News on Languages and Translations

Polish has recently been added as the eighth language! If you add a new language to the system, the initial translation of up to 3500 word snippets is often not enough. That’s why at least one native speaker among our users always helps with the exact adaptation and long-term maintenance – after all, new functions are being constantly added.

For example, we made the internal translation statistics now visible in the admin area of the shop – this makes it easier for the language support staff to make corrections and focus on the texts that are displayed the most.

It is not only about the labeling of the buttons and texts of the shop – a large part of the information on the screen comes from the product data. Here the PCG system offers the possibility of maintaining product data also in different languages. Finally, the online shop can be operated in parallel in different languages and for different countries. Using different price lists and menu structures, this is even possible although there are different prices and VAT rates.

Tools for automatic, rule-controlled translations of article information or individual characters also help.

EU organic

Ok, the amendment to the EU organic regulation has not yet been fully adopted – but that will probably come soon (it was probably a tight vote, and, well, 2021 is the target – many things can happen until then). Though (EU-)”organic” is now stricter than before – as a consumer, I would have preferred real measurable criteria in any case – after all, we have them (of course at a completely different level) for conventional greenery too. It is about liability – or labelling – if there is potentially polluting conventional field next door.

But it has been a long struggle for the current version – and if it will eventually be implemented, it is in fact a good step further towards a greater clarity (e.g. origin) and even diversity (seed regulation).

No matter, organic food remains organic, and if you want to be even safer, look at the logos of the growers’ associations in the shop.

See SZ and other sources.

CRM with PCG: Action Groups

CRM means Customer Relationship Management – thats english, but in many languages thats rather naively translated and it often means just  “customer administration”- but that’s not true of course. We don’t want to administrate our customers, but rather value them, we want them to know and to buy our products … and we want them to get more!

The improved newsletter functionality enhances the concept of action groups in the PCG, too. So far, customers or interested visitors could be organized in these groups already. Now, for the newsletter registration, you can determine in which groups the new addresses should end up. This makes sense not only if there are several registration pathes (e. g. on several websites): With the knowledge about the “origin” (or other properties) of a prospective customer you can create much more targeted campaigns.
The individual assignment of customers to groups takes place in the screen that has the customer’s communication settings.
For the combination of groups, you can use the customer filters or the various markers, with which you can now filter independently of the action management.

Use a Staging System!

More and more users are building on the web pages and generally on the design. The question arises how to try without affecting the current shop.
There were already some tools for the WebDesigner to do this. With a so-called “staging” system, this is now easier to accomplish, especially if the structure of the data is to be changed on a test basis.

Such a system can be requested once with costs of installation. From this point on it can be filled with “snapshots” of the database. The data is made anonymous. Now you can change settings or place orders – without affecting operation.
If the system is no longer needed, it can be suspended and does not cost a monthly fee anymore.

Big7 – Nutritional information

This time, the changes to the FIC (Food Information for Consumers) were less accompanied by the media this time than the introduction of the allergen labelling requirement 2014. products in the online shop must now also be listed in the Nutritional value data.

For some time now, you can enter these values in the PCG, the presentation in the shop is done directly on the article detail page.

For articles whose details are imported by Ecoinform, these values are already included in the product data sheet. For your own products, you must maintain this manually. PCG support has instructions as usual, and periodically there are also webinars on the topic. If necessary, please ask there!

SSL SSL SSL

HTTPS = SSL

SSL or HTTPS is the term used to describe the encrypted transmission of data from the browser to the server. In this way, the data packets run on different computers, from the WLAN router, via our DSL provider, via Internet node points to devices in the data center where the oekobox-online.de server is located, for example.
All these computers can read everything without encryption. It’s not easy for anyone to get to the computers in our data centers, but with WLAN access in the cafe it’s easier.

The basic principle of this encryption is a mathematical procedure in which there are secret and public sequences of numbers. The public ones are managed and issued in the form of certificates (certificates that are formatted in a very specific way).

The secure transmission is triggered by https://-Protokoll in the web address. If everything works out, the locker is closed:

Even more trust of a client can be achieved through extensions, sometimes you even have to go to the notary and introduce yourself. Then there’s the name of the locker:

So what…?

The contents of my shopping cart… well, anyone can see that, right? There are many arguments that every individual communication (here: you with your seller) should remain private. But that makes us a little bit political or philosophical.

Your password, which you also use for bank access, is a more understandable scenario, but in practice it is not that common.

But: the data can also be manipulated during retrieval. Here is an example:

As a customer you can trust your Bio-Shop, click on every link that is offered to you there – or download a file that says “our top products as zip-file! There’s a virus inside that’ll destroy your computer.

So we are all pissed off: you, because you have a virus, and the bio-shop is suspected of having a dirty website – but the virus didn’t come from him at all, but was infiltrated on the way (in the cafe?).

This was just one example of many cases that SSL can help.

Why now?

The “big players” on the Internet have now taken the initiative. Not only that their offers are in principle accessible via SSL, but they also prefer partners whose contents are also offered in encrypted form. These may be links on Facebook, or search results on Google.

Google (the Chrome Browser team) and Mozilla also want to warn about non-SSL sites soon – at first only when transmitting data, but later on also when it comes to the simple retrieval of pages. That is why we should tackle this in the next few months (if it has not yet happened).

I have not driven the topic forward very much in the past with our installations – because a proper implementation of the idea can make work:

SSL is more than just a certificate

The certificate is issued on a domain name. The content of a website, however, often no longer comes from just one domain (I recommend the LightBeam-plugin in Firefox to anyone who wants to know more about it).

The browser only displays a closed (often green) lock if everything on the page is correct, i. e. all displayed (images) and not displayed content (scripts for animations, e. g.) come encrypted from providers with valid certificates.

In practice, this means work – many of them have a lot of content in CMS systems, where there are also many so-called absolute links. Even the web designer has to work carefully. Fortunately, there are tools (e. g. HTTPS Checker) that will help you to find them.

Not all certificates are supported by all end devices or servers (e. g. the shop server) – this should be clarified before the purchase.

The best way to communicate with customers is via SSL – i. e. also all links from mails should point directly to the https-page (as in this mail!) The often used logic to forward http-addresses to https- is not so good – after all this first call can be manipulated, and because this process happens automatically, the visitor has no chance to hear this.

This means that in the end, no one should have a reason to call the http variant. You can also change your Google entry accordingly and set technical tricks like HSTS.

SSL in the shop system

The shop system can always be addressed via https-. To do this, you only have to change the call within the web pages.

In the admin area the links to the website can be added, as well as placeholders, contents etc.

Non-Https references to images in the offer are automatically converted to internal links by the shop system and are thus also available in encrypted form, so there is no further work to be done here.

It will be more difficult for users who have integrated the shop with their own sub-domain (e. g. shop. schoenegge. de). Here, an individual solution must be found.

The new shop under construction will exclusively use SSL-protected content.

SSL is a permanent work – that’s why the item “SSL support” has been on the price list for some time now.