Workarea v3.5 Announcement

The latest release of the Workarea platform adds many major features and platform enhancements. Notable additions include native Segmentation, Digital Products, and Release Schedule Previewing.

For an on-demand demo recording of this Workarea Release v3.5, watch the video at the end of this article.

Segmentation and Advanced Personalization

Native Segmentation is the highlight of this product release. Workarea Commerce Platform Release v3.5 includes a complete solution for user experience personalization through the addition of native segmentation functionality. All aspects of the user experience, including products, categories, content, search configurations, and discounts can be configured to a targeted Workarea Segment. 

Sophisticated, tailored experiences can now be crafted, tested, and deployed within minutes by Workarea Commerce Platform Admin Users.

Example Workarea Personalization use cases include:

• Personalized site search results
• Geo-targeted content
• Personalized welcome banners
• Exclusive product launches and discounts
• Navigation adjustments based on interests
• Offers for returning visitors
• Welcome messages or offers from referral partner sites
• First time visitor sign up campaign

Workarea Segments are dynamic groups of shoppers and come in two flavors: “Life Cycle Segments” and “Custom Segments”.  Life Cycle Segments come standard with Workarea Commerce Platform and include “First Time Visitor”, “Returning Visitor”, “First Time Customer”, “Returning Customer”, and “Loyal Customer”. Life Cycle Segments can be used without any additional configuration.

Custom Segments allow Workarea Admin Users to create customized logic that defines which customers are included. Rules can be created based on behavior such as referrer, browser technology used, geography, orders, and revenue.

In this example, Segment Rules define a Custom Segment based on several customer attributes.

Once a merchant has established their Segments, these dynamic customer groups are available as targets for personalized commerce, content, and search experiences. All assets that are managed in the Admin can be enabled for specific Segments.

Workarea Content Blocks can be configured to be visible for one or more Segments.

A Page's Content Block listing shows which blocks are targeted to a Workarea Segment.

Enhanced Site Planner Features

Workarea’s Site Planner function got some important upgrades in v3.5. An updated Release Calendar is available in the Admin to preview the Release schedule. Note, Site Planner still supports integration with your standard calendar app, whether it be Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook Calendar. 

Indexing and caching were enhanced in this version to support a better preview experience. These technical enhancements, in addition to Release Preview Stacking, creates a higher fidelity preview for testing future releases. Release Preview Stacking is a concept that takes into account prior, yet unpublished Releases, when previewing a future release. All Release changes are merged so the preview represents the true future state of the site.

Imports are now supported in Releases. For example, when importing a file, the imported assets can be associated with a current or a new Release.

Site Planner's Calendar View shows users which Releases are upcoming.

Previewing Releases now supports previewing as a Segment.
Personalized experiences can be previewed in Workarea Site Planner.

Digital Products

Workarea Commerce Platform now natively supports Digital Products. Fulfillment SKUs represent how a SKU should be fulfilled in Workarea Commerce Platform with settings for “Shipping”, “Create Gift Card”, and now “Download” for digitally fulfilled products. For SKUs whose fulfillment policy is “Download”, multiple tokens can be generated and tracked for download URLs.

Fraud Management

Implementing order fraud screening logic or integrating with a 3rd party fraud solution has become easier in v3.5 with the addition of a default “Fraud Analyzer” component. This component executes prior to payment during checkout and is intended to be extended during the implementation of the platform.

Multiple Gift Cards

The standard checkout UI in the Workarea Commerce Platform now supports checkout with multiple gift cards. Also, the gift card API endpoints were updated to support multiple cards.

Insights Timeline and Plugin Insights & Reports

A new Insights Timeline report is available in the Workarea Admin. This chart allows admin users to track revenue, orders, units sold, and new customers against a timeline that shows Release dates as well as any custom events added by the business. This report is useful for understanding the impact of work published with Site Planner on the business.

Additionally, many Workarea Plugin Insights and Reports were added in v3.5. These insights become available when the plugin is installed. 

New Plugin Insights and Reports include:

• Save For Later
  • Saved for Later report
    • Tracks adds, deletes, units sold and revenue by product
  • New insight - Most "saved for later" products
• Wish Lists
  • Wish List products report
    • Tracks adds, deletes, units sold and revenue by product
  • New Insight
    • Most wish-listed products
• Sales By Store
  • Adds metric to track sales by store per day
  • Sales By Store report
  • New insight - Top Stores
• Subscriptions
  • Subscription Products Report
    • Number of Subscriptions for a product
    • Average Frequency
    • Unsubscribes
    • Units Sold
    • Units Canceled
    • Orders
    • Refund
    • Revenue
  • Subscriptions Over Time Report
  • New insight - Most Subscribed Products
• Reviews
  • Reviews By Product report
  • New insight - Most Reviewed Products
  • New insight - Top Rated Products
• Returns
  • tracking refunds and returns through cancellation metrics
• OMS
  • Add metrics for fulfillment and cancellation metrics
  • Products canceled
  • refund amounts

Admin UI for Configuration Settings

Many implementation settings, previously requiring configuration file edits, are now available for setup in the Workarea Admin in a new Configuration page. Global implementation configurations and business rules can be easily updated without the need to deploy configuration changes through the code deployment process.

Workarea Commerce Platform v3.5 Demo

Ben Crouse, Product Lead provides an overview and demonstration of new features available in Workarea Commerce Platform version 3.5.