This already causes problems with customers adding an item to their cart and the product just happens to go out of stock right before they hit the "add to cart" button. Rather than an intelligent and comprehendable message about the product now being out of stock when they add it to their cart, they get a message saying their cart is empty. The frustrated customer then hits the back button and tries to add it over and over again, becomes frustrated and gives up their desire to ever do business with the store again, figuring their shopping cart system doesn't work. This is even worse when the customer is in the middle of checkout and suddenly the product disappears.

Carrying over 100,000 products we get emails from baffled customers regularly. I have started checking when this happens by the presence of the line "Invalid argument supplied for foreach()" in relation to "$productindexes" in "cart.php" in our error logs and the frequency that it occurs is about every 3-4 days.

I concur, and I don't understand why this happens either. If a customer tries to add a product that is out of stock then when the cart comes up there should be a dialog_tools message that tells them that the product they just tried to add is out of stock. Also, when a customer logs in after adding items to their cart, but then logs out the items are saved to the database and the cart is cleared. If the customer logs back in, then the items are recovered and are viewable. However, if a customer adds more items to their cart while logged out, and then logs back in, then the items in the database are lost, replaced by the new items that were selected while logged out. This is a tad bit screwy, and can frustrate a user who doesn't know what's going on. Is there any known hack or workaround for either of these problem anybody? Thanks Y'all.

Ahh yes, forgot about that problem for a moment there. :!: :(

Yes this a problem, just today a customer was like a deer in headlights when trying to figure out what was going on. Of course no sale :(

Even if a customer sends a request for help it is often just out of frustration and a moment later they often decide it is best to just shop elsewhere. Best to eliminate little functionality quirks like that which can cause the entire sale to just fall through.

Re: Worth having ????
 

Thanks for the answer -again !
I should have my shop front design sorted soon and I will be paying your shop a visit for some add ons, probably all of them ! :wink:

I noticed you have a printable catalogue mod and that's just what i'm looking for you must have read my mind ! Does it work well ?

Re: Worth having ????
 

No problem. Hopefully that helped. Just a quick history of what I've seen. I don't want to see this version rushed out like 4.0.x seemed to have been.

Yes so far people have given good feedback to the catalog mod and some have had some good suggestion improvements that we will be implementing probably this week. I hope to have a demo up soon, but I first have to create a demo 4.0.x store

Carrie

Re: smartbargain checkout
 

AMEN to that!!!! This is definitely the way to go!!! There is no need to change something that has been proven to work day in and day out. :)

Going forward, it would be AWESOME if they can just totally remove the "username" field on the registration page and just use the email address as the login name. It is VERY confusing to the customers to have separate fields, email address and then username.

Additionally, this would also reduce 1 more un-necessary field that the customer have to fill out. The less they have to type, the more likely they will complete the transaction.

This is pretty much the stardards for all major ecommerce sites out there. Just take a look at sites such as overstock.com, newegg.com, smartbargains.com, buy.com and several more. I can not think of any good reason why there should be two separate fields, usernames and email address.

Here are all the people that feel the same way as I do. Thank you for letting me voicing my opinion. :)

http://forum.x-cart.com/viewtopic.php?t=12126&postdays=0&postorder=asc&hig hlight=username&start=0

Another thing that I noticed is that........The "First Name" and "Last Name" information in the "Contact Information / Personal Infomation" area do not get populated into the "First Name" and "Last Name" fields under the "Billing Address" and "Shipping Address" section. Even if the customer has the option "Same as billing address" checked during registration.

Hopefully this minor bug will be fixed in the next beta release. :)

-Tuan

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/980/checkoutprocess8ck.jpg

I would like to put in a request to have the Featured Products functionality completely overhauled. I find it to me the most cumbersome part of our stores regular tasks (we try to do 10 or so featured products every-other week).

I would like to be able to simply punch in the PRODUCTID to have it added to the F.P. list. Our product names tend to be pretty long, and so the current pop-up window and "directory" navigation to products is horrible for us. The textarea boxes cut off way too much and do not show the product sku or id, and so a lot of times I cannot determine the product I want to slect (we do car parts, and so a lot of the initial words on products are the same until the end of it). Simply inputting the PRODUCTID would eliviate this altogether.

Another suggestion would be that there is a F.P. checkbox in the product details that you can check or uncheck whenever.

Thanks,
Brian

Fancy Categories Mod
 

I figure I'd better weigh in on the Fancy Categories Mod as I own a license for it and I think it's a great mod but it needs some help.

Two things that I think should be included in the mod:

1.) You should have the option to create a static javascript/html menu that you can regenerate whenever you update your inventory or you can regenerate manually by pressing a button instead of a menu that queries the database every time a page is requested.

2.) You should be able to choose how many levels deep you want the menu to go (1, 2, 3, etc). When the menu extends all the way across the screen to the other side it looks kinda strange.

Just a couple suggestions.

This thread certainly has the forum buzzing! The new features look great. Just to add my thoughts to the matter, all I think have been mentioned before:

1. Templates - definately need a good clean up, remove excessive redundant tags and strip away as many embedded tables as possible. Need to move to a well structured CSS framework as well to help avoid editing dozens of files on every install you make.

Personally I would prefer it if the base installation had a very basic template set that can easily be extended/improved as the designer requires. As it is the templates are complex and require lots of time to modify, it's easier to add code than take away!

2. Buttons templates - needs to be a lot simpler, why run the button process through 2 or 3 templates when you can just have one.

3. Improved checkout - any improvement here is a plus! My clients customers are alway geting confused by the 'register' part while ordering - is it possible to optionally make a 'fast checkout', ie

1. Enter name/address
2. Enter cc/payment info
3. Make payment

- with no hint of username/password. Make it quick and easy.


I think X-carts direction should next move towards site optimisation. there's no reason why the base template set can't be rewritten in a reasonable time and included in a maintenance release?

On 4.0.16 when "Redirect Customer to Cart" is unchecked in general settings it makes it so that when a customer clicks add to cart that they are not sent to the cart page which is good but they are also not given any visual feedback that their click did anything.

In 4.1 please add a visual confirmation that is near the add to cart button that appears after they click add to cart to let them know that the product was added.

ajax maybe? :)

AJAX wouldn't be needed. Just use GET or set a Smarty var before reloading the page.

For 4.1 I know Shan already mentioned customer notes and removing it from CC and giving it it's own field which would be great.

I also think that it would be good to add a column on the admin/orders.php?mode=search page that would be called notes and when a customer leaves a note that that column in the row for that order would have a link called View Note that when clicked would open a pop-up with the customers note. This way when viewing all the orders from a day it would be obvious if there was a note and would be easy to access it.

Also in provider/search.php?mode=search when listing products it would be nice if there was a visual clue as to if a product was disabled. The same way disabled categories in the category section are dimmed if they are disabled would be great :)

You are right. No AJAX :)

Mod is now available to do this

Jon helped me get this mod together. Works in 4.0.16 and the code is available here near the bottom of the first page:

http://forum.x-cart.com/viewtopic.php?t=24561

4.1 Bug
 

Has anyone noticed that during check out when you change your options ie. you had a white t-shirt in your cart and you change that t-shirt to blue it deletes it from your cart completely.

I already posed this question on this thread, but wanted to bring it back up to see if anyone else has run across this problem. Has anyone succesfully imported products in 4.1 yet using either a tab or comma delimited text file? I still can't get it to work. I've even exported some sample products, then turned around and tried to import the same file, but with no success. I still get the checking csv file message and then nothing else happens, it just hangs.

My two cents...
If some of the code was cleaned up and you use the proper doctype, you could generate W3C compliant catalogues as well. I've done this in version 4xx. Keep SEO in mind while perfecting this script because a fast and beautiful site at the bottom of the search engines is still a fast and beautiful site... at the bottom of the search engines. :wink:

Buy Now and Product Options
 

I see there is an option in "Product options options" (heh) to direct Buy Now users to the product details. I would like to optionally display the product's options in the product list. Customers could see a list of products and add one with the correct options to the cart without having to view the product details (extra step) or without having to Edit Details from the cart (no customers understand this).

Since 4.1 improves the functionality and utility of membership levels, it would be nice to see some additional work here:

1) Add order minimum per membership levels. We have different order minimums for our wholesale and retail customers.

2) The ability to bind membership levels to shipping charges. We have different delivery charges for our wholesale dealers and some of our larger direct account both of which are delivered by our trucks. In addition, we have tiered delivery charges for the direct accounts ($x, $y for orders over an amount, free shipping over amount).

While in the shipping charges, it would be nice if the charges were on the same row as the range (lbs with weight, % with order total) and in the first column.

Bob

Checkout - any chance of an early release for this?
 

Hi there,

So glad to see the checkout is being addressed - looks great!
(once the few errors people have mentioned are ironed out)

To be honest this was my biggest X-Cart disappointment in exisiting versions (it really sucks in existing versions) - and personally I do not see EZ Checkout as being much good either. So what to do right now I am thinking???

Therefore I am about to start hacking away at the invoice code (since my store is still not live yet) and I am wondering what is the best approach to take.
Namely try and use the code for V4.1 or hack away at V4.0.17?

Any feedback on this for the short term (NOW) usage is appreciated.

Thanks - Asiaplay.

PS: also thinking about the import and export admin feature - can this work as a standalone for the existing V4.0.17?
Namely does V4.01 use the same SQL structure as V4.0.17?
Love the fact that product language options can be imported via CSV for example! (presently daunted by the 1000 products x 5 languages I have and the time it will take me to cut and paste these in for each product!!!
As well as the pain of havng to copy the language side of options between products hassle that exists at present!). Any thoughts on having an update for the import/export area / part released earlier?

Re: Checkout - any chance of an early release for this?
 

4.1 & 4.0 are totaly different, 4.1 beta is what it says, a beta version and not to be used for anything but testing and as a guide to what will come.

in no way use this code in a production site as you will have no support, plenty of errors and a store that will not fully work or be updatable.

for now use 4.0.17 or wait 6 months for a stable version of 4.1

Checkout - any chance of an early release for this?
 

Thanks for your comments Shan... appreciated.

Was really hoping X-Cart staff would come back on this and say - yeah... we can do something :) .. wonder if they read these forums and will offer a solution ;)

Thanks again... will avoid code from V4.1.0 for now...

Re: Checkout - any chance of an early release for this?
 

Yes they do :D

Hi All

As additional suggestion (which I think would be easy to implement):

I would like to see in the new version that each static page has a separate radio button to select if it is to be parsed rather than the global radio button.

I just re-worked a page recently that had a mouse-over javascript (the padlock) that could not be parsed even with the <literal> statement in the page.

For X-cart developers here is the manually patched HTML page:
http://www.eotr.com/Art_of_Noise_sp_22.HTML

If I cannot individually select parsing, then I would have to use:
"http://www.eotr.com/Art_of_Noise_sp_22(original).HTML"

(note because of the forum filters: I had to quote the link above because of the open & close bracket - copy the link and paste into browser)

So if it isn't too hard, could you please add this feature?

Merry Christmas and a Safe, Healthy and Prosperous New Year to All
Ing. Stephen Hatton
:idea:

Thank you all for your posts, we have reviewed them all very carefully. X-Cart 4.1.0 Beta 2 is released and this thread is locked. I invite you to continue the discussion here: http://forum.x-cart.com/viewtopic.php?t=25220