October 2015 Update for Software Assurance

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This bulletin focuses on just one of the recent developments within axis diplomat that has been pre-released to those customers with Software Assurance - the ability to add watermarks to your axis vMerchant product images.

There have been numerous other developments in many areas of axis diplomat and these will be featured in a further Software Assurance bulletin next month.

Adding Watermarks to your Website Images

For those customers that have axis diplomat 2014 with Software Assurance and have converted to 2014 Image Management (a no-cost option for axis diplomat 2014 users) there is now the ability to add watermarks to your images for axis vMerchant-based websites.

Watermarks can be applied to product and/or category (eBusiness Group) images and may, optionally, be applied at certain sizes only. You may choose, for example, to watermark larger images but leave small thumbnail-sized images without watermarks.

The watermark is applied when the image is uploaded to your website whilst the master copy of each image held within axis diplomat is not watermarked. This means you can change your watermark, or remove it, at any time without needing to re-import your images.

It also means that un-watermarked versions of the images do not exist online (unlike some mechanisms that use the web server itself to add a watermark on demand). Furthermore, the performance of the website is not affected by the need to process the image before delivery.

As the watermark is applied at the point of uploading it to the website, it is also possible to apply different watermarks to the same images on different websites.

The watermark is taken from any PNG file with a transparency layer so you can create a watermark in your favourite graphics application - it might be your company logo or a copyright message. You might choose to have your watermark once, in the centre, or tiled across the whole image. It also means that you can make the watermark as strong or as faint as you wish.

For example, a watermark could be any of the following:

Please note that for the purposes of illustration, we have made these watermarks heavier than you would probably choose to use on a real website - they can be much lighter if you wish.

We have provided full documentation on the steps required to watermark your website images in a support note that can be read at www.axisfirst.co.uk/documentation/Adding-Watermarks-to-Product-Images/articles/12641.

If you do not have the tools or resources to be able to design or create your own watermark, please contact us. We offer a full design service, not just for watermarks but for logos, banner advertisements and all of the other imagery that you may need for your digital marketing - including your website, emails and for your axis diplomat documentation.

Finally, we've used this facility to apply watermarks to the larger product images on our demonstration website so this may be the ideal time to see our latest showcase of how an axis vMerchant website can look.

Our demonstration website can be found at http://egpl.axisfirst.co.uk/ and don't forget to check it out on a mobile phone too - it is of course a fully responsive website.

If you do not currently have Software Assurance and would like to discuss it further, please speak to your Account Manager or complete a Software Assurance Enquiry Form.

Please click here to view details on the previous July 2015 Update for Software Assurance