Welcome to the Quick Shopping Cart® Developer Blog!
Hello, my name is Cindy and I lead the terrific team of programmers who work on the GoDaddy.com® Quick Shopping Cart®. We've created this blog so we can share tips on how to get the most out of Quick Shopping Cart, cover topics in eCommerce, and showcase some Quick Shopping Cart stores. We value communication with our customers and see this blog as another avenue to reach out to every Quick Shopping Cart merchant.
I'm proud of what the team has accomplished in the year that I have been working on Quick Shopping Cart. We've integrated with QuickBooks®, implemented site promotion features like coupons, free shipping and meta tag support, provided storefront preferences such as the ability to display zoomable images with the Interactive Image Viewer, added support for the FAST TRANSACT® / VeloCT payment gateway, added support for Google(TM) and Yahoo® advertisement conversion tracking, integrated with Google(TM) Webmaster Tools, and much more.
We've got lots of exciting plans for Quick Shopping Cart feature development. I'm interested to hear about how you use Quick Shopping Cart today and how we can help you maximize your profits by designing new features.
Thank you for visiting the Quick Shopping Cart Developer Blog, and I wish you successful selling with Quick Shopping Cart!
— Cindy
I'm proud of what the team has accomplished in the year that I have been working on Quick Shopping Cart. We've integrated with QuickBooks®, implemented site promotion features like coupons, free shipping and meta tag support, provided storefront preferences such as the ability to display zoomable images with the Interactive Image Viewer, added support for the FAST TRANSACT® / VeloCT payment gateway, added support for Google(TM) and Yahoo® advertisement conversion tracking, integrated with Google(TM) Webmaster Tools, and much more.
We've got lots of exciting plans for Quick Shopping Cart feature development. I'm interested to hear about how you use Quick Shopping Cart today and how we can help you maximize your profits by designing new features.
Thank you for visiting the Quick Shopping Cart Developer Blog, and I wish you successful selling with Quick Shopping Cart!
— Cindy
I would find it helpful if the "in stock" was optional. My business is custom so nothing is made unil ordered, there is no "in stock". Another option that would be nice is a choice for the cost,say From,Price,ListPrice or nothing but the amount in dollars.
These are great ideas, Lora. In fact, we are currently working on making the cart more customizable -- including adding more flexibility so that you can choose which information to display to customers.
Thanks again, and good selling!
Cindy
The USPS PRIORITY mail shipping still does not work. If you order one item, yes, but I did a test order with multiple items that I know that weight on, shipping from CA to CA, which is very cheap, and an order that should cost $7.50 for shipping, came out to $17.00 WOW!! People so hate that! So, I'm back to the custom shipping method.
Thanks for writing in, Tammy.
We looked at your store configuration and discovered that the problem was that no box sizes had been defined under Processing --> Shipping -- > US Postal setup. This was causing Quick Shopping Cart to default to shipping each item in its own box. After we defined a box in your store setup, the rate calculations were correct.
Thanks for writing, and good selling!
Cindy
Defining the boxes simply isn't a good enough solution. I cannot define the box sizes, because either the craftsmen themselves pick the boxes and packing materials, or the professional shipping company must do so. i need to be able to have this be automatic, according to the accumulated sizes of the products, because there is simply no way for me to predict which items they will want to order at the same time. My product line is too wide ranging for such a simplistic solution. Thanks.
Thanks for the blog. Great idea. My number one wish list item is to enhance the features of the Members database so that we have the ability to send out promotional emails (opt-in) to our existing customers. Allow our customers to opt-in to future promotional emails during the check-in process and then provide us with bulk email sending abilities from within the shopping cart program. Or at least allow us to export the contents of the Member database so that we can get the email addresses into any standard email program. Thank you.
Great idea, Jeff. We are looking at ways to integrate Quick Shopping Cart with Go Daddy's Express Email Marketing(R) to allow you to direct promotional email campaigns to your Quick Shopping Cart customers.
Thanks for writing, and good selling!
Cindy
This was a good blog
More than anything, I need to be able to do international shipping through my shopping cart. Right now I have to process all my international orders manually.
Thanks for writing. We are looking at ways to support international shipping in Quick Shopping Cart.
I would be very interested to know how Quick Shopping Cart merchants are currently fulfilling international orders. What regions do you ship to? What carriers do you use? How do you process payments?
Thanks again, and good selling!
Cindy
For international, (and because of the high fraud rate) I will take Canada orders only. I am unable to verify a credit card outside of the US or Canada. When I do my shipping, I use US Postal Global air mail, or Global Priority mail. The Priority gets to Canada in about 4-6 days. The shipping is very reasonable, around $15-22.00 depending on the weight for Canada. UPS is very expensive to outside US areas. So, there is my 2 cents. Hope that helps. Thanks for all your hard work Cindy!
Tammy
Thanks Tammy!
This information is very helpful for our planning on how best to support international orders.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
i used to use cart 32 for my shopping cat needs and they allowed you to customize the shipping fields, so i made a field that would display whenever the country code on the order entry was not usa (cart32 system required you select your country on the order form) - it would default to read: "international shipment - an email will be sent to you later for your approval prior to processing your order". the state and zip code fields were also designed to accept any two letter designation or 5-9 number zip so for example a customer could add "pq" and "v1x2e7" for "quebec" and "postal code" if need be.
Hi Rob -
This is an interesting approach.
What we are looking at for Quick Shopping Cart is integrating the address information with UPS(R) and US Postal shipping rate servers, and with payment gateways where possible. So as you can see, we need to do more than just collect international address data.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
Ideally it would be nice to have the site do the rate calculations, but for now i'd be satisfied as a stopgap measure if the QSC was designed to accept the international address info (canadian province and postal codes at the minimum).
rob
We currently ship to Canada a lot and want to be able to ship to Mexico and Central America and the sunny Caribbean, too.
Sandra,
Thanks for responding with your information. It helps in our planning.
Thanks again,
-- Cindy
Right now I have my customers e-mail me what they want and I manually research the shipping costs. Once I get the needed information, I send my customers a PayPal invoice through the PayPal interface.
Nearly everything I ship goes out by USPS Global Priority Mail. I believe I've shipped to every continent. USPS breaks the Global Priority Mail down into 5 zones, with pricing broken down by the half-pound, up to four pounds. Here's a link to the pricing table http://pe.usps.com/text/pub51/51tblb_001.html#vnameref_1
I'm so glad you guys started this blog. I've talked to my GoDaddy rep about this and used your online feedback form and was beginning to lose hope that my suggestions/requests were getting to the right people.
Feel free to e-mail me if you'd like to talk more about this offline.
Thanks,
Chris
Hi Chris -
Thanks so much for weighing in on the International Shipping. This is very helpful indeed.
Glad you like the blog!
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
I only ship USPS and would ONLY to countries where the packages can be tracked. So many of the Pacific Rim areas are taboo. MANY websites spell out countries they WON'T ship to. I take international payments via Paypal and VISA.
International shipping WOULD be a great but having a shipping "method" that worked for many users would be difficult.
My problem for example, I have some small $10 items that I can ship in an regular envelope and am happy to only charge $0.75. If someone also orders a $5 item that weighs a couple ounces, now I'd have to charge $2 to put in a bubble mailer and ship first class BUT if they also purchase a $25 item that is 12 ounces I'd have to go Priority Mail and charge $5. There would need to be a way to say everything has to ship at the most expensive method of any item in the order. Understand? But the shipping charge would accumulate, at that most expensive methods rates, with the weight of all the items and any additional items purchased. So I could basically use a weight based USPS calculation BUT again all items would have to ship at the most expensive shipping method.
Hello,
I was wondering how the packages are assembled when more than one item is purchased. For example, I have a 12X12X4 item, and an 18X12X2 item. When I check out, it comes out as two packages! Even though I have a box size of 19X19X19. These two should fit in one box, but it wont calculate correctly. Thanks
Hi Mark,
Without knowing more details about your configuration, I'm not sure why you got these results.
There could be several variables that would make them pack separately. A couple things to check:
Hope this helps,
Cindy
I don't have any "ship in own package" or weight problems. The only thing I can figure is that the import products function "transposes" the length and width entries. I don't know why it does this. Maybe that is the problem with the "virtual" box. For example, I give product dimensions as: 12 length, 8 width and 2 height. When I upload, it transposes, and I get 8 length, 12 width, 2 height. Maybe this is the problem, since, in the shipping section where you define boxes, the length/width/height don't match up with the product dimensions. Please check into this. Thanks.
Well Mark, you're right - you've found a bug. We weren't aware that the Excel product import was transposing the length and width, but we looked at the code and see that it is. We'll fix this soon. In the meantime, if you want to test your theory, you can switch the values in the Excel columns and see if this packs them in the same box. If you decide to do this, let us know how it goes.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
International shipping is a huge issue for us as well. We have been using our Innovative Solutions credit card account to manually process and charge the orders. This is all done manually and becomes a major hassle when volumes are high. We ship everything USPS. I would even be willing to put a flat rate shipping charge on every item for international shipping if that would make it easier? The Cart will not except International addresses at all the way it stands now. I do love your product, it so simple to use it's scary, fix International shipping and you'll be my hero. THANKS
Hi Bud,
You raise an interesting possibility - to support International Shipping for Custom Shipping to begin with. We'll take a look at this.
Glad you like the cart otherwise.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I insert Pay Pal coded buttons on my individual product pages and add a note: "for orders outside the U.S., click the Pay Pal button immediately below." It's a decent workaround method. I've noticed that Canadians can now order using the shopping cart. Is this intentional, or was it just a clever user from Ontario?
Hi MJ
Yes, the combination of using Custom Shipping with PayPal is a workaround that enables you to ship to Canada.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
I completely agree. We provide a service to International clients and it is effectively impossible to do this right now using this software. Cindy, perhaps you can look at, at a minimum, adding a "Country" field to the checkout process. Also, how about a separate class for Services where shipping information is not required?
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for writing. Question: If we did the minimum, and accepted international addresses in checkout, would you still be able to effectively charge for shipping and run your payments?
Interesting idea about having a Services product type. You're right, these orders would be processed differently. Something to think about.
Thanks again,
-- Cindy
The new shipping preferences are GREAT! Finally being able to ship multiple items in the same box makes things so much smoother.
I only have 2 more suggestions!
1 - Refunding and editing orders. I still don't see a way to change an order (add/remove items) or to refund an order. This would be extremely useful. It is hard to explain to customers when they call why I need to re-enter their order, or ask for their credit card again to make changes. It doesn't make me look very professional.
2 - Selectively apply tax to items. Some items we sell are taxed (products) others are not (gift certificates, services, etc). Right now we can only apply a tax to the entire storefront.
Thanks for listening!
Thanks for your comments, Cliff.
It's true that QSC does not currently support refund processing directly. We are looking in to how best to provide this functionality. Are you able to process refunds through your merchant gateway?
We have not had a large number of requests to edit orders, but I will put it on the radar to see what kind of interest there is amongst other Quick Shopping Cart merchants.
Regarding adding a "taxable" flag on products, this is on our to-do list.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
I would love the ability to process Canadian orders. It is a huge pain to have every customer from Canada call in.
There should be a way for us to "require" a fax number just like you require an e-mail address. Having fax numbers for our customers would come in handy.
I too would love the ability to e-mail my previous clients and can't believe it is not possible yet.
It would also be great if I could run scripts. Having a simple script like one that inserts todays date or day onto a product page would be fantastic. One could say on sale today "6$%^&" only and have the right day show up instead of having to log in every morning and make manual changes.
Allowing the shipping information to be edited was a great idea!
Thanks Michael!
I think some Quick Shopping Cart merchants are inserting scripts into some of the HTML fields such as the home page welcome message and product descriptions. You could give it a try.
Hope this helps,
-- Cindy
I think it would be helpful if there was an extra column in the Member Manager to show when a customer became a member. I see the list grow, but I can't keep up with who joined last.
The options need a way where you can modify the option, instead of having to delete it, re-enter it, then move the option back up to it's place. That's very tedious. Also, when a new option is added, the product should automatically update it's new options, instead of me having to go in every product and update it manually.
Add an option called Money Order instead of calling it COD...that seems to confuse customers.
Ok, I think I'm finished. Thanks...this blog is a great idea! Kudos on the coupon option.
Hi Iris -
These are really great ideas. I'm thinking the "Member since..." date would be pretty easy to do. I agree that Options Admin can get kind of cumbersome if you are doing a lot of them. We're also looking at how you can do a little bit of customization on your payment options.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
I would really LOVE the "Member since..." field.
I also agree strongly with the comments about being about to update options without deleting. What a pain it is the way it works now!
Hi Cindy,
I have a question about shipping. My client would like to charge shipping by the total value of the order rather than weight. For example if the total order is $100 charge $10 for shipping and handling. - it would be a percentage of the total order. None of the systems seem to have this capability. Can you help me on this one.
Bryan
Hi Bryan -
You can charge shipping by order total this way:
1) Go to Processing --> Shipping.
2) Enable Custom Shipping.
3) In the Custom Shipping form, select "Order Total" for "Calculate Shipping Based on".
4) In the Shipping Options section, enter the minimum and maximum endpoints for the range, and the amount you want to charge for shipping in the "Fee" column. Tip: The Max Amount for a row needs to be the same as the Min Amount for the next row. If an order comes in for exactly this amount, the fee value from the higher row is used.
5) Save and Publish!
Hope this helps,
-- Cindy
I like this blog! Great idea. I have a couple of wishes. My main page is www.atlantagiftbasket.com
1. Incorporate the ability for non-US countries to place orders! I have a lot of Canadian customers that ship to the US and I must manually enter their order and "fake" the system.
2. Incorporate a "custom" shipping type. I send most of my gifts through a courier service and would like to enable a selection of a fixed price courier charge regardless of weight or size. I tried using the Options feature but must manually edit each product. See #4 below.
3. Allow an option on individual products to be "tax exempt" like shipping or service options.
4. Add more to the product import/export capabilities like the product Options and image file name. See #5 below.
5. Add the ability to upload all my pictures at once and then pick them from the repository. It is very time consuming to add new products and have to upload the pictures one at a time.
Keep up the great work and I look forward to seeing the next round of enhancements!
Greg
The Atlanta Gift Basket Company
Hi Greg -
I really like your site! It is very well designed and your photos are awesome!
By custom shipping type, do you mean something beyond the Custom Shipping rates that you define under Processing --> Shipping?
I agree that improvements to catalog management, including bulk operations, are needed. We are looking into how best to approach this issue.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
Hello, by the custom shipping option I would like to see the following - shipping options price by weight is fine under custom, but I would also like to add a flat rate "Courier" shipping charge of say $20. I have figured out a workaround by using the Options feature, but I have to manually edit every product on my site to enable this rather than a default shipping option. For example, I have a product that is $75, I would like to have two shipping options: Ground is based on price and say 10.95, Courier is flat rate and is 20.00.
Hi Greg -
Multiple custom shipping options is one of our most-requested features. This is definitely on the roadmap.
I think your workaround is very creative. Agreed that setting this up product-by-product is cumbersome.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I carry many products that are exactly the same except come in different sizes at of course different prices, I would like to be able to have a drop down box for the different sizes at the diffferent prices and have it dropped into the cart.
Now I have to enter in a full product for each size.
Thanks for the blog idea, Lois
Hi Lois -
Have you seen the new Option Pricing feature?
Now, when you define options for a product, you can also include a price increment or decrement that will be applied when your customer selects the option. So, if your base price is $10.00, and you want to charge $1.00 extra for size XL, you can set the "XL" option to have an increment of $1.00. When your customer selects XL, the price adjusts to be $11.00.
Check it out!
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
I would REALLY very much like to be able to set the destination address of the HOME button in the Quick Shopping Cart to whatever I want.
Along with this, I would really like a new button called CATALOG that would go to the location that the current HOME button now goes to.
Hi Sandra,
I'm happy to tell you that some of the QSC developers are scheduled to work on -- among other customization features -- the ability to set the URL for the Home button. Creating a Catalog button is a good idea, too. We will look into this.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
I agree, the ability to change the destination of "Home" is something badly needed.
Here are a few more suggestions.
1) I would love to be able to add a background to the template outside the cart area. This would give the ability to blend with my main site.
2) Make company name not a mandatory field in the information area. this way i can have a logo that takes up the entire header. It also looks goofy when someone logs in and it says "Welcome" in the header. the ability to add a break after the logo would be nice.
Hi Reuben -
I'm excited to tell you that all this... and more... is in the works!
I do have one question for you - when you say add a background, do you mean an image? Tiled images? Or something else?
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Great idea to have this blog. How about an easy way to offer gift certificates or event tickets.
A FedEx shipping option would also be nice.
Is there some way to offer a discount on case lots. (My cart is being used for a winery)
Hi Dan,
These are all great ideas. We've been thinking about integrating with FedEx, and trying to get some information about how useful this will be to customers. I'm glad you've weighed in.
We're also looking at how best to expand our pricing engine, with things like gift certificates and lot pricing.
The Event ticket idea is interesting. We will need to see how much interest there is in this offering, and think about how best to accomplish this.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
Hi.
I'm new.... Can I change the size, location and color of the Name of the company ? Put a picture in the back of it ?? Or these features come in a more advanced program ?
Thanks.
Hi Amir -
Currently, you can't do these things in Quick Shopping Cart. I'm happy to tell you that some of our developers are scheduled to work on this functionality -- you will be able to edit your store header and display graphics.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
I have been with Go Daddy shopping cart for 8 months + now I think. I have to say that I am amazed by the features they keep rolling in. I too am wishing that international shipments would be supported. To make it cheaper for the customer, we only send out international shipments with USPS Global Express Mail, and USPS Global Priority Mail (variable weight).
My other wishes is that Godaddy integrate with Google Checkout... it would save us A TON on transaction fees!
I would also like the ability to use custom shipping along with the other options. That way I could provide all orders with a Free Ground Shipping Method, and also let them pick Priority Mail, UPS 3 Day, UPS 2 Day, and UPS Next Day if they want to do an upgrade.
I would also like the ability to email my customers a promotional code for 50% off next day shipping or something of that nature. And the coupon that they enter only takes money off of the shipping charge.
Hi Michael -
So many great ideas!
We will look into how we can enhance the shipping and coupon offerings. And we are keeping an eye on Google(R) Checkout too.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
I would like to check if you have any news yet on the integration of Google Checkout with your Quick Shopping Cart. I am planning to use Google Checkout for my Merchant Services. Please let me know.
Also, I couldn't access where I could edit the welcome page. Thanks.
Hi Jenny,
I love your store! Very nice job on the colors and graphics.
It will be a while before we have any firm plans about Google Checkout.
It looks like you were able to get in and edit your Welcome! message, but let us know if you continue to have problems.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I would LOVE to have customized or at least a block for messages on the invoice.
Hi Dan!
This is a great idea. We will look into how best to approach this.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
In the ebay auction manager we should have integration of shipping the digital products automatically once the payment is received. Currently I have to manually process the order with the customer information gathered from paypal account.
Hi Sridhar,
Currently the eBay listing tool only allows you to use Quick Shopping Cart to list products on eBay and to receive auction status. Quick Shopping Cart does not receive any information from eBay or PayPal regarding payment status for items sold on eBay, so we don't really have a way to close the loop and update payment information in Quick Shopping Cart, which is required in order to allow immediate download. This is a good idea though, we will look at this some more.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I would really like my clients logo to show up bigger at the top left of the shop. I uploaded the proper size, and it seems so small.
Hi Darryl -
Here is a tip. If you upload an image in GIF format, Quick Shopping Cart will not resize the image, like it does for JPG and other fiel formats. GIF format is for advanced users who can use an image editor to get the image in the size they want first, then upload.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for writing,
-- Cindy
Note that may help other users. I was having a HECK of a time setting up my shopping cart. The pages would load SLOW, lock up or not finish loading ALL the time. THEN I switched to Mozilla.org Firefox browser (instead of Microsoft's Explorer). I don't know what's different between the 2 but now the shopping cart works PERFECTLY and fast!
Hi James,
Now, this is very interesting. I have heard a couple other Quick Shopping Cart merchants say the same thing. We will look harder at Internet Explorer(R) in our testing.
Thanks for the tip,
-- Cindy
Two things and this both maybe since I have limited web experience.
1.) I would hope for some more pages in the Quick Chart .. ie. the ability to make FAQ or news pages or pages just to provide support, explanations, or customer testimonials.
2.) I know the SSL is important but I hear it effects the way searching engines optimize and crawl the store. Is this true ? If so would the above support pages help with that matter or could we pick pages that should not be https ?
Hi John,
We are looking at ways to allow more customization of pages, and also to integrate with Web Site Tonight(R) where you can define your own pages.
Our resident Search Engine Optimization expert tells me that having SSL does not affect how the site is crawled. We've got several QSC customers who use https and we see them showing up in Google search results.
Hope this helps,
Cindy
Hello.
I have to say that I am very unhappy with the quick shopping cart.
There is nothing quick about it.
I have over 20,000 items I can sell and do sell on the internet and wanted to list those items here.
Listing items here takes forever.
I upload with the CSV file, but listing the sale price and adding images takes years.
We desperately need multiple image upload via zip and a colum in the CSV file for sale price.
Both the image upload and sale price features DO NOT WORK CORRECTLY.
The image upload is supposed to take the image and if you upload it at the original, it is supposed to prepagate to the thumbnail and enlarged image. It does not.
The sale price feature is supposed to make is so if you do not enter dates, the sale price is indefinite, it does not. If you leave the dates field blank it will demand it before you are allowed to save the item.
Overall this system is slow, very slow.
This would be a nice, not great system for someone selling under 100 items.
For anyone trying to make a living from offering variety, this is the worst.
Last, there is no way to check traffic for this. We can't tell who saw the pages, where they came from. Not even traffic facts works for this. Some peopl e even bought traffic facts thinking it would work for this, but it does not.
I would not recommend quick shopping cart to anyone.
This thing needs lots of work.
You can look for me to leave once my year of quick shopping cart and merchant services contracts are over.
I am very disappointed.
Hi Hugo,
I'm sorry you have not gotten the results you expected from Quick Shopping Cart. I can see where trying to create and manage a 20,000-item catalog would be difficult. We are looking at ways to provide bulk catalog management capabilities.
The standard product image does propagate to the thumbnail and ZOOM images if you use the Add Product form (the Quick Form) to upload the main image. As far as the sale price, we can look at removing the date range restriction. We are looking at integrating Traffic facts as well.
Again, I'm sorry you're disappointed, and I hope you will take another look at the product when we have added some enhancements.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
The ability to re-process orders that have been declined would be nice. Either by re-submitting the credit card, or being able to enter a new credit card. Sometimes the payment gateway might be acting up, causing a card to decline, but when I log directly into it, I am able to process the card. I would then like to go back to the admin panel and say that this order is ok to process.
Hi Michael -
Quick Shopping Cart allows you to do a Capture on an order, even if the pre-authorization does not go through when your customer places the order. Does this work for you, or are you having other problems?
If you do go into the payment gateway to process the payment, you can return to the QSC Order Admin to set the payment status to Completed. Is there something else you are looking for?
Hope this helps,
Cindy
Cindy,
I'm referring to when an order is marked "In Process". Sometimes the gateway responce is: "A Duplicate Transaction has already been submitted".
When this happens, there is no Capture button. There is only the choice to cancel the order. I take the credit number from this, and process it directly in the gateway and it goes through. Now I can't change the status of the order in the admin panel, I cannot mark it as shipped, I cannot enter a tracking number.
There are some orders that say "A Duplicate Transaction has already been submitted", but those are shown as "Payment Errors" on the status, not as "In process"... with those I can click on Capture, or change the status to successful
OK Michael, I see what you are saying now. Orders that display In Process or Payment Error statuses are sort of in Quick Shopping Cart limbo - they are not really considered to be New orders, so they don't have all the actions available. They are orders where the pre-authorization to Authorize.net failed for some reason so the order does not complete in Quick Shopping Cart. If I understand you correctly, you are taking this information and going into your Authorize.net account to capture payment, and you want to be able to update the order in QSC accordingly.
Let me ask my payment processing expert about this.
Thanks for the clarification,
Cindy
Cindy, is there a way to expand the customer database to allow some custom fields that customers can fill in so we can determine certain criteria? We need some specifics about an order that are unique to our business and when there is a gap, instead of having to call them or e-mail them it would be better to have this in their customer profile.
Hi Keith -
This is an interesting request, I had not heard this before. We will put it on the radar and see what kind of interest we gett from the Quick Shopping Cart merchant community.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
a feature like this would be helpful for me too - if there was a field my customers could enter their car's make and model it would benefit me to insure that the customer did not mis-order and help me with future model specific part promotions.
Thanks for the input Rob - it helps us to get a feel about if a requested feature will be helpful to a large number of Quick Shopping Cart merchants.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
One feature that would be nice would be the ability to change part number based on options. One example would be when Size 12 Shoes have a different SKU than the same shoe in size 11.
Hi Brannon,
Interesting idea. Would you also want to change other things about the product, such as shipping weight and dimensions?
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
For my current catalog I don't really need to change other product characteristics based on options. It would just be nice the sell a Converse Tactical Boot that comes in a variety of colors and sizes without having to make separate products entries for each color and size or manually assign the proper SKU at time of order processing. I sell Footwear, Outerwear, Shirts, Pants, Belts, Holsters and other gear that changes SKU based on size. Perhaps simply adding a field next to the price adjustment where you add options to the product may be sufficient. Adding options with a file upload would be great as well. Thanks
Thanks Brannon, this input helps in our feature planning.
Cindy
I know that I could benefit from being able to customize the options sections. For example if I have sizes as an option, I could saying shipping is an extra $1 for 2XL, instead of just adding it to the price. Customers might be pushed away if they see the price. Adding it to t'he shipping costs would be less over-priced' looking.
-Nina
I have a similar situation - I offer a product such as Gourmet Basket that comes in three sizes. Each size has a different SKU number and different price and shipping cost (Based on weight). Currently I have to create three different products. It would be great to create one product with three options that can have the different costs and SKU numbers, along with different shipping calculations since they are different weights.
Under PRODUCT > FULL DESCRIPTION is there a way to change the font, color or bold the text that goes in this field.
Hi Nicole,
Yes, there is. Whenever you see the "HTML" icon next to a field, it means this field will accept HTML tags and display the text according to the tags.
You can look at any HTML reference to help you construct the HTML tags. Here are a few examples to get you started:
Hope this helps,
Cindy
It would be absolutely fantastic if you could use Fed Ex as a shipping method and specify the delivery type (next day, two day or ground) and bill out the actual charges.
Accepting Canadian orders would also be great, it is a huge pain to have customers from Canada call and have to fake the system to take the order.
Many Canadian customers are likely just to abandon a full cart and shop at another store when their zip code can not be entered.
Also we need to be able to do broadcast fax to our previous customers, it is such a simple thing to implement, why dies it not exist. If you do not want to have that ability within your site allow us to export an e-mail list just like we export a mailing list.
We need a way to modify an order just like we can modify an address (a great recent addition) orders that are placed are sometimes followed by a phone call to make a change. Now I have to call up the invoice, save it to my desktop, open it with FrontPage, edit it, save it, print out the new one and then get the credit card number again from the client because your system will only allow me to charge exactly what they "bought" the first time.
I really need clients fax numbers, there is no where for me to ask for a fax number and no way for me to require a fax number.
Thanks for reading!
Michael Del Greco
shop.Laser-Therapy.us
Hi Michael -
We are looking into offering Fed Ex as another shipping method.
Taking Canadian orders online should work if you have Custom Shipping configured and accept PayPal. Maybe you could experiment a bit and see if this will work for you.
The fax number is a good idea, as is offering functionality to edit orders. We will look into these.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Cindy,
My site uses a website tonight home page that is more personal and directs the consumer to the quick shopping cart. When the consumer enters the shopping cart area it has no way of accessing the original homepage. Have you looked into integrating the two for a more seamless integration.
thanks!
Hi Joel,
Yes, one of our currently scheduled projects that I am most excited about is to work on tighter integration with Web Site Tonight as far as templates and navigation back to the main site from the store.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
That is quite interesting. We may use that as well because we have the same problems at home and at my job. What's going to really change things up is the new Internet Explorer 7. I'm hearing that they are having problems with sites running Java Script, and it would be best to use them after the first patch.
Cindy,
I have some issues with the qsc & quickbooks integration. When a customer places an order I must then log in, open the order, precapture, mark as shipped, update order, then repeat for each customer. ONLY THEN can I download to quickbooks, and it doesnt download the credit card info so I can make refunds in quickbooks even though I am paying quickbooks for this service. Not only is it time consuming if there are 100+ orders, it leaves out the most important functionalities of the QB service. I am quite sure that GoDaddy doesnt want to lose the processing fees youre charging on each and every customers order, but its making this system totally useless. QB and I talked about the matter and they were rather frustrated that their software and service is being manipulated this way. I too feel somewhat left out because nowhere did I see that godaddy is charging fees on all of my customers, taking out of my bank account and theirs, on top of what I agreed to pay for the qsc, hosting, email, ssl and everything else. I'm sure most people overlook it and don't know.
Another issue: This website services 20+ universities in the NY area, particularly students for which we must have dorm and room # and would like the ability to place fields for them in the address area as required fields.
As for excel inventory, it seems to be functional, so why cant the customer database be handled in a similar way? It appears I have no way to look into records if a customer calls in with questions about their order, with the exception of course, of using the ridiculously slow shopping cart interface to search by date. I find that rather difficult when a customer doesnt always know the date they purchased something more than 2 weeks ago. Again I ask why godaddy is refusing to allow the download of customer information. If I choose POS payment then of course I can use the POS machine but as I have the proper functions with my merchant account to process payments as well as refunds in QB, does godaddy allow me to download the information to my quickbooks software so that I can actually use it? I doubt so. This must be once again because of the exhorbitant processing fees that godaddy is charging on each and every credit card transaction.
I have actually looked into valueweb affinity and some other sites that support quickbooks, so that may be a long term solution. I would prefer that godaddy alleviates these annoyances so that the QuickBooks integration that is plastered all over the godaddy website functions as it should. QB did not sound happy about the way its being used, as I am not happy either.
Please let me know if theres anything that can be done. Possibly something more proactive than "We're looking into it".
Ken
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
The new ENews e-mail has a item that says "upload a sitemap to your Quick Shopping Cart account." Can you expand on this topic so all of us can get a site map uploaded to Goggle merchant tools and get listed.
Sure, Michael! I will ask the developer who is an expert on that feature to write an article about it. This is one of our most exciting new features!
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I tried to create a sitemap using online sitemap generator tools. Unfortunately, the QuickShoppipngCart website is not compatible with these tools. All my other websites map just fine, but, you can't do a QSC website.
Hi Mark,
What tools were you trying to use? And what happened that it didn't work? We'll look at some of the tools if you can send us the links.
I can say that you can generate a Sitemap with the Go Daddy Traffic Blazer(R). You have to manually edit the sitemap afterward to remove some internal links that don't really go to pages on your site. I am having one of the QSC developers create a blog article on the Google Webmaster Tools, and we will address these kinds of details.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
XML-Sitemaps.com is one tool. I tried many other online site generators. Maybe it's because the QSC site uses the .hg file extension. I don't know, not a techie! All I know is I tried all afternoon to create a sitemap from various tools and none worked for me. All replied with: an error occured. Can anyone else try their own site?
I cant seem to find a way to edit an existing item in the shopping cart. I'm sure you must be able to do this, but am unable to find the path.
thank you
Hey, Rick. When you are looking at the list or products (Catalog --> Products), hover over the product Title and you will see it turn red. This is the llink to edit the product. You cam also click on the gold icon to the far right of the screen that looks like a pencil.
Hope this helps,
Cindy
Can you integrate Quick Shopping Cart with Paypal Website payments pro. I do not want to have a separate payment account..one for PayPal and one for my merchant account. I have been holding off getting a merchant account because I have been hoping that GoDaddy would integrate with PayPal Payments Pro soon. I have lost a lot of customers because I dont offer a merchant processor. The PayPal checkout is lengthy, too many links to follow, and not everyone knows you can use a credit card to checkout with PayPal. Additionally, the logo should change on the homepage...instead of the basic PayPal logo, you should use PayPal's logo that also shows the visa, mastercard, and other checkout options.
Lastly, I would like to see how many people actually abandon the cart during shopping and checkout process. This is an important statistic. Can you add some basic traffic facts to the Shopping Cart?
Thanks.
Hi Janette -
PayPal Pro and Traffic Facts integration are definitely on our roadmap.
Have you edited the PayPal verbiage that is displayed on your checkout screen? You do this under Processing --> Payments --> PayPal Setup. You can edit the verbiage to write something about accepting major credit cards.
I've contacted our PayPal representative to ask about displaying the alternate logo.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Cindy,
Offering PayPal Pro is on my top 3 things that would make QSC perfect.
The other two being international orders and having pages where you can have your own html or list pictures or customer testimonials, etc.
Thanks,
Nina
I definitely agree that we need the PayPal Website Payments Pro. Currently, we use it on our retail website at http://www.uniqueoils.com. Right now when someone places an order, we have to go into our virtual terminal at http://www.paypal.com/vt and process their credit card payment. It would be nice if the consumer had a problem with their credit card, they could see it right away instead of us having to call or email the customer.
It would be nice to have the opportunity to "view" or get a cc of the emails that QSC automagically sends out. I like to know what my customers are receiving and when. In another product, I get an opportunity to automatically OR manually send the emails.
When I first started with QSC, I didn't "complete" some orders. A few weeks later, I went back and marked as complete. Several customers complained that I sent them an order confirmation AFTER they had received the items and thought I was charging their credit card again! I had NO idea that ANY emails were being generated from QSC. So, we definately need to know what emails are generated, when and what they contain. Thanks!
Hi Mark,
Thank you for the great suggestion! At a minimum, we can create a Help Center article that describes the emails, their content, and what triggers them. I will also look at letting you configure a "cc" on your customers' emails.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
The new shipping options are great but I'd like to be able to give different items different origin ZIP codes. Another good choice would be an option for large freight items to get processed but it would tell the customer we will call with the total. How about a company field! How hard can that be to add?
Hi Bruce,
This is great input. Supporting drop-shipping, where you define warehouses including their origin ZIP, is on the roadmap. Adding company name is on the roadmap as well.
I hadn't heard about freight shipping until fairly recently, but it has come up a few times now. I'll keep an eye on requests for this.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I also have problems with freight shipping and QSC. I cannot offer a shipping cost for freight ship items. I even quit at Ebay because they chose an idiot shipper who destroys things for a horrifying price and didn't cover his damage. I have a professional shipper who does more than wrap plastic around a flimsy cardboard box for furniture sets of 600 lbs or more. Customer satisfaction requires that their furniture be packaged and shipped in a wooden crate, and the costs are dimension, weight, and address sensitive, as well as the curbside or inside delivery options. If these things could be conveniently set up for me, I would consider putting the rest of my product line on QSC, though the other problems I've been having with QSC are very frustrating and worrying.
Hi Margaret,
I'll try to address this and also your previous comment about it being unrealistic to define shipping box sizes.
I can see that you have advanced needs with regard to shipping options. In introducing the multi-item shipping quotes, we are aware that this is just the first step toward a much more robust offering of shipping options. We needed to start somewhere, and this first step solves an important shipping issue for a large segment of our merchant base. I won't lose track of your suggestions as I continue to keep my eye on Quick Shopping Cart merchant requests for more robust shipping support.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
How about adding HTML options to the Category Name so we can use the proper trademark, copyright or registered symbols so we can avoid those nasty letters about trademarks.
Hi Bruce,
What I do is use the ASCII decimal code to get the symbol. So, ALT+0174 for a registered trademark, ALT+0153 for a TM, ALT+0169 for copyright symbol, and so on.
Give it a try!
Cindy
Not sure if my last reply made it as the blog timed out. I would like to see an additional "fixed price" shipping option. For example I want to offer my customers a ground shipping option based on product weight, plus an option for fixed rate courier shipping. I found a way to work around with product options but must manually configure this for every product. That is very tedious and time consuming as compared to setting a global custom shipping option.
Oh yeah, one other thing. The checkout page should default to billing and shipping addresses the same "NOT CHECKED" - or configurable as checked or not checked. I have many customers that don't realize this and then have to call to put in the shipping address. And finally, it would be nice to be able to modify the template pages - for example on the checkout page that shows "special instructions", I would like to make it say "Enter Gift Card Text". That is another customer calling issue. Thanks!
Hi Greg,
I had not heard this about the shipping and billing addresses. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Thanks also for the idea about special checkout fields. This is something I'm hearing more and more.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Pictures, Pictures, Pictures.
To be honest, the greatest amount of work involved when using the Quick Shopping Cart with my product lines is the inability to automatically upload or associate pictures with the product. Example: One of my manufacturers has a catalog of just over 100,000 items. I carry about 25,000 of those items. The manufacturer graciously provides me the product info in a spreadsheet and pictures on CD. Currently, I have to take a small batch of the items from the spreadsheet and transfer them to the upload template, upload them, then go item by item to associate the picture and options. Anything that would simplify this process would be greatly beneficial to me. Perhaps including the local filename in the spreadsheet and uploading the image during import would be the best. If not that, perhaps the ability to direct the cart to use an image at a given URL would work. Then I can simply upload the images to a folder on my host site and the cart can display that image. Again, this is the most work intensive component of the cart with regard to my usage. Thanks
Hi Brannon,
I agree, bulk catalog management -- especially of images -- is something that we need to work out, and this is on the product roadmap. Thanks for adding your voice to this often-requested feature.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Is there a way to get a list of the customers who have bought each individual item?
Example: Item 1 - customer a, customer c , etc
Or download a spreadsheet with that information?
Hi Richard,
At this time Quick Shopping Cart does not supply this information. I can see how this would be very useful though. We'll look at this along with other Member enhancements.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I would like to see the following features added:
1) REPORTING - Net reporting should subtract out the coupon code discount from the gross total.
2) AUTO EMAIl - I would like to have more control over the content of each email.
3) COUPON CODE - I would like to have free shipping + a $$ amount that I can add as part of the discount.
Best Wishes - Matt Harr
Hi Matt -
Thanks for your input, always appreciated. These items are on the roadmap. For your suggestion #3 regarding coupon codes, are you saying that you would like to offer Free Shipping PLUS $$ off, in one coupon code? So when the shopper enters the coupon code, it both takes off the shipping cost and some $$? Or, would it accomplish the same thing to allow multiple codes to be submitted on an order?
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Cindy,
Here is a question:
Can I, or will there ever be a way to GET RID of the coupons showing up on the website? The coupon idea is great, but if you have no offers for a coupon, all you get are questions from customers wanting to know where they find a coupon BEFORE they place an order.
So, I would like to be able to take that off , and put it on the website whenever I need it.
Thanks
Tammy
I have been trying to upload a site map for my QSC for Google Webmaster Tools. I created the sitemap with Traffic Blazer, but each time I try to upload using the Browse and Save, NOTHING appears in the sitemap field, but it gives me the URL address. I pasted this to the Google Webmaster field, and it rejected it as needing to be (guess what) exactly what I had pasted in the field. Just discovered this blog, and see that it is something being worked on. I am new at websites, and need some very specific instructions in order to "remove some internal links" You mentioned in the blog from 10/23 response to Michael that you would have your expert write an article. I know I'm kinda dense, but where will this article be published? Is it available to all QSC sites???? Appreciate your response.
Hi Gary,
Sorry you've been having problems. Please see the recently posted blog article Using QSC Webmaster Tools Integration.
Hope this helps,
Cindy
I have two shop websites with you. Both are still being developed and neither are up and running as of yet.
One seems to be "ok" because it is small.
The other site has nothing but problems. When publishing takes place your program seems to stall. Perhaps it doesn't, but stopping for and hour, seems a bit long (900 items).
The importing from an excel file is very poorly written. As a programmer myself, I would be embarrassed if I was GoDaddy. It's JUNK! I'm thinking maybe I should move on.
Thanks for your comments, John. I'm sorry you're disappointed with the performance on your large site.
We are currently working on the publishing process to speed it up. And we are also looking at ways to provide catalog management for large sites that is more robust than the current Excel upload. Both items are on the roadmap.
Thanks for your input,
Cindy
My biggest frustration with using the service deals with the lack of being able to edit the "customer interaction" emails. Quick Shopping Cart should include the functionality of the Website Complete product and allow us to 1) SEE and 2) EDIT the emails that the customer receives after ordering something from our websites. Also, every once in awhile, customer forward me generic "we are sorry there has been an error" messages that they received when trying to order something. The service should notify US when a customer receives these errors so that we can be proactive in contacting them to try and help. When a customer has forwarded me these messages, they are however, so ridiculously generic that there is no way to know what happened in the first place.
Hi Jeff,
The ability to edit emails and invoices is one of our most common requests and this is definitely on the roadmap.
We will also work on a way for you to get notified if a customer is having problems ordering from your site; thanks for bringing this up.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Since you removed the CVV data and you do not support my payment gateway Linkpoint. It is now difficult to use quick shopping cart. It would have been nice if you at least provided more than a 4 day notice that CVV data was going to be removed! So what am I supposed to do now you will not support my payment gateway and you don't collect the CVV data.
Hi Steve,
I'm sorry for the inconvenience. This change is required in order to comply with Payment Card Industry standards, which state that CVV data cannot be stored. Since POS transactions are processedd manually offline, providing the CVV data for offline processing would mean storing it. We can continue to collect CVV data for online processing via the payment gateways, because we pass it through to the gateways without storing it or displaying it.
Support for the Linkpoint payment gateway is on the roadmap. In the meantime, the CVV change does not prevent you from using POS as a payment option.
Thanks for your input,
Cindy
Hello,
The look and feel of the site is great,
However we have a few requests. We have no Inventory and Mfg. part #’s are not required how can we remove this text? Our customers only need to view open invoices and then pay.
Hi Dave,
Currently, there is not way to remove the Inventory and Mfg. Part Number displays from your site. We are working on this functinality for a future release.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Hi, we would REALLY like the option to hide the number of items displayed with each category Ex:(234), specifically the top level categories. It does not show a accurate count of our products, as they are listed in more than one subcategory and count as multiple items.
We feel it may intimidate some customers as to the apparent volume of product numbers shown on the home page. Thank you.
Hi Danica -
Great suggestion! We are working on a future release that will include additional storefront preferences, one of which is to show or hide the product count next to the category label.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I wanted to add, I totally agree to this suggestion. Many of my customers ask me what the number 52 is next to the category listing. I tell them, "Well that is the numbe of products in that category"... but it would be great if that were gone.
Thanks, can't wait for that change.
Tammy
Greetings. When a customer places an order using a credit card but the credit card transaction won't complete (i.e. invalid card address) the order status changes to "In Process". Unfortunately, when searching for orders there is no "In Process" option in status drop down box. It would be great if we can fix this search option.
Thanks,
Brannon
Hi Brannon,
We'll work on this. Thanks for bringing thisto our attention.
Cindy
Hi Cindy, This blog thing is great. But I have one question. Are there any plan, on expanding the coupon options and flexibility? I would love to be able apply a discount to one item, but only if another item was purchased and also being able to tag a coupon to an item would be great.
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Since we released the Coupons feature, we've had a few requests to punch it up a bit with features such as the ones you suggest. We are looking at ways to add flexibility and functionality to the Coupons in a future release.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Dear Cindy,
The shopping cart check out procedure is too difficult and confusing and customers are telling me they are leaving my site because they do not see the Guest option at check out, but get stuck instead, beliving that they have to create a membership account first- with an impossible password to figure out how to create- because it is comprised of numbers, letters and a "special character". They do not realize until I tell them, that the reason they cannot create a password is because a "special character" is requested. Cindy, please consider reversing the template, so that the "Guest" proceed to checkout option appears at the top of the page; and please eliminate the need for a "special character" as part of the password.
Please respond to this.
Thank you,
Roy Katz
Hi Roy,
Both of your suggestions are on the roadmap. We are going to redesign the checkout so that it's easier for your customers to see that they don't need to create an account. We are also going to relax the password requirements to be something easier for your customers to remember. Thanks so much for your input - this helps us prioritize our roadmap.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Roy, I suggested that exact same thing many months ago, si I am confident that the QSC team will change it. Many of my customers don't get it also. They all try to sign in, wheather they've registered, or not. I can't wait for the change to happen. I'm hoping it will come before December, as that is the biggest selling month for all.
TAMMY
I had a couple of complaints today where people did not see how to check out without signing in. I know all you have to do is scroll down just a bit, but believe me, people are not the quick, and just don't see that. What date can this be changed? All you need to do is flip the page, where the CONTINUE TO CHECKOUT is on top, and the sign in is on the bottom. Can this be done as a quick fix possibly? Our busiest seller months are here. With all the hits I get, I should be seeing many more orders. Maybe this is the problem.
Thanks,
Tammy
Hi Tammy,
We've got this change in Test now and we are going to try to get it released within a few weeks.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Is there a way to offer multi purchase discounts without using the coupon feature. e.g. I have an item that is .99 each and would like to sell them each or 12 for 9.99. I can't find a way except to add it as new products. Even that would be tedious and not very professional on the site.
Hi Mike,
Currently there is no way to offer discount pricing on bulk purchases other than -- like you say -- to create additional products. This is a great suggestion though, and we will look at how we can make Quick Shopping Cart support more flexible pricing.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Cindy,
How long before Linkpoint, through CardServices International is avaiable? It used to be a processing system on the WSC program. I too, and doing the POS b-cuz I have had Cardservices for 10 years, and your other merchants can't even come close to beating my rates.
Tammy
Hi Tammy!
I don't have an ETA for Linkpoint integration, but we have started the planning for this.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Some of my customers have mistakenly entered the wrong email address when they registered.
I would like to be able to update their email and then send them a copy of their invoice through the QSC.
Can you fix that?
Hi Sandra,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We'll work on this.
Cindy
By far the most important thing I need is to change the buttons at the top of the shopping cart. That would let me solve so many problems.
HOME should be renamed PRODUCTS/SERVICES (or maybe INDEX) and a new HOME button should be added that is customizable to point to my real home page.
FAQs should be added.
LINKS should be added to help with my online marketing campaigns.
I should be able to optionally include other highly-usful buttons include SHIPPING, WARRANTIES, RETURNS, DEMO.
Hi Sandra,
I'm happy to tell you that these changes are all in the works. You will be able to customize the menu bar links. You will also be able to create custom Headers and Footers that will allow you to add as many additional links as you want.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Cindy
that is great! Any rough idea of when?
Sandra
Hi Sandra,
Unfortunately, we are not permitted to publish our product roadmap or to give projected dates for new development. We're excited about these features though, and hard at work!
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I would also like to be able export EVERYTHING to back up stuff and to re-import it easily, if needed.
Hi Sandra,
I assume you mean everything in your product catalog? I agree that more robust catalog management will be a great benefit, especially to merchants with alot of products, or with alot of information about each product.
Thanks for adding your vote for this feature,
Cindy
I am very happy with the QSC. New developments are always happening, and it is great that Cindy replies to all these notes, and really pays attention to what the merchants are requesting. I really don't have time with my extremely busy business to read much of this, but I did go in, at the wee hours of the night and read a blog where Cindy was saying how to customized your photos with the GIF images. I came across this before, but never realized that I could change my logo, for instance as someone was suggestion. I have recently changed the size of my logo, and the rest of my home page. What a difference. I never wanted to change my format, I just wanted a larger image. So now I have the best of both all because of this wonderful QSC forum. Thank you Cindy for all your hard work.
Sincerely,
Tammy
Thank you Tammy!
I looked at your site and I must say your new header ROCKS! It looks really great.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
MODIFY does not work when you modify categories. I've discovered you have to DELETE the item & ADD it back in again with the corrected category. This has taken considerable time to figure out.
Hi John -
I agree that this is not as obvious as it could be.
For the benefit of others, John is talking about using the Catalog Manager's Import / Export feature. If you export your product list, you can modify certain product attributes in Excel and upload the changes. You can also add new products this way. John is saying that when using the Excel file to modify existing products, you cannot change the category. This is because many merchants put a product in multiple categories, and changing the (single) category setting would result in deleting the product from all the other categories.
We are looking in to ways of improving catalog management.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Hi and thanks for the forum. I want to create a sitemap but most (I haven't tried them all) sites require you to upload a file to prove it is your site or to assist in the creation of the sitemap. There is no place to upload a miscellaneous file for this purpose. I also thought there would be a blog article on this subject.
I would love to have access to the CSS on my site.
I have a large number of items on the site and would love to have a way of "hiding" the items that I know will be out-of-stock so as not to confuse/discourage the customer when she or he is browsing.
Lastly, bulk item uploads with images would help my ability to effectively add new items to the site. It is very time consuming to upload items and then item-by-item, add the images.
Thank you for your time.
Hi Ryan,
Sorry you've been having problems. Please see the recently posted blog article Using QSC Webmaster Tools Integration.
Your other suggestions are on the Quick Shopping Cart roadmap.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Greetings:
I am sure this has been brought up before so just consider this as adding my support.
I need the ability to print out a listing of all orders, the items ordered, and each order's status. This way I can hand off a list to the appropriate department for follow-up e.g. orders that are invoiced but not shipped need to be verified for shipping status.
Also, I love the idea that a bunch of thing are on the product road map but it would be nice if there were some place we could look to see estimated dates for feature implementation and such, even if it is "sometime in June of '07" it would be nice to know.
Thanks alot. Keep up the good (hard) work.
Hi Brannon -
Thanks for the suggestion for printing out orders.
As far as the roadmap, we are not permitted to publish this or to give projected dates for new development. But we are listening!
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Dear Cindy,
So far, I have been extremely pleased with QSC. I have run into a dilemna which I did not think about when setting up QSC. I sell services and physical products in my store. The service I sell is sales tax exempt. The physical products (CDs) are not tax exempt. Right now, QSC does not allow an option to have tax exempt and taxable items in the site. I have noticed many shopping cart services out there do have this option. Are you planning on incorporating this option into your shopping cart service. I do not want to leave QSC, as I am extremely pleased with your service.
One other suggestion that I have is adding a PACKING LIST option for something that could be printed out after an order comes in. Many online stores ship their items with a packing list, rather than an invoice. Is this a consideration?
Thank you and I look forward to your reply.
Best,
Mike
Hi Mike,
I'm glad you like Quick Shopping Cart!
Your suggestions for taxable/non-taxable products and printable packing slip are both in our plans.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
Cindy,
Thank you for your reply! It is great to hear you are working on setting up the taxable/non-taxable option and possibily the printable packing slips. This all makes great sense! I truly hope the tax/no tax option for individual products happens soon. By providing this option, it will immediately help me in not having to correct and refund out of state sales tax that was accidentally charged to a client.
I also made another discovery today on QSC. If a partial refund is issued, (i.e. sales tax only or shipping charge), the sales report excludes the product that had the refund issued to it. Is this something that is going to be corrected?
Thanks again for getting back and I will look forward to new features!
Mike
Hi Mike,
It's true that currently QSC interprets a Refunded status as a full refund. We are looking at ways to track partial refunds.
Thanks for writing,
Cindy
I too, am in for the partial refunds, selecting which items to refund, and not the entire order. the WSC project was like this. You would select the items being refunded, and if any shipping or tax was being refunded, you would select that , and put the amount in. Can't that system be copied, and put in the QSC?
Tammy
Hi Tammy
Thanks for the comments. Our efforts to integrate features from WSC into QSC are ongoing.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
I have a concern with the quality of the zoomed pictures etc. When I am viewing our pictures prior to adding them to Quick Shopping they look great. Once they are on the site they loss so much quality. It makes it very diffucult to show the true beauty of our products. Is this due to restitions on Quick Shopping??
Aaron,
I hope that our recent article "What happens to my uploaded images?" will answer your question.
Thanks for writing,
Greg
I use Paypal Virtual Terminal to process credit card payments. Paypal requires a "Card Security Code" for all transactions and we noticed that our store no longer collects that info. I also saw the e-mail from GoDaddy about why it went away. I'm wondering if you have any suggested workarounds. It's a major hassle to have to call every customer to request their security number over the phone. Thanks!
Hi Jeff,
If you don't want to set up a merchant account and go through a gateway, the only other alternative is to use PayPal to accept credit card payments from your customers directly, and disable the POS credit card collection in QSC.
Hope this helps,
Cindy
Hi Cindy,
I have a few issues which I am sure more customer will experience, especially those servicing an International market. They are all related to the Billing and Shipping Information page during the check out process.
1. The format verification on the Postal Code and Phone fields will not work with countries other then the USA and Canada. Many countries do not have a 5 number postcode or a phone format that is (123) 123-1234.
2. The limitation of a 2 letter state code is also a problem with many countries.
3. My product does not require any shipping info, as the product is digital, so only needs to be emailed to the customer. It would be good to be able to remove the option regarding Shipping Information, as it is not required and will likely confuse the customer about how they receive their product.
Many thanks and I hope the issues regarding servicing International customers can be resolved easily!
Glenn.
I would like to see my ebay sales imported somehow into my QSC site. I can create new listings but cannot retreive existing sales. There is something called 'ebay marketplace" I've seen used on other sites.
Thanks for listening.
Hi RJ
An interesting idea!
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
I love your product. The shopping cart is awesome and easy to use. I use the excel template to import my items and I wonder if you will be creating a template or feature to also include images .gif or .jpg in the import process?
Thanks again for your hard work.
Kyle,
Glad to hear that you love the product.
Unfortunately right now there is no way to reference images with the Product Import Process. A bulk image upload feature is on our roadmap for future development, and the Product Import Process will be enhanced to take advantage of the new feature.
Thanks for writing,
Greg
I have had several occasions where I need to edit an order to change quantities, pricing, e-mail address etc. Currently I either cancel and re-enter or handle it offline.
International orders would be a HUGE plus. I have customers on every continent. For Int'l, I usually ship USPS air mail or Global Priority Mail. Occasionally I also use UPS, FEDEX, and DHL, since some customers request I ship using their carrier account #. Could there be a option for shipping to allow customers to enter their account# and carrier and therefore not charge any shipping?
I'm hoping in the future you will have the ability to specify quantity discounts in QSC. I have implemented an "option" that lets customers choose a qty discount but it is an "honor" system now.
I have only been using QSC for 2-3 months and so far I love QSC and its simplicity. Keep up the great work!
Andy
I would like to be able to add custom/standard message to invoice before the customer places the order. One reason for this is due to that we have to figure shipping after the order is submitted and call the customer back with shipping cost before we actually charge the customer. I want to place a message that states this in every cart view and in the cart before the order is purchased as well as in the confimation email that is sent when the order is placed. I would then like to be able to change/modify the order after the fact to be able to apply any changes if needed.
I wish I discovered this blog earlier. It's a great idea.
Two questions/suggestions:
1. I've seen previous comments about about adding a gift certificate function to QSC. Do you have a tentative idea of when this might be available?
2. I'd like to be able to offer free shipping and a discount in one coupon code and/or allow the buyer to enter more than one coupon code. Can that option be made available in a future update?
Thanks,
Laura
me to!
(that is: I'd like to be able to offer free shipping and a discount in one coupon code and/or allow the buyer to enter more than one coupon code.)
I allow monogramming on my products - is there a way to add a text box where customers can enter their initials on the product page? I am currently using the box on the shipping page; but would like to make it easier.
Thanks for your help!
Andrew,
This is a great suggestion and it is on our development roadmap.
Thanks for writing,
Greg
I need a place where customer can add a short personalized message to accompany their order. We sell gift baskets on line and everyone wants to add a note to be sent along with the basket.
Any suggestions?
Cindy~
As we are a rock shop, we offer complimentary free shipping based on 2 different avenues, 40+ lbs and $200 order total. Now, in the free shipping section, I can easily specify my offering of free shipping on the $200+ order total, but I need to be able to have another option to offer my free shipping for the 40+ lbs order total as well. Is there an option for this currently that I have just overlooked, or is this something that can be added possibly asap? Thank you very much for all you support and encouragement to each of us merchants!
Brie Bielecki
Online Manager
www.digginsonline.ws
-Is there a way to tweak the shipping so we can have flat rate standard, then free above a certain dollar amount while still offering UPS expedited shipping? I cannot figure out to get the best of both. Also, I have a few suggestions.
-I'd love to see more inventory customization by option. We carry small quanitites for now, and if we have two colors, we have to have two different listings so we can track inventory correctly.
-It would be nice to offer an alternate view or two of the products on the descripition page. Or to konw where I can put images so I can type in the html to display an additional image in the long description box.
-Spell check would be cool!
-I agree with others that the logo needs to link to where I chose it to go. I also agree that the category numbers must go ASAP (where it often incorrectly puts the number of products in the category).
Thanks! I love the blog and I'm happy so far with QSC.
My main website is www.atlantagiftbasket.com.
The biggest thing I have seen this holiday season that would make a "major" difference is the ability to customize the checkout pages. I sell gift baskets and each customer wants a gift card. Currently, the only place to enter this is under "Special Instructions" and the customers just don't realize they can enter the gift card text here. If I could modify the text of that and have it say "Enter Gift Card Text Here", that would save me a tone of customer calls!
Hi Greg
Something you can do is add some text to your Production Description to advise the customer to insert their request into the Special Instructions.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
Is there a way to change on the product pages where the category links are on the right side to link to a different web address(Modify links)? We are working on setting up our own designed pages with products and then linking them to the Quick Shopping cart to order...problem is when the customer goes to the product page....the links on the side would go back to the category pages in the cart instead of the pages we create.... Is something like this possible?
Also, any updates on uploading multiple product images all at once?
Hi Greg
At this point in time we are keeping the shopping cart as a self contained application.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
I am really getting frustrated with the lack of substance that I am finding behind this product. I am attempting to run a simply sales tax report for 2006. Should be simple. But I find that your reporting feature doesn't even have the concept of a DATE. Reports without being able to filter by date? The report just shows me every transaction since the day that I opened the store. OK - I'll just export it to Excel and sort by date and manually delete what I don't need. Nope. The date isn't even a field in the exported data. This is very, very frustrating. Why should customers have to maintain separate records to do such simple tasks?
Jeff,
Thank you bringing the missing dates to our attention. We plan on adding the dates to the reports in an upcoming release.
Thanks for writing,
Greg
I am looking for a way to password protect the actual storefront so that no one can access our products and prices without our permission. I realize this is a little unusual of a request and probably not something I can do from my Storefront Manager, but I was wondering if you had any suggestions.
Thanks for your help
Hi Ernie
A members only shopping cart is something that has been brought up by other customers and is something we are evaluating.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob.
Cindy,
I have just started using Quick Shopping Cart. Overall I am impressed with how easy quick shopping cart is to setup and use. I own a business and wanted to expand into being a distributor. Our customers would be other businesses. What I noticed was that in the "members' area there's no "company field" available. Which well for business to business sales is very important. I guess this wouldn't be a problem if I could change the field names" and possibly change the first name to "business name". Or something like that.
I was wondering what the "official" statement is on this subject? Is adding a "company name" to the member fields something that is going to happen? If so is it currently being worked on? Or is "business to business" sales not the target market for "quick shopping cart"?
Thanks and keep up the good work.
John
sales@onlineedm.com
www.onlineedm.com
John
Sales@onlineedm.com
www.onlineedm.com
Hi John
Business to business sales is something that we want to be able to help facilitate for our QSC users. Adding a company name has been field is something that has been discussed and is on our radar, but its overall ranking in priority has not been established yet.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
Please consider letting us change the names of both category pages and product pages to include keywords instead of category and product numbers. This would greatly help our search engine visibility! Also, let us add keywords to each of these pages, too.
Hi S. Anderson
Do you mean something like having the whole breadcrumb of a product page get included in the field that gets displayed in the title bar of the browser window? Or, in the url address itself where you see something like "....ProductDocument.hg?productId=2&categoryId=2" displayed? If it is the latter, I don't believe we can alter that.
Also, I think search engines return information from title bars, description boxes and page information more so than what is in the url address line. As I understand it there are many things that go into the search algorithm, like number of sites that reference your site etc, that factor higher than what is in the url.
On the Site Promotion | Webmaster tools page you have spots to put keywords into the Title, Description and Keywords fields. This is one area that search engines like Google will pull from.
Does this answer your question? Maybe others in our blog community have some insights as to how they are increasing visibility of their sites and will add to this thread.
Thanks,
Rob