X-Cart forums

[totaltec]

Originally Posted by carpeperdiem

Add To Cart Popup - "Buy Now" upsell product adds to cart instead of redirect
https://bugtracker.qtmsoft.com/view.php?id=42319

Originally Posted by rocky

I have to disagree with you on this one. Add to Cart Pop-Up was aimed to ease the process and when a customer clicks on Add to Cart in pop-up window he expects the item to be added to the cart instantly. Whereas, you want to redirect him to the product details page (unexpected behaviour).

Originally Posted by carpeperdiem

This is standard behavior for xcart since 4.1.x -- this is not the time to remove this. Does everyone agree?

I tend to agree with both of you. Add to cart in the popup is intended as a quick up-sell feature, I think it is a great feature for impulse buying.

However, there are many instances where the merchant needs to control the selections that the customer makes as Jeremy states.

I can think of several solutions to this problem. A simple one would be to change the button text to "See Details" on products that have options, then the redirect to product page would be expected. Another is to exclude products with options from the popup.

The best solution in my opinion would be to include the options right on the page. I know this adds significantly to the overhead, but it seems like it would solve the problem perfectly.

I think pushing the options out to the category pages, and other product lists, is a good idea in general. At least it could be an option in the admin. I know the code exists for allowing product options in the product lists, I have coded a solution for this in the past for a client.

The fact is that X-cart is a complex beast, there are always situations that would be perfect for one merchant, terrible for another. QT has to walk the fine line of trying to please everybody, and they do it remarkably well.

[ADDISON]

It is Up-selling or Cross-selling? Up-Selling means making the customer spending more money on an expensive product with the same characteristics than the one visited, Cross-Selling means creating a chain of products for a potential buying.

In my opinion if a customer wants to buy a product and it is already added to cart, pop-up window content could be:

1) just for information - this is my main choice, leave him alone to buy it!

2) showing other products to buy. Up-selling as term is not OK - it is cross-selling. Think to show for example product accessories - this is what I will show for him in product page, after the customer clicks on Continue button.

There are lots of discussions on Internet about Up-Selling and Cross-Selling. The most say:

Up-Selling - is great in Cart page or Product page as "You could be interested? Did you see this?". - I don't think it is OK to do this!

Cross-Selling - is great in Cart page or Product page as "We recommend ...", "People also bought ...".

After me it is like catching a fish. Once you catch one and it is on hook you can't fish another one with the same fishing rod. You take your own conclusions.

Sorry for this Off-Topic post.

[totaltec]

Originally Posted by ADDISON

After me it is like catching a fish. Once you catch one and it is on hook you can't fish another one with the same fishing rod. You take you own conclusions.

LOL. Or as my grandmother used to say, "You can't catch two chickens at the same time."

[carpeperdiem]

Actually, it's upselling.

"would you like fries with that?"
"do you need a case for the camera?"
"do you need brushes with the makeup powder?"
and the most evil of all: "would you like an extended warranty?"

In situations 1, 2 and 3, we (merchants) are doing our customer a service -- pointing out there are accessories that are suitable for the product that they may want, and we just happen to have an expertly paired solution, right here, right now.

cross-selling (to me) means selling something else, once the customer is in the store (customers also bought)

Terminology aside, we can call it anything we want -- but the ability for a merchant to help a customer find exactly what they want is our job. If my customer buys a makeup item and I don't ask her if she has the appropriate brush makes me a poor service provider. Of course, she may already have one - but maybe not.

Mike - your suggestion to turn off the BUY NOW pref makes no difference in the Add To Cart pop-up (try it). Pref On or OFF it still simply adds item to cart without option selection. This is TERRIBLY dangerous for the merchant since it guarantees the wrong item will be in the cart. Returns. Bad.

I don't see merchandising as a fishing trip. I'm trying to help my customers find what they need. I have countless orders where my customer comes in for one item and leaves with a dozen. That's not fishing!

Adding the product options to the category page (same code, right?) is a major undertaking that I don't want to do. There is another option:

http://www.websitecm.com/x-cart-mods/ezupsell.html

I own this, use it on my 4.1.x store and can upgrade it to 4.5.x for cab fare. I think I may have to use EZ-up and not the sexy pop-up (unless I can put EZ-up into a js box - of course I can - do i want to? maybe.)

Part of the attraction for gold plus was the add to cart popup. But it's not ready for prime time if your store relies on options. And based on the response from Alexander, I think it's a long time coming before this feature is added -- so I will turn it off and install EZ-up. Simple. Happy.

I hope x-cart leadership understands why this missing functionality is a bug, and makes the add to cart popup worthless to the store with product options.

Moving on...

J

[ADDISON]

"Upselling (sometimes "up-selling") is a sales technique whereby a seller induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Upselling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products but can also be simply exposing the customer to other options that were perhaps not considered previously. Upselling implies selling something that is more profitable or otherwise preferable for the seller instead of, or in addition to,[1] the original sale. A different technique is cross-selling in which a seller tries to sell something else."

Here is an up-selling example. You are inside a product page and see a jacket which costs 200 USD. As a seller I show you other 3 - 4 jackets, pretty close to the one visited, but with prices more expensive, around 250 - 300 USD. My intention is making you to buy those expensive, for more profit. I could use fear to the customer that a product is not better than the others, just for spending more money on those I want to sell, or I have in stock. Another example: you buy a software and there are options for upgrading 1 year, 2 years - this is a "soft" up-selling, a normal one related exclusively to that product. As a person who graduated in marketing techniques when I'm visiting a store I watch how the products are promoted - always a big fish has people who are working for increasing the selling. It is a pleasure for me to see how smart they are. As a conclusion Up-Selling must be used very precaution.

We are posting inside a thread about a new version 454. Let's talk in details here about selling techniques: http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?p=348318

[carpeperdiem]

Expectation: years of development should have worked its way into the core.

Disappointment: why do we have to do basic, common sense, rudimentary mods to a mature product?

For example:

Contact us form. If the cusotmer types a book (or a simple email) and uses paragraphs, xcart 4.5.4 does not preserve line breaks in the message. It's a 10-second fix, all of 7 characters, but why hasn't this been added to the core after all these years? Of course, every store has probably done this on their own, since reading an email without line breaks is next to impossible.

/include/help.php

find:
// Send mail to support

$body = $_POST['body'] = stripslashes($_POST['body']);

replace it with:
$body = $_POST['body'] = nl2br(stripslashes($_POST['body']));

uses the nl2br function of php. http://php.net/manual/en/function.nl2br.php

2 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

But why isn't this in the core? It's NOT a bug -- it's just a defect.

After sitting out many years of upgrades, I expected 4.5.4 to be a mature product. Just sharing. Remember, I love this product, but sometimes it just frustrates me.

[totaltec]

Originally Posted by carpeperdiem

Mike - your suggestion to turn off the BUY NOW pref makes no difference in the Add To Cart pop-up (try it).

I wasn't implying that it worked, just suggesting that it be made to work.

Here you go. To change the button to See Details instead of Add to Cart, if the product has variants or options:

Look in /common_files/modules/Add_to_cart_popup/product_added.tpl
Near line 140 Find:

{include file="modules/Add_to_cart_popup/buy.tpl}

Change it to:

                    
{if $p.is_product_options eq 'Y' or $p.is_variant eq 'Y'}
 {assign var=productid value=$p.productid}
 {include file="customer/buttons/button.tpl" button_title=$lng.lbl_see_details  href="product.php?productid=$productid" additional_button_class="main-button"}
{else}
  {include file="modules/Add_to_cart_popup/buy.tpl}
{/if}

[carpeperdiem]

Originally Posted by totaltec

To change the button to See Details instead of Add to Cart, if the product has variants or options:

Hi Mike, Thanks for this....

SO of course, when I went back in to turn on the add to cart module to test this (I disabled the module after realizing this wasn't going to work as is) -- the add to cart function no longer works. This was before I did the edit that you suggested.

I have done all the normal troubleshooting -- use cleanup.php, etc...

Now I am doing a folder-by-folder compare with a default 4.5.3goldplus to see what I could have done to make it stop working. Geez!

Thanks for the code.

J

[rocky]

Originally Posted by carpeperdiem

And based on the response from Alexander, I think it's a long time coming before this feature is added
J

I didn't say that, Jeremy. What I said was that there can be different notions of how it should work and we should take them all into consideration. One merchant reckons it should redirect to a product details page, whereas it's not so obvious for another one.

Folks, I'd really appreciate if you discussed Add to Cart Pop-up feature in a separate thread as @ADDISION suggested, because this thread is dedicated to X-Cart 4.5.4 release.

[jillsybte]

Originally Posted by carpeperdiem

Hi Alexander,

Thank you for replying.

The behavior that should happen is a standard function of X-cart from any category page with a BUy NOW button -- IF, the setting:

Product Options
Redirect a customer who clicks the "Buy Now" or "Add to wish list" buttons of a product with product options to product details page [checked]

please see:
http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?t=65183

The issue here is the function of BUY NOW should be consistent across the ENTIRE store. IF a customer clicks on a product that requires options anywhere else in xcart (and the setting is enabled to redirect to product page if there are options required), then xcart takes the customer to the product page to select options.

Alternatively, if xcart were to allow the selection of options in the products listing, there would be no need for this.

The reason this is an ESSENTIAL fucntion for the cart is that if the customer uses the upsell buy now and adds and item, WHAT size is it going to be? What color? This ONLY creates problems for the customer and the merchant snce they will both have to deal with this. "the customer can specify size or color in the cart" is not acceptable. That's too late. In the case of makeup products, we have various shades of powder. The "default" color may be light-medium, but that's only because about 35% of the customer are this color. But we also have colors for very light all the way to dark. We CAN NOT assume a customer has light skin. If we ship the customer the wrong color, we have to deal with returns, upset customers and expenses. The easy solution is to require the customer select the color they want before they checkout. (ah -- see https://bugtracker.qtmsoft.com/view.php?id=42316 and http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?t=65176 ) -- it's related!

The correct flow should be just like on a category or featured products page. The code exists. You probably had to code around the preference. PLEASE respect the normal behavior of the store. DO I need to get you a bunch of "yes, Jeremy is right here -- please fix x-cart" emails?

Please discuss this with your team. I know you will agree that the cart consistency and making order process simple for the CUSTOMER is all that matters. If the customer has to change a color or size or (more likely) merchant has to contact the customer and verify their color choice, this is not making anything easier for the customer. Or the merchant.

Thanks.

Jeremy

I am totally with carpeperdiem here. To be blunt, customers are generally stupid. They are extremely unlikely to notice that an in-cart item has options to select, such as size, color, etc. This will create a major headache for both the customer and the merchant, since the merchant will have to double-check whenever an item is ordered with default options, causing shipment delays, etc.

Furthermore, any online store at which I have ever shopped allows one to select options BEFORE adding an item to the cart. Having to change options in-cart is totally unexpected behavior.

I'm sure many others would agree with me and carpeperdiem here, so PLEASE fix this behavior.

Thank you.