Never before have we worked so intensively on a store version. But the years of development work are paying off: Today, we are releasing JTL-Shop 5, by far the best performing, most user-friendly and visually appealing version of our online shop software ever. Find out below what JTL-Shop 5 has to offer you.
JTL-Shop 5: Major release with powerful functions
A lean and easy-to-use store system with powerful basic functions was the top priority of our development agenda. We concentrated on what characterizes a modern online store: Attractive basic template, clear navigation, stable checkout process, diverse payment methods, convenient plugin management and coverage of all legal requirements.
With JTL-Shop, we also want to offer you the opportunity to set up an online shop quickly and easily, even without programming knowledge. To this end, we have worked hard on both the back end and the front end to optimize usability for you as a store operator. The result: intuitive user interfaces and less maintenance. Your customers will also benefit from this! JTL-Shop 5 provides them with a modern and smooth shopping experience.
Free upgrade to JTL-Shop 5
For users of JTL-Shop 4, the major upgrade to version 5 is completely free of charge. Prerequisite is a valid Subscription or Community Free Edition license and at least JTL-Shop 4.02 and JTL-Wawi 1.0.
The new functions in detail
NOVA template
With the release of JTL-Shop 5, we are delivering a brand new basic template that replaces our old EVO template. “NOVA” impresses on desktop, tablet or smartphone with a streamlined and fresh look and thus meets all expectations for a modern front end and a positive shopping experience.
With more white space and less information density, the category views in “NOVA” are even tidier. Here your store visitors will find numerous filters to define their search and further refine existing results. If a customer selects several filters in the category view, JTL-Shop 5 can further restrict the search result (AND link) or expand it to include the results of the second filter (OR link). With the new store version, you can define the link type (AND/OR) separately for each characteristic (color, size, etc.) in JTL-Wawi.
The clear category views and filter functions of “NOVA” not only fulfill a visual purpose. Both tools are designed to help your customers navigate more specifically to the product detail pages where the purchase decision is made. We have removed the sidebar on these pages to put the product at the center of attention.
OnPage Composer
The second major innovation in JTL-Shop is our OnPage Composer: This editor makes building your own webshop quick and easy – without any design experience.
With the help of the OnPage Composer, you can insert layout and content elements, so-called “portlets”, directly into the front end of your store. Use it like a construction kit and effortlessly drag and drop sliders, images, videos, buttons and much more to the desired location. Portlets that are not included as standard can be retrofitted via the JTL Extension Store – but more on that later.
But we didn’t just want to make it easier for you to create new pages, we also wanted to save you the trouble of rebuilding existing pages. Once you have designed a page, you can save it as a template in JTL-Shop 5 and transfer it to other pages in your shop with just a few clicks. One feature should especially please merchants with seasonal business: You can also save finished store pages as an unpublished draft and play them out later on a time-controlled basis (for example, at the start of the Christmas business).
Back end
The back end is your central point of contact for all work “behind the scenes”. We have reorganized the menu structure to make it easier for you to find your way around: We have replaced the top navigation with a clear sidebar. It shows you which page you are currently on in the store without you having to laboriously navigate through the menu or your back end. If you do want to search for specific content, our intelligent quick search will help you get directly to the page you want.
Another milestone: We have made the back end of JTL-Shop 5 fully responsive, i.e. optimized for viewing on mobile devices. This means you can now change settings from your sofa or intervene quickly on the go if “things go wrong”.
Usability
Good usability in the online store is the basis for a high conversion rate and therefore successful sales. And search engines also evaluate aspects such as the loading speed of a page for their ranking. So there are several reasons why we paid extra attention to usability during our development time:
Images have a significant impact on the loading time of websites and are one of the top reasons for premature purchase abandonment in eCommerce. In JTL-Shop 5, we have therefore specifically optimized the loading speed of image content. A central innovation: The images that you upload to JTL-Wawi as usual as JPG or PNG files are automatically displayed in WebP format by our new store system. Its higher compression speeds up data retrieval for your customers.
Lazy loading”, which we have also implemented in JTL-Shop 5, also contributes to the goal of faster loading times: Images are only loaded when they appear in the visible area during scrolling. And thanks to the new “Responsive Image Loading”, the image content in JTL-Shop 5 is automatically displayed in the resolution that is best suited to the device used by the user.
To offer your customers even more options when shopping, we have also enhanced the filter functions and the configurator for today’s release. The configurator is now mobile-optimized and allows a combined multiple selection as well as the purchase of different quantities within a configuration group. This makes the search for the right item very convenient for your customers: they can filter for several features at the same time and narrow down or expand their results as often as they like by “removing” or “selecting additional features” – without the page reloading.
JTL Extension Store
We have already teased the JTL-Extension Store in our blog post on RC 3 of JTL-Shop 5. However, as the new platform is only available to you with today’s stable release, we would now like to introduce it to you in detail:
The JTL-Extension Store provides you with a central platform for purchasing all your extensions for JTL-Shop 5! From the many attractive plugins, templates or portlets for the OnePage Composer, you can choose the right extensions to systematically professionalize your online business. For example, you can activate new payment methods, add marketing tools or add tools for evaluating and analyzing your sales activities.
JTL-Extension Store is permanently connected to JTL-Shop 5. Your extensions purchased there can either be downloaded in the customer center after checkout or appear immediately in the back end of your store. They can be installed there with just a few clicks. This saves you the detour via external partner sites or manual data upload via FTP.
The “My purchases” page in the back end also provides you with the ideal overview of all your purchases in the JTL Extension Store and gives you full control: you can see immediately when you can download a new version of your extensions or when a subscription expires.
To provide you with a central point of contact and administration, the JTL-Extension Store replaces the marketplace in the JTL-Store. In future, you will only be able to buy JTL products and the hardware for our POS software JTL-POS in the JTL-Store.
Take a look at JTL-Extension Store right now:
UTF-8
JTL-Shop 5 fulfills all the technical requirements to now also address a larger international customer base. We have changed the character encoding to the global UTF-8 format and converted the database collation to InnoDB. The OnPage Composer also natively supports the complete UTF-8 character set, which includes Arabic, Chinese and various special characters. These conversions not only allow you to cover many more languages than before, they can even be used mixed on individual store pages. This is also an advantage when shipping your goods, as no characters are lost in the name or address data when ordering from foreign buyers.
Please note: The UTF-8 character set is available for the pure content of JTL-Shop as of today’s release. For data sent from JTL-Wawi to JTL-Shop or received from JTL-Wawi, only Western European languages can currently be covered (ISO-8859-1 character set). You will be able to use UTF-8 for this process from JTL-Wawi 1.6.
Legal certainty
Implementing all legal requirements of the GDPR in your own online store and keeping them up to date takes a lot of time. To take some of the work off your hands, we have implemented a Consent Manager natively in JTL-Shop 5 and added a special feature: As soon as you install plugins from the JTL Extension Store that would require the Consent Manager to be updated, the required consent elements are automatically added. This means that your customers can specify exactly whether they give consent for a specific service on the currently displayed page permanently or only temporarily – and this means no additional effort for you!
But other adjustments also make JTL-Shop 5 the most secure version of our shop software to date: the native double opt-in features, for example, increase the legal compliance of your email marketing. And with the VAT information exchange system (VIES) now available, which is recognized throughout the EU, your online store is also on absolutely legally compliant ground when it comes to cross-border trade.
You don’t want to leave anything to chance when it comes to “legal security”? Then JTL-Shop 5 is the right choice for you. The latest version of our store system has been tested by two of the most renowned providers of legal services in the eCommerce sector and pre-certified by both the Händlerbund and the IT-Recht Kanzlei.
During a pre-certification check, lawyers who specialize in Internet law and online business take a close look at a store system. This ensures that it has the necessary structures so that you as a retailer can process your sales in compliance with the law.
Due to the positive pre-certification test, JTL-Shop 5 has received an official test mark. With it, the lawyers from the Händlerbund and IT-Recht Kanzlei document that the new version already enables the implementation of the most important legal information obligations in online business in its basic technical equipment.
You can find more information here:
Direct call "unavailable item"
Retailers with seasonal or promotional items usually face the problem of having to take parts of their product range offline on a regular basis. This not only involves tedious work steps, the “unavailable items” also deter potential buyers, which in turn has a negative effect on your Google ranking.
With JTL-Shop 5, these problems are a thing of the past! In the new version of our store software, you can make selected items disappear from all lists and search results. However, they can still be accessed via a direct link so that buyers can make inquiries about availability. This will please your customers and the search engines.
Are you curious to finally test the many new features of JTL-Shop 5 for yourself? Then download the latest version of our store software right here and set up your online store in no time at all:
Extensions of our partners
The numerous new features document this: Even the basic version of JTL-Shop 5 provides you with the best tools for setting up an online shop quickly and easily and managing it in a resource-efficient manner. However, there are important areas where we are happy to draw on the expertise of our partners:
“Payment” statistically leads to the highest bounce rate in the checkout process and is therefore crucial for a high conversion rate. And if you don’t write your “legal texts” in your own online store completely and keep them up to date, you risk warnings and unpleasant legal disputes.
To give you the best possible support here too, we have already integrated the plugins of selected and long-standing partners from the two areas “Legal texts” and “Payment” into the back end of JTL-Shop 5 for today’s release. If you choose these providers, you are choosing tested quality, as all three plugins have undergone a successful code review and front end check at JTL.
The plugins can be activated in the back end with just one click. And you also benefit from great promotions especially for JTL-Shop 5 customers:
Integrate the four most popular payment methods in Germany into JTL-Shop with PayPal PLUS and enjoy free support during installation & activation.
- Payment methods with PayPal PLUS: direct debit, PayPal, credit card, pay by invoice
- Complete solution: one installation, one account for all transactions, one price and one contractual partner
- Do you need help activating PayPal PLUS in JTL-Shop? Use the free integration help!
Always have an overview of your online store on any device. Start now with Amazon Pay and use dash.bar Business free of charge for 24 months!
- Install the Amazon Pay plugin in JTL-Shop & process your first transaction via Amazon Pay
- You will receive an email from Amazon with your discount code, which you can use to log in to dash.bar
- Applies to new Amazon customers only, also for existing dash.bar customers
Take the chance to win a voucher worth €100 for the JTL-Extension Store and become a partner of ratenkauf easyCredit. This is how it works:
- Integrate the ratenkauf by easyCredit plugin into your JTL-Shop
- Qualify for a discount code with two successful transactions
- Get a 100€ voucher for the JTL-Extension Store
Händlerbund offers legal support for your online business. Secure your store reliably and save up to 33% in the first year!
- Warning-proof legal texts in up to eight languages
- Competent legal advice and in-depth review of the store
- Examination by our specialist lawyers
- Assistance and representation with warning letters
The IT law firm specializes in legal advice in eCommerce and offers, among other things, legal protection packages with warning-proof legal texts.
- Free AGB interface
- 3 months free use of the AGB service
- Automatic monitoring & updating of legal texts
- 12 months free use of the Shopvote rating system
