Another additional feature

[keat]

Edited: This referrs to issues in V6 compared to V3

 

We found on our V3 sites that product options were confusing stupid people. 

 

People would call asking why, when they added an option to the cart, it would charge them £10.25 and not £8.50 as stated on the drop down. Explaining to them it was +£8.50 was often met with comments like being deceitful.

 

In the end, I had a small mod written that would display the correct sale price,  ie, Base price + Option price.

Now instead of it saying +£8.50, it says £10.25.

 

Could the same be done on V6 ?

 

Also I've noticed that when a product has a dropdown for mutiples, the default is "Please Select", where as on V3 it would default to the lowest denominator.

If we sell fuses in 25's, then 25 was the default option, with 50, 100, 500, 1000 being additional options.

 

 

As it looks on here http://www.bealworkshopsupplies.co.uk/micro-blade-fuses-10-amp-25-red.html , It appears that one fuse is £3.15, when in fact if you look at the drop down it would be for 25 fuses, and you'd have to physically choose this as an option.

 

Compared to: http://www.beal.org.uk/electrical-products/fuses/micro-fuses/micro-blade-fuses-10-amp-25-red-/prod_2860.html

 

There's little in the way of confusion on the V3 that your'e indeed buying a pack of 25

[kalyncomputers]

Why not upgrade to Version 6.0.1?

 

It would solve all theses sill problems.

 

Tim

[keat]

I was referring to 6.01, but i've edited my original post to make this a little clearer.

 

Incidentally, here is what I'm referring to on point 2.

 

I chose a product that we sell in multiples, starting with a bag of 10 fuses.

I added this to the cart twice.

Once using the default "Please Select" option and again using the 10 option.

 

 

Domestic Fuses 1 Amp - FU1-1 (1.30)

1.30   Quantity: 1

Domestic Fuses 1 Amp - FU1-1 (1.30)

Order: 10

1.30   Quantity: 1

 

The first entry looks like the customer is only getting one fuse for £1.30, when in fact he should be getting 10.

[bsmither]

I have seen some code in the CC6 Foundation skin that I think makes an ajax call to your store when an option is selected, which then dynamically updates the displayed pricing. (Internally, however, CubeCart keeps the base price and options price separate.)

 

If this is what I saw, then the CC5 skin (Mican?) would need to be enhanced to use this CC6 feature.

 

On the other hand, if that would be too difficult, an approach I have used in the past is "Quantity Pricing". Make it very clear in the product description that you sell in bags of 10 (for this product). In multiple pricing, for 100 for example, it's 0.20 less per bag.

1-9 each of a 10-count bag: 1.30ea

10 each of a 10-count bag (really one bag of a 100-count) 1.20 (times 10 is 12.00)

 

But this approach would be onerous to set up.

 

A third approach, no longer commercially available, for early versions of CC5, there is a plugin GWork's Dynamic Price Update, which is what I described above for CC6.

[bsmither]

Yup, the Foundation skin can do this.

 

We can make the Mican skin do it, too!

[keat]

I love the look and feel of V6, so much slicker, fresher and modern to V3, with some wonderful features.

However, i'f i'm to ever use V6, then I have a hell of a lot of work to do, around the products.

With over 4000 products, editing them all to suit the layout of V6 would be an almost impossible task, one which would never be completed i think.

 

From the first product page, with the buy it now option, point 2 is even worse.

You really would think that you were only buying 1 fuse.

[kalyncomputers]

Wouldn't this be simplified if you quoted pack sizes in the description? Alternatively you could do it in product options.  It seems to me that if you had an option for pack sizes or number of packs, it shouldn't be that difficult. 

 

As far as importing your products into 6.0.1, piece of cake! The store I am playing with has approx 1600 products which took about 5 minutes for the database through phpmyadmin. The longest part of the job was uploading the images.

 

Tim

[keat]

Tim.

 

I agree, however, with over 4000 products, auditing which ones need to display pack sizes and then actually changing them would be an almost impossible task.

Compare to the V3, and you'll no doubt see what I mean.

 

 

 

http://www.beal.org.uk/electrical-products/fuses/domestic-fuses/domestic-fuses-1-amp/prod_192.html

 

and then take this example http://bealworkshopsupplies.co.uk/index.php?search%5Bkeywords%5D=viz&_a=category

 

available in small, medium, large, extra large.

 

From the landing page, you havn't a clue what size you might be buying.

[kalyncomputers]

There is another option but I really don't like it, price the items as 1 off's and don't give the option to buy 1 but only the smallest pack size you do. 

 

To be honest, I don't think that running through 4000 products and making changes is that daunting a task. A simple download of all products as a CSV file, put them into Excel and sort, you'll soon see which ones need to be done. Once done, re-upload if there are to many to do by hand. Sort of job I used to do all the time before I (sort of) retired.

 

It's actually amazing how quickly you can do jobs like this when you get a rhythm going.

 

I had a shop which I did in OScommerce with 1200 products which we decided to redo using CC5. There was no reliable way we could find to port from OSC to CC so I did it be hand. First I made all the product options and groups and then I had OSC open in one browser and CC in another and I simply copied and pasted from one to the other. To start with each product took about 3 minutes, by the end, 30 seconds. The whole job was done in less than 30 man hours - my man hours! I did quite few like this as a couple of web developer friends found out I could do it and cajoled me with folding green stuff to do it for them.

 

Tim

[keat]

Another issue with adding pack sizes in to the descriptions I suppose again could confuse stupid people.

 

For instance, lets say we sell fuses in pack sizes, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500 & 1000

 

 

Assume I put 1amp fuse, pack of 10.

 

 

Customer adds 1 to his basket, he knows he's getting 10.

Stupid customer comes along and adds 50, does he think that he's getting 50 fuses or 50 bags of 10 ?

At the moment, the customer chooses how many fuses he wants, not how many bags.

[Dirty Butter]

Since I'm assuming you don't break open bags, isn't your description showing that they are buying by the bag of 10? If you mean they can't tell from Latest Products how many they are buying, you might consider taking the Buy button OFF the category and Latest Product pages. When we started our store our customers were consistently upset when the toy that arrived was not new. We used to have an extra button there linking to Description. But taking the premature Buy buttons off forces them to read the description. Also, could you add beside the quantity number on the Basket the word "bag(s)"?

[keat]

We removed the buy button from our V3 for this reason.

 

It's clumsy as it requires an extra click from the customer.

TBH i'd all but forgotten that V3 had the buy button it's been that long.

 

How difficult would it be to add the options button from the main landing page I wonder.