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X-Cart 4.1.0 beta 1 released

 
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  #161  
Old 11-15-2005, 11:36 AM
 
NuAlpha NuAlpha is offline
 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Light Speed
For some reason my inventory was off and Part B is not in stock.

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.
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  #162  
Old 11-15-2005, 01:17 PM
 
technicaldata technicaldata is offline
 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by NuAlpha
Quote:
Originally Posted by Light Speed
For some reason my inventory was off and Part B is not in stock.

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.
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  #163  
Old 11-15-2005, 04:49 PM
 
NuAlpha NuAlpha is offline
 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by technicaldata
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.

Ahh yes, forgot about that problem for a moment there.
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  #164  
Old 11-16-2005, 08:21 AM
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jedak jedak is offline
 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by NuAlpha
Quote:
Originally Posted by technicaldata
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.

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
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  #165  
Old 11-16-2005, 09:10 AM
 
NuAlpha NuAlpha is offline
 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by jedak
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.
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  #166  
Old 11-16-2005, 02:13 PM
 
Paul H Paul H is offline
 

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Default Re: Worth having ????

Quote:
Originally Posted by BCSE
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul H
I have a version 4.0.15 of xcart but haven't got around to going live so is it worth waiting for this new version to arrive fully tested and debugged or just carry on with my current version. The one thing that sticks out is this easier checkout routine. Once I have gone live with my store I won't be upgrading it ever due to the huge amount of hassle it would be.
So YES or NO is my non programmer question ?

Paul,

To give you an idea of how long it may take for 4.1 to become stable, it took 4.0.x over 9 months, and 3.5.x about 6 months. I don't remember the times for 3.4.x and 3.3.x So 4.1 is still in beta, I would estimate 6-12 months for it to be come "stable" This is just based upon past history. I could be wrong. I'm sure they'll have 4.1.0 out (non-beta) well before then, but it usually takes many months for a new branch to be considered "stable" and mostly bug free.

So really it depends on when you want to open.

I'm hoping they will take their time to get this first version out, and have it mostly bug free from the start. So that they aren't "fighting fires" and can concentrate on working the hopefully small remaining bugs out.

On upgrading, for me, that's no big deal. But I've done countless upgrades for people. From 3.3.5 all the way up to 4.0.16 Upgrading can take someone who knows what they are doing, from as little as 1 hour to do, to 10's of hours. Just depends on how many versions your moving from/to and how much your store is modified.

Hope this helps.

Carrie

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 !

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 ?
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  #167  
Old 11-16-2005, 06:44 PM
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Default Re: Worth having ????

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul H
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 !

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 ?

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
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  #168  
Old 11-16-2005, 10:12 PM
 
TL408 TL408 is offline
 

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Default 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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by flyingsaucer
I am now having my checkout system modified to match the smartbargains.com checkout style. Very easy, only two steps. It includes all the elements of x-cart checkout but in a very clean way.

Once you click checkout button, it presents you email and password screen, and there is a checkbox that says something like "I am a new customer" and if you select it, it allows you to create a password in next step.

In next (second) step, you have the cartsummary to the left, and to the right you have shipping options, address and payment all in one page.

Notice how they have the notes, and billing sections collapsed using DHTML and you can expand if you need to.

Bottomline is, they are a multimillion dollar company and they have dedicated people to find out what frustrates customers and how to hide the less usable elements, like billing address or notes and make things easier for customers.

No need to reinvent the wheel.

I wish x-cart people have done something similar as a fast checkout module.
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  #169  
Old 11-23-2005, 06:32 PM
 
TL408 TL408 is offline
 

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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
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  #170  
Old 11-23-2005, 07:39 PM
 
TL408 TL408 is offline
 

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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
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