Smartstore 5 Release Highlights

The completely rewritten and redesigned Smartstore version 5 with all enhancements is available.

Smartstore 5 is the fastest store system in the world and offers over 1,000 improvements:

Advantages that will score you points as a store operator every day! Take your position, your KPIs, your search engine ranking, customer satisfaction, workflow effectiveness and store turnover to the top with Smartstore 5, without having to make any concessions to the unlimited individualization of your store.

On the contrary! It has never been so easy to customize Smartstore 5 stores completely and individually to your own business model and sales concept.

Get ready for maximum performance and unprecedented flexibility!

We have catapulted Smartstore 5 far into the future by using the latest Microsoft .NET technologies and consistently refactoring the program code. Compared to Smartstore 4, performance has increased by a factor of 5 to 10 in all areas.

Smartstore 5 highlights:
Ready for Cloud
out of the box

Smartstore 5 is the fastest store system in the world

Compared to Smartstore 4, performance has increased at least 5-fold in all areas. With less than 100 milliseconds TTFB (time to first byte - the time it takes for the website to start loading), Smartstore is the fastest e-commerce platform out-of-the-box. This means it takes just a tenth of a second for the web server to send the first byte of the store page to the customer. Whether with a single store or dozens of multi-shops on a Smartstore installation.

In addition to technical speed, faster implementation of projects is a major point. Store operators also benefit from practical speed advantages, for example with fast data import and export at extremely high speeds with Smartstore 5.

Platform-independent and a wide range of hosting options

In addition to Windows, Smartstore 5 now also supports hosting on Linux. In addition to Microsoft SQL Server, the license-free open source database MySQL is now also supported as a database server. Support for other databases such as PostgreSQL is planned.

Automated translation of all content

The new translation tool translates the entire store with just one click. What is translated? Product texts and descriptions, product groups, menus, SEO meta tags, CMS page builder stories, content sliders and other content. In addition, the translation is automatically stored in the store, so it is not a one-off live translation. The possibilities are not limited to the most common languages. With the combined knowledge of DeepL and Google Translator, websites can be easily translated into many more languages than ever before.

PayPal Checkout

The new PayPal Checkout enables payment via PayPal, direct debit, credit and debit card as well as payment on open account. PayPal Checkout also enables a variety of other local, country-specific payment methods for the first time, making your online store more attractive at home and abroad. Nowadays, customers attach great importance to having a variety of options for paying for their purchases. With PayPal Checkout, you can prevent shopping cart abandonment more easily and record more orders.

Extended "Log in with ..."

An important tool for store operators to convert visitors into registered customers is "external authentication". In addition to the standard login by email and the existing external login methods via Facebook, Twitter and Amazon Pay, Smartstore 5 has now added three authentication methods: LinkedIn, Microsoft and Google. The increased and flexible range of these login methods can lead to more customer registrations.

Database backups

New with Smartstore 5: Backups of the database can be created and organized conveniently and securely by the store administrator in the backend with just one click. No special additional software is required. The administration offers functions for downloading, uploading, restoring and deleting database backups. A practical addition to your backup strategy.

Flexible hosting

Cloud, hoster or self-hosted on premise: the choice is yours! Extremely easy and simple with Smartstore 5: deploy Smartstore quickly and independently of the system environment locally, on a server or in the cloud.

As a platform-independent and Docker-capable application, Smartstore 5 can be hosted on all common cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. This allows you to easily take advantage of the flexibility and security of the cloud. With the help of these services, it is possible to scale your store quickly and in an unprecedented way.

Hosting with Docker

Use our new Docker images or simply create your own Docker image with one click directly from the source code. Docker is a particularly simple tool that is supported out-of-the-box for the first time with Smartstore 5.

With Docker, you can run Smartstore directly on a server equipped with Docker without triggering the installation of additional system requirements and configuring additional programs. Because Docker takes care of that.

WebP support and professional settings for image processing

Smartstore 5 supports the new bandwidth- and storage space-saving image format "WebP" from Google with a file size saving of around 30 percent. Smartstore 5 also allows you to make very detailed settings for how store images are compressed and reduced in size for preview images. Technical drawings require different settings than furniture and textile photos. Work with the good default settings or customize everything individually: Smartstore 5 gives you this freedom.

Advanced personalization

With Smartstore 5, store operators can address customers individually more easily and comprehensively than ever before. By creating a successful customer journey in Smartstore, you stand out from the crowd and improve your customer loyalty:Mega Search Plus, Personalized Product Recommendation, Product Advisor. This runs through hundreds of setting options that have been newly created and further expanded for Smartstore 5.

Store & backend facelift

The user interface in both the front and back end has been revised and adapted to the latest design trends with Smartstore 5. And all this with further enhanced user-friendliness, simple operation and retention of the learned workflows.

A particular highlight is the new DataGrid, a proprietary development by SmartStore exclusively for Smartstore 5, which is essentially an Excel spreadsheet for all commerce data in the store. Store operators can easily find their way through all data tables, for example for products.

The column arrangement can also be changed as required and sorting data is more efficient than ever before. In addition, individual changes made to the DataGrid are saved.

100% legally compliant

Smartstore 5 is also 100% legally compliant thanks to pre-certification via TrustedShops. Even in the event of future changes to the legal situation at European level, the highest courts or the practice of the data protection authorities. Our promise: we will quickly provide you with updates that are technically adapted to these circumstances, within a few hours if necessary.

Improvements with the 5.0.1 release

Update 18.11.2022: Further improvements have been added with maintenance release 5.0.1:Omnibus EU directive-compliant pricing is fully supported. There are also great new features in the area ofprice marketing for store operators. And more! Read more about the individual new features now!

EU Omnibus Directive compliant

Compliance with the Omnibus Directive of the European Union. As a store operator, you can now display a "verified purchase" label for product reviews by store customers. Furthermore, you can now add the "Lowest price" or "Lowest current price"to your crossed-out comparison prices, a standard feature that has been available for a long time.

New price marketing opportunities

Advertise more actively by adding discount badges, e.g. "Deal", "Limited offer", "Black Friday" etc. to your price offer.

Countdown for special offers

Present time-limited offers where the special price ends automatically after a certain time and visually counts down dynamically, converting site visitors into buyers. A new standard feature for all store operators in Release 5.0.1 is the countdown for special offers. You are completely free in terms of the countdown: days, hours... A valuable marketing tool!

Massive improvements to the price presentation

5.0.1 introduces many new setting options for the product price, which are required by law and also open up new sales opportunities: You can now always display the standard price, let offer price replace the regular price. You can also present the savings on the standard price to your store customers in an attractive way.

Barcodes, QR codes and GiroCode

More and more consumers are scanning codes with their cell phones to gain access to services and information, now also for Smartstore 5.0.1. This release includes a complete framework for barcodes/QR codes. Developers can use it for pioneering services.

One example is the new "GiroCode" plugin (available on request) for Smartstore 5.0.1, which, for example, spices up the good old prepayment with QR codes. Customers can scan the code, transfer of IBAN etc. is no longer necessary, all payment data is in the scanned code, customers can thus pay the prepayment directly via their banking app or mobile payment method - without additional fees.

All store operators will find a simple bar and QR code generator in the admin area . This free tool is available from Community Edition 5.0.1.

MediaManager with metadata

The MediaManager (available on request) as an integrated image, video and document management system can now display additional metadata for photos, for example about the photographer or the camera. This makes it easier to work with large collections of product images. IPTC and EXIF are supported. MediaManager users can now store internal admin comments for each medium.

PayPal innovations

PayPal has evolved significantly in 2022. These much-requested innovations, especially PayPal Checkout, are reflected in the free PayPal plugin for Smartstore 5.0.1. In detail, an installment payment widget has now also beenadded, and the payment method invoice purchase or "Pay per invoice" has been added.

Store operators starting out with PayPal benefit from the greatly simplified PayPal onboarding. It is now sufficient to simply log in with the PayPal access data to set up PayPal for Smartstore. It is no longer necessary to create an app on the PayPal developer site, as was previously the case.

Performance

Smartstore remains the fastest store system in the world, responding to customer clicks and customer searches in just a tenth of a second in an extremely large number of cases. Further optimizations have been made, resulting in improved startup speed and 100 MB of memory saved after launching Smartstore 5.0.1.

You can readthe complete release notes for Smartstore 5.0.1 on our Github, where you can also download Smartstore Community Edition for your server operating system. https://github.com/smartstore/Smartstore/releases/tag/5.0.1

How to get Smartstore 5

Smartstore 5 is available in various editions and with manufacturer support.

We recommend the Premium Flat for store operators. Here you receive the store software with expert telephone support and update service for a monthly fee, and the intelligent store search MegaSearch Plus is also included in the flat rate.

Do you have any further questions about Smartstore 5? Give us a call or send us an e-mail.
We will be happy to advise you personally!

Your Smartstore team

E-mail: info@smartstore.com
Phone: +49 (0)231-5335-0
SmartStore AG
Kaiserstrasse 63-65
44135 Dortmund