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Just a quick note regarding your "upgrades"


Guest madshears

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Guest madshears

spends hours adding products using this ridiculous script. I am the one that often has to fix the coding when I enter H1 tag and it makes the last line of that script skip a line when you reduce font size, I am the one that spends hours scrolling through images until I find the right ones I want added, and now I am the one that is tired of losing $$$$$$$$$money$$$$$$$$$$$$! You people should be ashamed of yourselves! I do NOT understand why this is a work in progress with you people. You should have had ALL of the buggs fixed before releasing this version. I am sure we are not the only ones that have lost sales because of BUGGS in this script! And don't send me over to the PAID bug fixers either! You should fix our problems not send us to pay one of your ALUMNI or Mr Preying Mantis Who KNOWS the weaknesses of this script and exploits it over there! Spending yet more of our not "hard earned money" :) If he isn't already your employee, you sure ought to make him one! Every time I turn around we have lost money, lost sales, and we are losing future sales I am sure. I mean come on! How dumb is the general public and why should I have to BEG them to CALL me EVERY Single Day "Now Available 9:30am-10:00pm EST seven days a frigging week because the Store SCRIPT is doing some crazy thing AGAIN!! We hadn't planned on investing in a 1-800 number for awhile but hell, may as well. That way people can atleast call us for free to tell us what is WRONG WITH THE STORE TODAY!!! Are those customers really gonna come back to "THAT" store? The one that doesn't have a shopping cart that they can locate, or the one that won't allow them to check out by emptying the cart, or the one that they just can't figure out HOW to pay! Gimme a break people! I saw a post a few minutes ago about how YOUR CREDIT CARD SYSTEM WAS RESTORED!!!!!!!! Yeah! Good for you!!! NOW FIX MY STORE! And further more, you better take my name off that satisfied customers list, cause if anyone contacts me to see what I think about Cubecart 4.2.2. I will tell them the TRUTH! :lol: You can't kick me off this board, I'm the girlfriend the one that is about to get very verbal when angry and tired. And Hey CubeCart I AM VERY ANGRY AND VERY TIRED OF THE SAME OLD CRAP! Our site works fine for a few days and them BAM! Something else goes wrong! Every update, we update, creates more problems. If I may suggest, maybe a bit of good old fashioned customer service and for you that want to redirect me by saying this topic was covered in topic # 84359746746580-48-533840-68-03486-208450-86-082 KISS IT! I paid for this stupid script twice and have invested hours and hours in it!! I do not have time to search through this forum for prior answers, especially when over half do not cover 4.2.2. issues! Now, what are ya gonna do?? Erase me???

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Guest Brivtech

I was about to delete that thinking it was spam.

I do not have time to search through this forum for prior answers, especially when over half do not cover 4.2.2. issues!

If you don't have the time to search for the answers, how do you know they don't cover your problem?

This forum, although provided by the developers, is mostly run by contributors who are CubeCart users. You really should have put your message directly to the developers.

The contributors to this forum who provide answers to your problems do this on a voluntary basis. We are not paid to do it. We use our own resources and unpaid time to help, where we could be doing other things.

While I appreciate your frustrations, I don't appreciate you venting off at us because we've suggested you search the forums for answers. There are hundreds of new posts each week, with questions being asked that we have already spent the time and effort answering. Why should we be ashamed for providing free help? You're lucky we even bother.

Sometimes answering a question isn't straightforward, it can take a few hours to reproduce the problem and find a suitable solution - Personally, I can't do that for every single CubeCart user, there's topics I simply have to leave. I have 2 full time jobs, I just don't have the time for a third, paid or not. If answers have been posted before, then it's a common problem. If they haven't, then it's probably a problem specific to you, perhaps your hosting setup, modifications, etc. No 2 hosting systems are the same, so no matter how well something is programmed, external factors can create a whole host of new problems that can't be tested. Even if the developers signed up to 100 different hosting accounts, there will still be users encountering new problems.

If a version update has changed the nature of that problem, the posting within that "prior" topic will help us to know something has changed, so we can modify the answer. Not all of us have problems, so unless someone explains in sufficient detail what the problem is, there won't be a suitable answer. If I can't answer something because I either can't reproduce the problem, or it is out of my area of expertise, then I'm afraid I have to leave it alone for someone else to try.

If you don't have the time to look for answers, then we can't really help you. We make the investment in time. If you want a wonderful e-commerce website, then you need to do the same. I've used many different ecommerce programs, all of them have their pros and cons, and all of them require investment in time and often money to customise it to your individual needs. No one package fits all. This is a technical system. If you are incapable of configuring and administering a website, and the responsibilities that entails such as fault-finding, then I'm afraid people will tell you to go for paid help, especially when it is somthing that is not standard within the core software, and reading your previous posts, I can see you have been customising your store quite a bit.

I can only assume that as you have posted in the payment gateway forum, your current problem is related. I have looked at some of your recent posts, and I can't see where you state that you are still unable to resolve particular problems.

Instead of venting off, could you not be a bit more constructive by pointing us to posts you have made relative to individual problems you are still having, so we can try harder to help and resolve them?

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Guest madshears

Sorry I did not mean to post that again. When I say I don't have time, please look at the amount of writing and prod descripts and you will see what I mean. The BF has looked through this forum for hours upon hours. Before buying this script, we looked at reviews. I am not a coder and yes mods have been made to the skins by a professional. We have now spent as much money on this script as we have had in sales. Issues have been shopping cart dumped on customers, checkout is confusing to people, and now the shopping cart disappeared. I put in a ticket which I'm sure will be promptly given the once over. Every update messes up the store script. I did read about a problem with AOL customers whch basically said "yea, we know about the problem and it will be fixed in the next update or version" (not sure which, after all it was around 1 AM when I was looking at it. We checked to see how user friendly the version was and it LOOKED easy enough, until you modify anything and have to search through 100's of images to find the one you want to add to one product. Our customer that bothered to call, could not see the shopping cart. HMMM he was an AOL user, like millions out there. Now grant you, their were probably thousands that have looked and have not been able to find the cart and not bothered to call. Why should they? This is internet sales. The issue has nothing to do with the security of the site but, you know how people are and how they think. "This site doesn't work properly so why should I go back? It wasted minutes of my precious time and why trust these people when they don't even know their site is messed up" So, sorry if I offended but I know I am not the only person that feels this way. I would LOVE for our site to just WORK. I can not duplicate the problem. I do not use AOL. Further more, this is the FIRST time I have searched and posted on this forum. Usually the BF does that. I personally have 100's of products to add and write descripts for as well as attempt to find the code break that makes H1 when reduced to medium sized font leave a space line between the last line of text and look through the 100's of images to find the one I wish to add under manage images and answer the phone and deal with customers who need me to take their order over the phone. And meetings with Wholesalers and the list goes on and on. You say "hire a professional" we did. But, everytime we update using a cubecart update it does something different to the store. One weekend last month, an entire weekend of sales was lost to this and honestly would you come back to a store that dumped your shopping cart a zillion times???? Now, he puts all updates into our test store before doing it to this store and I have to say, I have never seen so many things that can go wrong in 30 seconds in my life. And I feel my rant was well deserved. I saw others experiencing the exact same problems. We cannot afford to employ a professional everytime Cube Cart sends yet another update. We should have just used the FREE store and advertised Cube Cart :) as we are losing sales all the time. This is not the customer service I wish to give MY customers. They are important! Our customers are the MOST important thing to us and well, if they experience difficulties do you really think they will come back??? And yes, I vented, last time I looked I live in the USA and have a right to FREE SPEECH! I will not ever post again on this forum. I will leave that to the BF who has much more patience and knowlege of coding than I. It just leads me back to the question, why did you release this version without throughly checking it? We had a $30 script written by someone on the for profit forum that we used before this and even though it was not as sophisticated it did the job. Maybe, we should just go back to him and beg for every $10-$15 mod he can offer and beg the others as well. I thought the whole reason we purchaed this script was so WE could maintain it, not employ many people to do that for us. So, forgive me if I sound a little ticked! This is our business and we are losing it everyday. This feeds our family, it isn't a hobby.

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It would a LOT easier to help you out if you'd leave some whitespace in your post. One long continuous block of text is hard to read.

I suspect that this is also one reason for slow sales on your site. You're obviously dealing with professional-level products, yet the mass of text makes the site look unprofessional. Regardless of the technical problems involved, this alone will cut into your sales.

I don't know who you've hired to handle the technical end of things. It sounds like they don't exactly know what they're doing, and are learning the trade with your money. Test installations are the ONLY way to verify that something works before moving it to the live store. I spent weeks working with a test installation of CC4 before upgrading my site. The final upgrade process took a couple of minutes, worked flawlessly, and no-one experienced any problems.

As Brivtech mentioned, the forum community is a group of volunteers helping others. No-one pays me to help out, yet I do because so many have helped me when I needed it. Over the years, I've experience many problems, although mostly with other scripts. CubeCart has been one of the most stable I've used. When I was trying out Content Management Systems, many forums had an arrogance against non-programmers. Luckily, these forums here are not plagued by that problem.

To answer the only real question I can identify in your post, "Why should I spend hours sifting through the forums?", I can only say that knowing the technical side of running a website really comes in handy, even when you don't manage it yourself. It's good to know the environment in which you run your business. In this case, the Internet and PHP scripts. If you ran a "brick and mortar" retail location, you'd have to spend hours keeping up with the zoning laws and other governmental policies affecting that world.

If you hire a GOOD webmaster to run your site, sifting through forums and such wouldn't be necessary, as they will already be familiar with the technologies employed. As anywhere else, you have a choice between spending money, spending time, or a balance of both.

I read above that your site has a lot of mods. One critical thing to always keep in mind is to test, test, test, EVERY mod that gets installed before installing another one. That way, you know exactly which mod created the problem. Along a similar line, it's important to test the core system without any mods installed to verify that everything's working beforehand. By segmenting your effort, you can pinpoint where problems exist. By not doing this, you may be fooled to thinking that a problem lies with CubeCart rather than with a mod that was installed incorrectly (or may have been buggy itself).

Any time you start adding mods to the system, you'll start getting more and more suggestions to take your problems over to CubeCartForums.org, where all mod-related discussion takes place. This isn't to put money into anyone's pocket, but to keep these forums 'clean' and focused on the core code, which as I mentioned, should be tested for your use before adding any mods.

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I'll reiterate what Alan said - test, test & test before production. CubeCart V4 currently has (and always has had) bugs. I'm surprised that you didn't read about this before you purchased the script (since you said that you did your research). If you asked the developers over at CubeCartForums.org whether they would recommend CC4 as a production system, you'd get a unanimous response. CC3 is (and has been for some time) stable.

Further, your developer has done a poor job on your front-end interface. Your potential sales are stunted to a much greater extend by your store's design rather than AOL incompatibilities. Your pages contain far too much text. My personal advice would be to switch over to CC3 and approach a reliable & genuine developer with a good portfolio any many years of experience. You won't have to worry about upgrading your store either! In addition, you can purchase mods to include all the functionality of CC4. In fact, I would suggest that you could have added all this functionality for less than the cost of a V4 license.

However, I recognise that this would involve a large sunk investment. Your other option would be to again approach a genuine developer to fix those issues that you are currently experiencing. You would also need to contact this developer to test any updates before they are applied to your production model. Thus, this would result in ongoing costs prior to each release until CC4 becomes stable and production worthy (my opinion).

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Guest madshears

Ok lesson learned. So, we just basically wasted $179.00 twice, as we have another site that is floundering as well.

Sorry I will add spaces

Mods??? The skin?? Modifying a skin should create all of this? And by all of this I mean the shopping cart being invisable to some customers, checkout process being long and laborious and redundent, making the customer go back if they add dashes between phone number, then oops they didn't see that tiny box at the bottom that doesn't say much "I agree to TOS" I am looking at this from a customers view now.

If they don't check that miniscule box at the bottom, it sends them right back. Ok, login, do we really need that folks??? Why not an option to be rid of it??? Looking at it from the customers' perspective, it just sucks. I mean how many times would you attempt to pay for something before you gave up? And would you go back to that site and try again? I doubt it.

OOPS forgot spaces, OK, Let us see, managing images? OM Why can't I just have browse to add image 1,2, 3, 4, 5, whatever? Why do I have to scroll through 100's of shears? I know my shears but please! If you look at 100's of them all day, they all begin to look alike.

As for our professional, well, he made a LOGO that I liked, and one I had already thought of but when he sent it to me how could I say no? Had I had the time, I could have photo shopped the same logo but he sent it to me before I had the chance to do it myself. I did not want to plagerize the image. He made NO recommendations about the site except making menu different, shortening the links names at the top. Then he blames his coding on my bf the "daft coder" so, I ask you. Who am I to trust now.

As for the site being to wordy, does that mean people cannot read now? There are technical aspects to each shear that should be addressed. You think it would be better if I just said, "here is the blue shear you cut hair with it" now please go to the confusing check out/cart? I have many customers tell me it is refreshing to see a sight that doesn't give them the same old blah.

If I were a techie, coder, brilliant minded person like you guys, I would not have bought a store script! I would have just designed my own. I know very little basic coding and that is it. I am the GF not the techie, I only add the products. If you wish to offer up your opinions, please feel FREE to do so. I'm open to your suggestions, as we are losing money everytime something is updated (which he does first on a test store) without the duplication you see on the real store. We can only duplicate so many errors with our two computers.

As I have said before, the cart dumped orders for an entire weekend, fixed on Monday, sales jumped back up, then the really confusing checkout, redundent, useless info we do not need from our customers. If they make a purchase, or choose to register, great! If not, OK too! I hate getting spam from websites I visit and I like an occasional update but that is about it! Does creating a password make the site safer for shopping????

I will listen to anyone's ideas. I am open. I do not care what people think of my writing ability. I can leave the fun stuff out, no problem and just be simple techie about the shears. Go ahead and butcher it to death.

I do have a question though? How do you guys know when your design is a hit?

We set out to be different from all the other sites without going flash. We kept the thumbnails smaller for easy loadability (if that is even a word) I have used keywords all over the place. When I Google one of the names of our popular Grooming Shears for instance, we are on the front page, in fact, when I google just about anything we carry on our website it shows us on the 1st to the 3rd page.

Our demographics are predominatly females between the ages 18 & 60 and studies have shown that our fave color is purple! I see our local customers often and I know what they like. I do know that the customers over the 45 age mark are more reluctant to shop via the internet and we are happy to take their calls.

Our hosting is provided by Host Monster/Blue Host, one of the recommended host by Cube Cart. Everything on their servers are kept up to date.

As far as hiring someone for the technical aspect, that would be cubecart.com themselves. It's their script, their coding, and their bugs. The only mods in place are images, and the hide site documents mod. Thats it. The problems show up to the masses after the latest updates.... well the last one was good for a few days. We get 200,000 hits a month, and we check stats on our counters, not just the cc built in stats which on high traffic sites such as ours, is basically useless.

Let me clarify this . . . one of you said we should just use CC3 . . . so are you telling me I wasted our money and all this time and effort for nothing? Should we just switch to CC3 leave it Kita blue or whatever, make no mods, and we will have a viable store???

Oh yeah, and the reviews about CC4 were all excellent, over 200 excellent reviews with only a few negs thrown in there.

As far as you folks being volunteers, thank you, the post was not aimed negatively at you personally. I had just had enough of everything thrown together and we are suffering financially here. No joke. We may just have to close the doors. I'm sure if your retail store whether it be brick and morter or php malfunctioned all the time, you would ne upset too.

I liken this to my customer coming to the register with a basket full of goodies and me saying I'm sorry I cannot operate the register today, can you help me, or even worse, there is no help available until Monday, can you come back then??? Yeah, right. We are now forced to keep our hours of operation open over 12 hours a day and 7 days a week with our phone forwarded to our cells, so when I am in the middle of the grocery store or cooking dinner, or hey, god forbid I should even try taking a nap (because I try to add products as night) I have to be able to answer tech questions about shears and prices BOOM on the spot. It is grand living the life of the poor hard working! I am really tiring of it.

So bring it on people, I'm ready. ;)

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So... essay over then? You'll need to deal with one issue at a time. I don't think anyone has the time to answer all your questions. I simply suggested CC3 as there are no bugs and hence no need to apply updates. You could get someone to port your design over to CC3. I highly doubt that you will be able to fix all the issues you are having by yourself. As I said before... you should approach a genuine developer to thoroughly test your store and fix any issues. That way, you will be able to raise any concerns you have with the developer.

Think of it this way. If I bought a house and then personally did reconstruction work (with my D.I.Y skills), the house might collapse. Could I then shift the blame over to the original builders? Apply this to CubeCart. If there is a issue with the core software, inform Devellion and they will include a fix in the next release. There are bugs with CC4. However, some of the issues you list have nothing to do with CC4's core features. In fact, as far as I can tell, you have listed just a single "bug". Your other issues are due to the way YOU or your developer have modified or used the software.

Because CC4 has bugs, you may need to update the software occasionally. You would not have this problem with CC3. If you are serious about your business, your 1st step should be to contact an experienced developer. That developer will then be able to correct any issues and provide valuable advice with regards to your store's design.

EDIT: Further, I don't know how much you think a professional website costs? I can tell you this... $179 doesn't cut it - if you don't have the technical skills. Many website designers/developers will charge $3000-$10,000 for a basic ecommerce website. With advanced functionality using bespoke code, you could be looking at well over $20,000. Remember that a website is an investment. What you get out is directly proportional to what you put in!

As for the text. Let me give you an example (from your website):

Kenchii Scorpion 7.0" Straight Professional Grooming Shears No Sting Just Bling!

Could this not just be:

Kenchii Scorpion 7.0" Straight

You could add additional details as a short product description. Furthermore, I don't see a need to write about your company on the index page. This information could be added to the site documents. With all this text, you are making it hard for visitors to navigate and find the product they want. There are many other issues pertaining to how your design separates each product.

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Guest madshears

Ok Homar, when you say shorten my descrip and I see your for instance, K makes two types of grooming shears. Do you know the difference in personal grooming and professional grooming?

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Ok Homar, when you say shorten my descrip and I see your for instance, K makes two types of grooming shears. Do you know the difference in personal grooming and professional grooming?

Ok... but why the need to add "No Sting Just Bling"?

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I had a nice, long reply, but lost it when I clicked the wrong spot on my browser bar. (Still getting used to FF2.0)

I see you're hosted at hostmonster.com. That can explain a lot of your issues, particularly the lost orders. (Who recommended them??)

Your designer also mentions that he only tweaked a pre-existing design.

MAD Shears, visit the website

This is one of our American clients and has been trading on the Internet for quite a while. They designed their own CubeCart Store, but felt that it could do with abit of tweaking.

We designed them a new logo and refreshed their graphics, for a quick and fresh look!

Web design is a tough skill to master, especially since several web browsers display things differently. This can explain why some people don't see portions of your site that are visible to others. Find out what web browser those with problem are using. (AOL, was it? Another non-standard browser from what I remember) A good designer will be able to keep your site looking right on all major browsers.

From your post, you're running into several different issues and trying to solve all of them at once. Eating an elephant in one sitting is too much for anyone, so break it down into bite-sized chunks and you'll have an easier time.

You may also want to spend an hour or two reading the documentation at the CubeCartForums.org site. Lots of stuff explained there that will clear up much of your confusion. While you're there, read some of the reviews for potential webmasters and hire one that has a good reputation. If they have the time, that is. Good people are hard to find anywhere, and they usually stay busy.

Providing adequate product descriptions is a good thing. You don't have to describe the whole product in the name, however. "Free Mad Stuff" serves little purpose in a product name. And welcoming your web visitor with a long block of text like:

MADShears is about Professional Hair Stylist Shears, Cosmetologist Student Scissors, Professional Grooming Shears, & Modern Barber Professional Hair Cutting Tools. We have MADly Appealing Shears, MADly Popular Hair Shears, & MADly Performing Beauty Shears & Scissors! We have MAD Prices On All Your Hair Cutting Shears or Scissors. MADShears MAD Prices for Wicked Hair Thinning Razors, Razor Cutting, Feathering Razors, Hair Thinning Shears, Hair Texturizing Shears, Hair Chunkers, Hair Trimmers and Hair Clippers Are MAD As Well! Look No Further, MADShears Professional Hair Cutting Products Are Here! MADShears Offers a Lay Away Program So You Can Lay Away Those MADShears Today and an Educational Page With Truly Useful Information Like, How to Choose the Right Shear for You, How to Take Care of Your Shears, Scissor-olgy 101 & Even More! If Your Cosmetology, Barber School, or Grooming School Would Like to Have MADShears Staff Come Out, We Offer a FREE Class In Shears & Scissors 101! Just Contact Us! [email protected] or 336-510-9278 Thanks for Shopping With Us & Have Fun!

will only drive people away. It's not that they 'can't' read, but that they don't have the time, as you mentioned yourself. Everyone's busy, and it's important to get the most mileage out of as few words as possible.

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Guest madshears

As for the text. Let me give you an example (from your website):

Kenchii Scorpion 7.0" Straight Professional Grooming Shears No Sting Just Bling!

Could this not just be:

Kenchii Scorpion 7.0" Straight

You could add additional details as a short product description. Furthermore, I don't see a need to write about your company on the index page. This information could be added to the site documents. With all this text, you are making it hard for visitors to navigate and find the product they want. There are many other issues pertaining to how your design separates each product.

Please tell me what other issues in design separates each product? I am not being a smart*** , because I am not. I want the truth and I will take suggestions. I have to disagree with the product name. We sell 3 kinds of shears to 3 different types of customers, but all our shears are used to cut hair so I feel I do need to distinguish the type of shear as in Professional Groomer, Hairstylist, or Barber.

I can loose the cutsie ending but I don't think losing the type of shear would help my customer find what they are looking for. If you google grooming shear you are sure to get personal and professional shears, how to differientiate the two is a bit harder. Personal shears are not used by hair cutting professionals whilst grooming shears falls into barbers, hair stylist, and professional pet groomers.

I hope I am making sense here. Sorry for the essay but, this is the third weekend we have had no sales only to have some brave customers call us and give us a go anyway. All due to problems with the cart, one weekend it merely dumped everyones cart contents, one weekend the site would not allow customers to just pay without going through registration process and now this weekend they could not VIEW the cart. And all the mods you are refering to?? Could you be a bit mosre specific because hiding site documents, skin changing should not cause all this!

I had a nice, long reply, but lost it when I clicked the wrong spot on my browser bar. (Still getting used to FF2.0)

I see you're hosted at hostmonster.com. That can explain a lot of your issues, particularly the lost orders. (Who recommended them??)

Your designer also mentions that he only tweaked a pre-existing design.

MAD Shears, visit the website

This is one of our American clients and has been trading on the Internet for quite a while. They designed their own CubeCart Store, but felt that it could do with abit of tweaking.

We designed them a new logo and refreshed their graphics, for a quick and fresh look!

Web design is a tough skill to master, especially since several web browsers display things differently. This can explain why some people don't see portions of your site that are visible to others. Find out what web browser those with problem are using. (AOL, was it? Another non-standard browser from what I remember) A good designer will be able to keep your site looking right on all major browsers.

From your post, you're running into several different issues and trying to solve all of them at once. Eating an elephant in one sitting is too much for anyone, so break it down into bite-sized chunks and you'll have an easier time.

You may also want to spend an hour or two reading the documentation at the CubeCartForums.org site. Lots of stuff explained there that will clear up much of your confusion. While you're there, read some of the reviews for potential webmasters and hire one that has a good reputation. If they have the time, that is. Good people are hard to find anywhere, and they usually stay busy.

Providing adequate product descriptions is a good thing. You don't have to describe the whole product in the name, however. "Free Mad Stuff" serves little purpose in a product name. And welcoming your web visitor with a long block of text like:

MADShears is about Professional Hair Stylist Shears, Cosmetologist Student Scissors, Professional Grooming Shears, & Modern Barber Professional Hair Cutting Tools. We have MADly Appealing Shears, MADly Popular Hair Shears, & MADly Performing Beauty Shears & Scissors! We have MAD Prices On All Your Hair Cutting Shears or Scissors. MADShears MAD Prices for Wicked Hair Thinning Razors, Razor Cutting, Feathering Razors, Hair Thinning Shears, Hair Texturizing Shears, Hair Chunkers, Hair Trimmers and Hair Clippers Are MAD As Well! Look No Further, MADShears Professional Hair Cutting Products Are Here! MADShears Offers a Lay Away Program So You Can Lay Away Those MADShears Today and an Educational Page With Truly Useful Information Like, How to Choose the Right Shear for You, How to Take Care of Your Shears, Scissor-olgy 101 & Even More! If Your Cosmetology, Barber School, or Grooming School Would Like to Have MADShears Staff Come Out, We Offer a FREE Class In Shears & Scissors 101! Just Contact Us! [email protected] or 336-510-9278 Thanks for Shopping With Us & Have Fun!

will only drive people away. It's not that they 'can't' read, but that they don't have the time, as you mentioned yourself. Everyone's busy, and it's important to get the most mileage out of as few words as possible.

Wow CC recommended them.

He basically changed Kita blue to pink, I saw that post when looking at our stats. We had to engage him for the MS Logo and he said he did this and that and everything! And then got mad when other's did not agree.

What would you suggest for a front page? I was simply writing for Google and to let the local schools know that we do classes oh yea, and that are site is meant to be fun and educational as well.

I will have to allow Rick to read all that to explain the reasons. He probably has read every last post. He is no newbie. I am. He is great

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Guest dreamdancer

^I have to agree with others here. The cluttered look of your site is well, maddening. Too many words, too many images. It is literally headache inducing. I was able to add a product to the cart. Shop is showing up fine for me. I am on a Mac Book Pro, running OSX 10.5.2 and using SeaMonkey as my browser.

I personally do not have a cart, but I am a web designer with almost no php experience, and I have installed, modded carts and customized skins for at least a dozen clients. I did it by getting help here on the boards.

I am using GoDaddy for all of my hosting, and while there were some issues, they got worked out. I have installed mostly V3 stores, but have now gotten three V4 stores up and running.

First of all I usually get rid of one column and have a two column layout and then lose about half the cart features. Really who cares how many products you have and if you are W3 compliant, lose that. I usually put categories on my front page with images so people can go right to what they want and the image is easier to intuitively know where to go (there is a mod for that). With so many sale items I would not list them on the front page nor in the side bar, just a link in the category list is enough, people want to save money, they will look to see what is on sale.

Also if the browser page isn't wide enough your top menu wraps weirdly. I would have less menu items and use submenus if needed. The payment info can go on the shopping cart page (Visa badges and such) Most people assume if you have a cart that you take credit cards.

I also agree with others here, if you just say "I doesn't work!" then no one can help. I get that enough daily from clients forwarding me emails from people saying "the site doesn't work!" I can't fix it because I have no clue what isn't working, so those pretty much get ignored. Mind reading services cost triple, if not more.

I have used so many different cart systems in my past ten+ years creating websites, I have loved this script the best of all I have worked with. I agree out of the gate V4 had some maddening issues, but they are all fixed now and my last install went as smooth as silk.

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Guest madshears

Ok Homar, when you say shorten my descrip and I see your for instance, K makes two types of grooming shears. Do you know the difference in personal grooming and professional grooming?

Ok... but why the need to add "No Sting Just Bling"?

"I can loose the cutsie ending but I don't think losing the type of shear would help my customer find what they are looking for" Was my answer. I can do that and I will if everyone thinks that this a neccessary change.

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Listen... All I am doing is giving you advice. Advice that is a product of my experience as a website designer and developer. In this instance, you are right to differentiate your products. However, the core point I was making is to reduce the amount of text on your website. I highly doubt anyone is going to read through all that text. Your product names should include only enough text to define the product - nothing else. Do this for every single product where possible.

Your categories are a mess. Again, there is careless use of text within the category names. Because you have so many categories, I would consider manually structuring the category display rather than having CubeCart do it for you. For example, you could have a category group - "Hair Scissors". Within that group, you could list the following categories:

- Professional

- Personal

- Charmer

- Kenchii

etc. You should leave some structural space between each category group and clearly (visually) define which are the category groups and which are the categories. You also need to add spacing between the products listed in the "Popular Products" area.

Get rid of - "MADShears is about Professional Hair Stylist Shears, Cosmetologist Student Scissors...". All that text (the entire section - including RapidSSL/CreditCard logos & your satisfaction logo) need to go. You can add Credit Card and SSL logos to the footer of the page. Contact information and details about your company, shipping policy and returns policy need to go into the relevant site documents.

Remove all the text: "Copyright © 2008 MADShears.com Reproduction in Part or...!". Replace with "Copyright © 2008 MADShears.com". Remove the CSS validation logo. You can always add a small (discrete) text link to the page footer if you really want.

Think carefully before styling text using the WYSIWYG editor. The majority of your text should have the same font attributes (size, colour, font etc.). You should also consider having a designer do something about the site document navigation.

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Guest madshears

^I have to agree with others here. The cluttered look of your site is well, maddening. Too many words, too many images. It is literally headache inducing. I was able to add a product to the cart. Shop is showing up fine for me. I am on a Mac Book Pro, running OSX 10.5.2 and using SeaMonkey as my browser.

I personally do not have a cart, but I am a web designer with almost no php experience, and I have installed, modded carts and customized skins for at least a dozen clients. I did it by getting help here on the boards.

I am using GoDaddy for all of my hosting, and while there were some issues, they got worked out. I have installed mostly V3 stores, but have now gotten three V4 stores up and running.

First of all I usually get rid of one column and have a two column layout and then lose about half the cart features. Really who cares how many products you have and if you are W3 compliant, lose that. I usually put categories on my front page with images so people can go right to what they want and the image is easier to intuitively know where to go (there is a mod for that). With so many sale items I would not list them on the front page nor in the side bar, just a link in the category list is enough, people want to save money, they will look to see what is on sale.

Also if the browser page isn't wide enough your top menu wraps weirdly. I would have less menu items and use submenus if needed. The payment info can go on the shopping cart page (Visa badges and such) Most people assume if you have a cart that you take credit cards.

I also agree with others here, if you just say "I doesn't work!" then no one can help. I get that enough daily from clients forwarding me emails from people saying "the site doesn't work!" I can't fix it because I have no clue what isn't working, so those pretty much get ignored. Mind reading services cost triple, if not more.

I have used so many different cart systems in my past ten+ years creating websites, I have loved this script the best of all I have worked with. I agree out of the gate V4 had some maddening issues, but they are all fixed now and my last install went as smooth as silk.

We had Go-Daddy but we ran into tons of problems with them. CC recommended Host Monster and we switched. We have had no difficulties (that we know of)

with Host Monster.

How do you get rid of the second column? I assume you mean the popular products? I never thought that served much purpose either.

The dilemma with the sale products is we offer everything at a discount/sale price. But, the store takes over and puts everything in there. I know no coding except basic things I use when adding products, links, images, fonts, colors, that type of thing. Rick would have to address that one.

Are you charging for your services? PM me please if you are with a price. I am interested in how much someone would charge for this, as one of the posters went on to explain that a good site would be 1,000's of $$ up to Twenty Thousand. If we had that kind of money we would have had someone to design a site for us. Hands down. But, we do not have that luxery.

As for the front page our wonderful "pro" never said a thing about changing the front page to say anything different. In fact, he just changed the font and polished our 100% SG emblum. What would one put on the Front Page?? I am a little lost here as I thought putting the Google keywords on your front page was one of those must have things.

The issue about the menu tabs wrapping has been a concern since I read the post by our "professional" I have wondered about that since I saw his glorius posting and the responses from other designers. We have not been able to duplicated the menu wrap between our two computers. The menu could have effectively hid the cart from our customers. I have no idea, but one customer was using XP like me and could not find the shopping cart.

Our latest monster was the customers not being able to see the cart or they just give up during the check out process which is laborious, unclear, confusing, and makes you start anew if you make one mistake. Now, I am not aiming this at my customers but at the public in general. People are stupid sometimes or maybe this is their first time purchasing online and the whole checkout is just plain confusing. Period. So I am not asking anyone to guess.

I stated in my previous post about problems we have encountered including the shopping cart dumping customers purchases, alternate purchase gateways trumped the Paypal Pro, where folks didn't have to create an account.

I personally am turned off by anything that wants me to make an account. That takes time and also gives me another worry and I hate spam. We do not want our customers deluged with spam.

After this whole ordeal, I am beginning to think that one of our competitors has got it right she has a plain store with short descript, poor images, and call me or e-mail me for prices. Very short simple, unprofessional if you want my opinion but hey if this is what the people want, I can do it

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Guest madshears

Listen... All I am doing is giving you advice. Advice that is a product of my experience as a website designer and developer. In this instance, you are right to differentiate your products. However, the core point I was making is to reduce the amount of text on your website. I highly doubt anyone is going to read through all that text. Your product names should include only enough text to define the product - nothing else. Do this for every single product where possible.

Your categories are a mess. Again, there is careless use of text within the category names. Because you have so many categories, I would consider manually structuring the category display rather than having CubeCart do it for you. For example, you could have a category group - "Hair Scissors". Within that group, you could list the following categories:

- Professional

- Personal

- Charmer

- Kenchii

etc. You should leave some structural space between each category group and clearly (visually) define which are the category groups and which are the categories. You also need to add spacing between the products listed in the "Popular Products" area.

Get rid of - "MADShears is about Professional Hair Stylist Shears, Cosmetologist Student Scissors...". All that text (the entire section - including RapidSSL/CreditCard logos & your satisfaction logo) need to go. You can add Credit Card and SSL logos to the footer of the page. Contact information and details about your company, shipping policy and returns policy need to go into the relevant site documents.

Remove all the text: "Copyright © 2008 MADShears.com Reproduction in Part or...!". Replace with "Copyright © 2008 MADShears.com". Remove the CSS validation logo. You can always add a small (discrete) text link to the page footer if you really want.

Think carefully before styling text using the WYSIWYG editor. The majority of your text should have the same font attributes (size, colour, font etc.). You should also consider having a designer do something about the site document navigation.

What would you put on the front page then? I am lost. I was under the impression that the front page was the Glorius Google Catcher in the Sky! So what would you put there? I also think the credit card logos, google check out and paypal tell people we are a safe shoppin zone. When you design a site that sells things how do you give the customer a sense of well being?

As for categories, I'm sorry, you still do not understand the nature of the shears we are selling and I think giving customers the ability to browse by categories using price is very important and differentiating between shears used by professional groomers, hair stylist or barbers are important. I am a shear specialist you are a web-site design specialist. This is not a place I can agree with you. I believe the categories allow for ease in customers finding what they are looking for.

I can loose the Cutsie, Witty Endings to all the products but, if you were buying shear A and comparing shear B would you want the A that comes with free madstuff or shear B that comes with nothing? I understand you are a pro at this but I am a pro in shears and scissors. We are taking advice, and we are implementing it.

My goal for madshears was a unqiue fun place to shop that also educated people on how to buy shears (something they truly do not teach in schools) and a place where our customers can show off a little too! ;) I wanted a site that wasn't the run of the mill, generic site.

We are stripping down our other site DrScissorhands to the bone. We will follow your suggestions. We will see which site trumps the other. I appreciate the suggestions, I truly do. But, none of this has rectified or discussed the true problems that I vented here about. All the probs with CC4 and the cart/checkout which is ridiculously difficult to navigate through. Very confusing. Not to mention the fact that one weekend it dumped the contents of every customer's cart over and over again. How do I get those customers back??? Will they come back???? This past weekend it was all about the invisable cart. Very frustrating and not good. This is what we do for a living.

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I don't think you understood what I was suggesting (regarding the category layout). If such a structure was implemented, you would not loose any details. It would simply make the navigation more intuitive.

With regards to the checkout area. This is a fault of the design rather than CubeCart. I cannot comment on the shopping cart "bug" you are suggesting as I have never experienced it.

EDIT: CC4 has the ability to sort by price in the category view. There is no need to create categories for price ranges.

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Guest dreamdancer

We had Go-Daddy but we ran into tons of problems with them. CC recommended Host Monster and we switched. We have had no difficulties (that we know of)

with Host Monster.

I am having no problems with Godaddy, they just upgraded to php 5.25

How do you get rid of the second column? I assume you mean the popular products? I never thought that served much purpose either.

I do it in the skin templates, I simply remove all of the script tags and put them on one side. Then I change the width of the center column. Here is an example, this is a V3 store (she wanted her store super simple, really clean) - http://lisamariejewelrydesign.com/store/index.php

The dilemma with the sale products is we offer everything at a discount/sale price. But, the store takes over and puts everything in there. I know no coding except basic things I use when adding products, links, images, fonts, colors, that type of thing. Rick would have to address that one.

You can toggle that in the control panel, and then also not use the Sale box

Are you charging for your services? PM me please if you are with a price. I am interested in how much someone would charge for this, as one of the posters went on to explain that a good site would be 1,000's of $$ up to Twenty Thousand. If we had that kind of money we would have had someone to design a site for us. Hands down. But, we do not have that luxery.

I do charge but right now I have three stores to do plus a complete redesign of a huge site. While I have charge more than $1000 for a complete site, it has never gotten close to $10,000, especially to mod a skin for a store. I can send you some of my modded skins to look at if you like. Or maybe you can send me yours, I can look at it to see how long it would take to simplify it. I will PM you.

As for the front page our wonderful "pro" never said a thing about changing the front page to say anything different. In fact, he just changed the font and polished our 100% SG emblum. What would one put on the Front Page?? I am a little lost here as I thought putting the Google keywords on your front page was one of those must have things.

There are mods for that, but not found here. As far as keywords, I am not the expert at that, it seems to change daily what is and isn't acceptable for the search engine. More important to me are the humans coming to the site, if they are turned off no amount of search engine rank is going to help.

The issue about the menu tabs wrapping has been a concern since I read the post by our "professional" I have wondered about that since I saw his glorius posting and the responses from other designers. We have not been able to duplicated the menu wrap between our two computers. The menu could have effectively hid the cart from our customers. I have no idea, but one customer was using XP like me and could not find the shopping cart.

I saw it when I made the browser window narrow. But even so, it doesn't go far enough down to hide the cart. There are issues with AOL and there is a document about this on the main Cube Cart site (an issue that effects more than this cart, stupid AOL PoC!)

Our latest monster was the customers not being able to see the cart or they just give up during the check out process which is laborious, unclear, confusing, and makes you start anew if you make one mistake. Now, I am not aiming this at my customers but at the public in general. People are stupid sometimes or maybe this is their first time purchasing online and the whole checkout is just plain confusing. Period. So I am not asking anyone to guess.

I stated in my previous post about problems we have encountered including the shopping cart dumping customers purchases, alternate purchase gateways trumped the Paypal Pro, where folks didn't have to create an account.

I haven't had a situation where products are dumped out. I am trying now to configure a cart with PayPal pro using the sandbox, but something got royally messed up, I can't get it to create an order any more. So, yeah, that is a problem.

I personally am turned off by anything that wants me to make an account. That takes time and also gives me another worry and I hate spam. We do not want our customers deluged with spam.

After this whole ordeal, I am beginning to think that one of our competitors has got it right she has a plain store with short descript, poor images, and call me or e-mail me for prices. Very short simple, unprofessional if you want my opinion but hey if this is what the people want, I can do it

Agreed and V4 doesn't force people to make an account. I think you should stick with this system, with some adjustment it should work for you.

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Guest madshears

I haven't had a situation where products are dumped out. I am trying now to configure a cart with PayPal pro using the sandbox, but something got royally messed up, I can't get it to create an order any more. So, yeah, that is a problem.

Yeah it is a huge problem and the response from CC wasn't very helpful either. I will have Rick PM it to you. It dumped cart contents on many customers when implemented. I wanted to scream! This was an especially bad weekend to loose the ability for customers to purchase as we were the only people that had K Pink Poodle shears, the first "pretty shear" for professional gromers out there, we lost thousands of dollars worth of sales

RE: Accts--You and I know V4 doesn't require you make an account but the general public does not know this. ;) Go through check out process with someone not a CC techie and follow them through check out. It would be funny if it weren't such a pain that customers give up!

Thank you for all your suggestions. We are changing things.

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RE: Accts--You and I know V4 doesn't require you make an account but the general public does not know this. sad.gif Go through check out process with someone not a CC techie and follow them through check out. It would be funny if it weren't such a pain that customers give up!

That may be... but it is a fault of your design rather that CC4. I've taken a look at your design from the cart end and it is rather confusing. Firstly, you offer 3 methods to checkout: PayPal, Google Checkout and Credit Cards.

I would remove the PayPal button and use CubeCart's Gateway feature for PayPal and Credit Cards. Secondly, I would not have the credit cart logos as a button. Instead, I would have a normal button with the text: "Checkout". To the right/Left/immediately below this button, I would display the credit card and paypal logo (not paypal button) - implying that customers can pay using these methods by selecting that button. Below the checkout button, add some kind of separation, for example:

====== OR =======

Then place the Google Checkout button below the separator. This clearly implies that the customer has the option to choose between the payment options provided. This is about as simple as you can make the checkout process (if you offer multiple payment gateways).

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Guest dreamdancer

Homer, how do you remove the PayPal button, I am in the process of setting up PayPal pro and that button appears automatically when I turn the Pro module on. Also I haven't gotten it to successfully connect, it just times out when I use the Pro module (regular PayPal is working)

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Homer, how do you remove the PayPal button, I am in the process of setting up PayPal pro and that button appears automatically when I turn the Pro module on. Also I haven't gotten it to successfully connect, it just times out when I use the Pro module (regular PayPal is working)

I haven't worked with CC4, so I can't be specific. However, it is likely that the button is being displayed using a tag e.g. {PAYPAL}. Or... It may be that a single tag lists the available payment options (including Google Checkout) - in this case, you may need to modify some PHP files. There may be a much simpler way of doing this...

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Guest madshears

this is Rick, I was getting ready to reply the very thing that dreamcatcher said.... it is automatic with the alternate paypal website payment pro which is one of the payment gateways I use.

Concerning payment methods, I'm just doing like the other stores I buy from on the internet, offering multiple ways to pay. I am also listed on google checkout searches, as well as paypals searces. The image replacement of the button is simple and only takes mere seconds to do or undo. I can remove the logos from the front, but I will not remove the secure logo, as peeple need to feel somewhat secure when they shop. Some know to look for the ssl locket, others dont. Besides I personally would rather have a credit card logo than a button that says "checkout" especially when your other options are by *default these big pretty logos that draws your eyes to them. Why does paypal website pro not have some sort of a creditcard logo that shows up in the page if you want it? Click paypal it takes you to paypal, click google, off to google checkout you go... but that drab checkout button takes you to credit card acceptance, just dont make sense.

(* default meaning that logo that shows up in the cart when that gateway is configured.)

As far as the paypal logo showing up in the store's basket, no matter what the situation, that tos check box, the "no non numbers" in the phone numbers upset people. then the 14 other pages following up to the actual purchase.... in no way has anything to do with any codes, mods or anything elxe I have done. I have done only simply skin mods, and I do try them on my test store...but the biggest problem, complaint, and fuss we get are simply put...

I cant check out. It tells me I left something out, I left something off, i put a dash in my number, for godness sakes.. if it is the last tihng I do, I will figure out how to make that tos box be checked by default..lol..

Dreamdancer, I will also figure out how to remove the paypal button for you.

I wish checkout was like this.

see something you want....click it..

Click add to cart.........

view cart.......

Viuew cart page loads.....*NON overcomplicated Payment process begins here*

click cc logo, paypal, or google located on the page......

go to payment page... put in your *required address, cc information, and the phone number with or without dashes.....click submit

PAID, your stuff is on the way..

2 pages, from cart to paid.

no need to sign up

TOS already checked.

not the 12 step program which is the cc official coding. no matter which skin I use it still uses this method. I am experiementing with my test store and imple3menting in my other live store seeing what happens. I am employing almost all of your suggestions into it.

We do like when people are honest, which is why I reply with honesty back to you in great details about why or how something is the way it is.

My girlfriend feels the same. If you see error in my reasoning I have made in this post, please explain to me why, and your reasoning.

Thanks everyone,

Rick

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Guest madshears

PS.. dreamdancer

If you want to remove that paypal logo button, (This is for the PayPal_Pro alternative gateway only)

go to:

ROOT/modules/altCheckout/PayPal_Pro

EDIT the button.php file

replace:

} else {

		

			$link = "<a href='index.php?_g=rm&amp;type=altCheckout&amp;cmd=process&amp;module=PayPal_Pro&amp;ccb=".base64_encode($subTotal.",".$config['defaultCurrency'])."' target='_self' /><img src='https://www.paypal.com/".$locale."/i/btn/btn_xpressCheckout.gif' border='0' title='' alt='' /></a>";

		

		}




with this code:


}

thats it, paypal logo is gone fomr the basket area... step 19.. hehe

This is for the PayPal_Pro alternative gateway only.

Im sure the rest will follow suit.

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Guest bennyuk

That may be... but it is a fault of your design rather that CC4. I've taken a look at your design from the cart end and it is rather confusing. Firstly, you offer 3 methods to checkout: PayPal, Google Checkout and Credit Cards.

Just had a look at your store.

1. I have to agree abut the checkout process. I just looked at your cart and I could imagine a user thinking "Where is the CHECKOUT button?" You have 3 checkout buttons, some of which appear on your home page (or similar). I would recommend seeing if you can have ONE button the says "CHECKOUT AND PAY NOW" to make it clearer.

2. The home page text needs to be cut down. Use headlines and paragraphs, and dont centrally justify it all. Pay for an hours time of a copywriter, easy fix.

3. Cut the LATEST PRODUCTS list down from 20 to 4. It looks messy and cluttered.

4. Get rid of those paypal, SSL, and 14 credit card logos on your home page (stick them in the footer, not all 14 of them though).

I think your store has great products and good content, its just formatted badly. I feel for your frustration over t eproblems you've had, but I think that some design changes and consistant formatting will turn your store into a great store.

I hope it works out for you, fingers crossed.

Ben

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