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Ecommerce Templates > Newsletter > July 2018
Welcome to the July edition of the Ecommerce Templates Newsletter where we bring exciting news of the latest ECT release, 6.9.3 and its features, including some very powerful performance enhancing additions, a new PHP HTML editor for the admin and supercharged side filter bar plugin.
We have lined up some cracking new features with the release of 6.9.3. Following intensive research we are offering what we think is the best HTML editor out there for the admin. Try the Froala editor yourself and see what you think. A lot of work has been put into improving the performance of the store pages and we're excited to share the results with you here. We are also announcing a new side filter bar with checkboxes so customers can choose multiple brands and / or attributes to help drill down to what they are really interested in.
You may already be aware of the Google Speed Update arriving in July 2018 and with this in mind a lot of work has been put into improving the performance of stores. It's something that has always been at the forefront of any development work carried out at ECT but we wanted to make sure we left no stone unturned before this important update.
The graph above shows results from a test we carried out comparing load times on the exact same product page first on version 6.9.2 and then on 6.9.3. Results were good on both but load times on 6.9.3 were reduced by over 15%. To put that into some sort of context, according to Google Lighthouse, the BBC has seen a loss of 10% of their users for every extra second of page load. If you can keep page load down you should attract and hold on to more visitors.
In the graph below we show the same test but on the product detail page, before and after updating to 6.9.3. As you can see the performance here is even further enhanced - a 22% difference!
With these changes in place you should see a decrease in page sizes and an increase in speed. The HTML is also optimized making features such as the dynamic menus or side filter bar much more efficient. With the reduction of javascript in the code the keywords that Google and other search engines seek out should become more prominent and easy to find. We are confident the overall benefits should be significant particularly when viewing multiple pages where the external code will already have been loaded. You can check your individual page performance using these tools...
We are not ones to standstill at ECT and are always on the lookout for the features to make store owners' lives easier. That's why we have just made the Froala Editor available for the admin. It's a very powerful HTML tool yet also quite lightweight. Load times are excellent and we think you'll certainly enjoy the drag and drop image upload feature as well as the sleek display and intuitive editing capabilities.
Unfortunately we can only provide the Froala Editor to PHP users as there is no ASP API available.
The Side Filter Bar has proved to be a very popular plugin and we've responded to demand and released an enhanced second version which incorporates checkboxes so customers can make multiple selections from the same attribute or brand group. We have also worked on the performance side of things as well as introducing design improvements.
Here's an overview...
If you would like to see the new side filter bar in action, please visit our Wordpress Demo Store and feel free to have a play around!
Updaters as always are available from our updaters page - it doesn't matter which version you are currently running, you can always update to the latest and greatest without going through all previous versions first. If you want to be informed automatically of the new features included in the updaters you can subscribe to the Updater forum - that means you'll receive an email each time a new post is added.