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Today we’re announcing our biggest update to At The Yard since our initial launch. It’s a feature we’ve been asked for time and time again and one we couldn’t be more excited to bring to the community. Today we’re announcing the ability to manage and run a public facing online shop directly from within At The Yard.
Work on the shop started over 2 years ago and has incorporated an extensive 1+ year invite only soft launch where we’ve been testing, refining and improving everything ready for todays wider launch.
Let us begin with a quick video to show you how easy it is for anybody to make a purchase.
As you can see making a purchase is quick and simple. And with the option of creating an account your customers can save even more time in the future.
Here’s a quick list of the features you get with our public shop feature:
The next thing you need to know is that unlike other products on the market we don’t charge a ‘per booking’ fee. We don’t want to penalise you for selling more (in fact we want to support you to sell as much as possible) and so we offer simple transparent packages so you know exactly what you’ll be paying us for the service. (Please Note: There is still a card processing transaction fee but that goes to the card processor not us).
For that card processing we have selected Stripe as our supported payment processor - they are well recognised, trusted by a number of very well known brands and organisations and offer competitive rates on transaction processing.
The good news? If you’re already on one of our larger packages the public shop is included as part of your existing subscription. You’ll just need to drop us an email to enable it on your account and you’ll be good to go.
For our smaller packages there is a small add on fee to give you full access to the public shop system - again just get in touch and we’ll add it to your account.
To find out details for your specific package check out our pricing section or get in touch and we’ll let you know.
We’ll be posting how-to’s and further updates in the coming weeks so watch this space to find out more.
In March 2022 we released the shop feature for At The Yard after more than a year of testing. It’s allowed our customers to reach a wider audience and create more opportunities for their customers to use and benefit from the facilities and services they offer.
But we didn’t want to stop there, we had more ideas to add new features and improvements which we’re highlighting in this series of posts.
This is one post of a part of multi part series of blog posts:
The obvious question you’ll be asking is; why do we need to do anything special to support the Channel Islands when it comes to the shop feature in At The Yard? Well the simple answer is money, more importantly taking payments and making sure you get paid.
As part of the checkout process, for any user of the shop, anywhere in the world, there needs to be a way of taking payment. Typically this is in the form of a debit card, credit card, or their equivalent being supplied to make payment. To facilitate this we use a payment processor - a company who acts as intermediary between At The Yard and everything to do with the actual act of taking the money and sending it to your bank account.
We use a payment processor because these companies dedicate their entire business to this specific task (in the case of Stripe processing 100’s of billions of pounds worth of transactions every year!) meaning they’re very very good at it! Their focus and their scale gives us confidence when taking payments and in turn gives your customers confidence in entering the card details.
Whilst we’re very happy with our existing payment processor they, like all companies, choose where they operate and unfortunately they don’t support the Channel Islands.
This left us with a few different options.
This was never an option we considered seriously - our customers in the Channel Islands should get the same set of features as we offer in mainland UK and all the other regions that At The Yard supports. As we had no plans on changing that we had to find a solution.
One option that we could have considered was acting as an intermediary between our yards in the Channel Islands and their customers. Whilst this would have worked it didn’t feel right to us.
Our philosophy is that your customers are your customers and your money is your money. Placing ourselves in the middle just didn’t feel right to us and so we decided it wasn’t an option we wanted to go with.
The final option was to review alternative payment processors to find one that would support the Channel Islands. If we could find one - we felt this would be the best option. It meant that we could support our customers whilst keeping them in control of their customers and their money.
Of course, as is often the case, the right thing is not always the easy thing! To support an additional payment processor meant that we’d have to completely re-engineer how the payment system worked to allow for a choice of providers to be supported.
So we bit the bullet and decided that adding an additional payment processor, whilst the most complicated, would offer the best experience. We spent the engineering resources and reviewed the available providers and settled on SumUp. SumUp is a popular payment provider that importantly already supports the Channel Islands.
Fast forward to today and the work is done and we’re pleased to announce that we can support At The Yards’ Shop feature in the Channel Islands.
For the end users, your customers, the experience is very similar - with the only significant difference being in the screen where they enter their card details. Oh, and Apple Pay/Google Pay - sadly we can’t use these at this time but will add it when/if it comes to SumUp online checkout.
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| Stripe - Checkout Page | SumUp - Checkout Page |
All in all we’re delighted with the end the result and that we could maintain feature parity across the regions we support. All whilst doing it in a way we’re proud of.
If you’re an At The Yard customer in the Channel Islands (or looking for a Yard management solution with a public facing shop) please get in touch - we’ll enable the SumUp integration for your account and you can be up and running soon after.
In March we released the shop feature for At The Yard after more than a year of testing. It’s allowed our customers to reach a wider audience and create more opportunities for their customers to use and benefit from the facilities and services they offer.
But we didn’t want to stop there, we had more ideas to add new features and improvements which we’re highlighting over the next few posts.
This is one post of multi a part series:
Today we’re highlighting the second update, Image Galleries. Our customers have some of the best facilities around and rightly so they want to show them off! We’re delighted to help them do so by allowing them to post as many pictures of their facilities as they want.
Let’s start by taking a look at how your customers will see these galleries.
A service overview page showing the 3 images of the facility, a description and the available bookings.
Clicking on any of the images allows people to take a look at the image in a bigger form. This is great for showing an a aerial overview of a course as shown in one of the images below.
Setup is quick and easy. Go to the Manage Shop page via the admin menu and click on Edit Publication. Scroll down to the Extra Information section and you’ll now see a new option for Gallery Images (shown below).
From here you can see your existing images (if you’ve already set some up) and have the option to add more by clicking on the blue + button at the bottom. When you click on the button a new blank option (shown on the far right) will be created allowing you to upload a new image.
You can then use the drag handles located at the top of the images to move everything around into the order you want.
When you’re ready, simply click submit and everything will be updated and ready to go!
Images are a fundamental way we make choices when shopping and with this update we’re excited to have expanded the pre-sales experience you can offer your customers. As we mentioned at the top of the post this is part of a multi-part series highlighting updates that we’ve brought to the shop since it’s launch, so check back soon for the next update.
In March we released the shop feature for At The Yard after more than a year of testing. It’s allowed our customers to reach a wider audience and create more opportunities for their customers to use and benefit from the facilities and services they offer.
But we didn’t want to stop there, we had more ideas to add new features and improvements which we are excited to be highlighting over the next few weeks.
This is one post of multi a part series:
The first of these is Pricing Options. Pricing Options streamlines and improves support for Multi Horse Bookings.
In the initial release of the shop you had to create and publish multiple services to be able to offer multi horse discounts when booking in a single slot (e.g. a service with 1 horse = £20, a service with 2 horses = £35). Not only was this time consuming to create and maintain for the yard but it could make for a cluttered looking shop (shown below).
This new feature, Pricing Options changes this by allowing you to publish a single service that has the multiple pricing options setup within. Once setup it results in a much cleaner looking shop (shown below) and makes for an easier booking experience for your customers.
Renting The Arena
Pricing Options
1 Horse - £30.00
2 Horses - £50.00
3 Horses - £70.00
From a customer perspective not much has changed. As shown above, the service page is now much cleaner and it is much easier to find what you want.
Once the customer has chosen the service they want (and when they want it) they’ll be asked to select the quantity of horses for the booking. This is done using a simple drop down box, from which the customer can select the number of horses (and at the same time see the different price for each option).
Once they’ve made their choice they’ll get to select the name and details for each of the horses they’re bringing with them to the booking. Finally, when they’re ready, they can add it to the basket and they’ll be ready to go to the checkout (or order more services).
Setting up pricing options is done from the service publication view within the shop management page in At The Yard. To get started find your existing service and click on Edit or Publish a New Service.
As before the base price (for one horse) needs to be set first. But now a new section, Pricing Options, has been added. By default this section will be empty but you can add as many options as you want by clicking on the blue + button at the bottom of the section.
Within each option you need to select the required number of orders (the number of horses) along with the associated price and deposit.
When you’re finished, click save and these will be ready for your customers to use. You’ll also be able to see an overview of your pricing options in the published service list under shop management.
Pricing Options are an example of an update we love in At The Yard - one that improves and refines the experience for your customers!
As we mentioned at the start of this post this is part of a multi-part series highlighting updates that we’ve brought to the shop since it’s launch, so check back soon for the next update.
We recently launched an update to the rota system in At The Yard that expanded functionality to let yards organise everything from staff rotas through to who’s turn it is to clear the paddock.
But what if you still need more?
Well that’s where integrations come in. Like At The Yard is with livery yards there are companies who’s focus is 100% on building the best software for creating and managing rotas.
Through integrations you can pick the best software available for rotas and bring that data into At The Yard where it can be easily displayed to your customers on the dashboard.
RotaCloud (https://rotacloud.com/) was the clear choice for us to support as the initial 3rd party rota System to integrate with At The Yard and we are excited to be announcing the launch today.
RotaCloud is based in the heart of Yorkshire, UK - and who better to tell you about themselves than themselves:
Having been on the receiving end of more than a few poorly managed work rotas themselves, RotaCloud’s co-founders David, Joel and James decided to come up with a solution. They pooled their skill-sets and got to work building an app that would let managers create and share rotas in minutes, regardless of their experience of rota management or technology. Cut to today, and RotaCloud is used by more than 3,000 businesses all over the world, saving managers time, helping businesses grow, and making life easier for their staff.
- RotaCloud - https://rotacloud.com/about/
Before you get started you’ll need to make sure you have:
To start the setup you need to go to the Integration Configuration page by clicking the button on the Admin ➔ Yard Config page. On this page you’ll see a section called RotaCloud Integration and a button you can press to enable the integration. Once you’ve clicked it you’ll see the following screen:
Next you’ll need to create an API key over in RotaCloud. You can do this by going into RotaCloud, go to the settings menu and go to the 'API & Webhooks' section. Create a new API key called At The Yard and copy and paste the API key into the box in At The Yard and click Store Key.
At The Yard and RotaCloud are now connected.
The next thing to do is link your staff users in At The Yard to your Employees in RotaCloud. To do this click on the Manage Contact Links button.
You’ll need to go to each staff member’s row and select the corresponding employee name from RotaCloud in the dropdown box. When you’re ready click on Create and it’ll setup all the links between the users and the employees in the two systems.
Your rotas will now be set to synchronise - this updates every 2 to 3 hours so you may have to wait a little while for the first synchronisation to take place. Once the first synchronisation takes place your rotas will show up under the Management ➔ Rota page. To let users see them you’ll need to go into the manage section for the rota and check the Publish checkbox (you may also want to check the Show in Forecast checkbox depending on your needs).
Congratulations! RotaCloud is now setup and syncing data with At The Yard and you can start benefiting from both systems working as one.