Blog

We have a nice little update to the News Module we'd like to tell you about.

Back Dating

First, to help people moving to Limited Run from other sites and services, we've added back dating support to posts. This way you can add all your old posts into the module, and still have everything appear in order. Honestly, we should have had that in there already, but alas, sometimes we forget stuff.

Exporting Posts

Next, we added support for exporting. Sometimes people outgrow our News Module, and we want to make it really easy to export all your posts. Hey, we're not jerks, which can be refreshing at times. Right?

Feed Reader Support

Lastly, we added support for RSS feed readers. Ever since Google announced they would be shutting down Google Reader, there's been a huge influx of new RSS feed readers launching (everything from our favorite, Feedbin, to free alternatives like Feedly, Digg Reader, and Aol Reader). These new services have really gotten a lot of people talking about the good old days, when RSS was king. So to keep with the old times, which are once again the new times, your news section will now automatically get a feed (just add ".atom" or ".xml" to the end of your news page's URL), and your store's news feed will now be auto-discoverable in most readers. This means if a fan drops your store's URL into their reader, it should automatically yank the feed and add it to their subscription list.

We have a lot of big things in the works, so keep your eyes on our blog and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with everything. And as always, thanks to everyone that's using and supporting Limited Run!

Last week you saw the release of our new module called "It's Available!", which is going to help everyone keep their customers and fans informed about pre-orders and back in stock items. Something we didn't discuss in that post, but alluded to with one of the screenshots, was our newly updated products area.

You might remember that the badges next to your "Sold" column that indicate whether a product is unlisted, coming soon, or available, were all one color. Well we wanted to freshen that up and make it easier for you to see, so we picked out a few bright colors for each state. We've also added a smaller badge next to individual variations that aren't in stock. And along with that new variation badge, we added a new product state called "Some Available" which lets you know that, within a product, there are some variations that are available and some that are "Out of Stock". Lastly, we've faded the "Not Listed" badge a little because we wanted to make it more obvious that you haven't made those products visible in your storefront yet.

In addition to the updated badges, you may have also noticed that we renamed the "Remaining" column as "Left" and improved the spacing across all of the stats columns to be more uniform. This will help make it easier to quickly review your sold counts and remaining inventory. And if you've installed "It's Available!", you'll see that "Sold" is no longer next to the badges. Instead, we have a new column called "Want". This is going to tell you how many people "Want" a specific item that's "Not Available" or "Out of Stock". And if you click that number, it's going to bring up the Pending Requests screen, which will let you review and send out notification emails.

Finally, if you're using the Ticket Selling Module, we've added these same improvements to the "Tickets" area of your dashboard as well!

Keep your eyes open next week, because we'll have some more great "News" for you. Heh.

We've just released a new feature that's not only going to help you sell more music and merch, but also help you to easily see how in demand your "Coming Soon" and "Out of Stock" items are. We're calling it the "It's Available!" Module, and it's extremely versatile, so let's take a look at how it works.

Pre-Orders

Probably the biggest and most important use of "It's Available!" will be alerting your customers about an item that just went up for sale. Specifically, pre-orders. A typical scenario for a pre-order involves a label or band announcing that on a certain date, a new album will be available. Beyond that, things get complicated. Labels and bands might release the time it will be up for sale. That time may not be met. Massive amounts of refreshing happens. People get annoyed, frustrated, post nasty comments on Facebook pages, threaten to jump from rooftops. Just all around ugliness. So to avoid said ugliness, customers can now choose to be notified when the item becomes available. They do this by entering their email address into the "It's Available!" notification request screen. As soon as you make the item available for purchase, you'll be prompted to send out notification emails to everyone that requested.

Out of Stock Items

Another great use for this feature is on items that are out of stock. For example, clothing that's not available in a certain size or maybe when the current pressing of a piece of vinyl has sold out. With both these items, it always helps to know what the demand is for an item you're considering printing or pressing again. Just going by emails you get, or comments on social media networks, may not tell the whole story. With "It's Available!", it makes it extremely easy for customers to let you know they're still interested in a certain item.

Other Cool Stuff

Just like your "Coming Soon" products, fans will want to be notified right when tickets for a show become available. So, we made "It's Available!" also work great when you're selling tickets.

Another thing we did with this feature is to let you choose which customers you'd like to notify. You can of course notify everyone at once, but maybe you have a VIP list or maybe just some really great customers you'd like to give a head start to. On the other hand, maybe you know the email address of a vinyl flipper and you'd like to leave them out. Either way, you have control of who gets notified and when.

Lastly, when anyone makes a request, their email address will also be sent to your Customers Module and included in the CSV download so you can add them to your newsletter.

Okay, I'm Sold!

To get started with "It's Available!", just follow these steps:

1. Go into your dashboard by signing in on the homepage.
2. Go to your store's "Modules" > "Manage Modules" area.
3. Install the "It's Available!" Module.

As always, if you have any questions, please send us a message.

You may remember a while back we launched a second payment option for our other service Card Included, which let you pay us with a credit card. Then more recently, we added another way to pay us on Limited Run, when we gave you an alternative to our Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system. This new method allowed you to pay us once a month with a saved credit card. Noticing a trend? We were preparing for something big, and when we do that, we're extremely thorough. Well, we can finally say that we're done preparing!

Stores can now accept credit cards, directly from their customers, with our brand new Stripe integration!

Stripe, if you don't know, is an incredible new payment gateway that allows sellers in the United States and Canada (with more countries coming soon) easily accept credit card payments from all over the world, and then have that money go directly into their bank account. With our Stripe integration, you don't need to know any code or be a developer, you just need to click a button in your store's settings area. It's that simple.

Not Your Grandfather's Gateway

Traditionally, credit card gateways have always been complicated and intimidating. Most want you to fill out lengthy forms and fax them in for approval. We like music from the 90's, not technology. We want stores to sign up and start selling. Stripe keeps us in the 21st century with a simple online sign up process, and a one-click "Connect with Stripe" integration. You'll be up and running in just a few seconds.

Another way Stripe separates itself from the gateways of the past, is in fees. No monthly fees. No minimums. No international fees. No extra fees for accepting American Express. And no extra fees for refunds. Stripe only charges you a standard 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee. That's it.

Accept Credit Cards Right in Your Store

Our PayPal checkout is the best in the business. We take a lot of pride in how quick and easy it is. We did this because, as our name suggests, we specialize in features that enable stores to sell fast selling items like music, toys, shirts, tickets, and more. But a credit card checkout is usually a lot more complicated than a PayPal checkout. Think about the last time you paid for something online with a credit card. Most likely, the experience was pitiful. Well pitiful was not going to fly with us. We can't have the best PayPal checkout on the planet, and then have some slow, dragging, time consuming checkout with credit cards. We wanted one small checkout screen, we wanted it to think for you, and we wanted to avoid email when redeeming digital. Basically, we wanted the easiest credit card checkout process available. Here's how we did it.

Once you connect your Stripe account, customers will see two buttons in the cart. One will be "Pay with PayPal" and the other will be "Pay with Credit Card". The PayPal checkout works exactly the same as it always has.

There's only one screen your customers will see when paying with a credit card, and it's tailored to fit what they're buying. It's slim, and it's small, but it packs a punch.

Back in March of 2012, a company called Kicksend significantly reduced bounced emails by detecting possible typos in email addresses. We were so impressed by this, that we incorporated their open source project into our new checkout flow. For example, if your customer types jim@fmail.com, we'll catch that and suggest the more likely jim@gmail.com.

Another interesting thing we're doing to save your customers time is automatically filling out the city and state after they enter their zip code. Pretty slick, right?

Finally, your customers pay right in your storefront, and seconds after clicking "Complete Order", they're shown a confirmation, and given download buttons to redeem any attached digital items. They'll never have to wait for an email notificaiton to get their downloads.

Stripe Integration is Now Live

There's no other credit card gateway out there that we could have done all this with, besides Stripe. They're really at the top of their game. To enable Stripe in your store, head into your "Settings" area, and click the blue "Connect with Stripe" button.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to send us a message.

A few months ago we released a cool feature called Multiple Managers which allowed a store owner to give access to their store to another email address. This comes in handy in so many ways, specifically when it comes to designers. Designers that work on multiple stores at the same time, like for instance Yann Novak who's built stores for Line and Room40, benefit greatly from the Multiple Managers feature. But what makes building more than one store at a time even easier is how Limited Run lets managers of multiple stores easily switch between those stores. By clicking the store's name in the top left hand corner of the dashboard, the store manager will be able to switch between any store they've been given access to. You don't have to sign out or in to the other store, just click the name and the dashboards will change automatically.

As you know you can sign directly into a specific store by going to SUBDOMAIN.limitedrun.com/admin or you can use the sign in link at the top right hand corner of the Limited Run homepage. But what's great about the Multiple Managers feature is it gives you access to another cool store switching feature called Launchpad. The Launchpad can be accessed when you're a manager on multiple stores, and you sign in through the Limited Run homepage. Or if you click "Launchpad" in the drop down menu talked about in the previous paragraph. The Launchpad not only allows you to choose which store you'd like to manage, but also gives you an easy way to create a new store, as well as change your sign in account info.

If you have any questions, click that blue thingy in the bottom right hand corner.