A lot has happened in the past 2 months at Tyche Softwares. Of particular significance are the following things:
1. Add to Cart popup in Abandoned Cart Plugin
2. Taking ownership of WooCommerce Delivery Notes plugin
3. Taking ownership of 5 WordPress plugins
4. Released new addon for Abandoned Cart plugin
5. Upcoming new plugin: Deposits for WooCommerce
1. Add to Cart popup in Abandoned Cart Plugin
Our roadmap of the WooCommerce Abandoned Cart plugin never had this feature. But we soon realized that this is indeed an important part of the Abandoned Cart process. Also we had noticed customers had started asking for this as they wanted to capture the email early & not on the checkout page.
After working on this feature for over a month & a half, we released this update to the plugin on August 16 2017.
This popup allows site owners to capture guest user emails before the checkout page.
2. Adopting the WooCommerce Delivery Notes plugin
Sometime during July, we noticed that the WooCommerce Print Invoice & Delivery Note plugin hadn’t been updated since 2 years. The author, Triggvy Gunderson had mentioned that he is looking to transfer ownership of the plugin. But despite repeated attempts to contact the author, we didn’t get a response.
This plugin helps you to print out invoices and delivery notes for WooCommerce orders. You can also edit the Company/Shop name, Company/Shop postal address and add personal notes, conditions/policies (like a refund policy) and a footer imprint.
After noticing that the plugin is being used by over 40,000 WooCommerce stores, we decided to contact the WordPress.org team & see how we could take this forward. We got in touch with them in July & received a prompt reply from Mika on the next steps.
After a month of exchanging emails & sending the updated plugin copy to them to review, we were given ownership of the plugin in August. That felt like an achievement unlocked!
Ever since we were transferred ownership, we have released 3 updates to the plugin. With every update, we have discovered something that broke due to the previous update. It’s been a learning process. The plugin now is stable & we will continue to maintain it & support it as well.
You might already be using this plugin. If not, you can download it from here.
3. Adopting 5 WordPress plugins
WordPress plugins repository allows you to add a tag “adopt-me” to your plugin, which indicates that the plugin is put up for adoption by the author. That’s where I found out about the Arconix Portfolio plugin.
I contacted John & proposed a roadmap to him for the plugin if we were to adopt the plugin from him. Eventually, that lead to all 5 of his WordPress plugins being adopted by us. The plugins are:
(Note: The above list is prepared with the shortcode from the Arconix Shortcodes plugin)
We have released an update (or 2 in some cases) for 4 of the above 5 plugins. They have been coded & documented well, which always makes it easy to work with.
This is the first time we are working on plugins that are not targetted towards WooCommerce, but they have a broader market, for any WordPress website. We are excited to see how these plugins work & add value to it’s customers. We will continue to maintain & support them.
4. Released new addon for Abandoned Cart plugin
We released a new addon: Aelia Currency Switcher compatibility addon for WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Plugin on 7 September 2017.
Currency switcher compatibility is needed when you are using Abandoned Cart plugin & a currency switcher on your website. Without this, your customers will only receive abandoned cart emails in the base currency, even if they have abandoned in a different currency.
A few customers had asked for compatibility with the Currency Switcher plugin from Aelia. The founder, Diego Zanella has been helpful & responsive in answering any questions about his plugin’s working. I am also thankful to our customer, Stuart. He is the first customer of this addon & he was also the one who encouraged us to develop this addon.
5. Upcoming in September
We have completed development of a new WooCommerce plugin: Deposits for WooCommerce.
We have a Partial Deposits Addon for our Booking & Appointment plugin. In the last couple of years, we received a lot of requests asking if the Partial Deposits addon would work without the Booking plugin. That is one of the reasons we decided to focus on a generic Deposits plugin.
Out of our 6 premium addons for the Booking & Appointment plugin, Partial Deposits Addon has the highest usage. That is another reason to develop this new plugin.
We will be releasing the Deposits for WooCommerce plugin by 15 September 2017 (tomorrow). The new plugin will offer deposits by %, by amount, ability to create payment plans, compatibility with booking plugin among some of the key features. The new plugin will be priced at $39.
Last word
The last 2 months have been very good for our team. We have done a lot of new things, and have achieved success while doing them, whether it’s adopting new plugins, or releasing new addons, or focussing on existing plugins.
I will write again in the next week, with the Deposits for WooCommerce plugin available & with some other news about our team expansion over the last 3 months.
As always, we look forward to receiving your feedback.
