Pages
Vendors wanted to be able to insert text on the customer portal pages just like every cart page, so we added above and below page body text areas for this page.
Edit all the text.
You can get to these new text areas (and all the other text areas) by going to Settings > Checkout and clicking the edit Text areas button on that page.
Added Affiliate Fields to Order->Create and Order->Edit
You can now manually specify an affiliate and commission due for manually edited and created orders. DPD doesn’t do any Automatic calculation since thats done at checkout, but you can manually specify a payout if needed.
Select Affiliate and set payout
Added Option to Use UPS Negotiated Rates
By default, DPD quotes the “published” rates for UPS. Some vendors have special rates negotiated with UPS. They now have the option of quoting those rates to customers during checkout. If you have negotiated rates and want to quote standard rates, leave the option turned off!
Updated French Cart Translations
A native French speaking DPD vendor provided us with better translations, so we updated them! We always try to use translations provided by our native speaking vendors when possible.
We’ve received feedback from many vendors about the new admin and its been mostly positive, but a few have asked us for tweaks here and there to make their life easier. In this update we have another round of minor changes to make things easier for everyone!
Made it easier to disable Integrations and Payment Methods
Previously form validation (making sure all the fields were filled out correctly) required API keys, etc. filled out in integrations and payment methods even if you were just trying to disable them on your store.
This wasn’t ideal, for example if you wanted to remove your credentials from DPD, so we made it where you can save them them as disabled with blank fields. If the integration is enabled you still need to fill out the required fields to make the integration or payment method work (because why would we save an active integration in a non-working state?) but now you can disable them and leave fields blank.
Mobile Layout Tweaks
With the new admin we’re trying to move the entire DPD admin to a mobile friendly layout that works on phones, iPads, etc. We’re about 80% there (some of the data tables are big and we’re working on getting them mobile friendly) and we’ve done some tweaks to button layout, etc. so that everything lines up and wraps correctly on mobile devices.
Specifically, we’ve fixed the button layout for saving pages on mobile, which was a little wonky, to use “block” buttons on small devices:
Easy clicky buttons on the small screens, natch.
This update wins the award for “the most work that nobody will notice” with 482 changes just to make buttons look a little different.
More Key Product Improvements
Vendors use DPD to deliver product keys it for a multitude of uses- delivering activation keys, phone card codes, gift card codes, keyed URLs as unique links, coupon codes, and all sorts of other things.
In the last update we added a key count display to the product list to make it easier for key sellers to see how much key inventory they had left:
Color Coded Key Inventory display on product list
This was great, but for vendors who deliver the same key to every customer or keys generated at an external URL or with Aquatic Prime it was annoying- it would show a red 1 or 0. So, we fixed that by adding different icons for “deliver the same key to everybody” and external methods and added helpful tooltips to tell you whats going on with product keys:
“Infinity key” for deliver the same to everyone and a “server key” for external generation!
Per Product Key Inventory Warning Threshold
We also added a per-product low key warning threshold, so you can manually override DPD’s sales velocity based warnings and set your own limit:
This field is optional- you can leave it blank or 0 to use DPD’s built in sales velocity based 7 day warning threshold.
Quick Actions Menu added to Product List
Based on popular demand, we’ve added a quick actions menu to the product list so you can jump right to a product’s specific task:
Jump right to what you need with the new Quick Actions menu.
You can still click on the product name or View button to see product detail and see everything about a product including stats, past product updates, existing fulfillments and price points, etc. but hopefully this makes basic tasks for people that know exactly what they want to do quicker and easier!
Other Minor Tweaks and Changes in this update:
Fixed the expired account message on the Dashboard when you no longer have a DPD subscription
Fixed a misplaced form tag on vendor/manageaffiliate
Made the Zapier link on integrations open in a new tab/window
Removed some dummy text that made it in to production on one obscure tooltip on one page that we’re pretty sure nobody ever noticed.
Depreciated 2CheckOut because even though they account for 0.059% of checkouts they are responsible for waaaaaay more than that in support requests, they have 3 different systems and it’s a crap shoot which one people are on, and their support desk will only send us canned responses.
We’ve had mostly positive feedback from vendors since launching the new admin earlier this week, but there have been a few bugs and a couple user interface issues we needed to address. We’ve been continuously releasing updates this week as things pop up, so here is a rollup of changes we’ve made:
More Transparent Product Key Inventory
A vendor wrote in and told us how important it was to be able to see available key inventory from the product list and suggested some changes to make his and all “key sellers” lives easier so we implemented them!
For products that deliver product keys, we now display the available key number with a color coded icon for inventory status on the product list and product detail page:
Red icon for no keys, yellow for less than 10 keys, and green for more than 10!
Easier to Find “Send Free Download” button
Before the redesign there used to be a button on the product detail page to send a free download to someone. We’ve received a lot of tickets asking where that went (we put it in the action menu button at the top) so to make life easier for everyone we’ve added the button back to the product detail page.
Now you can send free downloads like a madman without going in the menu!
Other Bug Fixes and Minor Changes
Fixed some buggered CSS in the affiliate mini-site from the update
Moved export button on reports pages to the top
Added some back buttons to purchase transaction detail pages
Fixed a bunch of minor styling inconsistencies on various pages
Fixed the send free download “success!” page style
Fixed an issue with affiliate link codes not generating properly
Increased global text size based on vendor feedback
Increased global gray text contrast based on vendor feedback
Fixed the affiliate / vendor mode switcharoo.
Made the product “bulk edit” page search field label more descriptive of its capabilities (hint: it searches everything on the page)
Last week we warned told people that we were releasing a totally redesigned admin and today we made good on our threat promise!
After hours of annoying database updates and migrations and a bunch of boring stuff that nobody really cares about we’re happy to share that the upgrade is complete and live!
We thought about showing you a bunch of screenshots of the new admin, but you can just log in and see it for yourself! Instead, here are some tips to help you get acclimated to the new layout:
New Admin Navigation Tips
The new admin has a simplified main navigation and we’ve reduced the 25+ items down to logical “modules” for each section. All the modules follow the this same design pattern:
Module
Primary action button and secondary action menu on the module “index” page
For example, to do anything with a product (create, edit, delete, get button code, copy, import, whatever) go to Product in the left menu, then either do the primary action on the page (create new product) or select your secondary function (like FTP import) from the menu at the top of the page. Or, open the product and do all existing product related functions there.
Store Options
We’ve consolidated store options that used to be in the theme and sprinkled around DPD in to two main menu items- Store Setup (store name, URL, contact emails, etc.) and Checkout which handles everything that used to be in theme, cart text blocks, store logo, policy pages, error pages, up-sell and cross sell text, etc. No more digging through 20 pages to find options!
Where did __________ go?!
We’re going to try to answer a few of these right off the bat to save everyone time!
Switch Store, Add new store —> Change Stores link at the top of the page
Add new product, FTP import, bulk edit products, deleted products —> Product page, menu at the top right
Purchases —> Orders
Import Customers, export customers —> Customer page, menu at the top right
Preferences Page —> Settings / Store Setup
Policies Page —> Settings / Checkout
Affiliate Options —> Affiliate menu item, store and global settings
We’re in the process of updating all the KB articles and tutorial videos with the new admin, so if anyone has any questions on how to find anything or has any issues please yell at our support team via live chat or support ticket- they’ll be happy to help!
We welcome any and all feedback, good or bad. Please drop us a line, send us a chat, or leave us a comment here. We’ve already received a few suggestions and we’re going to do our best to tweak things to make them easier for everyone!
In this update we’ve released a new out of stock message feature, an updated design for the affiliate mini-site that your affiliates see, and a few bug fixes and tweaks to existing features.
DPD is an all-in-one shopping cart and digital fulfillment service for downloadable products. Serving thousands of stores, DPD processes and delivers millions worth of downloads each year.
