New Crowdfunded Modules

We have decided after the success of our last crowdfunding module campaign that it is time to do another crowdfunding campaign to expand the free module selection in thirty bees. We are going to do the exact same method we did with the last crowdfunding campaign with this one as well. We are going to present three module choices and let our community vote on the modules.

In our last campaign, we got a little too ambitious with the modules, especially the module that the community chose.  We had over 350 hours of development time in the module. That averaged out to around $6.50 an hour to create the module. We bit off a little more than we could chew to say the least. In the end, the module was completed and is stable and in live use in several shops.  With that being said, this time we are going with smaller more focused modules that should have a wider appeal and do not require custom server configurations. Without further ado, the modules are!

Ad Tracking

We realize that most of our users are using paid advertisements to stay competitive these days. For every platform you buy ads on, you then need an ad conversion tracking module. Or if you do not use a module, you can just track conversions by $1 rate by pasting the Javascript snippet. This is not really ideal though, and it messes up order attribution when you have several targeted ads at very different pricing points. This is why we want to create one module that will track ads on the most popular networks and make it free and open source. The networks we have chosen so far are:

• Google Adwords
• Facebook Ads
• Twitter Ads
• Google Remarketing

This list is somewhat flexible since all platforms need the same data to work. If there are networks that are popular that we missed, let us know in the comments below.

Audience:

Merchants that use paid advertisements for their site.

Price to fund it:

$1500

Social Tags Integration

This is a hard module to name, for right now this is the working title. What the module will do is add a new tab on your products page, and also new areas to the categories pages. If you are not aware social media platforms all have their own sets of tags you can use to send data over to them. Some allow you to send the price, some will do images, description, and a myriad of other data. What this module aims to do is to let you tailor what happens when a product is shared with any network. Currently, the way thirty bees works is on a product page, when the page has been shared the image, name, and description are sent to the social media network. This presents a problem. Most social media sites want images that are different sizes. This module will allow you to upload specific images for specific networks. It will also let you adjust the information that you send to each network as well so you can conform to their requirements.

With this module you will also be able to set global overrides as well, say you haven’t entered information for all of your products, then the module will fall back to the global information you have entered. This will help ensure that when your site is shared the best possible information is shared and your brand looks great on all platforms.

The other main feature of this module is oEmbed data. This module will also make your site an oEmbed provider. If you are not familiar with oEmbed, it is data that is sent specifically so some platforms can pick it up. One of the main platforms that uses oEmbed is WordPress. This will make it so when a user writes about your products in their blog, it will show up nice and clean. Or if someone posts a link in Gitter, a Slack channel, or on a forum, the data that is shared will be automatic and supported. You can read more about oEmbed here. 

Audience:

Merchants that use social media or rely on organic social media for traffic

Price to fund it:

$2000

Order Editing module

Last but not least is a module that will allow you to edit the orders placed in your shop. Say you need to remove a shipping charge or add an item to an order, this module will do that. It will let you revise all the information of an order after the order is placed, simply by clicking next to each item. This module could be really handy if you have to frequently change orders or revise the quantities of items purchased in your shop. You will also be able to set statuses and remove them as well. It will even allow you to delete orders from your order list as well, helping you comply with EU law.

One note about this module though, it will not send amended payment instructions to users, payments will need to be collected manually. For instance, if a user calls and wants a more expensive shipping option, you will need to collect the money from the user manually, the module will not send out an updated cart link to pay for the added costs. This is something that is just not possible currently in thirty bees.

Audience:

Merchants that frequently have to change order information or revise orders.

Price to fund:

$2500

Lets Vote!