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CubeCart: The Verdict


cubicsquare

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OK l've gone walkabouts and looked at other carts.

Coming back to CubeCart l have to say it's hands down got the best usability for the shop owner. Kudos!

But the shipping? I created many posts about it, none were answered. The By Weight shipping modules allows you to set a weight range. Or something. But what about other weight ranges? And you're not allowed to just name  a tariff? The other modules are worse. Plus there's no concept of continents or wide geographical regions consisting of many countries. You literally have to include countries individually. The one thing that could possibly save the day is postage aggregator integration e.g. Parcel2Go, which is in fact listed. But they don't actually support CubeCart. It was just somebody fantasising that they do support CubeCart. And zero replies to my urgent requests for help about shipping.

You can make a cart, but do less than nothing - yes, less than nothing - about the shipping? And leave it for people to realise this further down the line? I get that you need to make money from plugins / extensions. So we should by a Royal Mail extension and a handful of others too. But this is bad because 1. We can't afford them all up front 2. We'd deffo need multiple extensions 3. WE NEED PROVEN SALES FIRST BEFORE WE CAN PUT MONEY DOWN. BUSINESSPEOPLE ARE C*A*U*T*I*O*U*S. If we had a successful store, we'd embellish it in our own time. What you're doing is forcing people into a stay or go situation.

The All In One shipping module pretty much solves the problem but even so it is 3rd party and doesn't have pre-set continents.

Verdict: Space Odyssey Monolith covered in monkey ####. You need to hand over the entire cart to the creator of the All in One Shipping plugin because that has saved your entire cart. Gosh even hand over your business suit and stationery. You owe everything to that person. Yes i'll get banned for this but l am sacrificing myself for the good of the many punters. Hopefully somebody will act.

My suggestions:

1. Make All in One a native extension, we don't like 3rd party for basic setup

2. If you really can't survive without paid shipping extensions (sure, you gotta make money somehow, and a paid cart won't appear on Softaculous etc.), then how about: a subscription shipping plugin???? That way business people can PROVE SALES WITHOUT HEAVY UPFRONT OUTRIGHT PURCHASES.

3. It's not hard to think of other ways to ameliorate this. It IS hard to think how you could care so little about shipping.

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The All in One Module was originally written  by a third party but is now (and has been for quite a few years) a CubeCart maintained and developed plugin.  The AIO shipping can pretty much do whatever type of shipping setup you can imagine and can cover the requirements for 85% or more of CubeCart customers.

You are also judging the plugin based on your very specific requirements - if CubeCart defined a set of countries by continents to suit you, there would immediately be people saying they wanted something different.  It is extremely easy to define your shipping zones and these need to be based on the shipping rates set by the organisation that YOU are using - shipping companies treat Europe as one, two, three or even four zones and often with a different group of countries in each zone - there will never be one solution that would fit everyone.  Once you have your zones, you then define what shipping areas fit into those zones.  It is a one time setup task 

Even if you do require one of the paid plugins - these are offered at extremely low prices if you look at the development, maintenance and support costs involved.

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I have a few moderately successful Cubecart stores, I've been a customer for many years now, I think I started in version 2, I've flirted with other carts over the last decade, including a disastrous stint with Oscommerce but always seem to revert to the known. I've got an Opencart store on the go as well but I hate it and Magento is way too cumbersome (and I can't be bothered with all the phone calls of them trying to up-sell me), the rest (Shopify, Bigcommerce etc) are all on their systems, which I'm a bit too paranoid and or cheap to sign up to.

I kinda don't know what your objective is, your reasoning is a bit flawed, I'm a business owner too so I get the caution, but I don’t understand how this is an issue here?

For example, my latest store and new business venture I also had a ~£0 budget, there was a bunch of reasons why I didn't want to just spin up another cubecart. However, my final cost to launch was ~£150 there is no competitor cart you can dust off and run for 0 money and provide the same level of use. Your main gripe, the All in One shipping module, is free, there are a bunch of other free extensions that you need to install to have an operating cart (PayPal). I don't see how that's an issue, some people will only use Sage not Paypal or like me only ship to the UK for free postage, so if they don't need it, it' s not installed, software is lighter weight. Also the creator of All-in-one hasn't been around in a number of years, so the idea of giving the keys over to them, is impractical as well as a bit mad.

You do highlight an interesting point though, there is almost zero reason that I can see that the All in one shipping module isn't standard at this point. It was always a bit of a glaring hole in the software that has existed since at least version 3. I personally have always needed that mod, but I assumed they never baked it into the software because didn't want to step on the toes of a 3rd party extension creator (who even at the time where few and far between)?

There are some minor issues that I have with cubecart, that have been around for years that seem to just go on “unfixed”;

The search function is just bad

The look of the default skin is a bit dated

The management of orders in bulk is non-existent (Bsmither custom made me an export or I'd be screwed)

The 3rd party marketplace fairly small and it’s all on the back of like 3 guys and seems to be getting smaller over time.

There seems like Quality of life upgrades that could be made that aren't because, maybe I'm the only one seeking them (which I admit could be a possibility), there isn't the development time for them or that they are waiting for the 3rd party extension to be made if the demand is high enough from a community that hasn't really existed or recovered from the switch from opensource to paid and back again *(In my opinion)*.

The main strength of Cubecart is that it's very modular and it's easily customisable, the main detraction seems to be I'm not skilled enough nor have the time to do it myself and to hire someone to do it seems cost prohibitive.

For Example,

There are 7 paid for themes on the marketplace right now, some of them haven't been maintained in years and look straight out of the 90's, one's demo page links to a Shopify site, one is an easier way to customise the Foundation skin, which is neat but not what I’m looking for.

I can go chose from 600 OpenCart themes and sure most of those are themeforest hatchet jobs straight from coding hell but hey they look pretty.

So I thought to myself, “Hey, you pay money for a theme anyway, what could be the cost of just hiring some guy to build exactly what you want” now admittedly I also wanted to hire locally so mileage my vary, so I emailed 8 web designers. Two actually responded, both wanted to migrate to Magento to install some random stock skin for a few thousand. Gave up with the self promise that in 2020 I'll finally make a go at that skin I started in 2018 :D.

 

So in closing, my own gripes though detailed and long outstanding are fairly minor in the face of the utility, low cost and ease of use that Cubecart provides. I think you are right to have your complaints, I kinda half share them but I don't agree that cost to launch is a good argument to base it on.

 

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3 hours ago, Lastwolf said:

there is almost zero reason that I can see that the All in one shipping module isn't standard at this point. It was always a bit of a glaring hole in the software that has existed since at least version 3. I personally have always needed that mod, but I assumed they never baked it into the software because didn't want to step on the toes of a 3rd party extension creator (who even at the time where few and far between)?

You covered the reason why it isnt part of core - all plugins were removed to separately installable items to make the install lighter weight and not cluttered with hundreds of unwanted and mostly unused plugins - there are also good security reasons for doing this.  While the All in One plugin is used by a great many stores, it isnt used by all and a significant number can trade very well without it - therefore it should be outside of core.

5 hours ago, Lastwolf said:

The search function is just bad

I agree although search is always an issue in all applications - it has been improved a bit recently but also the "Suggestive Search" plugin really helps with this as well.  

5 hours ago, Lastwolf said:

The look of the default skin is a bit dated

Foundation was never designed to actually be used - it was always meant to be a starting point for the development of other skins

5 hours ago, Lastwolf said:

The 3rd party marketplace fairly small and it’s all on the back of like 3 guys and seems to be getting smaller over time.

Agreed, the extension marketplace is relatively small but that is because most store owners are not willing to pay anything - the cost of developing, supporting and maintaining any plugin is high and I would guess that most of the 3rd party plugins dont make enough to cover the original and on-going costs

5 hours ago, Lastwolf said:

The main strength of Cubecart is that it's very modular and it's easily customisable

 It certainly is and the built in functionality is far better than most of the other "more successful" products out there most of which are clunky at best and at worst are massively heavy on server resources and extremely difficult to maintain or upgrade and often have more security issues per quarter than CubeCart has had in years.

5 hours ago, Lastwolf said:

I can go chose from 600 OpenCart themes and sure most of those are themeforest hatchet jobs straight from coding hell but hey they look pretty.

So I thought to myself, “Hey, you pay money for a theme anyway, what could be the cost of just hiring some guy to build exactly what you want” now admittedly I also wanted to hire locally so mileage my vary, so I emailed 8 web designers. Two actually responded, both wanted to migrate to Magento to install some random stock skin for a few thousand.

 The lack of choice of quality themes / skins is probably CubeCart's main failing but again, the cost of creating and maintaining skins is huge - I have two commercial skins and have spent far, far more hours on them than I will ever get back in revenue, as people baulk at spending a few tens of pounds.  You are right though that while there may be loads for many other applications, the quality is often extremely poor.  It is not a five or ten hour job to develop a skin and when you factor in support plus maintenance, it is a lot of effort 

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For sure, I would gladly spend a few tens of pounds, I've bought about 4 through the marketplace here and a few before that I forget how much, just to see how they were made or modify them to suit my purpose in brutal ugly ways. 

I'm not sure how you even start going about addressing the drawbacks I have.

Like Opencart has an extension that auto submits for Trustpilot, that's handy, but if I get some guy to go develop it and I the only customer it's like 500£ :D 

 

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On 12/11/2019 at 6:29 PM, havenswift-hosting said:

The All in One Module was originally written  by a third party but is now (and has been for quite a few years) a CubeCart maintained and developed plugin so no real idea what you are going on about there.  The AIO shipping can pretty much do whatever type of shipping setup you can imagine and can cover the requirements for 85% or more of CubeCart customers.

You are also judging the plugin based on your very specific requirements - if CubeCart defined a set of countries by continents to suit you, there would immediately be people saying they wanted something different.  It is extremely easy to define your shipping zones and these need to be based on the shipping rates set by the organisation that YOU are using - shipping companies treat Europe as one, two, three or even four zones and often with a different group of countries in each zone - there will never be one solution that would fit everyone.  Once you have your zones, you then define what shipping areas fit into those zones.  It is a one time setup task 

Even if you do require one of the paid plugins - these are offered at extremely low prices if you look at the development, maintenance and support costs involved.

Hi there,

Setting up continents was painstaking, truly. Also, as you say, it's open to debate, with Turkey and Russia sometimes being in Europe for example. Yep, even Vladivostok, right on top of Japan.

Then there's the islands in the middle of nowhere.

BUT at least they could have a stock version of continents that you can then make minor changes to. They should also allow you to copy and paste continents and plans.

 

PAID EXTENSIONS: Yes there are some paid shipping ones. For some reason l was thinking of the costly Royal Mail extension, but it turns out CubeCart doesn't even offer that. Also, with another cart it's free but another prices it highly. But evenso, regardless the extension, it'll never be the last word, you'd need other options etc. The mind boggles. That's the reason l would want a highly configurable manual solution because any niggles can be ironed out manually just as l want them.

 

I want to explain something. I am coming from eBay and so l have a way of doing postage plans that is much the way the brain organises itself (l think): along streets dotted with info. The street is the policy name that pertains to a quality not a quantity - l mean: jewellery, not 100g.

This has caused me a huge amount of confusion and distress. I am not joking, l literally went crazy about 10 days ago, as a culmination of about 3 months of stress. Something happened with another cart's WYSIYG editor, and it was the closest l had come to a total nervous breakdown in a long time. The pea under the mattress was the whole postage things, the way carts do them is different and it even differs cart to cart. The mattress itself would be the entire concept of carts versus ready-made online marketplaces. Plus l was trying to set up multiple carts. So l'm ashamed to say l pretty much near lost it. I don't really get my anger in the OP either, tbh. Feel bad about it now.

 

The fact is, l'm making this work, l'm happy with All in One Shipping more or less. I'm glad that you have explained it's maintained and developed by CubeCart, l hope you point this out in marketplace because the author's name seems like a pseudonym hence worrying. That means a lot to me that you explained it though.

 

Personally, l don't mind the small extension marketplace. Let me give another insight: I'm just a small business, and all l want is to prove sales. Regardless how others are doing, they aren't selling the same thing plus they aren't me. So for me, it all comes down to this: Getting my existing inventory bulk uploaded quick quick - with sane postage rates. The bells and whistles can come later once sales are proven.

 

Regarding getting you guys money, here are some ideas:

- A subscription plan for "all of our extensions" - pay monthly, minimum block: 1 month

- Donation button ?

- Affiliate developer links if a person can't be bothered in the end and just wants someone to do it for them? Explan what special treats the developers can offer e.g. automated marketing and order line updates for customers, comprehensively backing your site for you, malware detection etc.

- Show people how to upload a spreadsheet for anything i.e. make all available column headings clear, and give an example e.g. the all elusive shipping spreadsheet (yes it's too complex but the cart recognises it at the end of the day so it does end up getting databased somehow, therefore it can be uploaded somehow, so show us the column headings for that).

- And so on etc. etc. etc.

 

 

Really though, l like what you're doing. I've still not opened my shop but the structurally, as a cart admin, l really like CubeCart. It's obviously made by people that use their own software.

 

13 hours ago, Lastwolf said:

You do highlight an interesting point though, there is almost zero reason that I can see that the All in one shipping module isn't standard at this point. It was always a bit of a glaring hole in the software that has existed since at least version 3

 

That was my entire point really. The shipping or lack of it,  put EVERYTHING into a death spiral for me. The other native shipping add-ons were less than useful, they were, frankly, an insult. All the more harsh because l'd come so far only to fall at the last hurdle: Shipping. And what a fall: to be met with shipping plugins that made a mockery of everything l had done. Well, l've finally gotten my teeth into All In One, and pasted the values into a spreadsheet (another nifty aspect of CubeCart, you can copy and paste the finished array of rates from All In One Shipping plugin into .txt file, then copy and paste that direct into a spreadsheet). I like this new format. It's easy to update it now.

 

All In One Shipping retains some of the linearity that the brain uses: i break one tariff (e.g. Royal Mail International Tracked) into a series of segments for each weight band, and l can also then arrange multiple tariffs in one serial column. It also has the easily cross-referenced tabular aspect: find weight band, reference price. Go one level up, see array of geographical zones. This joint tabular and linear aspect allows you to quickly flit around checking rates when you are contructing or updating your rates, drawing upon multiple couriers. Hope that makes sense.

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, cubicsquare said:

Setting up continents was painstaking, truly. Also, as you say, it's open to debate, with Turkey and Russia sometimes being in Europe for example.

That wasn’t my point !  You are setting up continents as zones where most people would never do that and would have three or four different shipping zones for Europe.  Your “obvious” way of doing things would almost never be used by anyone else

4 hours ago, cubicsquare said:

The fact is, l'm making this work, l'm happy with All in One Shipping more or less. I'm glad that you have explained it's maintained and developed by CubeCart, l hope you point this out in marketplace because the author's name seems like a pseudonym hence worrying.

The extension marketplace clearly shows CubeCart as the developer although I do agree that showing “Estelles Winterflood” as the developer under the “Manage Extensions” option in admin could be confusing @Al Brookbanks could easily change that

 

4 hours ago, cubicsquare said:

The other native shipping add-ons were less than useful, they were, frankly, an insult.

In YOUR limited experience maybe !  There is a place for each of the shipping modules that exist and people will be using them - really do not understand your negativity over these being available - you are not forced to use or even install them

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Dude. How about a compromise. I'm not a complete ass, and neither are you. OK?

So if l'm making a point about something, please try to consider that l've tried to work around it and it either hasn't worked or the workaround has worked but that only highlights that there's a stumbling block out there.

Likewise l've conceded (even in the OP, by saying CubeCart is quite well wrought) that you guys (meaning the CC team) aren't completely daft. And you've left shipping as an afterthought because you're too cool for that :)

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Finally, you really need a Parcel2Go extension.

Let me just nail your reply: "That's just YOU. Most of us don't POST THINGS. We are REAL men. We just LOOK at things. Maybe use HORSE and CART. You are an IDIOT."

OK you're right. But in some instances l did find Parcel2Go helpful. Other carts offer it too. Your repo even officially offers it. Just saying.

 

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Hey Kids, lets keep it civil.

 

I think it's more an issue that you've been conditioned to how eBay works, Amazon is fairly similar, so anything that isn't that is a bit jarring.

The other shipping modules are probably artifacts of the time, long, long ago when Estelle's Mod wasn't a thing, this is a problem alot of carts suffer from, Opencart has some god awful addon's that don't seem to do the job they advertise.

Parcel2go addon requires demand to develop, so far that's two guys, I'll probably use it.

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Actually now that I think about it, this is interesting.

 

I often wonder, what is the average number of orders per day that the average Cubecart operator deal with and how is their work flow for dealing with it.

I assume most are like me, working on multiple platforms - Amazon - eBay - cubecart and using some sort of Label printing or order management system that oversees all those areas (Like channeladvisor, which doesn't support CC or OnestopOrder processing, which last supported CC3 and I've hacked together a work around for CC6 with the help of Bsmither).

I mean I sell 10-30 items a day so it's could be handled manually, but that would be a large amount of time for a small number of orders.

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56 minutes ago, Lastwolf said:

I often wonder, what is the average number of orders per day that the average Cubecart operator deal with and how is their work flow for dealing with it.

...

I mean I sell 10-30 items a day so it's could be handled manually, but that would be a large amount of time for a small number of orders.

 

I can only dream of 10-30 orders a day. But if l did get that many, Parcel2Go would be a necessity for me. Unless the things you are selling have uniformity - just pick one, any one, pop it in jiffy bag, add sticky postage label, job done. With me, it's different, 15 mins just to pick and pack the order.

I do accounts manually too - l input into a speadsheet accounting system l made myself. Coming to think of it, l don't know why l don't just use my PayPal's ready made accounts. Anything done outside PayPal l could just relegate to manually inputting into spreadsheet, but there'd be hardly anything outside of PayPal. Anyway, accounting at my level isn't a bother, l don't have high volume sales.

 

As for the Parcel2Go add-on needing development, l'm sure it's already partly done hence it's in the repository. It just needs updating l think. I'm not sure whom the task falls to, l suspect it needs Parcel2Go's participation because they told me via live chat that THEY don't support CubeCart anymore. Gosh just give them a £100 note and tell them to support it again.

Only 2 ppl on it? Okay but the theme of this entire thread is, there's no point in even having the cart if you leave out the shipping considerations! And l'm sorry but l'm not going to use UPS to post a 495g parcel to Isle of Skye. The available extensions won't be a complete solution and thus l'll need multiple extensions and still need a direct manual patch (= a rate table of my own devising). Nah, an aggregator like Parcel2Go is an ideal fallback solution, or even a sole solution. Also, it solves the MAIN issue: newbie wants eBay inventory transferred and up in the interwebs quickly and smoothly. The devs may lose sight of this need.

Still love CubeCart, but oh man, if you could just [insert demand] you'd be THE BEST.

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Also need a way of, PER PRODUCT for the shipping info:

- Enable shipping insurance on / off at set percentage of item price e.g. up to £20 add 5%, or up to £400 add 10% [l mean: set the rates pyramid up separately, toggle the entire rate pyramid on / off via the product upload spreadsheet, on a per item basis]

- Enable Tax / VAT (inc. or surcharge) on / off

- Make a named courier tariff (e.g. Royal Mail International Tracked) FREE, the implication being that all of the others will still cost the stated price. I mean, have a column on the product upload spreadsheet called "Free Tariffs:" where you copy and paste verbatim the tariff name already in your existing shipping tab, and automatically that tariff costs zero, for that product. Comma to separate tariff names if multiple tariffs.

- Mute a named courier tariff (see above for how to do this). Maybe also restrict to a named courier tariff.

- Maybe also, for that product, offer a price for multiple copies - some carts let you do this by formula input

 

The only alternative is eBay's method: you base it off the type of product sold and its weight e.g. "0.5kg Jewellery UK COSTS rest of world pays" or "1kg Non Delicate FREE MYHERMES for UK", and thus your prices will reflect insurance levels and whether one or more of the couriers costs for the local buyer in the UK - as per the rubric of your makeshift postage scheme. The downside there is that you end up with about 70 schemes instead of about 8 (to cover minute variations e.g. expensive that needs insurance, non delicate that doesn't need extra insurance, free for the UK, free for the world, not free for the UK, etc. etc.) that need annual updating or futureproofing at expense of buyers.

 

Check my suggestions out and if you can implement them but just won't, then you are saying no to money and no to potential cart users. We will recognise how important these tweaks are, even if some ppl think they can tell us we don't need them and we are, perhaps, just selling the wrong product, we must sell the right product to keep the cart happy etc etc

 

With my suggestions above, no need to translate eBay postage schemes into a grid, then retroactively figure out base prices, prices with insurance etc. etc. Instead, the resulting rates grid will be the source of all derivative postage schemes, from Carts to Marketplaces. Finally, if it can thus be reduced to one rates table, then of course it can be uploaded. At last, an uploadable postage policy. I don't think many ppl appreciate what an immense pain point this is to sellers of miscellanea that need myriad postage schemes. As long as we know the basic figures, e.g. from a rates table, we can spin off bespoke postage schemes e.g. with / without insrance, for delicate  / non delicate. free for this courier, but not for THAT one because l have to travel to drop off location for that one etc. etc. As long as we can keep a tight grip on the basic figures we can take our pricing to the bone. Maybe it wasn't important 15 years ago but now, people compare prices. We want to be confident in our final total price, we don't want to be subsidising postage, we want to be keeping it slim, competitive, so that we know we are offering the cheapest price we can actually afford to offer. Or at least we know where that cheapest price is should we need to lower ourselves. And we can translate that price grid into other carts and marketplaces as l say. Also rates table layouts will finally have uniformity  (because we finally nailed down all the data columns needed) so we can one day transfer postage rates between different cart manufacturers. At the moment i'm in immense difficulty. Never known anything quite like this pain in about 20 years! It's like a multidimensional Rubik's Cube. So now you see why the native shipping modules are such an affront. All in One, however, almost does it all in one. Good job Mz. Winterflood!

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I feel a bit bad about slanging off CubeCart in my OP by the way. It was a backhanded compliment actually if you read carefully - it's the best cart to set up. The problem was basically solved anyway, by the All In One Shipping plugin. I had thought it was 3rd party but CubeCart are saying in this thread that it's core. So that ends that. Still, please look at my suggestions in this thread. Shipping is supremely difficult. I need to ship anything anywhere.

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Thanks to all your guys for your feedback. I agree that we really need more extensions and significant enhancements for existing ones. Especially for shipping! 

I'm currently towards the end of a massive project with a huge global payment company and we are just about to release this as a new extension. Once that is done and proven stable we are hoping to be able to start work on improved extensions for 2020. 

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Thanks Al. I know this topic is finished now but for completeness l want to add some more suggestions:

- Also allow mute / solo / add countries (not just courier tariff) via the product upload spreadsheet. Multiple items separated by commas.

Why countries? Well, we all want to exclude some countries universally via the Zone setup or Localisation. But for some specific items, specific countries must be excluded. Example: Cuban and Persian philatelic items are embargoes by USA. If your stamp album has any stamps from these areas, no matter how old, it will be a potential international incident to post them to a US buyer.

- Display instructions alongside the shipping module

- Re: marketplace being embryonic at present: Not a big deal. Extensions would typically be a quick effective way of what can be done manually anyway right? So that's okay. My main priority is proof of concept of putting existing inventory from an existing marketplace, onto a shopping cart, hence opening up a second channel, so l'd prefer to set everything up manually to begin with anyway.

 

edit:

- Also if you want to re-make the All In One Shipping module: further to existing suggestions on this thread, that "Add shipping zone" tab needs to be pushed waaaaay to one side, you won't believe how much data l've lost and had to re-input due to accidentally pressing that tab. Also maybe clarify the correct sequence for applying edits: Save *then* clear cache.

 

I think that's it for now. Any further suggestions will over-complicate it.

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Edit: eek! One more thing: We can combine a few of my previous suggestions about muting and making free some courier methods, with another idea about displaying only a named courier (= soloing that tariff) via product upload spreadsheet: have "Shipping Tariff mute/solo/free?" column, where you name a tariff for the inventory stock item that you are selling.

Example: UPS Next Day, free,Royal Mail 2nd Class Tracked, free

Result: will make UPS Next Day *and* Royal Mail 2nd Class Tracked tariffs free of charge for THAT inventory item.

 

Example: UPS Next Day,solo,Hermes 48,solo

Result: will show ONLY the UPS Next Day and Hermes 48 tariffs.

 

Example: UPS Next Day,free,UPS Next Day,solo

Result: will show ONLY the UPS Next Day tariff ... and it will be free of charge - for THAT inventory item.

 

Example: Royal Mail 1st Class Standard,mute,UPS Next Day,free

Result: Displays all your tariffs applicable for that 756g (boxed weight) pair of binoculars as follows:

Hermes 24 @ £5

Asendia @ £16

Royal Mail 2nd Class Standard @ £5

UPS Next Day @ £6 @ £0 (FREEE!)

[Royal Mail 1st Class Standard doesn't get a look in, it's been muted]

 

Finally, maybe add an "EMPATHY" term to the syntax, so that if one named courier is made FREE, then a commensurate amount is deducted from the cost all other couriers, with the minimum price being £0. Further tweak, maybe specify a slightly lower amount to be deducted e.g. 90% of the now-free tariff. Example: Royal Mail 2nd Class Standard was £5, but now it's FREE. So, with EMPATHY, l deduct £5 from all other couriers to a minimum resulting value of £0. Alternatively, l can set EMPATHY to deduct a percentage of that £5, i.e. 90%, i.e. £4.50, from all other couriers.

Example: UPS Next Day,solo,Royal Mail 2nd Class Standard,solo,free,empathy90%

Result: Displays only the following, ignoring all other tariffs available for that weight:

UPS Next Day @ £5

Royal Mail 2nd Class Standard @ £5 @ £0 (FREE!)

 

BUT because l aded empathy, at 90%, it will actually display:

UPS Next Day @ £6 @ £1.50   (i.e. £6 minus £4.50, i.e. £6 minus 90% of £5, the £5 being the cost of the Royal Mail 2nd Class tariff that was made free and empathied-up)

Royal Mail 2nd Class Standard @ £5 @ £0 (FREE!)

 

The good thing about adding these features to the inventory upload spreadsheet is that we now have 3 controls over Shipping:

- Linear / Serial (the way a tariff is split into segments and arranged down a column in the shipping rates table)

-  Tabular (the cross referencing with weights and prices, and the weights don't even have to be serially arranged, no tantrum thrown by software for not arranging things serially, unlike with at least one other cart l've tried)

- Personalised (the way you have new syntax so that you can add the aforementioned adjustments specific to one item's available shipping methods, via the product upload spreadsheet - it's no longer just blindly done by weight, it's weight-based AND personally tweaked to override the weight based rules if required - the new syntax enables this)

 

All this can be done around the existing All In One Shipping plugin, no need for shop owners to re-do their data.

Mic drop.

[Picks up damaged mic and sheepishly replaces it on stand]

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  • 2 weeks later...

One more idea: the functionality (mentioned in this thread) that l had proposed to be set via the inventory upload spreadsheet (e.g. muting some carriers, soloing some, making some free, making some free and reducing all other available carriers by a percentage too) could *also* be set via a grid of carrier data within the cart itself.

Call this "Shipping Profile Mode".

To create a new shipping profile, you press the "Create new shipping profile button" (put this new button somewhere in the AIOS module interface). The resulting display would be:

>>> For each zone, show the avilable carriers, the cost, the weight, just as CubeCart currently displays them in the All In One Shopping module. As if you have copied and pasted into a spreadsheet the display the AIOS module produces.

>>> Display all zones in one page.

>>> Do this every time a new shipping profile is set up. So, it's the entire AIOS module's data, all on one page, each time "Create new shipping profile" is clicked.

>>> So far, nothing new except that all of the zones are on one page, and the display is definitively a grid now, not just a table.

>>> Now, for each row (each row has shipping tariff, and price and weight band, as you recall - that's how the AIOS module displays the data), have further columns represented by radio buttons. Columns include: "Free","Mute", "Solo", "Empathy percent" (if nothing entered, then no empathy setting applied, if "10" input, then all other prices i.e. all other rows, in that grid are reduced by 10%, unless they also have "Free" selected)

>>> Do this zone by zone, all on the same page

>>> Accidentally closed window? Or navigated away? Saved without naming it? Don't worry, it will auto save as "Un-named Shipping Profile 2020 01 14 time 150343" etc.

>>> To invoke this profile, name it in the CubeCart inventory upload spreadsheet. If you rename a profile, a warning comes up to tell you you must change it on any still-current inventory upload spreadsheet that you may have waiting in the eaves, too.

>>> Naming a shipping profile in the inventory uploads spreadsheet overrules any other shipping settings for that specific inventory item that have already been set e.g. via module interface based on weight, or even shipping settings already within the upload spreadsheet

>>> Finally, rename "spreadsheet" as "spreadhseet" as it is typically how it comes out. Seriously though, just checking you're awake ;)

 

 

There you have it, best of all worlds:

Shipping calculated by weight AND Set by profile

Also:

Shipping data arranged in two-dimensional grid AND Data arranged serially AND Manual overrides set via inventory upload spreadsheet

 

Sorry if that doesn't make sense. Please re-read or ask for clarification if it's unclear.

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