As we enter the year's final months, we are excited to share our ambitious plans for our Joomla products. While August may not have seen new features due to well-deserved summer vacations, our development team has been hard at work planning and refining what's next. Here's a sneak peek into what you can expect from us in the coming months:
Convert Forms
Our flagship Joomla extension, Convert Forms stands proudly as the second most popular extension in the Joomla market. But we're not resting on our laurels; instead, we're poised for even greater heights. We're committed to turning your website visitors into active participants, subscribers, and loyal customers. Convert Forms is the vehicle that drives this transformation. But what's on the horizon, you ask? Brace yourself for what's to come as we elevate Convert Forms to new levels of excellence. Here's a sneak peek into our plans:
Multi-Page Forms
We understand that complex forms require a more organized approach. That's why we're thrilled to announce that the most popularly requested feature for Convert Forms is on the horizon. We're working diligently to enable you to create multi-page forms effortlessly. Our user community has highly sought this feature, and our goal is to have it ready for you by the end of the year. It will allow you to break down lengthy forms into manageable sections while dynamically adapting the form flow based on user inputs.
Enhanced Fields User Interface
Your feedback is invaluable to us, and we've listened closely. In response, we're revamping the Fields User Interface to provide a smoother and more efficient form-building experience. Expect icons for each field, improved field reordering, quick insertion of new fields, search functionality for finding specific fields, and more intuitive options for managing field settings.
Bulk Import for List-Based Fields
We believe in saving you time and effort. That's why Convert Forms will soon offer the ability to bulk import options for list-based fields, such as Dropdowns, Checkboxes, and Radio Buttons. You'll have access to predefined lists such as Gender, Age, Employment, Days of the Week, Countries, Currencies, Numbers, and more. Additionally, you can import options simply by pasting text or by importing from a CSV file, streamlining the process of populating your list-based fields.
Conditional Content Shortcode
Personalization is key to engaging your audience. We're introducing a powerful {if} shortcode feature that will allow you to create highly personalized forms. You can utilize conditional logic anywhere you can write text in the form editor, such as in the Thank You Message, Emails, or PDF Form Submission Template. You can show or hide certain parts of your text based on a field's value. Tailor your forms to respond dynamically to user inputs and preferences.
Expanding Form Templates
Variety is the spice of life, and we're bringing that concept to form design. Expect to see a growing collection of form templates at your disposal. Whether you're looking for a sleek, modern design or something more traditional, our expanding library will cater to your needs.
EngageBox
We always strive to enhance your digital experience, and our Joomla popup builder extension, EngageBox, is no exception. As we look ahead to the coming months, we're excited to share some of the key highlights and upcoming features that will make EngageBox an even more powerful and accessible marketing tool for you:
Improve Accessibility
We understand the importance of making popups accessible to all users, and we're committed to improving their usability. Here's how we plan to boost accessibility:
- Trap Focus Inside Popup: We're working to ensure that when a popup opens, keyboard focus remains within the popup itself, providing a seamless navigation experience for users.
- ESC Key to Close the Popup: You can close popups easily using the ESC key, ensuring users have a clear exit path.
- Return Focus to Last Focused Element: When users close a popup, their focus will return to the last element they interacted with, maintaining the user's context.
- Prevent Tabbing Outside the Popup: While a popup is open, we'll prevent users from tabbing outside, keeping them engaged with its content.
- Enhanced HTML Attributes: We're carefully selecting HTML attributes to enhance accessibility, making it easier for assistive technologies to interpret and interact with your popups.
- Proper ARIA Tags: EngageBox will utilize proper ARIA tags to improve screen reader compatibility, ensuring everyone can access the popup's content effectively.
Conditional Content Shortcode - Personalize Popups
Just as we're introducing {if} shortcodes in Convert Forms, we're also extending this feature to EngageBox. With {if} shortcodes, you can create highly personalized popups with conditional logic in the popup's content.
Use {if} shortcodes to greet users differently depending on their geolocation country. Whether you want to show exclusive offers to visitors from specific regions or simply acknowledge their location, this feature adds a personalized touch to your popups.
Customize your popup content based on the user's device. For instance, you can display different messages to mobile and desktop users within the same popup, ensuring that your communication is perfectly tailored to the user's platform.
You can precisely target guests or logged-in users with different texts on the same popup. This capability opens up new avenues for engagement, allowing you to offer special incentives to registered users while delivering a different message to guests.
This feature empowers you to tailor your popups based on user actions and preferences, enhancing engagement and conversions.
eCommerce Display Conditions
We've proudly supported e-commerce-based display conditions for VirtueMart and HikaShop extensions. These conditions have empowered you to engage your customers with precision. But there's always room for improvement and expansion. We plan to introduce a set of new e-commerce display conditions.
- Purchased Product: Engage users based on their previous purchases, offering them relevant content and promotions related to their buying history.
- Last Purchased Date: Deliver timely messages based on when your customers made their last purchase, ensuring that your communications are always up to date.
- Current Product Category: Tailor your messages to match the specific product categories users explore, making your offers more relevant and compelling.
- Current Product Price: Customize your popups to reflect the pricing of the product users view, allowing you to provide real-time price-related messages.
- Current Product Stock: Keep users informed about the availability of products by triggering popups based on the stock status of the item they're interested in.
- Total Spend: Reward loyal customers or incentivize larger purchases by engaging users based on their total spending history.
These expanded e-commerce display conditions are designed to take your engagement strategies to the next level, ensuring that your popups are always timely, relevant, and persuasive.
Convert Forms Display Condition Upgrade
Currently, EngageBox supports a Convert Forms condition to display popups based on user assignments to Convert Forms Campaigns. However, as Convert Forms Campaigns is deprecated in favor of Tasks, we're evolving our display conditions. Soon, you'll be able to target users with a popup based on whether they've submitted a specific form, regardless of campaign assignment. This change ensures that your popup targeting remains precise and effective.
Google Structured Data
We're committed to ensuring your Joomla website is visually stunning and fully optimized for search engines. Our Google Structured Data extension plays a crucial role in achieving this goal by enhancing the structured data on your Joomla site. Let’s see our plans and new integrations that will take your structured data markup to the next level:
Integration with DPCalendar
We're excited to announce our upcoming integration with DPCalendar, a powerful events management Joomla extension. This integration will empower you to seamlessly markup all event details pages with the Event Schema type. By doing so, you'll provide search engines with structured data that clearly defines your events, making them more discoverable in search results. Whether you're hosting conferences, concerts, or local gatherings, this integration will help you stand out in search listings.
Integration with JReviews
Our integration with JReviews, a comprehensive directory and reviews system, is set to bring even more versatility to your structured data efforts. With this integration, you can markup all detailed pages with various structured data schema types, including Local Business, Product, or Events schema types. This means you can provide detailed and accurate information to search engines, improving your website's visibility and relevance across different content types. Whether you run a directory of businesses, products, or events, structured data will enhance your online presence.
Introducing the HowTo Schema Type
Structured data isn't just about enhancing your visibility; it's also about providing valuable information to users. That's why we're introducing the HowTo Schema Type. This schema type will allow you to create structured, step-by-step guides and tutorials that can be prominently displayed in search results. Whether teaching a cooking recipe, explaining a DIY project, or offering expert guidance, the HowTo Schema Type will help your content shine and attract users seeking informative guides.
Advanced Custom Fields
We're dedicated to offering Joomla users powerful tools to effortlessly create and manage custom content. Our Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) extension has been instrumental in this mission, and we're excited to share our upcoming plans that will further enhance your content management capabilities:
Maps Module: Streamlining Location Visualization
ACF already boasts the Map Custom Field, which helps visitors locate your business with an interactive map supporting both Google Maps and OpenStreetMaps. Building on this foundation, we're working on an innovative Joomla Module that integrates seamlessly with ACF's Map Field. This module will gather and display all individual markers assigned to Map Custom Fields in one interactive map, providing a comprehensive and user-friendly view of your business locations or other points of interest.
Gallery Field: Elevating Visual Content
Our Gallery Custom Field is about to receive a boost with exciting new features:
- Slideshow Layout: We're introducing a slideshow layout option that allows you to showcase your images engagingly and dynamically, providing a captivating viewing experience for your website visitors.
- Watermark: Enhance your image security and branding with the watermark feature, allowing you to overlay images with your logo or custom graphics to protect your content and maintain your brand identity.
- Image ALT Tag: SEO is vital, and the ability to add image ALT tags directly to your gallery items will ensure that your visual content is visually appealing, accessible, and optimized for search engines.
- Smart Tags Support: Smart tags offer dynamic and context-aware content generation. With ACF Gallery's smart tags support, you can integrate these tags into your image descriptions, further enhancing the relevance and personalization of your content.
File Upload Field: Enhancing File Management
We understand the importance of efficient file management, and we're bringing the following enhancements to our File Upload field:
- Image Resize: Resize images on upload to ensure they meet your specific size requirements, reducing the need for manual editing and optimizing your workflow.
- Duplicate Images on Item Copy: Simplify content duplication by automatically copying uploaded images when an item is duplicated, saving you time and ensuring consistency in your content structure.
Exploring New Frontiers: Our Next Joomla Project
We've embarked on a new journey of innovation and are thrilled to share our plans for the next Joomla product in the making. While it's important to note that development has yet to begin, we've taken the first steps in researching and laying the groundwork for what promises to be an extraordinary addition to the Joomla ecosystem.
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