You've been telling us that MultiMerch dashboards and seller lists look a bit boring.
We also heard that it would be nice to see sellers on a map and that having Google and Facebook display shared product pages with rich snippets would make it so much better.
All this – and other exciting things – are now available in MultiMerch 8.14!
New dashboards for admins and sellers
We've been featuring these for a while now, but the new MultiMerch dashboards for marketplace owners and sellers are now official.
It wasn't an easy task and we appreciate all of your feedback – these wouldn't be possible without you!
Since I already covered the new dashboards in detail earlier, check out that blog post for more information: Introducing MultiMerch dashboards.
New styles for seller lists in 2018
What's the point of featuring your sellers if their profiles just don't catch your customers' eyes?
They're there, but you just don't feel like exploring their stores.
We've restyled the list of sellers and the new and top seller blocks in MultiMerch to make them look more enticing.
Here's an example of MultiMerch 8.14 sellers in a marketplace powered by the Basel theme.
Now that's what I call enticing.
This is an example with the Basel theme, but we also made sure the new styles look good with the rest of our partner themes.
Map view of seller stores
This has been a long time coming and local marketplace owners will love this one.
Starting with MultiMerch 8.14, seller stores can now be displayed on a map in addition to the regular list view.
To enable map view, you'll need to specify your Google Maps API key, which can be obtained from Google under both free and paid plans.
We will soon be extending this feature to make it possible to display individual seller store locations in their profiles, too.
Microdata for SEO and social media sharing
Microdata (or Structured Data) is a page markup that lets search engines and social networks better understand the content of your pages.
This improves the appearance of your page when it is displayed in search results and shared on social media.
From now on, MultiMerch will add Schema.org and Open Graph structured data to product and seller pages to improve their appearance in search results and on social media.
(source)
For now, MultiMerch will display product and offer Schema markup, which will have Google display your products' prices and ratings on search results pages.
MultiMerch 8.14 also features a new SEO system architecture and the new SEO caching system for improved stability and performance.
All of these improvements are part of the MultiMerch SEO system and do not have to be enabled separately.
From your feedback to interface improvements
We've recently started collecting and systematizing your feedback about various MultiMerch pages and features to see where we can improve.
Your feedback has been invaluable – in MultiMerch 8.14, we introduced subtle improvements to seller and product management pages for marketplace admins.
For example, seller profiles can now be sorted and filtered by store name and seller's email separately and have profile images displayed for easier recognition.
You can now also use a shortcut button to view seller's public profile as it appears on the marketplace without having to search for it manually.
The list of products has received similar improvements for marketplace admins.
MultiMerch now displays product thumbnails, makes it clear (and possible to edit) which seller the product belongs to and lets you assign multiple products to a different seller in bulk.
As usual, MultiMerch 8.14 comes with a number of bugfixes, minor improvements and updated partner theme integrations for better compatibility with our supported themes.
Now, the new version is available for download in your MultiMerch accounts and on OpenCart Marketplace.
We all here hope you'll like it – and are eager to hear your thoughts on the improvements!
The post What's new and improved in MultiMerch 8.14: dashboards, maps, SEO appeared first on MultiMerch Marketplace.