Wishlist for next update

[barbara]

Just a few more things I'd like to add to the *wish list*.

1. When exporting product information, it would be useful to be able to not only export the product name, price, weight and so on, but also description. This would make it easier to modify information and import it back into Ezimerchant.

2. More of a bug than anything - when using Ezimerchnt I have noticed that when I use the Windows short-cut [alt] & [tab], to switch between applications, Ezimerchant crashes and forces me to restart the computer. I have gotten around this by not using the shortcut keys when Ezimerchant is open, but sometimes I forget and its a pain to have to reboot the computer when I'm in the middle of something. For reference, I'm using Windows Me.

3. It's been mentioned, but I'd like to re-inforce it - In the freight settings, letting the customer have the option of sending a package registered post vs normal post is something that needs to be addressed immediently.

Apart from this, I'd like to say that the changes made in the last update were great, particularily the ability to display a message rather than go to the shopping cart everytime a product is brought.

Many Thanks
Barbara

[dferguson]

Hi

1. its not really possible to export the description to a CSV file - Descriptions are HTML and contain many commas which would break the csv format. We would need to export to an actual database format like MS access for this to be possible.. But ezimerchant Pro stores its data in an access DB so its kind of useless.

2. Does this happen in the new version? Certainly havent seen it do it on our personal, home or test machines?

3. We added the Australia Post DRC in this version.. We will try to add more and more in future versions.

[bcarroll]

What I would like to see

1) Pick Up option - duplicate of COD
2) Ability to display items on site without a buy button - ie for products not yet released or sold out
3) Tag which I can insert into pages to indicate when the site was last generated
4) search engine for orders - ie find all orders by a name or email etc

[the woodpecker]

Just to reinforce or add to the 'wish list'

1/ Pick up option.

2/ "Insert Quote Number" Addition to shopping cart to let customers pay an amount not calculated by EZMerchant. Doesn't really need a database of quotes just the ability to pay a quoted price via the GTS.

3/ Multi packages vs.DRC It would be nice to be able to tick a box on the products page near the weight entry 'ships alone' or similar. This would allow adding a registration / handling charge per package via the freight surcharge. We regularly send multi pack shipments and register them making using the DRC a bit of a lottery which penalises customers with small single orders.

My thoughts for what they're worth.

Grahame

[the woodpecker]

Just to add a 4th point, it would be nice to selectively have International Prices available, we have some products that we can only sell in Oz, whilst other products can be sold anywhere.

Regards

Grahame

[bjs1965]

Ok, time to add some more wishes, and support have said they will look at implementing them in future versions if these are requested by lots of customers ...

1. I would like to know what the Product Number is going to be for my products before I generate the site and have to wait to find out. This is tiresome when you are adding a couple of products only, and you have to regenerate the entire site to find out those numbers, which I use as links throughout other parts of the site ... We can already see what the Category Numbers are when we do a new category ... why not products?

2. Speaking of how long it takes to regenerate a large store, would it be possible to allow us to regenerate only parts of a store?

3. I would like an option to have larger images to "pop up" when the customer "clicks here", giving us three image sizes (small, normal, and large popup), or alternately just allow for a popup link to be inserted ... this way we can use larger images to show more detail and not have to worry about how long our pages take to load - it will be up to the customer to decide if they want to view them ... I can already do this manually for each page, but everytime I regenerate the site it is cumbersome to have to remember to modify all the generated code ...

4. I would love Ezimerchant to be able to generate a Store Menu, similar to what Dean Woods have on their site ... www.deanwoods.com.au/store/webcontent16.htm - so that it fits within the design of the Store template!


Keep up the great work guys.

Cheers,
bjs1965

[Star]

I agree with these two:

1) Pick Up option - duplicate of COD
2) Ability to display items on site without a buy button - ie for products not yet released or sold out

My biggest wish is for existing customers to put in an account number at the START of the checkout as opposed to after they have put in their details. This is the main criticism we get about the set up and the reason we lose customers to competitors that have sites that remember their details.

No point asking customers to use 'auto fill' programs it is just too hard or time consuming for them

[bjs1965]

I agree with Star on point 2, that would be a very useful feature. Also, the account features would also be very nice.

Cheers,
Brendan

[bjs1965]

Dave is it possible to differentiate between Australian orders and overseas orders, and then only allow overseas orders to use PayPal as their payment option?

Regards,
Brendan

[dferguson]

Currently Payment Methods are non country specific.

[Odin]

I would like to see;

1. Customers being able to register and create an account.

2. Gift certificates - people can buy and redeem the gist certificates. Enter a code to get the value off the total price.

3. Have the postage calculate from Aus post. for regular, express & registered – this way you don’t have to set one postage for all products as you enter the weight etc of the products.

4. More free templates and make it easier to edit the templates.

[adrianlacy]

1. I'd like to see the Search function able to search Product code/Part number as well as title and brief description. I have customers who know product by code better than description

2. I'd like to see an undo / redo button for adding product info

3. I could make use of customer selectable freight options - eg Aust Post, Express Post, Registered, Insured, Courier, etc

i'd also like to say i'm extremely happy I no longer seem to have my previous lock up issues and thanks David for so quickly fixing our " symbol bug.

[lincoln]

Let the customer be able to submit an order via email and allowing a way to hide the credit details within the email.

[adrianlacy]

you need encryption to hide data, thats what the ezimerchant system is for.
Additionally, emailed orders rarely are filled out properly with product code/description, so follow up is almost always required to confirm correct details of order. I hate taking orders via email for that reason and the customer still has to ring or fax through cc details - Why bypass one of the main reasons to use a program like ezimerchant?

[barbara]

Just want to reconfirm everything I'm looking for in the future version of ezimerchant:

1) Customer login - where customers register their details once, and from then on just need to login with password and username.

2) Email address confirmation - when customers sign up for an account, an email is sent to the address they provide, and the account isn't activate until they have clicked on a link provided in the email. I have had several people put down the wrong email address in checkout (some are obvious, like xxx@hotmali.com, some aren't so obvious).

3) Pricing structure - same product, different prices for different quantities,
eg. - 8 peices=$2
OR- 20peices=$4
OR- 50peices=$8
OR- 100peices=$14
OR- 1000peices=$100
Weight will have to be set accordingly.

4) Postage options - eg. a standard rate, an express rate, a registered rate and an international rate.

5) An 'out of stock' option, where a product can be displayed, but the 'buy now' option is not displayed - this doesn't need to be intergrated with stock controls, just an option where I could tick/untick a box.

6) A newsletter setup, where customers have the option, when signing up, to receive a [monthly/fortnightly/weekly] newsletter. This would follow through to a client that can handle bulk emails and also has a seperate option to sign up to the newsletter from the homepage (I'm currently using MailWiz, from www.smartytools.com.au, which has most of these options, however, I would be more likely to get more people signed up for the newsletter if it was part of the sign up process). For the newsletter, double opt-in is needed, to ensure email address is valid, as well as the option to import and export email addresses.

7) Gift vouchers and promotional code set up (eg. enter AX34E at checkout for 20% off your order or the like). Also a new promotions set up, where I could have different levels of promotions (eg. all orders $100-$200 receive 10% off, all orders $200-$300 receive 20% off etc etc).

8) I understand why it is difficult to put an estimated postage price on the shopping cart page. However as all my postage costs are done based on weight, it would be extremely handy to have a total weight shown on the shopping cart page - just below the total price. This means that customers could check up on my postage page and see [for example], orders under 500grams =$4.50 postage etc etc. I feel this is one of the severe shortcomings of the program, as people want to know freight costs before getting too far along in the checkout process.

9) Automatic email sent when a customer's order is dragged into 'sent' folder (saying something along the lines of 'Dear XXXX, your order has now been sent, etc etc).

10) Ability to assign a product to multiple categories.

Other things that I think would make this a great program (but aren't essential)
-) Printable Catalogue - where customers could basically export the database (including Product code, name and price), to a printable version.

-) The option for wholesale accounts, whereby a customer can request a wholesale account, and if it is approved by me, next time they log in, they will see prices 50% lower than the standard price... A lot of work involved in this one, but something that I can see as a potentially fantastic feature.

Barbara

[dferguson]

Barbara Ive answered each of these via replying to your email.

[bjs1965]

Dave, I for one, thought Barbara raised a lot of interesting points ... would love to know your replies ...

Cheers,
Brendan

[dferguson]

Hi Brendan

Most of the questions raised have been answered multiple times in this forum before. But here goes.

1. Customer log in – Yes, V4.0 will have this feature. It will allow the customer to log in when they proceed to the checkout and our GTS will remember their address details. Very basic functionality - nothing flash like remembering multiple delivery addresses or payment methods.

2. Currently customers cannot create an ‘account’ so this is a non issue other than the customer not receiving their order confirmation emails – Which is annoying I agree but this would be the case with any shopping cart that doesn’t ask the customer to create an account. When we implement the login we will confirm the customers email address in some way.

3. Not in V4.0.

4. We currently offer the Australia Post DRC – Which gives the customer Standard Parcel rate and Express post rate and international rates. We may add to this the option of registering the parcel for an additional price.. Probably in a point release after V4.0. example 4.1 or 4.2

5. Yes – We have committed to this feature in V4.0.

6. V4.0 checkout has an option for the customer to subscribe to your mailing list. Ezimerchant has a rewritten bulk emailer and customer management section.

7. Yes! Will be in V4.0.

8. We will look into the possibility of advising the customer of the weight of their order. Other ecommerce systems sometimes show off that they can quote freight charges, but its really only if you have BASIC set freight charges only.

9. Wont be in v4.0 but will be easier to do with the new customers section as you can setup templates etc.

10. This will be in V4.0.

[bjs1965]

Excellent feedback and support, as always Dave ... looking forward to 4.0 (and, I guess, you are too!)


Best regards,
Brendan

[dferguson]

In regards to Point 5.

We have added a 'In Stock' column in the Products section of ezimerchant.
If a product has this ticked then it is concidered in stock. (default)
If a product has this unticked the it is concidered out of stock.

Now, what we would like to know is..

When its OUT OF STOCK what options do you need?

example:

Should we just hide the BUY button but leave the price? Or should we hide both?

What about putting some sort of 'Out Of stock Message' in the place of the BUY button?

Or do you want other options?

Please advise

[adrianlacy]

Personally I don't need the out of stock feature as such.

What I do need:

The ability to list products not actually for sale ie no longer available - we list some obsolete products purely for customer reference and to get found on search engines for those products - so for me - I'd need - no price shown, no buy button.

[Star]

David

I think many of Barbara's points reflect the needsand wants of many in this community

One question if I may and please excuse the paranoia. I would imagine that the data kept on the GTS (re point number 1 above) would be quite sensitive. By that I mean, most businesses are only as strong as their database. other than trust you guys are all a bunch of great blokes, what measure if any will protect the sensitivity of this data?

[memories]

Dave,

Keep the price and yes replace the Buy with 'out of...'

(thinking aloud...>)I also wonder if we can setup a button/field whatever that will get their email so we can advise them when its back in stock. In other words "im interested, please let me know when you do have it". This also could be used for pre-release products as an expression of interest (end thinking aloud)

Cheers,
Greg

[barbara]

I want to second Greg's opinion about the out of stock option - keep the price and replace the buy button with customisable text (this way we could just say 'out of stock', or 'out of stock, stock due xx/xx/06')

Barbara

[dferguson]

Star - You already trust us with all your order data - every last bit of it.. So the log in feature will not mean us storing any more data than we already have - except for the customers nominated password!

[dferguson]

Ok, in regards to the 'out of stock' option (point 5) I believe you guys will actually need to to perform two different functions.

Function 1. Out Of Stock
Optionally display/not display price
Display customisable text message in place of Buy Button.

Function 2. Display an Item not for sale.

Do not display Price nor buy button.

This would all be bundled into a single feature called 'Availability' with the following options.

If the product is 'Available' then it would act just like a regular product.
If the product is not marked as 'Available' then it would give you the following options:

a) Display/Dont Display Price
b) Display/Dont Display Buy Button (only able to display buy button IF price is also displayed)
c) If b) set to Dont Display Buy Button then Display/Dont Display Customisable Message.
Customisable message will be SHORT - like 'Out Of Stock' or 'Comming Soon' or 'Obsolete' etc.

Am I on the ball here?

[adrianlacy]

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME !

On another topic,
David, is there a way to have Order Reports print in Black Only - to save colour cartridges in inkjet printers - the bars between sections waste colours.
Is there something I can modify myself?

[dferguson]

There are two ways to make it print in black only.

1. Tell it to print in black in your printer preferences (when looking at the preview you should have a print preferences button)

2. Edit the order report and make it black/white only. (see: <a href="http://forums.ezimerchant.com/Forum/7-Established-Merchants/1924-Re-Credit-Card-Numbers/">http://forums.ezimerchant.com/Forum/7-Established-Merchants/1924-Re-Credit-Card-Numbers/</a> )

[memories]

Dave,

"Am I on the ball here?" Yes!!!!! :)

That would fit very well with my 4 shops.

Doesnt sound like I need to bribe you after all mate ;) heh heh

Regards,
Greg

[importscene-com-au]

David - Almost....

You should consider the option of selecting multiple out of stock messages (configurable drop down list so you don't have to retype them as stock availability changes).

For example at the moment, I manually add Stock availbility text to the bottom of each item which is one of the following:

"Stock availability: In stock"
"Stock availability: 2-5 days"
"Stock availability: 5-10 days"
"Stock availability: Limited Stock"
"Stock availability: Discontinued"
"Stock availability: Extended backorder delay - contact admin@importscene.com.au for details"

Each of these have different "show button/price" requirements which you have suggested providing "tick box" options for each which is good. (ie: First four will have price and button enabled, "Discontinued" will have both disabled and "Extended backorder delay" would have price but no buy button - although it would be nice to have a third option to show an email address for that circumstance!)

Note that the email message is long and you mentioned that the message would be short. The last message would be short if you enabled the "email for details option" and then the code automatically adds that text and your email to the end of the stock availability text.

The above text options on my site is supplimented with a colour scheme which represents the availability so it would be nice to be able to select the colour scheme for each message in the same way. My customers love this feature as they can see at a glance the specific stock availability due to the colouring - and it stands out. You may want to check out my site to see what I mean. http://www.importscene.com.au Click on any of the product details to see.

Also, the biggest problem I have is the regeneration of the site and uploading of the pages with every stock availability change. With this potential new feature how will you get around this? I gather through the updating of the single data file rather than the individual pages themselves and then read the field data to display on the pages (hopefully with colour schemes as suggested above?).

Cheers
Gregg

[adrianlacy]

In relation to brief and detailed information -
I'd really love a checkbox that allows selection for automated copying of information from brief to detailed - for search engine results we use maximum info on both brief and detailed pages and its a pain to cut and paste for thousands of products.
Obviously others use differing info, hence the selectable checkbox wish!

[j0anne04]

Current site I am building, a lot of the products are small fiddly parts that weigh under a kilo (eg: 1gm, 30gm, etc) the ability to chose to have weights set in grams or kilos, as at the moment I have to round the weights up to atleast 0.01kg to have it set in ezimerchant.

Would also like to be able to chose to take away the "Domestic" & "International" pricing at the top of pages. I've noticed some sites have done this already but im not sure how? Possibly have it as an option to display or not..

I would also really like to have my products open in a popup when they click on the item to view the detailed description. The layout im using doesnt fit the large images, so when they open the page goes lopsidded. I can fix this by resizing the images however to show more detail i prefer them to be bigger!

Thanks guys.

[dferguson]

Current site I am building, a lot of the products are small fiddly parts that weigh under a kilo (eg: 1gm, 30gm, etc) the ability to chose to have weights set in grams or kilos, as at the moment I have to round the weights up to atleast 0.01kg to have it set in ezimerchant.

Would also like to be able to chose to take away the "Domestic" & "International" pricing at the top of pages. I've noticed some sites have done this already but im not sure how? Possibly have it as an option to display or not..

I would also really like to have my products open in a popup when they click on the item to view the detailed description. The layout im using doesnt fit the large images, so when they open the page goes lopsidded. I can fix this by resizing the images however to show more detail i prefer them to be bigger!

Thanks guys.

Hi

1. ezimerchant doesnot force any weight unit upon you. Therefore you can represent weights however you like.

As an example 1 gram can be represented as 1.00 which would make 1kg 1000.00 or .1 of a gram would be represented as 0.1.

2. These can be removed easily. Go into the EDIT TAX SETTINGS section and set the INTERNATIONAL tax rate to 10%. The grey buttons at the top of the page will then no longer appear.

3. Its not possible to open into a new window - This is somthing we are looking at for a future version. You may want to concider a custom template - with a layout that does suit your big images. See www.practical-webs.com.au (http://www.practical-webs.com.au) for more information.

[firetrader]

Is there a way to add company name in checkout field decscription before names,
As I deal with companys and units, it would be much easier as the name, some times does not correspond to the comany I am dealing with.



A

[firetrader]

out of stock message instead of the buy button, maybe email request ?

Andy

[dferguson]

Currently the system asks for First and Last Names.
We can change this to Name and Company Name if you require.. Please email me with your registration number and I will help you.

[firetrader]

to be able to cut and paste out of Ezimerchant, names and details.
As I use manual systems to enter this data in to would make it faster and easier.

Andy

[dferguson]

Hi Andy

What specifically cant you copy and paste? You should be able to copy and paste order details?