Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

Well, I survived black friday. Barely. But X-payments didn't help me.

HALF of my orders double submitted yesterday.

WHY THE F does X-Payments iFrame have the need to re-invent the freaking wheel?

X-Payments iFrame "lite" in OPC ajax
-------------------------------
Press submit.
CURRENT BEHAVIOR:

Div goes 50% transparent while order is sent to the gateway. Customer has no indication that anything is happening, so customer presses submit again. Admin has to mop up the mess.

Besides geeks, do you really think an average customer is going to interpret a 50% transparent box covering the iFrame to represent "Your order is now processing..." -- of course not.

WHAT IT SHOULD (MUST) BE:
Press submit.
Customer sees something (an image, a popup, a page, something) that CLEARLY indicates their order is processing, AND the submit button disappears. A gray box is not the universally accepted "your order is processing" image.

If the Ajax can display a transparent div, it can surely bring up something with actual information as well, yes?

This is a serious product defect that MUST be fixed immediately. I can't recommend that anyone use X-payments in its current state.

I tried to find in xpc and/or x-payments css where the div that does this is called -- but I can't decipher it. It's probably in javascript, right?

Alex, you know how to reach me if you want to fix this. I know you only recently inherited this product design -- but fixing this defect of the design should really take precedence over everything else. The core purpose of checkout is to collect the money and let the customer pay you without effort. Anything that makes the checkout unclear to the customer must be fixed. Agree?

I will update this post once this defect is corrected.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

I also had some duplicate charges from payments, took lots of time to call each customer and inform them That I issued a refund and hopefully the credit card company will make the funds available asap.

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

Jeremy, the issue is noted and I'll do my best to have the fix published in this very thread and in our knowledge base ASAP.

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

Jeremy, have you seen my PM about new iframe checkout routines for X-Cart & X-P OPC and FLC? I sent it a couple of weeks or so ago.

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

Thank Alex.
I apologize for the heat and the drama -- but my black friday was truly insane with customer service issues. I'm just recovering.

You should know that I am actively working with Bill Brewer to integrate x-payments iframe into Altered Cart's CheckoutOne. In my opinion, CheckoutOne is a superior checkout experience for the customer (vs. X-Cart's default OPC w/ajax) and it "simply" will display the x-payments iframe. The solution will be to edit the x-payments template and css - but since the "lite interface" is hidden deep in js, it is not as simple as a template edit.

[side note and OT: there is nothing "one page" about x-cart's one page checkout" - since it requires multiple submits. maybe rename it to"two-step checkout" ? The reason Altered Cart's checkoutOne is a better user experience is that it solves the "next step" issues -- it's all on one page]

X-payments and XPC connector should make the visual aspects of the iframe accessible to the developer, and we should also have all the hooks as $vars. In the name of security, x-payments has obfuscated itself into unusable.

Yes, I saw your PM, but I didn't notice anything different. Maybe iFrame actually works now? I don't consider a 1.1 release worthy of the ".1" if it's simply bug fixes. I'll take another look in case I missed something.

I know you inherited this mess. But the bug fixes that are required are not major. It does require someone familiar with the code to do the (relatively minor) work.

I do not want to deal with xcart tech support. This is not an isolated issue. It's a product design defect that really needs to be addressed ASAP. My alternative is to not use x-payments and use a merchant account that has an iframe gateway. That's possible for me since my merchant account doesn't have a multi-year contract. But not all merchants can jump ship.

It is very obvious that 100% of xcart's resources in the design and coding of x-payments went to the security and PCI code, and zero resources went to user interface. After all this time, did you ever wonder why substantial number of the "NFR" x-payments licenses were never used and you have to do the "use it or lose it" annulled licenses? I can assure you that there would be widespread adoption of x-payments if it simply solves basic customer interface issues. You are very close to making it work -- I bet that one engineer who knows the code could fix it in 2 hours. BUT you have to provide the hooks to the developer to customize it for each store (images, css, $vars, etc..) Too much of x-payments is hidden in the name of security.

I wasn't part of your x-payments beta because I was in a multi-year contract with my merchant account and I had no intention of upgrading my store at the time. I figured I'd give you a year or 2 to get it right... that's why I am truly astonished that a shipping product at version 1.0.5 is still not ready for production.

AH, but that's why you have the project now, yes?

I will present my shopping list to you in PM. It's not complicated. An engineer who knows the code can probably knock it out quickly.

Thanks for listening.

Jeremy

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

Our X-Payments developer is working on the solution right now. I hope to have it tomorrow.

X-Payments is used by thousands of people now and this is why I am taking this issue very very seriously. I am going to send a newsletter with a solution once we have it.

The PM I sent you contains links to test copies of improved iFrame for OPC and FLC for X-Cart 4.5.4
X-P v1.1 won't be a bug-fix release. It will have new payment gateway integrations and support for recurring billing and tokenization (proper replace for manual CC processing). But we are in the beginning of our way now. v1.1 will have the solution for this issue, too.

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

PM sent. Thanks!

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

The patches to minimize impact from the usability issue are published at
http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Payments:Troubleshooting#Duplicate_charges

Our techs are provided with instructions about the issue, too. The patches are provided free of charge, but if someone wants them to be applied by our techs we may charge them according to SLA of our technical support service.

I don't think patches are hard to be applied and everyone should be able to apply them without hiring someone.

How to apply patches - http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:To_apply_a_patch_manually

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

And yes, future X-Cart version won't have this issue as we are rolling out improved OPC and FLC with iFrame X-Payments support there.

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

Alex,

Sorry for the public flogging, but unfortunately these patches do NOT solve the issue. I had almost as many duplicate and triplicate orders today as on Friday.

I responded to Joss, but haven't heard back in >22 hours.

In addition to the duplicate order issue (90% of this is very poor user interface) - IE8 is totally dead for x-payments. Chrome, Firefox and Safari on WIn or Mac works, but the errors in IE8 kill the store -- that is only with x-payments lite interface.

I know you said there are a large number of x-payment users, but how many are in production with xp 1.0.5 using the lite iframe interface in 4.5.4 goldplus? Wanna bet I'm it?

I urge any and all x-payments store admins to step forward in a thread I started and identify your version and interface and if it actually is working for you.

Click here...
.
.

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

I am using 4.5.4 gold and want to use X-Payments but this thread scares me. I have it all installed and everything (just haven't configured it) but I think I will just let it sit there and be a waste of money and time and not ruin our site.

I hope to see this new version released soon. This site always makes me feel like I am sitting around waiting, *sigh*

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

Don't let it scare you.
We are learning of a few issues that makes x-payments crap out:

1. coupons - not verified, but transactions with discounts or coupons seem to be part of the issue;
2. customers not filling in the forms correctly -- omitting a cvv, not checking "i agree to terms", not selecting the correct credit card type, etc...

BUT OF COURSE -- we (the shop) should not require the customer be perfect else catastrophic failure of the transaction! The checkout should be forgiving and hold the customer's hand.

I'm working on solutions and the x-cart team has full access to my dev site.

If we can figure out what specifically is breaking things, we can "not do what breaks" (phase 1) then fix it (phase 2)

More to come.

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

We are not currently using coupons at all (and won't be for at least 6 months+) and our discount system isn't even setup yet (hoping for January)

With that additional information is X-Payments still not ready for me to use?

Also I don't fully understand where it has to be installed and what all is required to run it... I have read that SSL is required, I have read it has to be on another host, lots of different answers and none of the info seems easy to find.

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

1. X-payments should live in its own secure place. i.e. its own user account in cPanel or a separate hosted place -- if you have a VPS or dedicated box, it can be a subdomain.

checkout.greatlakesvacuum.com

2. Yes, It MUST have its own SSL (or a wildcard)

3. The documentation and installation instructions are VERY comprehensive. If you simply RTFM you will get there. So RTFM. I commend the X-Cart team for the superb documentation on this product.

The issues remaining have to do with customer feedback during an order. if the customer does not have confidence that their order was processed, they will click again. The patch from last week helps, but it is still less than desired.

If you are going to accept credit cards, you have these choices:

1. use x-payments
2. use an iFrame provided by your merchant account
3. use paypal or other hosted payment method
4. use a payment form hosted on your merchant account server
5. If you use Authorize.net, there is another possibility worth investigation:
http://www.bcsengineering.com/store/authorize.net-dpm-module-for-x-cart-pa-dss-compliant.html

# 3 & #4 are not a good choice for many stores
#2 is only possible with select merchant acct and gateways
#1 has issues in certain configurations and setups.

Pick your poison?

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

If you use Authorize.net, there is another possibility worth investigation: http://www.bcsengineering.com/store/authorize.net-dpm-module-for-x-cart-pa-dss-compliant.html


---

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

Yes. This is an iFrame integration (#2)

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

No it is not an iframe integration - it is a transparent redirect method. So it is a good idea to discuss with the compliance officer at your bank before implementation. I have not come across one that did not accept it, and it is much easier and less costly than X-Payments. Lots of discussion about it on this forum, Just adding it to your list in case someone comes across this thread so they know there is at least one other option supported by a reputable x-cart mod vendor (BCSE).

--

Re: Black Friday hell - X-payments designed for (by) geeks
 

AH... ok. Added to the list.