Add to SunShop 4.0 feature list. [Archive]

verycommerce

04-20-2006, 09:58 PM

Oh pretty please with all kinds of sugar and cherries on top - A FULL QUICKBOOKS INTEGRATION!!!!

I KNOW that this was removed in the last upgrade, but we still have several fabric stores that desperately need fractional quantities. We retained the fractional quantities, but of course, that renders inventory a big mess. That would be one of my BIGGEST requests.

Also, shipping modules for APO/FPO addresses.

Would be nice to be able to set a minimum a customer has to purchase on a product.

In the checkout area would be nice to have one drop down menu customers could customize with "Where did you hear about us?" , so you can add places that you may be advertising in.

OKAY ... now, what I'm THRILLED ABOUT!
1. Gift Certificates! WHOOHOO!
2. A Wish List that can actually function as a GIFT REGISTRY --> does this mean it will deplete as orders are processed through it? This, in and of itself, is going to be sublime!
3. PayPal Pro - way to shuffle through that mess they require! YAHOOHOOEE!
4. Inventory control for options - YES!
5. I'm worried about changed templates too b/c we are an ASP 'reseller' and ours has been modified, BUT ... I'm soooooooooooo excited about all the other changes.

And now, to leave you to your work! ;)

augusthouse

04-20-2006, 10:03 PM

Please include the dd/mm/yy option both in shop and admin for those of us who reside outside the USA.

craigw

04-20-2006, 10:12 PM

:confused: Dear Turnkey Web Tools Development Team,

While I am really excited about the improvements I see listed, I am a bit shocked to see that the ability to offer FREE shipping over a certain dollar amount is not included.

Anyone who spends any amount of time shopping on the Internet realizes that many online retailers offer free shipping over a certain dollar amount. This has become commonplace with leading retailers.

Here is just a small list that includes some of the top retailers on the Internet:

Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Tower Records
ShoeBuy.com
Zappos.com
DrugStore.com

Just do a Google search on "free shipping over" and you will get a clue of how many online retailers are offering free shipping.

I thought for sure that when SunShop 4 comes out that such a fundamental feature would be included. Please don't overlook this essential feature if you want SunShop to be considered one of the leading shopping carts solutions for e-commerce.

Sincerely,

Craig Winters
Full Spectrum Internet & E-Commerce Services
PO Box 55669
Seattle, WA 98155
Tel: 425-775-7644
E-mail: mailto:craig@fullspectrumweb.com
Web Site: http://www.fullspectrumweb.com

fogelka

04-20-2006, 10:22 PM

We have not yet launched our site, and have not figured out all of the features of SunShop yet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you have no control over the "Best Sellers" list. I would like to be able to put my own items in that category, in order to promote items that are best sellers in the "real world" store, but may not yet be picked up on in the "virtual world" store.

steinje

04-21-2006, 12:00 AM

- Add Europe date format DD.MM.YY

- Option for adding picture/flash content inn the side columns

- "Where you found us" field for Customer too fill out when doing an order

- Customer Company field for customer to fill in, and will be shown on the order

- Address in format "ZIP CITY" not only "CITY, ZIP"

- When doing "Zoom In" on product pictures, no way of printing the image.

- Option for customer for printing complete catalouge of your products

- The price "strike through" is causing 8 look like 0, problem in som web browsers,
the strike through line should be 3 pixels lower.

- Can not edit templates in advanced mode using Firefox webbrowser

CaliXMinn

04-21-2006, 12:02 AM

I noticed nothing is being added to the group functionsin Sunshop 4. This could be a valuable marketing tool if used properly.

As it is used now a group is created for discounts.

What if, in addtion to the group discount, a group function was created for discounts with a formal signup page to create the group. You were also able to track total dollar sales (monthly, quarterly, yearly) for the group to pay commissions for that group - *see below.

That way you could have people selling for your store.

*You could sign up individuals(he could sell to friends and family), groups (they could use it for fund raising), businesses(if they buy products through your website - cash back quarterly for products purchased).

Group 1 Total Sales $30,783 quarterly
3% You could set the commission percentage.

Total sales commission for Group 1 923.83

Mail a check for that amount to the group leader and you have a very excited sales person working for your website.

I don't think I have seen any other cart offer this. I have submitted this on your formal quote request and have not received a reply after two months. Please consider this in the next upgrade to Sunshop. Fellow Sunshop users please tell me what you think.

Thank you,

Paul

vincent

04-21-2006, 12:32 AM

1. be able to set inventory base on each size/color variation.

-see x-cart for reference

2. be able to edit invoice (add item and delete item and manage back order item)

3. better sales report system

4. be able to add more field into customer profile detail which show in customer profile page and order detail page.

-example: be able to add a field call "reseller permit" and a field which allow customer to input their credit card information which show in order detail page.

5. create sales rep profile and assign commission rate to each sales repo.
also be able to assign sales rep. to each customer.

MySipsTea

04-21-2006, 01:50 AM

Hello,

These options should bring the cart up to par with ecommerce templates shopping cart

Two items from the peanut gallery:

1)Sitemap feature
2)Pricematch feature - basically a modified version of the contact form.

halyfax

04-21-2006, 04:10 AM

I don't think I saw auto thumbnail generation that is based on the dimensions of the original image. Currently all thumbnails have to be the same dimensions which is basically useless.

tkay

04-21-2006, 04:52 AM

I have read the list, sounds good but it really means nothing to me. I have no knowledge of programing, but with the help of support I have muddled through and have a site up and running pretty much as to how I would like it.

New features.
1. A manual would be nice. not to much tec stuff.
2. To offer a postage discount on the second or more of the same item
3. Set a minimum amount before they can check out
4. Customer registration to be on seperate page and the option create, don't create account be taken off check out page.

regards tkay
www.sweets4all.net

buddha

04-21-2006, 06:21 AM

sounds great!
especially the random image verification to stop all the spamming

sikter

04-21-2006, 06:34 AM

All the suggestions are really great and I support all of them.

Here are a few suggestions that haven't been addressed so far:

1. MUCH BETTER STORE SEARCHING AND ACCURATE SEARCH RESULTS. These what we have right now suck a big time, and they are very inaccurate. Every single shopping cart gives more accurate search results than SunShop. This is my main complaint about this car in general.

2. Being able to mix real time shipping and custom shipping. For exaple to be able to have local pickup (which is free) and UPS/SPSP/FedEx as an option at the same time. Free shipping as an added option to these, too.

3. To be able to work with discounts the same way as with coupons: like minimum purchase required before it kicks in, set the expiration date, etc.

4. Being able to tile the subcategory display like you tile the product display (when clicked on the main category), and more options for displaying these in general.

5. Being able to have a pull down menu and drop down menu as an option for displaying subcategories.

6. To have a way to tie the cart to the reall accounting system and inventory control.

Thanks.

BantasCreek

04-21-2006, 07:10 AM

Turnkey,

As an ASP licenses holder, I have worked with a couple of companies and developed the SunShop into a shopping cart fully loaded with products ready to be setup for their clients to use and to sell that particular companies products.

The one feature that I would like to see is the ability to disable the export/import of the CSV files in the manage products section. As you know, it takes a special understanding of how this works and what keyboard characters you can and cannot use when uploading and maintaining the products through a CSV file.

I have had a lot of issues with users whom just happen to have Microsoft's Excel on their computers and think they understand what their doing. Until they experience an issue where they have used a comma, quote mark or left the header in the CSV file, no amount of instructions (verbal or written) is adequate.

Please consider implementing an option to allow/disallow the export/import of the CSV file in the maintain products section of the SunShop.

ALSO...

We have discovered that the SunShop will allow buyers to actually purchase more products than you have in-stock with the force in-stock option set to on. The scenario is as follows:

1 - You have the force in-stock turned on.
2 - You have a quantity of 10 pcs.set for a product.
3 - A buyer adds 7 of this items to the cart at one time, which is below the in-stock quantity of 10 pcs.
4 - The buyer may or may not add any different items to the cart, but if the buyer selects the same item as before and adds a quantity of 4 pcs. or greater, the total of the items will (in this case) be 11 which is greater than the 10 which is the in-stock quantity.

To avoid confusion in this example, the buyers had clicked the add to cart button twice, once adding a quantity of 7 items to the shopping cart and then adding an additional 4 of the same item to the cart for a total of 11 items. Even thought the buyer could have edited his original entry of 7 items and made it 11 of the same item this was not done.

However rare this situation may be I have seen it happen, which oversells the item.

vegvit

04-21-2006, 07:14 AM

Please see this link with the posts about the fixed expedited shipping and other types of shipping options. I thought you agreed on those but could not see them in the list.
http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2387

Also I have to say the search results need to be improved for products searches, I have seen somebody posted about it and I agree with him. I am looking through my list and most of the things are now addressed in 4.0 but will keep checking and adding If I see anthing else missed.

Vegvit

JerzyR

04-21-2006, 07:59 AM

So I thought that I cannot rely on such things myself, so I will implement my own url redirection system on my server.
However for less experienced users it might be a little problem though

Jerzy

AlanT

04-21-2006, 08:26 AM

One thing I've learned since I first investigated SunShop is that the structure of the database is the most important aspect of any online software. With a good database structure, modifications can be made easily, new features added with little effort, and everything can be good.

This was what made sales reporting difficult. One of those reasons I was willing to 'lose' my investment in SunShop by switching to another cart. What good was it to be able to list a vendor for each product if I couldn't pull a report on that vendor's sales?

That wasn't the only reason I switched. Another reason came upon realizing that the integration of the affiliate modules was not as tight as I was led to believe in the product description.

Several people above are asking about an affiliate program although they don't realize that that's what they're asking for. The built-in affiliate program that SunShop had before was the key "killer" feature that is needed in a shopping cart.

Integrated to the point where we can define different commissions per product, as well as different commission levels per affiliate.

SunShop's ability to offer multiple downloads is an advantage over other carts, but will it have the option to assign downloads to product options. This will allow us to sell a low-quality file for a lessor amount and a higher quality file for a bit more. I see that there's a mod for CubeCart now that allows for this.

A save cart feature is an improvement, but why not do it automatically in a cookie? Don't make the customer think. Take care of the customer even when the customer doesn't understand they need taken care of.

Another advantage that SunShop has over other carts is the drop-ship feature. I can't remember clearly, but wasn't there an issue about shipping charges when products come from multiple suppliers? If so, then this will also need to be addressed in the new version.

As far as wholesale pricing, many shop owners want to set a separate price for each class of customer - retail, wholesale, distributor, etc. The discount system gave some ability to manage this, but not enough. We need to be able to set separate prices for each product for each customer group.

You've got some great ideas, including
__________________________________________________ ____
10. Adding of a custom build feature for allowing your customers to mix and match options for an item and regenerate the price based on these option without adding it to their cart.

14. Newsletter signup feature. Rework the sending method for newsletters so they will be "large list friendly".

15. Discount overhaul to allow more flexibility in discounts including cross-item discounts, category based discounts and more.

17. Add PayPal payment button on account pages if the order method was PayPal and the order was not fully completed and paid for.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Item 10 can be really powerful, and X-Cart charges extra for that feature.

Item 14 can be good. Add in the options for personalization of individual emails with firstname, lastname, order history, etc. and you're really got something powerful and unique.

Item 15 is something that's been asked for for years. It's about time.

Item 17 is something that I see a need for with many of my customers. Quite often, they have a problem with PayPal and end up placing 2 or 3 orders before they get one to go through.

The direction you are going with the templates can be good. I love the clean coding of the current templates, which are very similar to the XTemplate system. Having them in files can make the system run faster, and would allow for easy changing of 'themes' or 'skins' at the drop of a hat.

For those who are worried about going to CSS based templates, let me suggest that CSS isn't that difficult to learn. Go to http://www.w3schools.com/css and you'll be able to pick it up easily. That's where I finally learned how to master it. There's also a great tool for creating and editing CSS files. It's called RapidCSS, can be found at http://www.blumentals.net/rapidcss, and costs less than $20.

For an example of the power of CSS, go to http://www.csszengarden.com and you'll be blown away by the dramatic differences that can be acheived on the same webpage by changing nothing more than the stylesheet.

But on the other hand, it's best not to lock your customers into something they are unfamiliar with. For greatest compatibility, offer 2 sets of default templates, one table based and the other CSS based.

JerzyR

04-21-2006, 09:00 AM

Turnkey,

The one feature that I would like to see is the ability to disable the export/import of the CSV files in the manage products section. As you know, it takes a special understanding of how this works and what keyboard characters you can and cannot use when uploading and maintaining the products through a CSV file.

I have had a lot of issues with users whom just happen to have Microsoft's Excel on their computers and think they understand what their doing. Until they experience an issue where they have used a comma, quote mark or left the header in the CSV file, no amount of instructions (verbal or written) is adequate.

item.

The export/import feature should be improved as much as possible, not left out forgotten!!

This is the only way (via admin section) to update products inventory on daily basis. I use it on daily basis to replace products data with new information about items avaiability and quantity on stock.

regards
jerzy

Kraken

04-21-2006, 09:26 AM

Before I start nitpicking, I'd like to say that I'm looking forward to the upgrade.

In the checkout area would be nice to have one drop down menu customers could customize with "Where did you hear about us?" , so you can add places that you may be advertising in.

Another vote for this feature, please.

We have not yet launched our site, and have not figured out all of the features of SunShop yet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you have no control over the "Best Sellers" list. I would like to be able to put my own items in that category, in order to promote items that are best sellers in the "real world" store, but may not yet be picked up on in the "virtual world" store.

Whenever you edit a bestselling product, even just to increment the quantity on hand, it falls off the bestseller list. You have to create a fake transaction to relist it. While I don't mind being unable to control the list, I would love to see that bug fixed: editing a product should not remove it from the bestseller list.

1. be able to set inventory base on each size/color variation.

Yes, definitely. Sunshop does not handle variations well. The only way to control inventory is to create a separate product page for each variant.

Will we finally be able to see who is and who is not subscribed to the newsletter? A checkbox on the user list, which not only displays each user's current status but also lets us change it, would be most welcome.

TurnkeyAdmin

04-21-2006, 12:04 PM

JerzyR: Most likely this will consist of simply droppping a few uneccessary variables. For the most part the regular URL's will stay the same.

augusthouse & steinje: The date format feature will be added to the list as its something we were planning to do just forgot to add to the list.

craigw: This is going to be added as well. Just forgot to list it.

CaliXMinn: Group signup will possibly be added and I will get it on the list.

vincent: A few of your requests are already on the list.

halyfax: I think you are mistaken on how auto thumbnailing works. If you use the manual resising in the general settings then you are correct. But if you use the resizing in the Resizing settings then you are incorrect. The dimmensions are not altered if you have gd or imajic installed on the server.

tkay: I will get a few of your features added to the list. A few of them were going to be added just not on the list yet.

BantasCreek: The stock issues are already going to be addressed as its in the list.

AlanT: Thanks for the feeback. A few of the items you listed need to be added to the feature list and will be addressed. On the other hand though you may be mistaken on the group pricing. We added a feature in the last version where you can have group pricing per item. So that is already a option.

The list will be updated shortly so be sure to review it.

TurnkeyAdmin

04-21-2006, 12:13 PM

sikter: Subcategory tiling was added to 3.5.1

nicedreams242

04-21-2006, 12:38 PM

I don't think I saw auto thumbnail generation that is based on the dimensions of the original image. Currently all thumbnails have to be the same dimensions which is basically useless.

Image resizing appears to me the resize takes your contrainsts you enter from the image settings, and resizes the image, proportionally and once the image is within those dimensions for both height and width, not at all based on the image original size. I think you are saying you want per image based resizing and not global dimensions correct?

recedo

04-21-2006, 01:07 PM

I'm looking forward to this release and am very happy that you have released a features list at this stage.

There are several things I would like to see implemented, some have been listed here and I don't have the time to go through the full post. But... one thing that I don't think has really been requested, which I think a few people would be interested in;

A CMS type system for info etc. I have been looking at CS-Cart recently and love thier CMS and Adverts features, it would be good (and probably not that difficult) to add a similar thing to SS. This is by no means a plug for their software!

A couple of other features that would be good for me - maybe some others too so it might be good to have an additional 'module' (for an extra fee of course);

I sell music downloads so a built in way to have music/video samples through a flash button or similar would be great. At the moment I have to add the html manually. Also a way to list tracks on albums (with the preview) would be good. Pehaps you could look into creating a few modules for different types of shops, eg music, dvd, games, clothes and so on.

I, like some others, am a little 'worried' about the new template system, but we shall wait and see what happens!

I'll have a decent read through and get back to you with any other features I'd like to see.

Simon

Spookious

04-21-2006, 01:18 PM

* This reply edited to make it easier to read *

Here's some things I would LOVE to see added:

At Checkout... or in the Cart View... have a way to display all the Product's chosen Options in a list format instead of paragraph format separated by commas
At the Checkout/View Account page, the "State/Province" appears to default to the same state as what's listed in the 'Company Information' settings. Leave this blank to be chosen instead.
On the Contact Us form, if someone hits "Continue" without filling in the form, it sends a blank email. Also, on the Contact Us form, add some sort of error correction or handling, like for instance limiting the number of characters for the Name field, making sure the Phone Number field is all numbers, etc.
Error correction or handling is also needed on the Zip Code and Email fields when ordering.
When someone places an order and the "ship to" and "billing" addresses are different - have both sets of addresses show up on the final/finalization page.
*** [From Squirrelcart...] Squirrelcart can add a link that will open a popup detail page describing an option, and it's choices. If you add images for your choices, they will appear in this page. It's a great way to show detailed information describing the option and it's choices. LINK HERE (http://www.squirrelcart.com/features.php)... look under Product Options... it gives an example.
*** [Global Options] Creating an Option then applying that Option to different Products. The Option retains continuity/consistency across all the Products that contain that particular Option. If you edit the Option, the change would be made globally - across all the Products that contain that particular Option.
[Admin area] Make it easier to move Options up/down the list
Change the way option prices are displayed. Example... right now Option prices are displayed as follows:
- Add $50.00
I would like to see the "- Add" be displayed as "(+" with a closing ")" AND it would change to reflect the value IF we entered a negative number... "(-".
So now it gets displayed as (+$50.00) or (-$50.00)
To me (of course) this looks a LOT better, saves space (fewer characters) and is more robust in allowing us to use negative numbers without having it read "- Add -$50.00"
One click backup of entire shop
One click restore of entire shop
The ability to toggle on/off: credit card pre-authorization

*** If it/I had these 2 features, I would cry tears of shear joy & I would love you long time. :)

***
Now... I will say that I'm pretty excited about some of the changes and additions that are coming. I'm REALLY happy about a couple of them!
***

Question: I'm using 3.5 (pre-RC2 & 3.5.1). Will I be able to upgrade straight from 3.5 to 4.0? (Oh please, oh please, oh please!)

kathyg

04-21-2006, 01:24 PM

we have to charge sales tax within our State (California) which has thousands of tax rates. It's a pain to have to manually type all those tax rates in every time they change. If anyone has a solution I'd appreciate it

tomynate

04-21-2006, 01:42 PM

May have missed this. Would like to be able to set up new (featured also) items for limited number of days like 7, 14, 30. Very time consuming to go in a delete them one by one.

tomynate

04-21-2006, 01:43 PM

Would like to see them set up as html pages so can use text and key words for SEO.

CaliXMinn

04-21-2006, 05:07 PM

I actually called the State Franchise Tax Board on this and you are only responsible to collect 7.25% in all cities and counties out of your area.

You must, however, collect the tax rate in the zip codes in your city. Mine...Riverside has about seven or eight zip codes so I set them to 7.75%.

Hope this helps.

CybrHost

04-21-2006, 06:28 PM

All Categories and products should have a Header and Footer Text Area. This significantly adds to the design ability and is something many other carts offer.

tomynate

04-21-2006, 10:08 PM

Would like for my customers to be able to see shipping charges before checking out.

psworld

04-21-2006, 11:50 PM

Being a new user I found it extremely time consuming and frustrating:cool: to setup given many of the other commerce softwares have pre-existing shop items already installed that you just replace. Having used those store fronts also I must say the others did seem much easier to understand and less time consuming. I was suprised to not see that with SunShop. Any thoughts of doing something similar? We'd love ya for it! :D

jey2283

04-22-2006, 02:15 PM

I think you should add digital mall functionality to SunShop in the 4.0 release. This addition can be like the X-Cart Pro or Ashop Deluxe Digital Mall Feature. It would be great if you could make the cart allow hosted shops which pay "rent" or a % of the sale price to the owner of the digital mall. Go even farther and beat X-Cart Pro by allowing each store front to have its own domain the will link to the SunShop "StoreFront" Digital Mall database (or something like that).

Main point: digital mall to allow other people to sell their own stuff on your store with out you having to manually upload it set the price and pay out commissions. If X-Cart can do it, i know sunshop can!

jey2283

04-22-2006, 02:18 PM

This would be a great idea: have SunShop automatically charge a "PayPal" tax which is equivlent to the % the paypal charges to use their services. This would be roughly 2.99% + 30 cents. That would save me the trouble in finding the price i can sell an item for then manually uping the price to compensate for paypal. Just a thought, but if i had to choose btw the "paypal tax" and the "digital mall" focus on the digital mall :)

MySipsTea

04-23-2006, 12:48 PM

Ability to place items on backorder

verycommerce

04-24-2006, 10:05 AM

I don't think I saw auto thumbnail generation that is based on the dimensions of the original image. Currently all thumbnails have to be the same dimensions which is basically useless.

Actually you can set minimum and maximum thumbnail settings with the 'Resizing' feature and leave the thumbnail settings blank. :)

----------------------------
Can we have a way within the admin panel to see all products that are marked "new" or "featured"?

With the developments to the subcategory, it would be nice to be able to sort by subcategory instead of just category.

Once you have sorted your products, you should be able to move from one product to the next within that subset more easily. It is a pain to have to resort every time, or hit "back" and "refresh" to move to the next item on the subset.

Some of my clients have been marking things as "new" and then they have to go back and unmark them in a couple of weeks when the product is not new. Or they put things on sale temporarily. I know they can export and reimport, but frankly that isn't much easier with all the quotes and double quotes they end up with in their product descriptions. It'd be nice if this was more easily available to do in the admin panel.

daser007

04-24-2006, 11:28 PM

Hello there,

I appreciate the hard work and thank you for your coming new release. Here are some features I haven't seen posted as suggestions yet and that i consider very important:

> A way to easily import only some fields of the products while leaving all other fields unchanged. Ex. If i want to justa change the price of some skus I just import an excel sheet with two columns, price and sku and the product database just updates those two fields leaving the rest unchanged.

> On the Froogle feed be able to use the sale price when there's one instead of the regular price. And use the shorter item description instead of the detailed one.

> Able to create custom product, category and customer fields from the admin panel. This is a super powerful feature with many applications. Ex: want to ask classify customers on check out by having them pick an option from a drop down list: What kind of bicycle do you currently ride? Option1 Mountain Bike Option 2 Road Bike

Or say create a custom product field that shows in every add a product form

> A way to create "if statements" on the templates. ex. if catefory number equals 25 then show this piece of code, etc

> Be able to Custom write the TITLE of every product and category page without having the main page title at the beginning of every title in the page

> Be bale to set how many specials, or best sellers are shown at once on the side tables. It would be nice to show them dynamically even when runnning static html pages

> Specific header and footer for every category besides the general header and footer

I will be posting more features that i can think of soon.

vegvit

04-25-2006, 07:22 AM

When is the estimated launch date for Sunshop 4.0?

verycommerce

04-25-2006, 07:32 AM

When is the estimated launch date for Sunshop 4.0?

I've been told 'late summer.'

grayloon

04-25-2006, 09:47 AM

I'm very excited about full CSS support. We've been developing sites in CSS for a couple of years, and it's much easier for us. Glad to see SunShop is jumping on the bandwagon.

I'm also interested in an anticipated release date.

Scott

04-25-2006, 10:32 AM

Am I missing something or did you miss enhancing the SSL on more pages in the cart.

I acn't see it in the list. This is a Must have.

bkim

04-25-2006, 10:32 AM

Hello, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to contribute to an even better version of sunshop!

My only request is this: Is there a way to allow us to set a specific order to the fields that appear on the "manage transactions" page?

Our fulfillment company needs to receive our orders with the fields in a very specific order i.e. Order number, name, street address, city, state, etc.

It is very time consuming to select this specific order every single day.

Also, right now, for the "products" field, your software generates the product numbers rather than the product names. Is there any way to add a field that generates the actualy SKU or product name for each transaction?

Finally, can you add a field that indicates total weight of an order?

Thank you for considering these requests!

bkim

TurnkeyAdmin

04-25-2006, 12:02 PM

Scott: See #2

Scott

04-25-2006, 12:27 PM

Oh sorry, My Bad.

Thanks

ICEinLAVA

04-26-2006, 03:35 PM

I have requested this issue to be resolved atleast 2 other times.:mad: and you just don't see the issue your company created.:confused: so i suggest putting an option into the preferences or just changing the code to resolve the issue.

So let me spell out the bug for you in detail...

Issue. your shopping cart should only allow whole numbers in the quanity such as 4, 6, 1, 19, and so on. But instead your cart allows fractions such as .1, .5, .11, and so on. so it is possible that someone that is just filling the order is just looking at the quanity and see 11 instead of realizing it is .11 and the customer get 11 items for the price of alittle over 11/100 of the cost of 1 (figuring tax and shipping).:eek:

I know that there are some situations were a package of 100 can divided into portions. but most items sold through this shopping cart and individually based.

How exactly did you think people were to sell a fraction of a TV, shirt, coffee mug, computer. For the software and mp3 downloading. you can only pay for a fraction of the cost and still be able to download the product.:eek:

So for the THIRD time... Can you fix this...

Solution. Alter your code to use whole numbers only. have the code round down the the next whole number. Or you can add extensive amounts of code to put in a prefrence to choose between whole numbers and fractions.

TurnkeyAdmin

04-26-2006, 03:44 PM

Just to let you know....this is not a BUG! :eek:
We have customers that require fractional ordering. We will take a look at possibly making this as an option. But as an FYI, it's not a bug... :confused:

ICEinLAVA

04-26-2006, 08:24 PM

Additional features i would like to see added to sunshop.

- ability to have backordered product opitions affect the customers purchase. either the backordered item would not show up or it would be stated that the item is on back order and show up in red. ability to choose either one.

- Product options would automaticly adjust the price of the item to reflect the new price with the choosen product option.

- the increase of cost for the Product option could be a cost difference so that a + or - $ amount could be put in, (instead of Add $-10.00).

- products page, ability to adjust stock, price,

- ability to choose radio buttons, list box or check boxes for product opitions, and be able to rearrange the order of each product option and set the default if desired.

- being able to sort the list would be a great help too.

Check out how the admin section (http://demo.codetosell.com/) did their Products & Categories. notice the available options under the product title for each item.

ausute (Guy)

04-26-2006, 09:09 PM

I would like to see a choice in the log in, not all customers have a first name/last name, some are companies, I would like to see a choice of either, at the moment they must enter their first and last name, company name is optional. What if they could leave first/last name blank if they enter a company name (which could also be a club name or whatever).

If they enter a club name in the business name, then when they order they fill in their name and shipping details, which may be a personal address if not to the club, that way a club member can still get the "club discount" with out needing to add their profile, waiting for us to recognise they belong to this group and allocate the applicabe discount, during which time they may decide to pull the pin and not purchase.

Does this make sense to anyone but me, or is it a crazy idea?

Guy

daser007

04-27-2006, 01:16 AM

Have "Local Pick Up" as a shipping option instead of a payment method so customers can pay online and pick up at store.

Thanks

David

Spookious

04-27-2006, 07:00 AM

- Product options would automaticly adjust the price of the item to reflect the new price with the choosen product option.
I think that's what this one is saying (I hope):

10. Adding of a custom build feature for allowing your customers to mix and match options for an item and regenerate the price based on these option without adding it to their cart.
However, this ^ description doesn't say whether or not it's an automatic change/update in the price upon selection of the option. I would prefer automatic over having to hit a button to recalculate the cost. That would be pro!

Spookious

04-29-2006, 09:36 AM

How about...

One click backup of entire shop
One click restore of entire shop

I get nervous about having to backup specific things (Options, Templates, etc) for fear of missing something.

See my entire list of suggestions/hopes here. (http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/forum/showthread.php?p=11848#post11848)

DaleHutch

05-01-2006, 07:05 PM

Will the new SunShop 4.0 require expat XML for UPS????

DianeV

05-01-2006, 08:28 PM

How about larger input boxes in the control panel? Right now, the control panel is about 700 pixels wide, and the boxes into which we must type are really small, making working in them difficult. I don't see a particular reason for this, beyond the (arguably unnecessary) set of icons at the top.

eheia

05-05-2006, 09:15 PM

In the list you stated you would be adding more flexibilty to the inventory. The biggest problem I have is that I can't put in specific sizing (only the number I have in stock). Are we going to be able to put in the specific quantity for each size?

Also, when is this going to be available?

Another issue I was wondering about is your company going to have more support? I have submitted 2 tickets in the last 5 months and never heard anything. Never a comment if it was rejected, needed to be modified, or a bid. This was very frustrating and by not posting any response it made it seem like Turnkey doesn't care about customer problems. Will this change in the future?

Lastly, do we have to pay for the upgrade?

Please let me know

Sincerely,
Andrea
ShopToken

TurnkeyAdmin

05-05-2006, 11:14 PM

We already responded to yout ticket you submitted but here is the info again:

1. Yes, that is what we mean in addition to a few other things.

2. We hope to have it ready by min July.

3. Are you talking about support or quote requests. We never ignore support requests and they are ALWAYS answered with 24 hours. Quote requests are handled by a select few and I have to tell you that they are ALWAYS bogged down with requests and its impossible to get to all of them. For the most part, we try and at least get back to everyone but we cant guarantee that the work will actually get done unless we accept the work.

4. Yes, as long as your license is up to date you will get access to the updates.

fogelka

05-07-2006, 05:20 PM

I would love to have the ability to provide a way for people to use accumulated points to get discounts, free items, free shipping, etc. The easiest would probably be a simple discount, up to the full cost of one item.

Can this be done in Version 4 ? Or - better yet, is there a way to make it work in the current version? Thanks.

Spookious

05-16-2006, 01:04 PM

Thought of another one... The ability to toggle on/off: credit card pre-authorization

Thanks for considering. :)

See my entire list of suggestions/hopes here. (http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/forum/showthread.php?p=11848#post11848) :)

richiep

05-25-2006, 08:30 AM

Hi,
Thanks for taking the time to ask for our feedback. I've spent the last two months setting up SunShop for a client. I've found the learning curve to be large requiring quite a few trouble tickets. I've found response time to tickets to vary greatly, I've gotten responses within an hour while other times it's beenseveral days.

I've written many follow up eamils asking what's going on with the current ticket. Why do I have to write these kinds of emails? You guys claim to have 24-7 tech support but I have only recieved responses durning your short business hours that start at 10am Pacific time. Any tickets written over the weekend get responses on Monday or Tuesday maybe later... My work day starts around 6am Mountain which means I have to wait 5-6 or more hours to get a response. As a result setting up SunShop for my client has taken unacceptably long.

Right now I have a ticket in where you said contact your web host, well you guys are my web host. Why isn't that apparent to you at tech support? My last response to a trouble ticket said "have you restarted your web server?" No I haven't because you guys are hosting me. I've waited two days for a response to this...nothing yet. The project set up drags on, my frustration increases and my client has lost his patience.

Please, Please, Please increase your tech support staff immediatley.

Thanks You
Rich

nicedreams242

05-25-2006, 02:08 PM

Regards Spookious, not all processors support pre-authorizing credit card amounts. I think Authorize.net already supports this.

TurnkeyAdmin

05-25-2006, 02:13 PM

richiep,

I am not sure where you are getting the 24/7 tech support claim from but for the most part we try to answer tickets as they come in. We are open 8 hours a day durning the week and the office does close over the weekend but we do try to get to tickets. If you need answers quickly I would highly recommends calling in.

I apologize about the request to contact your hosting company but our software techs do not keep track of, nor are they aware of the hosting side of things. Its always a good idea to mention it if we are hosting your account.

verycommerce

06-05-2006, 12:31 PM

We are very excited about this release.

I do want to be another to request a more interactive, fuller e-newsletter sign up. It would:

-- Allow for user-based unsubscribing
-- Allow for administrative addition of subscribers by importing in bulk or one by one
-- Allow for 'areas of interest' within the signup

Thanks for considering these!

SunShopper

06-06-2006, 08:58 PM

I understand that the entire checkout process (from the login page thru the receipt page) will be secured using SSL but I would like to request that all the Customer Account pages (Edit Profile, Change Password, View Order History, Manage Wishlist, Your Downloads) be secured as well. This is standard on any professional website (amazon.com, buy.com, Walmart.com, etc.) and would be great if SunShop offered this as well! All the news stations are constantly alerting people who shop online to look for the browser lock or https in the URL when submitting personal information. Some people don't even know what it means they just know it better be there.

DianeV

06-06-2006, 09:09 PM

I totally agree -- that's what I meant (but failed to mention) when I suggested making the checkout secure. Absolutely: customer accounts pages should also be secure. I don't see the point in doing it any other way.

I have had this done recently by our programmer, and he had to go into the database to do some of it, as well as into the templates.

I understand that one shopping cart cannot address *every* issue or need, but these are just basic issues that should have been addressed long ago.

tomynate

06-07-2006, 07:49 AM

I agree. There cannot be enough security.

sikter

06-09-2006, 08:49 AM

sikter: Subcategory tiling was added to 3.5.1

Admin,
It doesn't show the subcategory images that I uploaded to represent those subcategories ...
Please tell me if I'm missing something here.

Thx.

punzi

06-10-2006, 03:11 PM

I am very happy to hear that you are working on inventory control of item options.

In addition I would like to see the Froogle feed automatically include the lowest price for an item (e.g. post the sale price when it is in use). It currently only sends the "Your Price".

Also It would be nice to be able to show "Out of stock" message without having to show stock amounts.

*** Also would be great if customers could check the shipping rate based on the contents of the cart by entering their zip code without having to have an account as is seen in many other carts. (I added this thought on July 16th)**

Thanks,
Peter

DianeV

06-10-2006, 05:08 PM

Ditto on the "Out of Stock" message without having to show stock inventory amounts -- or to set the cost at $0.00 ... which means that the Add to Cart button is shown on an item with no price.

It would be better to have an "out of stock" message for which the Add to Cart button is removed. A checkbox (tick box) in the Control Panel would be ideal for this.

SunShopper

06-11-2006, 12:23 PM

Wow! I didn’t even know the Froogle feed was being generated in a way that doesn’t show our best price. I agree Punzi – that’s a must fix!!!

I also like the idea of showing items as “In Stock” or “Out of Stock”. I really don’t like my inventory levels to be exposed. That could be potentially valuable information to a competitor. I suggest listing the Availability as either “In Stock” or “Out of Stock” – No Inventory Numbers!

I also like the idea of having the OPTION to disable the ‘Add to Cart’ button. Normally if I am out of stock, I’ll let a customer place a backorder because I know I’ll be replenishing this item any day but when manufacturer delays arise, I may not know when or if I may get more of a given product so I really don’t want a customer to even place a backorder. Right now SunShop lets you make the item invisible but that’s not a good option because I still want my customers to know I normally carry this product.

Spookious

06-12-2006, 01:06 PM

Is there any chance you might consider or work on Gbuy implementation?

http://www.forbes.com/markets/equities/2006/06/09/google-0609markets09.html

com1000

06-13-2006, 05:44 AM

As an ASP license holder for the last 3 years, I am looking at all these wishlist features, and think they are all very nice, but unlikely that they will all make the final cut. However, there are two features that SURELY MUST be in the next version,
1) secure registration area ( this is a critical issue, that costs us thousands of lost dollars each year)

2) incremental html page generation.... Turnkey MUST realize that as their software becomes more and more powerful, and customers start building bigger and better carts, with thousands of items , all the while making daily if not hourly chnages to the site, that incremental, or partial html generation is a must if the feature is to be of any value at all.
Right now, we are curently managing 5 sites for our customers with over 3000-5000 items in each cart... and we are spening half of the day just re-creating and re-creating, over writing and overwriting html pages, to keep things current.
We need a way to lets say start with item 4250 and re-generate pages 4250 and up, instead of having to re-write all of the pages again from 1-4250 that we already did yesterday.... for example

It is so time consuming, that we have several times contemplated going back to not using the static pages... but they truly do fare better in the search engines when using the re-write.
Turnkey, please look at this issue, and see what can be done about

SunShopper

06-14-2006, 07:29 AM

1. Meta Title Tags: I understand in 4.0 we are going to have the ability to enter META Tags for the Category and Subcategory pages just like the Product Pages, but SunShop only lets you modify the Description and Keyword Tags. SunShop uses the Title of the product or category as the title tag. This should be adequate however I would like to have the option to enter my own Title Tags for optimal SEO. The Title Tag is probably the most important Meta Tag but it’s the only one we cannot modify in Sun Shop. To appease everyone, it could be designed so if the Title Tag field is left empty then Sun Shop will generate the Title Tag the way it presently does but if information is entered into the Title Tag field, then this information would replace the Sun Shop generated Title Tag.

2. Sub Categories: Sometimes a subcategory could belong in multiple main categories (example: an Aromatherapy Candle could go under categories named ‘Candles’ and ‘Aromatherapy’). I would like to suggest the ability to assign subcategories to multiple other categories using the HOLD + CTRL feature similar to how you can assign products to multiple categories.

3. Confirmation Page: I really like the checkout system for payments made by credit card. After a customer selects their shipping and payment method, they go to the credit card information page. This page is great because at this point the cart is completely updated. It shows shipping charges, taxes, discounts and a grand total. The problem is there isn’t a page like this for all the other payment methods. If you pay by PayPal for example, it goes right to the ‘order submission complete’ page before you can even see what your final total was. Also if you enter an invalid coupon you won’t have an opportunity to go back and make a correction because your order has already been processed at this point. I would really like there to be some sort of confirmation page (similar to the credit card information page) for all payment methods. It should also show the actual shipping method rather than simply saying ‘shipping’.

Killer Commerce

06-14-2006, 08:08 AM

First of all I agree with everyone here who has suggested a completely secure checkout system (login thru receipt) and to secure all customer account pages. This is not a bell or whistle – it’s a MUST HAVE! Otherwise this cart is not a competitive product.

I also agree with SunShopper:

- I really think we ought to be able to enter our own Title Tags.
- The ability to add subcategories to multiple categories is brilliant!
- And having a confirmation page for all payment methods is a great idea! I can’t tell you how many times I have had to make changes to a customers order because they didn’t have an opportunity to correct it themselves.

If I may, I would like to suggest that payments by PayPal skip the final page and go directly to PayPal’s checkout system. That appears to be how most other websites do it and I believe it works better. Right now I get a lot of PayPal orders where I never receive payment because the customer thought they were done placing their order. Even though the receipt page alerts the customer that there are additional steps customers don’t always read everything.

nicedreams242

06-14-2006, 04:22 PM

"Enhancing the SSL" what does that mean? SSL is SSL. You can secure the entire shop if you like. Not sure what you mean. Templates are your friend as well. :-)

Killer Commerce

06-14-2006, 06:48 PM

When a page is secured using SSL, you will see the ‘https’ in the URL or the little lock in the lower right hand corner. Presently when you checkout, the only page that is secured using SSL is the credit card information screen. The preceding login page and confirmation page are not secured with SSL. That means all the address, and password information that a customer enters in these pages can be intercepted and read as it travels across the Internet.

The customer account pages are not secured using SSL either. So if a customer signs into their account to edit their profile, change their password or view their order history, then all this information could potentially be intercepted and read.

Customers are getting more web savvy to the extent that anytime they submit or view personal/private information online, they are looking for that little lock. If they don’t see it – they know the site is not secure and many will not place their order. It can potentially cost you thousands of dollars per year in lost sales.

Spookious

06-14-2006, 07:05 PM

Yes, what SunShopper said. ESPECIALLY about the Title Tags.

TurnkeyAdmin

06-15-2006, 06:37 AM

Guys this SSL thing eveyone is talking about is already being addressed. Its already in the list. No need to go back and forth about it :)

rrcole2

06-15-2006, 10:12 AM

I just want to get this staight. We are in the process of renewing our license for sunshop and using it for a different domain. If I do this and setup our new shop with the most current version and then 4 comes out, will I be able to upgrade to 4 our will I have to start from scratch and set everything up again. I really don't want to do the setup twice as we have a large inventory and many mods to the cart. Or am I way off base and it will be a simple conversion? :confused:

SunShopper

06-15-2006, 10:14 AM

Hail Hail Turnkey Admin :D

Brave New World

06-15-2006, 10:36 AM

Title Tags, Title Tags, Title Tags – I’ve seen it referenced several times in this forum and I agree! We need to have the option to enter our own! This goes for the product pages as well as the category/subcategory pages.

I also agree that all payment methods must have a way to review the order before completing their transaction similar to how the ‘Credit Card Info’ screen shows all applicable charges, taxes, discounts and shipping wrapped up nice and neat in a grand total. And please please please – put the shipping method on this page as well as on the final ‘Order Complete’ page. When customers upgrade to a premium service, they want to see it!

I also really like SunShopper’s idea to add Subcategories to multiple categories using the HOLD + CTRL function (or any function for that matter).

That’s my wants - now for the thanks to TWTAdmin:

· Thanks for addressing the SSL issue.
· I have also heard (from Support) there will be an option to use the name of the Category/Subcategory in the Static HTML URL for the Category/Subcategory pages just like how the name of the product is used in the URL for the Static HTML product pages. I really love how the SunShop programmers are taking Search Engines into mind!

vegvit

06-16-2006, 03:21 AM

I also agree that we need to be able to write our own title tags for each product. Ideal would be:

Sunshop generates the title tag from the product name automatically but also allows editing if we want to.

Title tags please :)

Killer Commerce

06-16-2006, 08:30 AM

....Not just the Product Pages! I would like the ability to have the option to enter our own Title Tags for the Category and Subcategory pages as well.

kathyg

06-16-2006, 03:01 PM

At the "PRODUCT" level, under "Shipping Settings", add the ability to list box dimensions and weight for more than 1 box. I think you could do this by first adding a new field called "#boxes per product" then allowing us to enter "Weight" "Seperate Box" "Box Length" "Box Width" "Box Height" for each box. Then we'd just need to be sure that Real Time shipping would first calculate the shipping cost for each box, then total those individual shipping costs together and list a "total product shipping cost" for products that ship in more than 1 box. But if that's a problem I have an alternate suggestion:

You could create a "Required Product" option (similar to the "Related Product" option that currently exists). Then we'd be able to add one or more "Required Products" to any Product. Each product's Real Time shipping cost would be calculated separately. That would eliminate the need to list weight and dimensions for more than 1 box per product. The only potential problem is that the "Required Products" could not be sold as stand-alone Products. There would have to be a way to keep them from appearing as "Products" but still allow us to require them with the purchase of actual products. Maybe you could do this by creating two classes of Products: 1) Main Products; and 2) Auxiliary Products. Then we could require the purchase of certain "Auxiliary Products" with the Purchase of a "Main Product." It would work as long as the customer could never see the "Auxiliary Products" except as a "Required" part of a "Main Product."

I hope you can implement one of these suggestions, so we can use our SunShop store to sell our products that require more than 1 box for shipping. Thanks.

TurnkeyAdmin

06-16-2006, 06:33 PM

kathyg:

That is already a feature... you can set box dimension per item and how many of those items fit into that box along with weight etc...

forte

06-19-2006, 11:57 AM

Dear Turnkey Web Tools Development Team,

My wish list

More that one email address for the Admin of the site
Sales should be able to go to say Sales@foo.com and enquirers for the form to whatever enquirers@foo.com

Filling in New Customer details

*The ability to turn off the State pull down menu
*A blank field in Country and the cart enforces the user to fill it in
* the ability to turn off Shipping Address Some of my clients only want to send to card holder address

Newsletter

An WISYWIG Editor and to be able to send in HTML or Text with or with out photos

Keep up the good work

Barrie,

aquariumworks

06-20-2006, 01:42 AM

Should have an option to be able to ADD INDIVIDUAL CUSTOM ICONS for EACH Category in the Category Table!

Fingerstyle

06-20-2006, 09:39 AM

There have been a lot of postings suggesting the ability to enter our own Meta Title Tags for the Product and Category/Subcategory Pages so I thought I’d analyze how the SunShop generated Title Tags perform and share my results with all of you.

I used random product and category pages from the SunShop Demo as well as samples from almost all of the “Live Shops” that are currently using SunShop.

The first thing I checked was relevancy using a common Meta Tag analysis tool. I was impressed to see that many of the Main Category pages achieved a 100% relevancy score, which is perfect. However, all of the subcategory pages drop significantly in relevancy. Product Pages also didn’t fare as well. Out of all the Product Pages I checked, not a single one achieved 100% relevancy. To SunShop’s credit, they averaged around 85% relevancy, which isn’t all that bad.

A big problem occurs the deeper you go into your subcategories. SunShop adds each category name to the Title Tag making it too long and putting your most relevant keywords at the end. Google usually cuts off your Title Tag at about 65 characters so if your most relevant keywords aren’t in those first 65 characters then your page will suffer.

The other problem is they are not very human friendly. You have to write your Title Tags for both the Search Engines and Humans because these Title Tags are what shows up in the Search Engines. For example, lets say you are looking for “Johann Sebastian Bach CD’s”. Which link would you click on…?

SunShop Title Tag:
1. ”Your Online Store – Music Category – Classical Music – Johann Sebastian Bach”

-OR-

Hand Written Title Tag:
2. ” Johann Sebastian Bach CD’s available at Your Online Store”

The first example is a SunShop generated Title Tag. It simply lists words so it’s not very readable to humans. And because it is about 12 characters too long, most of the word “Sebastian” and all of the word “Bach” will not be seen by many Search Engines which is terrible news because these are the very keywords you are trying to be found by!

The second example I think we can all agree is more readable. It sounds nicer and is more likely to get clicked on. It also puts your main keywords at the very beginning, which will help you to rank higher in the search engines.

The Bottom Line:

Your Title Tags should not be the corner stone of your Search Engine Optimization Campaign. There are many webpage’s that rank very high and have poorly written Title Tags. And SunShop’s Title tags aren’t exactly horrible but in many cases they can be dramatically improved.

We all must keep in mind that the Internet is more competitive then it has ever been and with millions of new webpage’s being added each day it is only going to get more competitive. If you want your webpage’s to succeed or even stay alive, you are going to need every edge you can get! And a properly written Title Tag is something that can improve your pages rank and more importantly, it can increase your click through rates. I believe having the option to enter our own Title tags for the Product and Category/Subcategory Pages is a MUST HAVE in SunShop 4.0. Come on TWT! You gave us the Description and Keyword Tags, now give us the Title Tags too!

AlanT

06-21-2006, 08:31 AM

kathyg:

That is already a feature... you can set box dimension per item and how many of those items fit into that box along with weight etc...

Actually, she was requesting the exact OPPOSITE. Multiple boxes for a single product. I agree that this is a unique situation, but addressing it would be useful.

tevih

06-21-2006, 08:36 AM

I'd like to see better backup system - backup the whole store, settings, options and images into one easy to reinstall file.

Spookious

06-21-2006, 08:48 AM

I'd like to see better backup system - backup the whole store, settings, options and images into one easy to reinstall file.God, yes. I wholeheartedly endorse this suggestion.

SunShopper

06-21-2006, 09:48 AM

Really liked Fingerstyle's article on Title Tags - I agree that we need to have the option to enter our own!

Also love the idea of a complete, 1-step back up system!

macprocess

06-21-2006, 12:18 PM

I want to know if you are interested to add these features to the version 4

NUMBER 1 - PAYMENT METHOD BY COUNTRIES

The ability to choose method of payment by countries for the admin.
For example, the admin can decide that USA customers can use
a merchand account but not customers from France.
or for example, the admin setup to accept payments with paypal only
for countries supported by paypal

NUMBER2 - SUPPLIERS ACCESS AND STATS

We want the ability for suppliers to add their own products to the store
with a supplier level, they can add products, see their own sales and stats
(and not sales or products from other suppliers)
We want be able to take a fee for each suppliers sales. Like that, we know
how much to pay to them every week or months. Fro example a supplier
add products and we can decide to take 5% fee for all product he will add.
When the supplier login to his account, he see the sales volume and also
the amount of fee that we take.

vegvit

06-21-2006, 12:34 PM

I concur.

One click back up system that backs up everything (and obviously a one click restore system to accompany that)

Editable Title Tags, this is very important for SEO

I beileve enough people have requested the above so far multiple times. Any confirmation on it?

JnP

06-21-2006, 12:42 PM

I thought I saw this mentioned but couldn't find it. I'd like to see implemented a way to attach attributes directly to products so that a bulk upload of all product data -including attributes- is done once in the products.csv file.

The way it's set up now, I'm uploading products.csv files of books grouped by category. Then I download my site's products.csv file to track each product's Sunshop-assigned item number. Next I assign attributes, then upload attributes files to attach the attributes to the products. This I'm finding quite tedious as I'm having to go back over all my already-uploaded products files a second time. It really gets to you after awhile :eek:

It's not feasible to add attributes to each book one-by-one from admin. This is even more tedious and grossly time-consuming than the above-described approach.

I set up my Sunshop purchase on April 5, and I'm still in the process of uploading over 3,000 book listings. I see no clear way to add entries for these: author, edition, format, publisher, date of publication, condition, etc. - other than as attributes. Having to go back over each individual book and upload its attributes is really taking up too much of my time.

Hope I'm understandable.

http://agelesspages.com

Brave New World

06-26-2006, 04:37 PM

There's been a lot of talk lately about having the ability to enter our own Title Tags to get the most out of our SEO campaigns. Has anyone heard anything about whether that feature is going to make it into 4.0?

What about the ability to add multiple sub categories to main categories?

GoPhotog

06-27-2006, 06:16 AM

I glanced quickly through the threads and didnt see the options I'd love to see. I sell digital downloads of photography templates. So these two are important.

1. Ability to offer a free download bypassing payment methods.
Now, before you say "why dont you just offer the download somewhere else on your site?" :p ... I want people to sign up to receive the free download. It gives me a database of customers to email with updates. I have a cart running now and because of the free option, I'm able to contact everyone that tried out the templates and let them know about the new store.

2. I'm disappointed this isnt an option.... I would love the buy 2 get one free option that spans different products. Not just buy 2 of one product and get another free. Like if someone bought 2 magazine covers, they can choose another for free. Doesnt do them any good to buy 2 of the same template. :rolleyes:

These are 2 options that I'm a bit disappointed the cart doesnt have. I'm getting rid of my current cart because these are mod's and I hate dealing with upgrades and worrying if it will undo the mod's I installed.

Thanks for listening!

Pamela

anna

06-28-2006, 07:43 AM

Paid membership would be so useful to have. What are the chances having that in version 4.0?

thedude

06-28-2006, 10:28 PM

I don't know if it is my customers or what, but many of them pick "check" or "money order" as their payment, but then they email me stating that they actually wanted to pay by credit card. Some change their mind and some just aren't paying attention during checkout. So then I have to have them re-order, or run their credit card manually.

I would like to see an option in the transactions to change the payment method of a current order to credit card, with the appropriate fields, and have it run the transaction through the merchant gateway. Is that a hard one?

Better yet, have it do the same for PayPal, and send the customer the request for funds through the site.

miloheckport

06-29-2006, 12:54 PM

Here is my wishlist

Performance is key - Optimize Optimize..
The ability to do flat rate shipping and Shipping modules. It would be great if you could use shipping modules (USPS International, FedEX for say next day, 2-3 day options) as well as offering the flat rate shipping table.
Have Sort by options at the top of product listing pages. Sort by Name, Price...
Clone Attributes
The ability to put a custom image for new products. A new Icon below the product images
Eliminate Warning Page has expired after performing a search when hitting the back button
Kayako Esupport Integration
vbulletin Integration
When adding new SubCategories or Categories, have a General setting so that you can choose to sort them alphabetically
Email notification sent to admin if a customer adds comments to an order.
The ability to store canned responses for the order comments field. I am sure most of us have some sort of canned response that we use when we notify a customer. Insert response....
More thorough documentation of the sunshop applications. Variables that we can use in the emails sent out and so on...

I am looking forward to the new version.

http://socalskateshop.com

shauna

07-04-2006, 06:17 PM

I always wanted a way to match up users and orders in the admin panel.

Currently, user accounts and orders are completely separate...

I would like to see the date of signup listed in the accounts panel. I have several duplicate accounts for same customer but am hesitant to delete any for fear it may be the most recent order. There is no way of checking which one is curent as it is now.

GreenHorn1

07-05-2006, 05:48 PM

1. Editable Title Tags – MUST HAVE!

2. The ability to assign a subcategory to multiple main categories the same way we can assign a product to multiple categories. This would be really helpful to me and apparently many other SunShop users.

3. Incorporate the name of the Category or Subcategory into the URL of the Static HTML pages. TWT Support has already explained that this is going to be a new feature but I would like to suggest not making it too long. I’ve seen some sites incorporate all the Main and Subcategories in the URL.

Example 1: Sporting Equipment – Baseball – Baseball Bats.
This is wrong - It should just be “Baseball Bats”.

Example 2:

Main Category Before:
YourDomainName.com/html/Category-5-0.html

Main Category After:
YourDomainName.com/html/Sporting-Equipment-5-0.html

Subcategory Before:
YourDomainName.com/html/Subcategory-18-0.html

Subcategory After:
YourDomainName.com/html/Baseball-Bats-18-0.html

vegvit

07-06-2006, 09:44 AM

many of the people here are pointing to the same things. title tags, flat rate shipping, attributes etc etc. IS TURNKEY ADMIN reading these? he is certainly not responding? should we expect any of the really important suggestions implemented or are we just entertaining and comforting ourselves by posting suggestions?

TurnkeyAdmin

07-06-2006, 12:42 PM

We are looking over the forum, but we cannot reply to each post at this point. We are trying to knock out the new version as fast as possible.

Killer Commerce

07-06-2006, 02:57 PM

I agree with all the suggestions of GreenHorn1. Particularly about incorporating the name of the Category or Subcategory in the URL. I agree that SunShop should simply replace the word “Category” or “Subcategory” (the way it presently does) with the actual name of the Category or Subcategory. This way the URL is short and specific – exactly what the search engines love. Couple this with the ability to enter our own title tags for products AND category/subcategory pages and we all WILL experience improved positioning in the Search Engines.

Rock on GreenHorn1

And

Vegvit for President!

tomynate

07-08-2006, 08:48 PM

What is the date now please?:rolleyes:

TurnkeyAdmin

07-09-2006, 10:24 PM

Please visit the link off of our main page regarding 4.0 information.

vegvit

07-12-2006, 10:12 AM

Turnkey admin still has not answered the question. Looking over does not necesseraly mean you are going to implement it.

Title tags (are they going to be added?) simple yes or no would do it.

Thanks

verycommerce

07-12-2006, 10:28 AM

I have had my fair share of excitement and disappointments with Turnkey over what SunShop can and cannot do, but for crying out loud it is ONE shopping cart in a million. The developers are working to make it better.

I would ask that everyone give them an opportunity to do what they 'can' before the next release. If they aren't responding in a 'definite' manner it is most likely because they'll be nailed to a wall if they say "Yes" but then it doesn't go through.

I would rather have a few of these features and get the new release, than for them to add each and everything everyone has asked and not have the release come out until next year.

Let's back up, take a breath, and allow their 'end of summer' and 'we're looking into it' be enough for now so the developers can do their job of trying to make it happen.

</peace talk>

vegvit

07-12-2006, 10:44 AM

you should read all the way back to see how many people requested title tags, i am not the original suggester. I gave this as an example and yes there are other improvements that have been suggested and I want them as well.

a yes or no would not harm anybody it would only let people know what to expect.

tyrant

07-19-2006, 09:53 PM

im crossing my fingers the release date does not get bumped back from the ETA of end of this month

vegvit

07-21-2006, 08:14 AM

by the way birds whispered to me that the templates and even the database strcuture are changing with the 4.0. If you have mods, special designs etc done to your website, chances are, you are going to have to do them all from scratch. Good news? not really. I hope the overall features and improvements justify this huge change. I would be very dissapointed for example if they leave the title tags out, assuming all the work we will have to do to upgrade.

Spookious

07-21-2006, 03:49 PM

I would be very dissapointed for example if they leave the title tags out, assuming all the work we will have to do to upgrade.Upon reading that, my first reaction is the same. I am hoping for title tags as well.

HOWEVER, I do not want to jump to conclusions or judge them on information that's speculatory at this time; I am giving them the benefit of the doubt for the time being - with the hope that they come through, at least on title tags. :)

kathyg

08-04-2006, 10:51 AM

1) allow us to set Shipping (Real-Time - vs-Fixed) at the Product Level rather than at the store level. We can use Real-Time shipping for most of our products. But we have a few products that require more than one box to ship, and Real-Time Shipping is not accurate for those few. Being able to set those products to Fixed Shipping could be a solution for shipping the multiple-box products.

2) Create a "Required Accessories" field at the Product Level (similar to the "Related Products" field). This might be another possible solution for products that require more than one box to ship. We could have the Main Product, then add "Required Accessories" such as speakers or cables that ship in a separate box. You would need to code it so that the order for the Main product cannot be processed without the "Required Accessories." In the Admin Area of the store, we would create the Product profile (including box weight and dimensions) for each "Required Accessory" and then assign the Required Accessories to the Main product. But the "Required Accessories" should NOT appear as stand-alone Products available for purchase.

Turnkey Admin: Are either of those requests possible?
Other SunShop Users: Would anyone else like either of these featuires?

Spookious

08-04-2006, 11:47 AM

2) Create a "Required Accessories" field at the Product Level (similar to the "Related Products" field). This might be another possible solution for products that require more than one box to ship. We could have the Main Product, then add "Required Accessories" such as speakers or cables that ship in a separate box. You would need to code it so that the order for the Main product cannot be processed without the "Required Accessories." In the Admin Area of the store, we would create the Product profile (including box weight and dimensions) for each "Required Accessory" and then assign the Required Accessories to the Main product. But the "Required Accessories" should NOT appear as stand-alone Products available for purchase.

Other SunShop Users: Would anyone else like either of these featuires?Couldn't you just use the "Product Options" to accomplish this?

kathyg

08-04-2006, 05:13 PM

DianeV

08-04-2006, 05:25 PM

I did something like this the other day, where I had no price, and then a product option dropdown box with prices on each item.

As I recall, you scroll down to the Options, click "Add" (or something like that) and then fill it out.

Here's an example:
http://juliensauctions.com/shop/html/Property-From-The-Collection-Of-Cher---Hardbound.html

Spookious

08-05-2006, 07:42 PM

Hi Spookious - if I knew how to do that thru Product Options I'd love to try. But the Help menu for Manage Options doesn;t really explain how to use it - at least not for someone at my level (I'm not a programmer). I'm open to any and all suggestions. Thanks.Heh, it's simple; there's no programming skills needed. It really is - as DianeV pointed out - 1 click. Her example is good too (beside the fact that Cher is looking a bit fake/creepy in that pic :p :D :eek: ). It'll at least give you an idea of what you can do. You can also check out my site (in my sig), as I use Product Options extensively; I actually rely heavily upon using Product Options. In fact, the way the Product Options worked in SunShop was a HUGE selling point for me to get SunShop in the first place.

miloheckport

08-09-2006, 08:14 AM

I want to know if you are interested to add these features to the version 4

NUMBER 1 - PAYMENT METHOD BY COUNTRIES

The ability to choose method of payment by countries for the admin.
For example, the admin can decide that USA customers can use
a merchand account but not customers from France.
or for example, the admin setup to accept payments with paypal only
for countries supported by paypal

Now that is a great idea. To code this could not be more than a few lines of code. It would save a lot of headaches from scammers overseas trying to use stolen credit cards and forcing them to pay via paypal or money order. I currently have to hack a template and put in a statement warning customers from other countries that they must use paypal.

miloheckport

08-09-2006, 08:23 AM

1) Yahoo Feed (File format is different for Yahoo and I have to tweak my google feed for it to work with Yahoo Services. + more feed options.
2) Google has a new service (can't remember the name right now) that is apart of google which requires a new file format for uploading products.
3) It would be nice to have transaction level workflow for communicating back and forth with the customer regarding the transaction. The current notification system is primative and making this functionality more robust would lead to better communication with your customers and would help to provide a audit trail. Esupport integration would be killer.

4)Turnkey Forum - Change the default thread life to beyond 30 days, we can no longer view the Sunshop v4.0 enhancements and other threads that might be helpful.

Thanks

TWT-Chris

08-09-2006, 12:41 PM

You can actually change the default thread viewing in your settings. They threads dont disapeer its just that you have a setting in your personal settings that you can change to view all posts over all time.

miloheckport

08-09-2006, 12:49 PM

Duh,
I forgot about that. I actually run vbulletin on my own site. Thanks.

miloheckport

08-13-2006, 10:57 PM

What is the current ETA for the first beta?

DianeV

08-13-2006, 11:00 PM

August 18.
http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/products.php?p=ss-shopping-cart-software&s=new

TWT-Chris

08-14-2006, 09:35 PM

Yes, the latest news on 4.0 can be taken from that page. As of right now we may need to push the initial beta back a bit more as we are contimplating redoing the order flow which may take another week or so. The beta release should not affect the final release we assume at this point but unfortunatly programming is not an exact science.

ttueni

08-17-2006, 09:14 AM

It would be nice if version 4 could integrate with Google checkout.

miloheckport

08-17-2006, 09:19 AM

Google Checkout would be really nice. The google feed helps my site quite a bit. A Yahoo feed would also be a nice touch. the code is there you guys just need to change the sequencing of the fields in the file. You can do it!!!

David Joor

08-19-2006, 02:43 PM

I know you all are working on the inventory control on 4.0 for say different sizes but I was wondering if you are building in say inventory control for package deals/sets. For instance lets use furniture as an example. You have a sofa, love seat, and coffee table. All three of these can be purchased separately but you also want to set them up as a package deal on the website for whatever reason. Will sunshop have the ability to create a package based product that pulls inventory separately for each item you specify in the cart already? That way you are managing only one inventory list?

This option would be very important to my company and I apologize if this has be brought up already. If this is not coming in 4.0 and I can't program it myself, which I probably can, do you do custom programming for clients?

Thanks for the hard work and look very forward to the 4.0 release.

SunShopper

08-21-2006, 12:57 PM

I see TWT is still working on 4.0 so while it's still in development I'd like to once again request that we have full Meta Tags (Title, Description & Keywords) for all product and category/subcategory pages. Looking back at all the postings, I'd say this is a MUST HAVE! Not just for Product pages but for the Category and Subcategory pages too!

Also, I really need the ability to place subcategories under multiple categories. You could simply use the Hold + CTRL feature similar to how you put products under multiple categories. I have many categories like "yoga music" that could go under our "yoga" and our "music" categories. I've also seen in the past postings that many people are requesting this feature. Please try to make this happen.

I can't thank you enough!!!

Killer Commerce

08-21-2006, 02:16 PM

I'd like to throw my hat in the ring and agree with SunShopper. I desperately need to be able to input my own Meta Tags (Titles, Descriptions and Keywords) and I would like to see this available on the Category and Sub Category pages as well as the Product Pages. I agree that this is a MUST HAVE!

The ability to assign a sub category to multiple categories is also very much needed.

Please try to work this stuff in to 4.0 (if you haven't already).

DianeV

08-21-2006, 02:25 PM

Turnkey has already announced that title and metas will be available for product pages. You can find this out -- as well as updates on the release date -- by visiting TWT's home page and going to the Sunshop 4 page ... where you'll see screenshots of *some* of SS4's pages.

I don't know about the others, as there are only a limited number of screenshots.

Killer Commerce

08-21-2006, 07:34 PM

Thanks DianeV!

But we still need to enter our own META Tags for the Category and Sub Category pages to give us the most bang for our buck!

Example:

The keyword phrase "candles" gets almost 90,000 searches per month where as "Yankee Candle" gets about 27,000 searches per month. A good SEO stradegy would be to optimize your "Candles" category page for the "candles" keyword phrase and your product page could be optimized for the "yankee candle" keyword phrase. This way we can get traffic for both the specific and general keyword phrases.

Please TWT - allow us to input our own META Tags for the Cat and SubCat pages!!!

Brave New World

08-21-2006, 07:44 PM

I agree with Sun Shopper and Killer Commerce - I MUST HAVE the ability to enter my own Title, Description and Keyword tags for the Category and Subcategory pages as well as the Product Pages. So many other lesser Shopping Carts offer this. It would be a shame if SunSHop didn't offer this in v4.0!

I also would really love to have the ability to assign sub categories to multiple categories. as mentioned above - this could really help me improve sales!!!

Come on TWT....you can do it!!!!

DianeV

08-22-2006, 05:22 AM

> we are contimplating redoing the order flow

I'd be interested in this, as the way SS (and some other shopping carts) currently work is to require people to enter their personal information in order to "set up an account" before continuing with their purchase. Even though they can bypass the setting up of an account, it isn't made clear that the information is being requested as part of the checkout procedure.

If I had my preferences, I'd suggest reordering (or recharacterizing) the procedure so that it doesn't seem like you are required to "register" inorder to make a purchase -- especially since they can purchase without setting up an account, but *must* enter their information. I do realize, however, that tax and live UPS/USPS shipping costs cannot be calculated without getting an address (or perhaps just a zip code) ... and that showing the final price (items, tax and shipping) before asking for personal information is ideal.

However, I hope my few comments are helpful. Given what we know is currently going into Sunshop 4, this and perhaps the title/metas for categories/subcategories, would make this one heck of a shopping cart.

DianeV

08-22-2006, 05:38 AM

I guess what I'd prefer is:

(1) View Cart with price
-- get zip code or whatever is needed to calculate tax/shipping

(2) show price with
-- calculated tax
-- shipping costs or, if there are shipping options, show options with associated costs (e.g., FedEx 2nd day air - $22)
-- allow removal/addition of items from/to cart

(3) show final price with tax and shipping
-- allow removal/addition of items from/to cart
-- allow change of shipping
-- calculate price totals

(4) ask for personal information, credit card number, etc.
-- offer the option to "set up an account" based on their information so that they can download their item, check to see when their item has been shipped, etc.

Or something like that. I know it's easy to sit around making requests of someone else at this late/early hour, but I do think something along those lines would be very consumer friendly. That is, let them know throughout the procedure what's going on, give them the info they need to make a final decision and then, lastly, let them complete their purchase. As a consumer, this kind of checkout sequence would put me in charge.

Killer Commerce

08-22-2006, 07:52 AM

When it comes to the order flow my only suggestion is to keep it short and sweet. Only ask a customer to enter information necessary to process the order and do it in the least amount of steps possible. And if there is a way to give a customer a complete total reflecting shipping, sales tax and discounts prior to having them enter personal information then that’s great but the most important thing is to make sure the customer has a complete total before they are asked for their credit card info – that’s where you can potenetially lose orders.

Fingerstyle

08-22-2006, 07:58 AM

I agree! I’ve got to have those Title, Descriptions and Keyword Tags for the Category and Sub Category pages as well as the Product Pages.

And I love the idea of assigning a sub category to multiple categories. I think this would come in really handy for a lot of us!

Make it so TWT!

DianeV

08-22-2006, 08:01 AM

Yes; that's what I was suggesting there. Unfortunately, unless a purchase involves no tax and no (or a flat) shipping charge, the customer has to be asked for a location in order to calculate those charges.

Still, I too like a "short and sweet" checkout procedure -- but unless the customer is presented with information and options in a reasonable manner, just making it short won't exactly do it.

Killer Commerce

08-22-2006, 09:39 AM

I totally agree with you but I worry that we run the risk of overcomplicating the View Cart Page. I’ve seen the checkout systems that allow you to enter your zip code so you can see your shipping charges prior to checkout but to get a true total we’ll also need to allow a customer to enter their coupon code to reflect any applicable discounts. And what about international orders? Some countries don’t even have zip codes. For these customers they would have to enter the name of their country. Therefore, we would need three fields on the View Cart Page to accommodate everyone – one for the coupon code and a second for the zip code and finally a third for the country code. I just worry that would be too much for some of my customers. I am always astonished at how easily customers get confused at shopping online. There are still so many people that are not web savvy. I still have customers that don’t know how to use the drop down boxes. Whatever it defaults to, they think that’s their only option. I have had to convert all my drop down boxes to radio buttons so all the option are available at a glance.

Don’t get me wrong DV! I love the idea but it gets a little sticky when trying to accommodate everyone. Possibly TWT could give us this functionality as an option so those who want it can activate it and for those who don’t may inactivate it. Or maybe we should simply modify the template by putting a little comment on the view cart page that lets customers know that shipping charges we be available after their billing and shipping information is entered. That way they’ll at least know you’re not trying to hide anything from them.

You really got me thinking on this one. If I come with a better idea, I’ll be sure to post it.

Killer Commerce

08-22-2006, 09:47 AM

I mentioned the thought of letting a customer know that shipping charges we be available after their billing and shipping information is entered and I just saw a great example.

I can't remember the website but they simply stated something like "You will have an opportunity to review your order before entering your credit card information".

That might do the trick!

DianeV

08-22-2006, 09:53 AM

Yes, that just might do the trick — and I hope the templates are split up enough that we can do just that (easily).

I know what you mean -- customers are very easily confused. I'm just saying that many orders can't be calculated without *some* info from the customer.

On the other hand, I like the "you'll be able to review your order before checkout" idea. Excellent.

Spookious

08-22-2006, 12:42 PM

I don't know if you guys saw this or not; it might be of some interest to some of you...
http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/esupport/index.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=11
(Sweet! PayPal Pro!)

BTW, when you ASP-ers finally get ahold of the BETA, I'm going to expect a full report, STAT! :p :D

EDIT:
Before this gets brought up again in this thread, check out this screenshot (http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/images/ss_screens/admin_product_edit.png). It definitely shows META Title, Keywords and Description - for each individual product.

DianeV

08-22-2006, 02:19 PM

Sounds good, Spookious.

But ... that's it. I keep hearing STAT. What does it mean? :)

Killer Commerce

08-22-2006, 02:27 PM

Diane V is way ahead of you Spookious (all though that was a good catch). It's not the Product Pages we're concened with - we're now hoping the abilty to enter our own Meta Title, Description, and the Keyword tags will be available on the Category and Subcategory pages too! I've looked back at the postings and nobody was saying just give it to us for the Product Pages - In fact, most wanted it for the Category Pages too! I've been optimizing the HTML generated Category pages by hand to get around this and it is just too time consuming. But it's worth it because I get way more traffic to my Category Pages using more general search terms than I have ever been able to get directed at my Product pages. Let's face it - we need all the help we can get in the search engines and we cannot properly optimize our pages without the ability to modify out Meta Tags.

I do go on and on don't I?

Spookious

08-22-2006, 08:04 PM

Sounds good, Spookious.

But ... that's it. I keep hearing STAT. What does it mean? :)LOL :D Ok, here's a definition from www.m-w.com ...

Main Entry: 2stat
Function: adverb
Etymology: from stat, abbreviation for L. statim
: without delay : IMMEDIATELY <get a doctor stat>

@ KC...
Thanks for setting me straight. :) And I wholeheartedly agree.

GreenHorn1

08-22-2006, 09:13 PM

I've looked back at these postings and I see a lot of very specific requests for very specific needs that not all SunShop users may be able to take advantage of. But the Meta Tags for Category Pages and Subcategory Pages along with the ability to assign a sub category to multiple categories would be something everyone could use! And by the looks of past posts, everyone in fact wants this functionality...me included!

Looking forward to the best Shopping Cart software in existance!

SunShopper

08-22-2006, 09:22 PM

I couldn't agree more GreenHorn1!!!!!

DianeV

08-23-2006, 12:57 AM

-- Thanks, Spookious!

miloheckport

08-25-2006, 10:44 PM

I am hoping that the new version will be available GOLD prior to the holiday rush. Some of the new features are going to be great and I just hope that many of us waiting for this release will get to take advantage of the new functionality by at least mid ocober. Any new updates on release dates? Of course we want a solid secure release, I just hope that it does not take too long to make it happen. Out of curiosity, how many sunshop licenses are out there?

DianeV

08-25-2006, 10:54 PM

I've been waiting too, since July, although I realize that SS4 wasn't promised until "the summer" (which could mean the end of the summer, which is where we are now). But when it comes out, it will be in beta, which means it isn't the finalized version -- so that means more waiting.

I've got a handful of unused SS licenses.

And I notice the forums have changed. Nice look. :) But I'd like SS4 better yet.

TWT-Chris

08-26-2006, 12:35 AM

Rest assured 4.0 will definently be final and ready before the holiday and believe me, we are hammering away at it night and day. We underestimated the original beta release time but you must realize that we have rebuilt almost everything from the ground up. PLease be patient with us on this one guys. You wont be disapointed and we are doing our best to get this thing out. :D

DianeV

08-26-2006, 06:42 AM

Okay. But what holiday are you referring to?

craigw

08-26-2006, 02:35 PM

I am willing to bet we are not talking about the Labor Day Holiday!

What comes next - Columbus Day, October 12? I don't think Halloween is considered a holiday, so rule that out.

So that leaves Thanksgiving and Christmas...

But hopefully we will have enough lead time to do all the upgrades for our clients before consumers start shopping for Christmas. For the retail stores, the holiday buying season now starts right after Halloween.

So it would be ideal if we could get a final version of SunShop 4.0 by Columbus Day. :)

Craig Winters
Full Spectrum Internet & E-Commerce Services
www.fullspectrumweb.com

tomynate

08-26-2006, 04:45 PM

I am anxiously waiting. I am already getting Christmas sales.

Fingerstyle

08-29-2006, 12:08 PM

We are all very anxious for the release of 4.0 but many of us are hoping that you will work in the ability for us to enter our own Title, Description and Keyword Meta Tags to the Category and Subcategory pages as well as the ability to assign a Sub-Category to multiple Categories (similar to how a product can be assigned to multiple categories). There isn’t a screen shot available for the Category Pages as of yet so for all we know you have already given us this functionality, but if not, please make sure this gets into 4.0 before the final release.

SunShopper

08-29-2006, 12:25 PM

We're all crossing our fingers on this one! Let's hope it makes it to v4.0!!!

Brave New World

08-30-2006, 08:19 PM

Yes! I hope they will work this in too!!!

The good news is, per TWT Support, they are going to work the name of the Categories/Subcategories into the URL, which demonstrates TWT is thinking about SEO. And since they have already committed to giving us the ability to enter our own Title, Description and Keyword Meta Tags for the product pages, it just makes sense that they will do this for the Category/Subcategory pages too.

As for the ability to assign a Subcategory to multiple other categories, well they already allow this for the products so giving us this functionality for the Category/Subcategory pages is well within their expertise and since everyone here has been asking for this, then I feel pretty good about this too but we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, I’ll be on pins and needles!!!

Diana

09-19-2006, 02:55 PM

Having the ability to create different ship tables for an infinite amount of shipping methods would be very useful for users that sell products that are very similar. Currently, the only way to make-shift it, is to use the 'secondary' and 'other' ship table, which are only limited to three.

Also, having more control to create, name and edit informational pages would be nice.

Oh - and Level 2 Google Checkout would be nice too.

Thanks,
Diana

miloheckport

09-24-2006, 12:15 PM

No status update since Sept 8th. Can turnkey fill us in on the current status of 4.0?

TWT-Chris

09-24-2006, 01:20 PM

There are too many form posts floating around on the subject but we just posted an update on the 15th on a different ticket:

http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/forum/showpost.php?p=12951&postcount=23

delcompusales

09-28-2006, 02:23 PM

Several things I would really like to see:

1. Much more flexibility on shipping costs.
a. Free shipping over a set amount
b. Ability to add a ahipping surcharge on a particular order or to a shipping location. My costs and incentives are different for shipping internationally, so I need to be able to charge more for the shipping.
c. Ability to designate shipping methods on an item basis. I loose money on shipping of certain items because people select "Media Mail" when Media Mail is not permited on an item. I should be able to only display Media Mail for those items it is appropriate for.
2. Better product management. I keep some supplies in-stock myself, others I use a distributor for. Therefore the current "in-stock" is use-less.
3. Google Check-out - It's free so why shouldn't I be able to offer it?
4. The new Version out real soon!

paperlion

10-04-2006, 08:18 AM

one more for the peanut gallery...

stores with large numbers of items would do better to have a flexible file structure as to which folders images are uploaded to - folder size can then be limited to 10 or 20,000 or however many and others sent elsewhere - probably by product category, etc.

Otherwise, the feature list looks exciting!

paradisemint

10-13-2006, 07:33 PM

19. Add more bulk option features for the item and transaction list.

We sell lots of items in bulk. It would really help us out to be able to establish a different price per item based on the quanity of an item that a customer buys.

For example:

Quanity 1 - $74.99ea
Quanity 2 - 10 $72.99ea
Quanity 11 - 20 $71.99ea
Quanity 21 + $70.99ea

Or even something like this...
Quanity 1 - $74.99ea

with a drop down option of that says something like:
Or buy 10 @ $72.99ea
Or buy 20 @ $71.99ea

If an option like this could be added. It would be greatly appreciated. We have used your cart now on several websites for 5 years. Keep up the good work and updates.

Kevin Campbell
President CEO
http://www.paradisemint.com

Kraken

10-20-2006, 11:11 AM

One more request for Google Checkout support. I need to support this one way or another, and I really hope that I don't have to pay somebody to implement it for me after the 4.0 upgrade. Thanks for considering it.

miloheckport

10-31-2006, 04:50 PM

So here we are Halloween 2006 and no updates on v4.0, or have I missed a news update? I am a little pessimistic on this release. I see no way that TKWT can get through the beta process at this point and being able to implement the new version prior to this years holiday season. Coding must not be going as smoothly as anticipated. As a developer myself, I feel for you guys but as a customer I am a bit bummed. Please tell me (or the collective us) what is up!

vegvit

11-01-2006, 06:21 AM

silence is their answer :)

TWT-Chris

11-01-2006, 01:54 PM

Guys you need to keep your eyes on the news posts please:

http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/esupport/index.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=14

miloheckport

11-01-2006, 02:50 PM

I wish I could see into the future as I would have seen this announcement coming. Not the news I was personally hoping for as I really wanted the new version dialed in and installed at this point. I dig the features list of the new version and I am sure you guys will deliver just a little too late for this holiday season.

rexprice

11-14-2006, 09:22 AM

This issue came up while a UPS Technician was attempting to map SunShop cart data to their online systems. I might recommend that the checkout process either automatically populate the sname field with fname + lname of the customer or include a button which says something like "Click here if Shipping Address is SAME as Billing Address" rather than "Click here if Shipping Address is DIFFERENT than Billing Address". The logic being that there will always be the correct shipping recipient name for Shipping Info in the sname field of ss_user table in the database. For the majority of orders the Billing Name is the recipient of the order, but when the order is a gift (holiday or otherwise) the alternate Ship To fields (sname) are used more often. The problem is that a UPS label will automatically be addressed to the customer's name rather than the recipient's name because UPS is forced to map the fname and lname fields which are always populated with data, while sname is often blank. Just a thought.

TWT-Chris

11-14-2006, 11:11 AM

This wont be a issue in 4.0 as it will have a separate ship first name and last name

SunShopper

11-14-2006, 10:46 PM

I would like to suggest an option to allow a packing slip to NOT show pricing information. I get this request all the time from customers who are shipping gifts to a third party.

allhandl

11-15-2006, 06:25 AM

ditto- on packing list pricing.

craigw

12-05-2006, 03:16 AM

:confused: Your loyal customers have been instructed to stay abreast of the latest timetable on the release of SunShop 4.0 beta by going to
http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/esupport/index.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=14

The last posting there was November 1 and it says "good news is that we are no longer months nor a single month out from the beta release." Well, it has been over a month and the beta release is still not out. While that is disturbing that you have again missed a tenative release date, what is more troublesome is the lack of communication about the current release date.

As I have stated before, I find my customers are pretty forgiving about delays if I communicate with them. However, when things are overdue and I don't communicate with them, that is what gets them upset.

Please post timely updates on the status of the release of the SunShop 4.0 beta. We can handle the truth. If you ran into a problem. Just tell us. But please communicate with us in a timely fashion every couple weeks. Thank you!

Craig Winters
Full Spectrum Internet & E-Commerce Services
www.fullspectrumweb.com

tomynate

12-05-2006, 06:35 AM

I thoroughly agree. Lack of communication kills relationships.

miloheckport

12-05-2006, 11:32 AM

I feel the same way. I dig sunshop but there are so many other solutions out there. If I had the time I would implement another shop. Communication is key and we are all a bit blind to what is currently going on!! I think now is the time for the latest update.

com1000

12-05-2006, 03:22 PM

Turnkey should give us weekly updates, how hard is that? I really look forward to the new version, and will wait patiently, but I have a problem that many of you may also have.....
I am a web developer who uses Sunshop exclusively for all my clients... I love it.... when someone asks for a feature thats not in the current version, lately i have been telling them that it will be in the 4.0 version coming soon
( if indeed it is a scheduled feature) I have been telling customers that gift certificates and secure signup would be here in time for xmas... but with tomorrow being the 6th of Dec. we probably wont make it in time for real xmas orders.... the lack of secure signup definately hurts sales, especially at xmas time, when many people are buying for the first time or for the first time in a year..... one of my largest accts ( alright he IS my largest acct) does a quarter million $ a month in Nov and Dec each year thru 2 Sunshop sites... he is getting 20-30 calls a day to his customer sevice desk questionig the lack of secure sign up form.

I would love to tell him and others when we expect the new version... right now i cant tell them anything...i dont have a clue

DianeV

12-05-2006, 03:36 PM

I have the same problem, but have long since stopped giving any kind of estimate as to when Sunshop 4 beta will be released, let alone the finalized version that I'd be comfortable using on clients' commercial sites. It would help, however, if Turnkey would let us know what's going on.

That said, I was going to PM you, but I see that Turnkey has disabled private messaging for some reason. At any rate, if you need Sunshop customization, my friend Darin has done same for us: call (951) 530-1681 in Riverside, California: http://alphanetdevelopers.com/

Spookious

12-05-2006, 06:15 PM

^ Yeah, what all those folks said. I've been hold off making some major changes and now I'm thinking that I just should have done them because now I'm waiting way longer than I thought I would. It's disheartening and frustrating.

It really would be nice if you [TWT] guys would update us - at the very least - weekly. Seriously - it takes maybe 5 minutes max for one of you to post a simple little note in the forum to let us know what's going on. We know you're busy, but c'mon. At least update the people that help make this forum what it is. :)

com1000

12-05-2006, 08:40 PM

Diane, I have spoken to you before thru this forum... I know you have created a mod for the secure login, which is great... I have been holding back having that done myself, because I didnt want to start doing mods to a lot of carts that I would then have a hard time upgrading in the future... I didnt think it would go this late into the season before we would have the secure sign up

TWT-Chris

12-06-2006, 04:59 AM

Where have all of you guys been? We just released a newsletter last week (Thursday) to EVERYONE about the status of 4.0 along with new pricing and much more. If you have the newsletter notification turned off in your account that may be the reason why you did not get the news but we will also post it in the news area seeing as how it seems many did not get the newsletter. We aren't keeping anyone hanging and we are doing our best to do weekly announcements.

Here is the newsletter online:

http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/index.php?l=latest_newsletter

FYI: Coupon no longer works.

vegvit

12-06-2006, 05:29 AM

May be I could not figure out playing with the DEMO but I dont see how we can set up a discount or coupon with which a customer gets X free product if they buy Y products (BUY 2 GET 1 FREE) . This was available in 3.1 though it did not work ideally but now it does not exist. When poeple asked about this type of discounts and why they did not work properly TWT said they will address it in 4.0. It looks like removing the function all together seemed like a solution to TWT.
Can someone explain?

TWT-Chris

12-06-2006, 06:13 AM

Actually you can set it up a few ways. If its the same item though you can set it up as a quantity pricing discount in the product itself.

vegvit

12-06-2006, 11:42 AM

Actually you can set it up a few ways. If its the same item though you can set it up as a quantity pricing discount in the product itself.

not quite.

You can set the "per item price" from there. I only see the admin side and don't know how it appears on the actual site but it seems like it is reducing the per item price not adding free product. In the end you achive the same result but the way it shows on the shopping cart will be confusing.

BUY 2 GET 1 discount-- Ideally (other carts do just this) shoppiong cart shows:

Gadget A Quantity 2 price $5 extented price $10
Gadget A Quantity 1 price $0 extended price $0

Total quantity 3 Total Price $10

However with your pricing table it will show like:

Gadget A Quantity 3 price $ 3.33 extended price $10

Total Quantity 3 Total Price $10

As you see it is not really BUY 2 GET 1 FREE and it looks unprofessional.

Correct me if I am wrong.

com1000

12-06-2006, 08:18 PM

You say in your newsletter that the demo right now is what the beta will be.... well the generate html pages dosent work.... what is the latest on improving that, making it capable of incremental page generations.... ( like only new items etc.)
and still cant test the reports feature or the Quickbooks integration....

TWT-Chris

12-07-2006, 12:56 AM

As we said in the newsletter:
With the admin area about 99% completed we are left only with a few things that need to be added before the non beta release such as the order stats and advanced order editing

The HTML generation cant be tested as the front end isn't up yet. You will most likely see it in the beta release. And as we stated in a previous post...
Quickbooks exporting is now done externally via a windows application. We are taking full advantage of the Quickbooks SDK this time around instead of dealing with the iif format that is depreciated.

vegvit

12-07-2006, 09:39 AM

not quite.

You can set the "per item price" from there. I only see the admin side and don't know how it appears on the actual site but it seems like it is reducing the per item price not adding free product. In the end you achive the same result but the way it shows on the shopping cart will be confusing.

BUY 2 GET 1 discount-- Ideally (other carts do just this) shoppiong cart shows:

Gadget A Quantity 2 price $5 extented price $10
Gadget A Quantity 1 price $0 extended price $0

Total quantity 3 Total Price $10

However with your pricing table it will show like:

Gadget A Quantity 3 price $ 3.33 extended price $10

Total Quantity 3 Total Price $10

As you see it is not really BUY 2 GET 1 FREE and it looks unprofessional.

Correct me if I am wrong.

TWT did not reply to my message , I assume I was right. BUY 2 GET 1 FREE function does not exist in 4.0 though it existed in 3.5 . I don't know how this is supposed to be good.

vincent

12-07-2006, 12:29 PM

1. Hi, maybe I am not playing the demo correctly. But I do not see where you can edit the invoice(order). Is the new sunshop going to have a function that allow admin add a product and attribute(size and color if I sell cloth) to the invoice in the edit mode.

2: in the product page. can we assign inventory for each combo attribute?

for example: I have lingerie001 as the parent sku

I have color "black" and "red" for this parent sku
I have size "Small" , "Medium", and "Large" for this parent sku.

sunshop should generate the child sku like the following:

lingerie001_black_small
lingerie001_black_medium
lingerie001_black_large
lingerie001_red_small
lingerie001_red_medium
lingerie001_red_large

Once this is done, are we able to set the inventory for each child sku in the admin page? such as:

100 pieces - lingerie001_black_small
20 piece - lingerie001_black_medium
80 pieces - lingerie001_black_large
100 pieces - lingerie001_red_small
100 pieces - lingerie001_red_medium
100 pieces - lingerie001_red_large

regard,

Vincent

TWT-Chris

12-07-2006, 04:00 PM

vegvit: No, you are not right the functionality is there. Once you see the front end you will understand.

Everyone: Please wait until the final version is out before you jump to conclusions on what will exist or doesn't exist at this time. As we have stated many times additional features will be added throughout the beta process.

JnP

12-08-2006, 09:16 AM

From the Sunshop 4.0 Admin demo, I downloaded googlebase_products.txt. I opened it for viewing as a spreadsheet. The column headers are more user-friendly to used booksellers and other retail specialties. Can you give us some idea whether -or how- this is going to be integrated with the products files for bulk downloads and uploads? I haven’t read up on this from the Google end, so please excuse.

For example, are author, condition, format, isbn, and size going to be fields that can be easily attached (without complications) to the products.csv file? That’s the only way I can envision a setup for the google file to contain the product link and the entries in these columns in one smooth step. Otherwise, it looks like it will involve a dreadful process of somehow having to add these to the file manually as attributes.

I know currently it’s possible to add columns to the items file from within the MySQL database. I don’t have a problem with that, just wouldn’t be able to change all the php code functions to correspond to the newly added columns.

Furthermore, will there be a way to easily make these fields searchable via the advanced search function? That is, if it follows that they can be added to the items table in MySQL.

Fingerstyle

12-27-2006, 10:16 AM

There are a lot of requests for the ability to generate an XML Sitemap in another thread called “Add Google Sitemaps XML File Export Capability”. I think this would be a great feature in SunShop 4.0 and wanted to make sure the request finds its way to the “Add to SunShop 4.0 Feature List” thread. It certainly gets my vote!

paperlion

01-06-2007, 10:38 PM

but we will also post it in the news area seeing as how it seems many did not get the newsletter. We aren't keeping anyone hanging and we are doing our best to do weekly announcements.

News area is empty and I can't find newer announcements anywhere. Is anyone doing weekly posts?

TWT-Chris

01-08-2007, 12:26 AM

Nothing was posted over the holidays but there will be a Beta 2 release this week, probably tuesday.

DianeV

01-08-2007, 12:29 AM

Very cool, Chris. And what are you doing posting this late on the weekend? (kidding)

How's the beta testing going?

TWT-Chris

01-08-2007, 12:32 AM

Always up... always working on 4.0. I am trying to get it out to you guys ASAP. As I type I am wrapping up the beta testing of the checkout system and method modules. Coming along nicely.

DianeV

01-08-2007, 12:36 AM

Thanks, Chris. Glad to hear it's going well; must be frustrating to be working so hard while customers are demanding it be done yesterday.

Say, why did you all turn off the PM capability? Sometimes that would make it easier for forum posters to help each other.

miloheckport

01-08-2007, 12:01 PM

One thing that would be nice is a cost field for products. Is this coming in Version 2.0?

Pooch

01-16-2007, 03:24 PM

I don't see this as an option right now, but it'd be great to include a "testimonials" option to 4.0. You could use a similar setup as you do for "Reviews", but allow single testimonials to be displayed at random on the right side of the screen, with a selectable option to read more.

xadoa

01-20-2007, 01:50 AM

are we talking 2 or 3 years to have this release out? isn't it enough talking ? i hope people that bout licence in 2004/2005 don't get frustrated that their license is expired and haven't got 4.0 which they meant to buy :)

how can we test wth real producton when there is no upgrade for existing version.. who would sit there and enter new data to test for you? only ones that go with foodstamps ... most of the time, testing and running at the same time, that is the actual test..but we can't use the existing database .. oh boy, to enter the old data is too much already .. entering it again? i rather not using it ..
guess have to wait for the official release to have the upgrade? not sure i can get 4.0 running on my website by the end of 2007? or need another license renewal for the 4.0 actually out ..

TWT-Chris

01-20-2007, 09:37 PM

Well first of all 4.0 wasn't even announced until April of 06. We knew then it was going to be a big project since we did rework EVERYTHING from the ground up. Yes the project did turn out to be bigger then first anticipated but we are very close to a RC release. So lets not make it seem that 4.0 has been years in development because it has not even bee a year yet.

Also, we don't expect people to renter all of their data, you can even play with the demo if you wish. Those who are testing we are happy to have their feedback and it helps to get 4.0 out sooner.

DianeV

01-20-2007, 09:50 PM

Okay.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to participate in the 4.0 beta testing. Unfortunately (or, really, fortunately), my time has been taken up with building a couple of SS-based sites, and some other sites. So ... :)

anna

01-23-2007, 03:32 AM

What happened to "New Product" category in ver. 4 ????
I was hoping it would be improved for better from ver 3.

Too bad that the Category Tree will not be availble in the new realese of sunshop. I was looking forward to that.

SunShopper

01-23-2007, 02:16 PM

1. The Image Verification feature on the “Tell a Friend” and “Add Your Review” page is case sensitive. It needs to either state “case sensitive” or make it so it is not case sensitive. I would rather it NOT be case sensitive to minimize customer entry errors. I know that would make it less secure but I don’t think we need Fort Knox security on these forms – but that’s just me.

Also, after it has been sent successfully, the announcement stating, “Your message has been sent successfully” Is not in range to be seen. Unless the customer knows to scroll up, they won’t be aware it was sent and may keep on trying to send it. This is however working correctly when the customer enters something wrong. When an error is made, it automatically scrolls up so the customer can see the error message. We need this to occur when the form is successful too!

2. The Search Box in the upper right hand corner isn’t working properly. No matter what I type, it will not list any results. The advanced search does seem to be working just fine but it could be very annoying every time you submit a search, you will be taken to the “Advanced Search” where you will have to reenter your query. Or worse yet, the customer might think the site doesn’t have what they are looking for and leave to a competitor.

Also, the submit button on the Advanced Search form is not using the CSS Button Styles so it is not consistent with the rest of the site. Plus I just love those CSS Button Styles.

TWT-Chris

01-23-2007, 06:43 PM

1. We have to leave it case sensitive unfortunately... We can make a note of it but it should be assumed that it should be entered as you see it. mixing the case makes it harder to get around.

2. Looking into this for Beta 3 release tomorrow.

SunShopper

01-24-2007, 08:01 AM

No problem, I can certainly live with the case sensitivity but I’m still hoping that after a successful form submission, the screen will scroll up so the customer can see the announcement and verify that the form was sent.

I see that you already applied the Button Style to the submit button – You’re Speedy!

tjmaxwell

01-25-2007, 08:12 AM

Hello,

I originally bought the license for SunShop because of the promise of PayPal Pro integration in Version 4.0. I haven't heard anything about this since the first announcement, and notice it isn't available in the Beta 3 admin demo. When will PayPal Pro be implemented?

TWT-Chris

01-25-2007, 04:47 PM

You will see PayPal Pro integrated before the final release. No worries.

TWT-Chris

01-28-2007, 08:34 PM

I just actually wrapped up the extensive Beta testing on PayPal pro integartion so you will see it in the Beta 4 this coming week.

DianeV

01-29-2007, 02:53 PM

This is getting exciting. :)

vegvit

01-30-2007, 08:28 AM

will there be anything about the sitemap on 4.0? I know many people asked for it.
Please respond.

danegerous

01-30-2007, 01:27 PM

1. There needs to be integration with Quickbooks checkout credit card portal.

2. There needs to be the ability to have "In Stock" for EACH OPTION. not just each item. That way shoes and things that have different quantities per option can have their own stock...

Pooch

01-30-2007, 03:13 PM

Will the option for Verified by Visa be available with 4.0? Thanks in advance for your response!

Mac

01-31-2007, 09:41 PM

The Manufacture List is a great feature. You should include the ability to create more Manufacture Style Lists.

It would be a key feature for a videogame site, DVD Site, etc...

Renaming the Manufacture List to say "Genres" this way when you add a product you could pick "Sci-Fi Shooter" or "Action Adventure" from the list.

If there was another Manufacture Style List one could rename it to "Developers" or "Publishers" or "ESRB Rating"

Include The Manufacture Style Lists in the Advanced Search this way one can refine a search with ease.

Having the Manufacture Lists display on the Product Page and be linkable would be really sweat!

vegvit

02-02-2007, 03:33 PM

I Asked This Question Before But Did not Get Any Satisfactory/clear Answer.

Sunshop Now Has A "buy X Units Get Y Units Free" Function , However 4.0 Does Not Have Such A Thing. The Way It Works In 3.5 Is Not Perfect However It Is At Least There.

After 3 Beta Releases I Have Not Still Seen How We Are Going To Apply The Above Pricing In 4.0. ?

TWT-Chris

02-02-2007, 07:04 PM

Mac: You can rename the list to anyuthing you want... its not restricted to just manufacturers.

vegvit: I already stated that this feature will still be available. One thing we have not fully integrated into the front end yet is the volume pricing and that is tied into what you are referring to.

Everyone: 4.0 Beta 4 is available and does include PayPal Pro integration.

SunShopper

02-06-2007, 01:41 PM

I would really like to see the addition of a Stocking/Bin Location field for each product ID and then have the packing list sort by that Stocking/Bin Location number (low to high) to make picking orders easier. This doesn’t have to show up on the orders just the packing list so the customer doesn’t get confused.

I’ve noticed by these posts that some of us carry hundreds and even thousands of products. At some point you have to use stocking locations so you know exactly where stuff is in your warehouse. Further, you need your packing lists sorted by this stocking location so you don’t have to back track.

This would be very helpful for those of us who carry a large amount of items.

Please consider it!

Thanks!

Killer Commerce

02-06-2007, 02:14 PM

To heck with the guys with thousands of products, I’m a little guy with only about ten shelves worth of stuff and I know where everything is and I would still love to have my packing list sorted by bin location!!!!!

A typical order pick for me might start me at shelf-10 then to shelf-3 then back to shelf-10 again, then shelf 2, then back to shelf-10. It drives me nuts!!!!

By sorting the packing lists by bin location, I would have first been sent to shelf 2, then shelf 3, then to shelf 10 where I’d pick everything on that shelf at one time…not back and forth and back and forth.

Stocking/Bin Locations will help for everyone that knows how to use them. This is great idea and should be easy to add a simple field on the product page.

Brave New World

02-06-2007, 04:56 PM

I love this Bin Location idea!

I sell hardware like nuts and bolts. I have a lot of shelves with about 8 bins on each tier and I’m constantly having to go back and fourth. It just makes sense to pick things in order! All this would require is an additional field for each product ID.

Great Idea!!!

Fingerstyle

02-07-2007, 07:56 PM

Just in case TWT doesn’t have any Warehouse Management Knowledge, a bin location is basically a series of numbers and letters that states specifically where an item is in a warehouse. Say you have a product in Zone 10, down aisle 3, on shelf 7, on tier C (for the third shelf down) in bin 4. You would call out the stocking location as 10-3-7-C-4. If you sort your packing list (low to hi) by this number, it would keep all the zones together, followed by the aisles, then shelves and so on. It would basically lump your areas together so you pick everything in that area at once. It also makes you go from aisle to aisle in order so there’s no back tracking.

And it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Like Killer Commerce said, even if you only have 10 shelves, your stocking locations could be as simple as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 respectively. It can be as simple or as detailed as you want.

It’s also better than just using part numbers because you should never change your part numbers unless absolutely necessary, but you may rearrange your stock from time to time, which might result in changing the location of some products. With Bin Locations, you don’t change your part numbers or anything else about the product info, just the bin location. So you can be free to reorganize and rearrange your stock whenever you please.

This would really make SunShop a competitor to the big boys out there. SunShop have everything else, why not Warehouse Management too! And it would only require an additional field for every product ID and a simple instruction to sort the packing list by bin location.

Please consider it – thanks!

craigw

02-08-2007, 11:31 AM

Two things we were promised in SunShop 4.0 was the ability to export orders to QuickBooks and the ablilty to give the customer free shipping if they purchase over a certain dollar amount.

While the export feature in the demo of SunShop 4 seems better than 3.5, it still does not seem to have an "Export to QuickBooks" button. Will that be included in the final version of SunShop 4?

And on the free shipping, I see no way to do that when you have selected the "Realtime: Shipping Options". It seems like there should be a field and check box that says something like, "Provide free shipping over" and then a dollar amount to enter like $100. Will the free shipping option be included in the final version of SunShop 4?

Craig Winters
Full Spectrum Internet & E-Commerce Services
www.fullspectrumweb.com

TWT-Chris

02-08-2007, 06:16 PM

craigw: Please search the posts regarding 4.0 before you make assumptions.

1. The QuickBooks export, like we have said many times already, is going to be handled by a windows app. It will be released soon possibly at the same time as the first RC version.

2. You can add free shipping over a certain dollar amount with either a coupon a automatic discount.

craigw

02-09-2007, 12:07 AM

Hi Chris,

Sorry I did not search the forums before posting the question about QuickBooks. I am sure many of us will be eager to see that QuickBooks application since it is a feature that many customers are asking about.

Regarding the coupon method for free shipping, that is what we are using now in SunShop 3.5 and it is a cumbersome method that is difficult for the customers to understand, especially when the discount is fully automatic on most of the Internet's popular e-commerce web sites such as amazon.com, drugstore.com, etc.

You made reference to "a automatic discount" for the free shipping. How does that work and where is it set up?

Again, the easiest method would be if it could somehow be set up in the control panel shipping area where we could just select free shipping by clicking a check box and then indicating what the dollar amount is where they receive the free shipping. You would probably also need to have check boxes to indicate which methods the free shipping apply to. For example, some online stores may only wish to offer free shipping on UPS ground where other would also offer free shipping on USPS Parcel Post. So having the ability to select which shipping methods the free shipping applies to may be a good idea.

As you probably know, free-shipping-over-a-certain-dollar-amount has become a popular marketing tool for many e-commerce web sites. I hope the free-shipping-over-a-certain-dollar-amount format implimented into the new version of SunShop 4 is robust enough to provide a shopping experience to the end user that is similar to what they are used to with the Internet's most popular e-commerce sites.

Thanks for listening.

Craig Winters
Full Spectrum Internet & E-Commerce Services
www.fullspectrumweb.com

Pooch

02-09-2007, 12:24 PM

You made reference to "a automatic discount" for the free shipping. How does that work and where is it set up?Craig Winters

Craig,

This feature is selectable from the main admin menu "Manage Discount".

Pooch

02-13-2007, 01:00 PM

After months of tinkering with 4.0, I JUST noticed that the Best Selling list is relevant to whatever screen you're on. For instance...on the main page, it's the best selling out of all categories. In TV & Video, it's the best selling from within that category only. This is a GREAT touch and very useful! Just wanted to applaud the TWT team!

SunShopper

02-13-2007, 10:49 PM

I really like the ability to enter both private and public notes on each order but after they are added, there is no way to distinguish which ones are private or public by looking at them. Maybe rather than saying “Note By demoadmin”, you could say “Private Note By demoadmin" or "Public Note By demoadmin”. I really don't care how it is distinguished, I just want to be certain our customers don’t see anything they are not supposed too.

Please consider this – thanks!

TWT-Chris

02-13-2007, 11:51 PM

We will definitely add this. So we don't forget please add it to the tracker. http://tracker.turnkeywebtools.com/

craigw

02-14-2007, 03:45 AM

2. You can add free shipping over a certain dollar amount with either a coupon or a automatic discount.

Hi Chris,

I finally got around to trying the automatic discount feature for shipping. While it works fine as far as applying the discount and giving free shipping over a set dollar amount, it has one major design error. That design error is that it gives free shipping on ALL shipping methods. Most businesses are only going to want to give free shipping on UPS Ground and maybe USPS Parcel Post. But as this feature is currently designed, someone could select USP Overnight and it will still be free.

Naturally the business could post a notice that the free shipping only applies to UPS Ground, but what about the customers who actually do want to order it UPS Second Day or UPS Overnight or USPS Priority Mail? There is no way for customers to order any of those premium shipping options when the free shipping discount is applied.

And as I previously mentioned, the coupon method of offerring free shipping is what we are using now for SunShop 3.5 and it is very cumbersome. My existing clients have been complaining and I have been promising them that this would be changed to an automatic system in SunShop 4. If all I can show them is the automatic discount that has this major shortcoming of all or nothing on all forms of shipping, they are going to be very disappointed.

So we need a method with the automatic discount feature to be able to select which shipping methods are free (most likely just USP Ground and/or USPS Parcel Post for most businesses) over a certain dollar amount so that the other premium shipping methods are not affected.

I know you are super-busy trying to get 4.0 released, but please see if you can address this free shipping issue further when you get a chance. Thanks!

Craig Winters
Full Spectrum Internet & E-Commerce Services
www.fullspectrumweb.com

SunShopper

02-14-2007, 12:54 PM

I agree with Craigw! I would like to specify what shipping methods become free after a certain dollar amount is spent. Maybe somewhere on the ‘Edit Discount’ page, all the installed shipping methods could be listed with check boxes. We could then check which shipping methods the discount would apply to. This would give us tremendous flexibility. For example, we could select Free Shipping to be applied to Media Mail, First Class, Parcel post and UPS Ground if an order reaches $50.00. But we could also have a separate discount that would make Priority and UPS 2-Day free if an order reached $150.00.

Further, rather than automatically applying the discount, I would like the customer to be able to view all the shipping methods but have the applicable shipping costs change to $0.00 or “Free” so the customer may still select their desired method but they can see that they won’t be charged anything. As it is now, the customer may not know they received free shipping. They naturally go to select their method of shipping only to see costs next to each method. They may think they didn’t get the free shipping and then leave and never come back.

What makes this great is what the customer sees, the customer gets. If they See UPS Ground listed at $0.00 or Free then that is exactly what they’ll pay. But if a customer sees Global Priority at $35.00 then that is what they will pay. It’s all there so they can make an informed decision rather than calling my toll free number to confirm they got free shipping or worse yet, we lose the customer.

vegvit

02-15-2007, 09:43 AM

SITEMAP SUPERB , THANKS TWT. This really helps. However will we have a google sitemap? which goes to product level, and helps greatly with rankings. I think the same format is good for Yahoo so it is not specific for google only. Any updates?

DianeV

02-15-2007, 09:48 AM

vegvit, I have never used Google Sitemaps, and do just fine with rankings. And I'm not crazy about the idea of sharing my marketing data with anyone.

Anyway, isn't that something you generate within your Google account?

vegvit

02-15-2007, 04:02 PM

well google sitemaps do not share your marketing data in any way, it is simply a list of your web urls where you want google index, and you can give more importance to some pages over others if you want to. You set crawling times so googles crawls your website only those times etc. it is very useful and now other major search engines use it as well, and it should very easy to code . If incorporated it is an added value for sunshop.

DianeV

02-15-2007, 04:15 PM

I realize that Google Site Maps do not, apparently, share data with third parties. ;)

I'm saying I've never had a problem getting sites crawled and listed.

SunShopper

02-15-2007, 11:04 PM

Howdy DianeV!

I think vegvit is talking about an XML Sitemap that Google and Yahoo are using these days. The format goes like this…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
< urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
< url>
< loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
< lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
< changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
< priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

You would repeat everything from <url> to </url> for each URL. This will tell the search engines what to index and how often. You would normally provide the URL of every single Category, Subcategory and Product page. As you can imagine, keeping up with this would be murder. Every time you make a change you’d have to modify this file so making it database driven would be the only way to go.

Per Google:
“Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can't reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines.”

So do we need them or not?!
Per Google:
”Please note that the Sitemap Protocol supplements, but does not replace, the crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting a Sitemap (or Sitemaps) to a search engine, you will help that engine's crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site. Using this protocol does not guarantee that your webpages will be included in search indexes. (Note that using this protocol will not influence the way your pages are ranked by Google.)”

Conclusion:
Make sure you don’t have any broken links to the pages you want indexed and you will probably not need an XML Sitemap. But they sure are all the rage right now!

Another type of Site Map
A single page that lists hyperlinks to every Category, SubCategory and Product Page has become very popular. Overstock.com uses one that is found on their footer. The URL is http://www.overstock.com/searchmap.html

The idea is, Search Engines will limit how long or how much info on a given website they will index at a single time. They also may limit how deep they will go. So if you make one page of links to every single page you want indexed, it’s more likely that all or most of your pages would get indexed.

Either way, If we decide to create these types of Sitemaps, we’ll need them to be database driven. Personally, I'd like to give them a whirl.

DianeV

02-15-2007, 11:10 PM

Hi Sunshopper. I do know about Google XML Site Maps. I've just never needed them. That said, your mileage may vary. :)

I don't know how many pages you're talking about, but I've never had trouble getting pages picked up by search engines. It may help, though, to get other sites to link to yours (and not by reciprocating links), as Google for one has indicated that number and quality of links to your site will be a gauge against which they determine how deep they'll crawl.

SunShopper

02-16-2007, 11:43 AM

Sorry for the long love letter DianeV. I just wanted to share what I learned with everyone. I pulled my facts directly from Google and thought that would be of interest for those who aren’t sure what all this SiteMap business is all about.

I haven’t really had any significant problems getting crawled either but I do seem to have one or two URL’s here and there that I can’t find on some engines. As I begin to add substantially more products, it is going to be increasingly difficult to regularly check to see if all my URL’s are showing up. We may be able to take some comfort in the knowledge that we are providing a SiteMap so at least we know we’re doing all we can to get crawled. But by Googles own admission, if your site is well linked, then you WILL get crawled. Site Maps were really designed for pages that are not linked and would not be found through the normal crawling process.

That said, I was interested in your statement about how sites that have more backlinks will get crawled more deeply. That may be the real issue here. Getting crawled is easy – getting every single page crawled is another matter.

I just love jumping through all these hoops to appease the engines – LOL!

Killer Commerce

02-16-2007, 12:56 PM

I agree that the Free Shipping Discount isn’t that intelligible.

If we are promoting Free Ground Shipping on orders of $50 or more than I would like to see that shipping option equal $0.00. But if a customer wants to upgrade to UPS Next Day Air then I want to charge them for it! The discount is for free shipping on Ground not Next Day Air. But the way it is now, an order that meets the minimum amount to receive shipping will get free shipping on whatever method they choose. Plus if the customer doesn’t know to keep an eye on the cart, all they will see is a bunch of shipping options with costs next to them suggesting they will be charged. I can hear the phone calls now…“I thought I was supposed to get free shipping but the cart says $5.95”. Most customers will perceive this as a scam and just shop elsewhere. It has to be crystal clear or we’ll lose customers!

Also, on the Order Review and Receipt Page, the method of shipping is NOT called out. It just says “Shipping”. When customers pay a premium for Express Shipping – they want to see it say “Express Shipping”! It’s also not showing up on the Packing Slips so how will we know what type of box to put it in? We use Priority Boxes for Priority Mail. And finally – it DOES show up on the printable order selected from the Transaction area of the admin and in the confirmation email that is sent to the customer but it’s in a weird place. It should be in the area that shows the Total, Discount, Tax, etc. In that area, it still just says “Shipping”. This really needs to be fixed.

Brave New World

02-16-2007, 01:19 PM

I agree! I can’t use the Free Shipping Discount as it is. It’s just not intelligently laid out. The shipping options should simply come up with a cost or be listed as $0.00 or FREE. The shipping options that have costs by them will be what the customer will be charged for selecting those methods – period!

I also agree that anywhere it says “Shipping”, it must be replaced with the Method of Shipping. On the Order Review Page, Receipt Page, Packing Slip, Order Page, Email Confirmation…EVERYWHERE!

TWT-Chris

02-16-2007, 01:51 PM

Guys don't forget about http://tracker.turnkeywebtools.com/ it really helps us track issues and suggests better.

Killer Commerce

02-17-2007, 01:39 PM

I noticed the HTML Pages are being placed in a directory named “catalog”. I already put my SunShop software in a directory called “catalog”. This means a typical product page URL would look like this: www.MyShop.com/catalog/catalog/html-page.html

I don’t know if putting the words catalog twice in a row will adversely affect me in the search engines or not. Heck, it might get me ranked really good for the word “catalog” (LOL) but I would rather be able to choose what the name of this directory is called.

I would like to see a field on the HTML Settings Page where we can enter the name of this directory. Maybe make it default to “catalog” but still allow us (those of us who want to) to override it.

SunShopper

02-17-2007, 01:59 PM

I agree Killer Commerce! I really love all the control we have on how the static HTML page URL’s will be expressed. But the directory name also affects the URL so I believe we should have control of that too!

miloheckport

02-17-2007, 09:36 PM

I have some ideas as well
- Order Administration - We get a lot of duplicate orders and have to manually add product back into inventory. An simple admin button "Add Items Back To Inventory" would be really nice.
- Order Administration - Comments section - A Configurable drop-down list to enter default comments. Example:
02.17.07
Your order shipped today
Thanks for your order
- Product Admin - Configurable columns so that you can select the data that you would like to see in the product list (viewable, Is New, Featured).....

The main thing that I have noticed with sunshop is the lack of simple intuitive features. I really think that for version 5.0 Turnkey needs to really sit down and communicate with the users of the software and pick our brains for ideas. I use the NaviCat MYSQL tool quite a bit to maintain my database which is great but wouldn't it be nice to be able to have a robust query tool in the SunShop Admin area where you can do inline product edits and perform a batch update..

I also use vbulletin (the forum software used here at Turnkey) and I am completely blown away by all the features the software has available. I know there are other cart systems available and I am hopeful that Turnkey will step-up to the plate on the next version beyond 4.0.

Glenn

02-18-2007, 05:30 AM

Here are a few of my ideas for new functionality for your ecommerce product. I can provide existing examples of each if you require.

1. I noticed there is currently no option to Agree to Accept the Term & Conditions of the website prior to completing registration.

2. A captcha option should be included during the registration process to confirm it is a real person registereing and not a malicious software program.

3. As you are currently developing the gift certificate function, make it multi purpose for use with a gift card system.

4. Include a function that customers can check the balance and history of their gift certificate / gift card.

5. Ability to display up to four tags beneath products e.g. NEW. SALE, GIFT, HOT etc.

6. Each category should have a section for 'Featured Products' and ' New Arrivals'.

7. Include a function that gives customers an option to receive a notification email from the website as soon as the product they are wanting to purchase is back in stock.

8. Include a gift wrapping service opyion during the checkout process. Perhaps offer up to four different wrapping styles via a radio button selection and a text box to capture the verbage to be written on the card.

9. Ability for members to reorder from a previous order.

10. An address book for members to store up to five addresses for shipping puposes.

11. Ability to sort the results of an advanced search.

12. I am not sure if this is covered or not but the ability to store product weight in kg. I noticed, the Fixed Method in Shiiping Settings only contains 'Per Pound' and not 'Per kilogram.

13. Again, I am not sure if this is covered or not, ability for customer's to add special delivery instructions (comment) during the checkout process.

14. Order tracking function.

15. On-line poll function.

16. Shipping Info tab against products.

17. Change label on Checkout button to "Proceed to secure checkout".

18. Banner Management function.

19. A field in the backend system to set the copyright dates eg. © 2005-2007 X Company Ltd

20. Reward points loyalty program.

21. Have an option to place a strikethrough line through the RRP price.

22. You already have Retail Price (RRP), Your Price (Selling Price) and Sale Price but you need one more, 'Cost price'. Or is it, Your Price is the Cost Price ???? Can these be relabelled?

23. In Australia, we would need an ability to change Zip to Postcode, State/Province to State/Territory. (Note: As you have already included Australia Post as an available shipping method, I was surprised this wasn't included !).

24. An ability to sell goods to a single country only.

25. I had trouble locating an area relating to 'Email Notifications'.

I hope you find my ideas useful.

Mac

02-18-2007, 11:23 AM

I would like to see a search by letter in Alphabet.

vegvit

03-20-2007, 07:38 AM

I still cannot see any BUY 1 GET 1 FREE DISCOUNT* OPTION after months. I was told it will be there, now it is beta 7, no such discount is there. If I am missing let me know how it works.

*BUY 2 GET 1 or similar

SunShopper

03-20-2007, 11:33 AM

Does everyone realize that the shipping method does NOT show up on the Order Review Page, Order Complete Page and the Packing List?

On the Order Review Page, it just says “Shipping” followed by the cost. It doesn’t show the actual shipping method (i.e. Ground, 2ND Day Air, Next Day Air, etc.). I know when I purchase something online and upgrade to Next Day Air it’s usually because I need it right away and I better darn well see it on the Review Page.

It also doesn’t show up on the Order Complete Page, which acts as a printable receipt. Therefore our customer’s receipt will NOT have the shipping method on it. This is going to cause abandoned carts as well as unnecessary phone calls of customers confirming whether their packages are going to be sent via the method they paid for.

But worst of all, it doesn’t show up on the Packing list! How the heck are we supposed to know how to package our orders? Shipping companies have all kinds of parameters to their various shipping methods. Some need to be a certain size, some require special stickers or in the case of USPS, they offer free boxes if you ship via Priority but how will we now how to prepare the package if we don’t know the shipping method? I don’t know about the rest of us, but I can’t simply look at a shipping cost and know that the package is to be shipped via Air Letter Post to Australia, or via FedEx Ground, or UPS Next Day Air.

I submitted this as a bug fix but was told that it’s working fine. That was Beta 6 and I’ve seen no change in Beta 7 or Beta 8. I just wanted to see if anyone else has a problem with this. Maybe it’s working fine and I just don’t see it or Maybe TWT needs to know this is a big problem and needs to be addressed.

I will look forward to hearing some responses to this problem.

Killer Commerce

03-20-2007, 01:34 PM

This is a HUGE problem and I am puzzled why it’s not a standard feature. Not listing the shipping method is the same as not listing the products. People should see what they’re paying for! This was so important to me that I actually paid TWT to add this to my SunShop V3.5 license about a year or two ago. They simply put the method of shipping off to the left on the same line as the word “Shipping” and that worked fine for me. I also had them add it to the Packing Slip, as I wouldn’t know how to package my orders without knowing what the shipping method is. This is a MUST FIX!

vegvit

03-20-2007, 01:38 PM

TWT-Chris

03-20-2007, 01:42 PM

You are correct that the shipping method does not show up on the packing list as of right now. But it DOES show up on the printed order page as well as the admin area reviewing the order. Although its highly unlikely that the person who ordered it would need to see what shipping method they picked it is viewable by the person fulfilling the order on the printed order page.

On a side note, as we have also stated, this is still BETA please be patient as we are still added little things missed here and there on a daily basis.

SunShopper

03-20-2007, 02:53 PM

I don’t mean to make a big stink of it. In fact, it’s very difficult to complain about little things within 4.0 when there are so many new bells and whistles to get excited about. But it looked as if the case was closed. And to your credit, it does show up on the printable order (from the admin) and it also shows up in the order confirmation that is emailed to the customer. The problem is, the printable order should not be used in place of the packing slip as it includes very sensitive payment details such as the complete credit card number, expiration date, IP Address, etc. So most companies would prefer to keep the original order filed away for their records and opt to send only the packing list to the shipping department. And I agree that it’s unlikely that a customer who just selected their shipping method would need to see it on the review and order complete pages, but you’d be surprised what can confuse some of the many non web savvy customers out there.