Icecat Release Notes 213: Enhancements for Brand Partners, SSR Transition, and Marketing Efficiency

In Icecat Release Notes 213, we are excited to present a series of significant improvements that aim to enhance the user experience, streamline workflows, and empower our teams. This release introduces key updates across three major areas. These areas are – Brand Partner localization, the transition of Brand Statistics to SSR for improved performance, and a simplified country management system in Pipedrive for our marketing team. These enhancements will not only optimize operational efficiency but also provide a more seamless and personalized experience for both internal teams and end-users. For additional details, please refer to the previous Icecat Release Notes.

Enhancing Brand Partner Focus: Brand Partner Localization

In Icecat Release Notes 212, we introduced an exciting development designed to empower Brand Partners with greater control and precision in managing their operations across different locales. Furthermore, this enhancement aligns with our commitment to streamlining workflows and improving product management capabilities within the Icecat ecosystem.

The Brand Partner Localization feature provides targeted solutions to enhance efficiency and focus for Brand Partners. Our development team has completed the implementation of this feature, resulting in several impactful changes:

1. Locale-Specific Permissions for Brand Users

• Brand users can now push information solely for locales enabled in their user profiles.

• These settings are managed exclusively by Icecat administrators, ensuring that permissions remain secure and consistent.

2. Enhanced Icecat Cloud Product Page Functionality

• Locale and country filters on product pages now reflect brand user settings, displaying a restricted list of locales.

• Product information is tailored to the user’s locale preferences. For instance, a brand user assigned to the English locale will only see English-specific data, promoting a focused and distraction-free experience.

3. Optimized Product Search in Icecat Cloud

• Search results are now aligned with the brand user’s assigned locales, displaying only products active in their designated markets.

4. Localized Data in Icecat.biz Functionalities

• The Product Index File, Product Catalog File, and Image downloader tools have been updated to provide information exclusively for locales specified in the brand user’s settings.

By limiting access and activities to assigned locales, users can enjoy:

• Focused Operations: Eliminating unrelated data boosts productivity and decision-making.
• Streamlined Workflows: Locale-specific organization simplifies content management and updates.

The Brand Partner Localization feature underscores Icecat’s dedication to improving Brand Partner experiences. By offering tailored solutions that address locale-specific needs, we continue to support our partners in achieving operational excellence across global markets.

Transitioning Brand Statistics to SSR: Enhanced Performance and User Experience

As part of Icecat’s ongoing transition to Server-Side Rendering (SSR), we have successfully moved Brand Statistics to the SSR framework. This migration marks another significant step in optimizing our platform for both users and search engines, yielding remarkable improvements across key performance metrics.

The transition to SSR ensures faster loading times. Additionally helps with SEO, and a smoother user experience by pre-rendering pages on the server before delivering them to the user’s browser. For our users, this translates to seamless navigation, reduced load times, and improved accessibility. For search engines, SSR facilitates better crawlability, enhancing discoverability and ranking.

The impact of the migration is evident when comparing the old and new Lighthouse metrics for the Brand Statistics features. Here’s how SSR has improved performance:

Brand Search Page

	Old Metrics	New Metrics
Performance	97	100
Accessibility	73	91
Best practices	100	100
SEO	85	100
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)	1.2 seconds	0.3 seconds

The performance score reached the perfect 100, with LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) reduced by 75%. Accessibility and SEO scores also saw a notable boost, making the page more user-friendly and discoverable.

Brand Dashboard

	Old Metrics	New Metrics
Performance	74	99
Accessibility	78	92
Best practices	96	100
SEO	85	100
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)	1.1 seconds	0.4 seconds
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)	0.688	0.045

The performance nearly hit the perfect score, with LCP improving by 64% and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) drastically reduced to 0.045. Consequently, this ensures a stable and visually consistent experience.

Brand Comparison

	Old Metrics	New Metrics
Performance	91	100
Accessibility	76	91
Best practices	96	100
SEO	85	100
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)	1.6 seconds	0.4 seconds

The shift to SSR delivered a perfect performance score, reducing LCP by 75%, while accessibility and SEO improvements further enhanced the user experience and search engine visibility.

The migration of Brand Statistics to SSR reflects our dedication to delivering superior performance and usability. With faster load times, enhanced accessibility, and perfect SEO scores, users can enjoy an efficient and engaging experience. Whether they’re analyzing brand data or comparing products.

Improving Marketing Efficiency: The New Pipedrive User Country Field

In our latest sprint, we’ve implemented an enhancement in Pipedrive that significantly simplifies the workflow for our marketing team. This improvement addresses a common challenge related to managing user country data, making it easier to organize and target users with personalized content.

Previously, our marketing team had to rely on a free-text field in Pipedrive to capture the user’s country information. This field contained localized country names. This meant that the same country could be listed in multiple ways depending on the user’s language or region. As a result, filtering and segmenting users based on their country was cumbersome and prone to inconsistencies.

In this sprint, we introduced a new Country field in Pipedrive, designed as a dropdown menu. This field standardizes country names, ensuring that all users are listed under a consistent, unified format. Consequently, there are no more variations in how countries are named. Everything is now standardized, making it easier for our team to filter, sort, and manage users based on their country.

This enhancement is part of our continuous effort to improve the efficiency of our internal processes and enable more precise, data-driven marketing strategies. With the new unified country field, the marketing team now has the tools to better segment users and personalize communications. This enhancement also allows for optimized user engagement based on geographic data.

As we continue to innovate and refine our platform, these updates reflect Icecat’s ongoing commitment to delivering high-performance solutions and fostering more effective operations.

We look forward to seeing how these improvements drive greater success for our brand partners and marketing teams. Additionally, we’re excited about the positive impact they’ll have on all users interacting with the Icecat ecosystem.