We’ve wrapped up SparkLayer’s top 12 product launches of the year, and we promise it’s worth scrolling all the way through. If you’re feeling extra keen, you can also read about our latest customer milestone here (it’s a big one!).
Not got time to read the full post? Watch our short wrap-up video above for the summary.
🌄 January: 1-click B2B Theme Install
B2B eCommerce moves fast, which is why we’ve created a solution that takes just one click to install. Our solution enhances the Shopify Dawn theme and is perfect for businesses that want to get up and running quickly.
It’s not your classic ‘off-the-shelf’, basic theme, though - Dawn not only automatically connects with your Shopify Store, but it comes preloaded with all your SparkLayer settings so there’s no coding involved. Our dedicated Support team are always on hand to help you get set up or make customisations (like creating B2B-only forced logins), and there’s a hub of Help Docs if you do want to give it a go yourself!
🏢 February: Company Users
A lot of our customers have more than one person involved in their B2B buying process, which is why we set up Company Users. This feature is designed to optimise company B2B purchasing and make life easier for everyone. This gives all users access to order history, shopping lists (regularly ordered items that can quickly be added to new or existing orders), and address books. Shopping carts are still kept private to each member, however.
🛒 March: Custom Checkout Fields
Every business is unique, which is why we offer custom checkout fields that you can tailor and edit as you evolve. You can set up checkout fields for PO numbers, preferred shipping dates, and addresses. Setting up your custom fields is easy, but we also have a whole host of Help Docs, onboarding calls, and ongoing support to make sure you’re getting the most out of SparkLayer.
✏️ April: B2B Price Editor
Need to change a price quickly or add a new bulk-buy discount for only your B2B customers? Our new feature means you can edit prices on an ad hoc basis without creating a new CSV file or going through a thousand set-up steps each time. You can select from a large range of languages, weight thresholds, and price list imports - all at the touch of a button.
💰 May: B2B Price Engine
Whether you’re selling purely to B2B merchants or you’re using a hybrid sales approach, our Price Engine will be driving everything you do. This update helps you streamline your B2B pricing rules. Rather than relying solely on CSV uploads, you can now create automatic B2B pricing (eg a flat-rate discount on your Shopify set prices), edit pricing with the new Price Editor tool (above!), and make the most of the RRP widget.
🤝 June: Pack Digital Integration
Headless builds typically add a lot of time, energy, and cost to an eCommerce platform - not with Pack! Given that Pack are the only platform that enables this type of functionality, it’s safe to say that this is one of our favourite updates of 2023. As of June, SparkLayer integrates with Pack to create a one-of-a-kind shopping experience. It speeds up your site by 2-3x, boosts conversion rates, and is responsive across all devices. Ultimately, this integration allows you to manage your DTC and B2B channels in one place.
🏠 July: Checkout Address Editing
To make life easier for you and your team, our newest version of SparkLayer allows you to edit addresses, add multiple shipping addresses, and streamline your drop shipping. You can also add minimum and maximum orders to each customer group linked to specific addresses. All our tagging features pull through from your Spotify tags, enabling you to set custom rules for B2B customer groups.
🤝 August: BigCommerce Integration
SparkLayer now integrates with BigCommerce so your website can quickly transform into a B2B solution. You can easily run B2B eCommerce alongside your DTC website, too.
We’ve even set up a BigCommerce demo store so you can see just how easily our tech overlays existing retail websites. SparkLayer is available across all versions of BigCommerce, whatever plan you’re on.
💻 September: Sales Agents - Inline Price Editing
Sales Agent is one of the most loved features, both internally and externally. We’re proud to say we’re one of the few platforms to offer this level of ‘order masquerading’ across B2B eCommerce on existing websites/ platforms.
To make this feature even better, we launched inline price editing in September 2023. This enables Sales Agents to make ad hoc price adjustments and apply discounts without having to set up or edit their price lists. It’s faster, it’s on the fly, and it’s flexible.
🚫 October: Advanced Order Limit Rules
Bulk ordering is great - it’s what wholesale eCommerce is all about, right? The launch of our order limits enables more powerful ordering rules for B2B.
To help our customers achieve the perfect balance of hybrid eCommerce, we introduced order limits. If you want to keep a failsafe level of inventory, you can set maximum limits, ensuring you’ll always have enough stock to meet your DTC needs. You can set upper limits on cost, (eg order must be more than $100), quantity (eg order must contain at least 50 items), and a combination of the two factors, too.
⚖️ November: Unit of Measure Pricing
Another feature designed to give you more control over orders, our unit of measure pricing does what it says on the tin. You can set pricing based on specific purchasing quantities and offer discounts automatically when rules are met.
Your customers can now order based on predefined units (like boxes, pallets, or cases), with custom pricing set up for each option. This can be done via CSV imports, through establishing standard % savings, and through our quantity pricing functionality.
✔️ December: Barcode support
We’re ending the year on a high - barcode support might be the most mentioned phrase at SparkLayer, from both our customers and our team. This has undoubtedly been one of our favourite projects to work on, partly because it’s been requested so many times! If you're using barcodes within your eCommerce platform, you can now display these to customers via our Front-End Interfaces.
You can take this a step further and integrate SparkLayer with your barcode scanning system to fully automate the creation of B2B orders. Check out our video below to see this in action…
Looking ahead
The feedback we get from the 1,000+ customers using SparkLayer is what powers us to innovate and motivates us to find the best possible solutions. We can’t wait to share our 2024 roadmap with you, so stay tuned! You can sign up for our newsletter below under "Get B2B insights" if you want to hear from us first.