QSC in 2007
Greetings to All. My name is Rob Speers and I am the new Development Group Lead for the GoDaddy.com® Quick Shopping Cart®. I started with Go Daddy® in early January of 2007. I have been in software and technology for the past 4 years and in project management for 14 years. Immediately prior to Go Daddy I was working with the software development group of an international e-learning company here in
We collect feedback from the use community in a variety of ways, and this users’ blog is a good place for you to post comments. We would like to hear about the things you like, the things you don’t like, and what you think needs to be added to help you increase your productivity with the application and increase your sales with your customers.
Our goal for 2007 is to continue to build out the functionality and feature sets of the Quick Shopping Cart® to bring you the tools you need to be successful in your businesses.
Good luck and good selling!
Rob
You guys really offer a wonderful product and I want you to know how much it is appreciated. Your staff in customer support are really wonderful and smart. Great communication skills. I have never in all of the time I have used your services been disappointed. Except once and that was not in your control at all. It was only because I got 3200 orders in one week and the system was unable to handle the volume...even then you guys helped me. Thank You!!!!!
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I've never actually seen any of my comments posted nor have I found a way to start a new topic, such as when if ever do you plan to debug the download function
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Hi Phil
Comments are posted after review, and usually when there is a technical review required this can take a few days so that we can publish an answer with the question.
We moderate the blog to maintain some structure by providing the articles to start the threads. We are open to requests for topics about the QSC.
Thanks for your interest in the QSC.
- Rob
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Why do you say we can leave comments even when comments are closed?
When will you complete the alpha testing of the download function so that software developers and ebook publishers can actually use the quick shopping cart to vend their wares? If you have no plans to remove the bugs, how can I get a refund? (Never mind the time I invested setting up the shopping cart).
How can I enter a comment of my own?
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Hi Phil
We just closed off some threads just from an admin perspective to see if it made sense to redirect people to a more recent posting as those articles were published a while ago. If those topics still generate questions and comments, we can certainly re-open them. This blog is for the dev community so I want to make it effective for everyone so that when someone is looking for an answer and its already been posted, they don't have to search multiple threads.
From a blog mgmt perspective, we create the articles to initiate threads of discussion. I'm open to ideas.
As for testing and bug fixes....they are an ongoing part of our lives and our goal is to keep improving the overall QSC. I don't have specific dates on that particular area at the moment.
Thanks for your contributions.
- Rob
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Will Google Checkout support be added soon?
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Hi Bill
We are actually having some exploratory talks with Google on this topic. We'll keep you all posted.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob.
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Rob, Glad you're part of the team.
I just received, today, an e-mail from Google on a Feb 27th deadline to add attributes to the Froogle/Google base items. "we will no longer list items that don't meet a minimal number of attributes by the end of February 2007"
When I look at my items on Froogle, none of them have any attributes, nor do I see a way to add them from within QSC. Is this something that will see a QSC update REAL soon or am I missing something?
Thanks, Andy
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Hi Andy
Thank you, I am happy to be aboard.
Yes, we have discovered this week that there is some development work required to our Froogle integration to support their new requirements. That effort is underway and we will be releasing a patch soon. Stay tuned for an update!
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I inquired before regarding the inventory issue, and saw under the "Importing Products Into Quick Shopping Cart" that Cindy had inquired about the same issue. Not having the ability to track inventory of different sizes is a huge issue. Is this a feature that is going to be implemented? Thank you.
Best regards,
Beverly
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Hi Beverly
Currently we do not support the tracking of inventory on options. It is on our roadmap, but priority for it has not been established yet.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I would just like to trumpet this issue and say that tracking inventory by size (and other options) is most definitely a CRITICAL issue. If a priority for such a feature has yet to even be given, then might I strongly suggest it be given one TODAY. At the risk of sounding like a whiner, the inventory tracking system/features as they presently stand are very weak, almost worthless even (at least for many types of products). Even making just this one improvement would GREATLY improve the overall functionality & value of the tracking system.
...and that's my 2 cents.
Respectfully,
-Dan
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Hi Dan
We agree that having a more robust inventory tool is a high priority and it is on our roadmap. I can't say at this point when it is likely to be in production as we have a lot of competing interests, but we do know it's a hot button for a lot of our QSC owners.
Thanks for contributing to the blog.
Regards,
- Rob.
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BIG HAIRY PROBLEM! The shopping cart does not support international orders or shipping! I need this NOW! I've spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours building a business using GoDaddy and the quick shopping cart without realizing there was no international shipping. Now I have international customers who cannot order from me without a manual process! BOOOOO! I can't believe that something this critical to a web storefront isn't available! I hope you folks can help me find a work around or we will need to part company. What a disappointment.
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Hi Kiki
I am sorry that you were not aware of the limitations with international shipping. Our Help Center (from Go-Daddy website click on FAQs in the Help and Support section, then once in the Help Center select Quick Shopping Cart from the Select a category dropdown and then type in international shipping into the search for, or in the Select your product section, click on Business then select Quick Shopping Cart, and in here there are 18 FAQs) does make mention that the QSC does not support international shipping options. Also, from the Go Daddy website, when you are on the QSC page, under the Features and Tools tab it does mention there that International is not supported. However, I agree that is moot now that you have already gone and done the hard work setting it all up.
However, we have taken this feedback on board that we need to be clearer about this during QSC setup so that the next person who is planning to go international does not have the same experience that you did.
As you have noted on your website, you can get around the situation via a manual process. In addition to your method of having them contact you, there is also the option of using Custom Shipping (you charge a flat fee that covers your international shipping costs and have your own account with an international carrier) and have them put their address in the Special Instructions.
Adding support for International Shipping and all the intricacies that go with it is quite a large development effort and it is high on our radar, but I do not have a timeline for it yet. For now, you will have to use the alternative options that do require more manual steps.
Thank you for your input.
- Rob.
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I am finding that several states require not only sales tax be collected but a surtax based on counties as well. I live in Florida and we have a 6% sales tax but each county adds its own surtax. These range from .05% to 1% in addition to the 6%. Is there any way the dev team would look into adding an additional level of tax tables that allowed the seller to use zip code or county (if prompted on cust info) to make tracking these taxes A Whole Lot Easier. I have seen it on several other shopping carts but I like Godaddy and would prefer to stay here. It is becoming more and more common for states to do this. Please let me know the feasability of such a request.
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Hi Dwayne
We have seen this request a couple of times now. We have tax handling enhancements on our roadmap and this aspect will be added to the feature request list.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I have a special way to add a background to your catalog home page without having to load unsecure items from an external style sheet...create an item with random properties, and upload the pattern you want as a background image as the items default image. Then view your cart item image in your browser and goto the image properties by right clicking on the image from inside your browser, and choose "properties" now write down the address of the image. Now go back to the cart admin, and set that item to discontinued so it won't show up in your catalog, but the image is still on the server.
Now you need to goto the welcome page and use div tag with properties background-image set to the the image url that you have copied, and surround your welcome message html with this div tag. It will allow you to customize the main body area of your catalog page. Html skills and style sheet knowlege are needed for this trick.
It is useful to note, that this cart supports the use of embedded syle sheets, so you can keep the look and feel of your fonts the same.
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This comment is a reply to Kristof who sent me an email today I can't reply to from a discussion board where comments are closed:
A shipping address is not required by PayPal or charge cards just a billing address-so why are you confusing my customers?
Why are you confusing my customers by providing a shipping address when no product will be shipped?
Why do you refuse to let my customers know that if they press that "Submit" button, they will shortly receive an email with a download address. Instead, you scare them away.
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Hi Phil
The QSC is a commerce vehicle for customers that have all types of products, physical and electronic. We have a single checkout process that needs to work for all types of products that are being purchased. Therefore the shipping address is part of that process. In addition, the payment gateways do require shipping address for processing credit card transactions.
Right now the QSC has the checkbox for Shipping Address same as billing, and when you get to the checkout this box is pre-populated, so there is no additional entering of information required of the customer.
As for having a message to let customers know to expect an email with download instructions, it is possible right now to include this information in the product description or in other text areas of the shopping site. This may be an alternative you could try.
Somewhere down the road the QSC may be extended to provide alternate checkout procedures based upon whether the product is physical or digital, but that is not on the immediate roadmap.
Thanks for your contributions.
- Rob
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Rob, one thing to keep in mind, many of us set up our product catalogs not knowing that the email the customers get would be so non-descriptive about what to expect next. Yes, we could add that information to the description, however, those descriptions are already written, and with over 110 products in my case and no batch editing capability, the idea of adding these instructions to 110 descriptions is not practical.
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Hi Jeff
Yes, I do understand that it's not practical with lots of products. That was just one example. I am sure there are other places on the site that a message can be posted where it would make sense. For example I have seen someone use the welcome page to make a note about international shipping limitations.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob.
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I am concerned that the current QSC bahavior of taking a customer to the shopping cart after adding each item is a behavior that may at worst result in shopping cart abandonment. In may serve to discourage browsing and reduce to items sold per shopper.
Is there a plan to alter this and is it possible for you to allow shoppers to view cart information on a side panel regardless of which QSC page they are viewing?
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It is on our roadmap to add a side panel to provide a mini-cart summary with a storefront preference to avoid taking the user to the view cart page after adding an item to the cart.
Regards,
Greg
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Is an integration between QSC and Express Email Marketing on the roadmap? I provide free updates for 1 year with my products download purchase. I spend more time re-entering customer data in Express Email Marketing, than I do any other task, including technical support. It is frustrating not to be able to have access to the customer data that should be readily available in QSC for use in Express Email Marketing. Even a simple export/import process would be better than nothing.
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Hi Jeff
Thanks for the feedback. We do have a QSC-EEM integration on the roadmap (we even had an initial scoping meeting last week). Once we get a better idea of how we can fit it in with our other priorities, we will share that information.
Thanks.
- Rob
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Hi, Glad to see the blog finally took off, a very good indicator of more positive things to come. Anything on the board for a customer (zip code based) shipping calculator?
Thanks for the past enhancements!
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Hi Mike
The way our current shipping mechanism works is that we get a real time quote from the carrier based on the zip codes in the order information. So, were you referring to something else?
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob.
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Is there a way to export orders to a flat file?
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Hi Brad
At the present time you can not export orders to a flat file. It is not on our roadmap yet, so we will log your request and continue to monitor our user community to see if this is a feature that others want.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob.
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We've used QSC for over 1 1/2 years and watched it evolved significantly! But... without recipical linking pages no site moves up on Google ranking. I'm suprised that this hasn't been 1st on MANY peoples lists of wants, besides a photo album (we sell clothing and to show others wearing them besides the item photos would be "nice"). If you don't have back and forth links from and to other sites Google may bot your website, but the ranking is -zero. Please Developers, make this a priority! Thanks for all the improvements we have seen in the past 1 1/2. Head Wench, WenchesAtWork Renaissance Clothing
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Hi Debra
Glad to hear that you are noticing the growth of the QSC.
We have a major release coming out around the middle of this year that we have been working on for quite a while now in which we are upgrading the flexibility and customizability of the storefront. Part of this release will include the ability to add html tags to headers and footers, so you'll be able to insert your page links there.
As for the ability to have more than one photo, we have a product called Online Photo Filer, which you may or may not be familiar with, which is an online photo album in which you can have multiple categories, or galleries, of photos. We don't have a tight integration between the 2 products, but you could have links contained in your product description area in the QSC where the viewer could be sent to a photo gallery for more views of a product.
We realize that this is something you and other QSC users may not be too familiar with so we are going to write an article describing these options in more detail and we'll post to the blog next week. Stay tuned!
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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Thanks Rob - yes QSC has been amazingly responsive to so many request and I do love most of the newer features, this being ONE of my favorite - your customers actually getting to give input!
What I mean about page linking is not within our site(s), we have that ability. We (ok speaking for myself ; -) need 1-3 pages where we can recipical link with other off GoDaddy websites which Google looks for in ranking. The more related websites I can link to (and of course request they add MY stores link) the higher everyones ranking on goole becomes. I'm sorry I didn't make that very clear earlier - I tend to work on my site in the wee hours when I'm not up on my caffine enough!
YEAH - a photo gallery - yes I have used those on many other web building sites, but I'm an old html coding woman and love doing that and the gallery sounds wonderful - Can't WAIT! Thanks to the team for giving us the opportunity for feedback to make your product even more outstanding! Debra
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Hi Debra
Thanks for the clarification. We will take this under consideration.
Regards,
Rob
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In the world of MAP pricing it would be REALLY nice to be able to create coupons that are not GLOBAL.. I.e. you could say have a 10% discount, but only applied to X manufacturer.. most selling prices are below the MAP (minimum advertised price) and as such CANNOT be shown until in the cart.. that ability to have multiple coupons at multiple rates that can be identified and related to certain products would be AWESOME.. put it in so there can be a choice as to whether the customer has to apply it or it's auto applied for a date range, like the sale price is... but also allow us to NOT show the finished price..
you can see an example of what I mean at
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=2865&A=details&Q=&sku=372130&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation
hopefully you can work something out like this, there are a lot of retailers that need to skirt the MAP issue.
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Hi Tom
We understand your situation. We do have pricing engine improvements on our roadmap to extend the current functionality. We are looking at things like member pricing, volume discounts, price point breaks and making them available at different levels (like category, manufacturer, etc). We do not have a timetable yet, but feedback like yours helps us to determine priority.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I too have a question about member pricing and different level price breaks. Why can't I offer a discount to customers for every $100 the spend? How can this get amended? I have a few other questions but don't think they belong here with this thread...
Thanks in advance for the help,
-Marcelo-
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Hi Marcelo
QSC does allow you to create coupons (under the Site Promotions tab) where you can create coupons for a set dollar amount discount; a percent off the total; or, free shipping and handling. These coupons can have expiry dates (or not) and you can set a limited number of uses (or have unlimited). The shopper is required to enter the coupon code, so its not an automatic discount.
Is this what you are referring to?
Regards
Rob
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Hi! I am part of a small business that is using QSC. We love the new picture option but you are still missing a vital feature that should be included on the item page - and that is pictures for color choices!! The options are good but you should have a run of thumbnails that go along with the color name. Very critical when selling retail goods. We have emailed (and called)Go daddy about this several times but without any response. We have been live since September but still would really like to see this happen. Please!
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Hi Mary
We are posting an article that describes how you can utilize the Online Photo Filer product to provide additional photos for a product, to supplement the one photo that goes with the product description. Stay tuned for that in the next few days.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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I have been asking for 2 (seemingly) simple things since I started using the shopping cart:
1.) Add a Company Name field - we are a business to business site and we have to call every time to get the company name for shipping and production.
2.) Contact export/Customer export. Other than going to UPS to download the list, or using the relatively simple reporting mechanism, we have no way of going back and reaching out to our past customers to cross sell. BIG Problem. I have purchased the 1 Great Shopping Cart, but wanted to give QSC one more try before we port over.
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Hi Thomas
Re 1). This is something that has been asked for and is on our roadmap.
Re 2). We currently do not have an customer export tool from the Admin interface. However, we are developing an integration with our Express Email Marketing product which will enable you to store first name, last name and email address of the shopper if they opt in. That is a good suggestion though and we will take it into consideration.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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Thanks for the blog.
Could you give me an idea of implementation on the business name field? Important.
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Hi Thomas
We have had a couple of requests for this feature, but at the moment it is not high on our priority list. Looking at other shopping carts on the web, some have this, some don't. Even though it seems like a small thing, adding that field cascades into a lot of changes throughout the application and we are currently focused on other areas that give us more return for effort.
Your request is noted and we will continue to monitor people's interest in this feature.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I can't inventory products, because we have another sales channel in place that we can't change.
What this means is that products can be ordered that we have no inventory for.
I see that there is a "discontinued" option within products, but I don't see any way to flag them as "backordered" (without using inventory) or even disable them.
Is there any way to manage product availability outside of inventoried products or discontinuing them?
We were falsely told by godaddy support that the inventory in our QuickBooks would synchronize UP to the website. After ordering it and spending hundreds of hours getting all the product data it turns out that the product data is only synchronized DOWN from the cart to quickbooks, so we have to make what we have somehow work.
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Hi John
You are correct. Right now you have to use inventory to manage product availability.
Thanks for your comments.
- Rob
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I was told the same thing. Have you come up with any good workarounds?
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Previous requests have been made for a referral option where a new customer could list a person or website that referred them to the cart, is this in development?
We have a shipping cost structure that is percentage based (8% of total order or $6.50 which ever is greater), could this type of shipping calculation be built-in?
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Hi Heath
Right now the shopper could use the Special Instructions field to insert a comment, but there is nothing in the pipeline for a specific field for referrals, like a drop down box or the like. However, one of the reasons we have the blog is to elicit feedback from the user community, so we will note this down and see how it rates against the other features on our roadmap.
Building out the Shipping engine is something that is on our roadmap, but in the more long term future. We will note this use case for consideration when we get to scoping that effort.
Thanks for your contributions.
- Rob
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When using the shoping cart as our "site", it would be nice to have the ability to store some non-product imagery under our secure certificate. Otherwise, the inclusion of any images causes the popup window "not secure".
Is there a workaround to this? Or am I missing something. I would like just 5MB of space so that I could reference complimentary images in the fields that accept HTML.
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Hi Jason
Yes, if your images are stored at a non https url, then you will get the popup. In order to avoid the popup you must reference your images via https.
In the next version (scheduled for release mid-year) we are adding the ability to create custom headers and footers which will allow you to insert custom content.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Hi,
I am really concerned with not being able to divert the HOME shopping cart button back to my main site (in addition to the continue shopping button). I have been told that this feature is coming soon due to the number of other clients that are facing these same issues. Can you confirm as to whether or not we will be seeing this in the near future? Thanks so much!
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Hi Tracy
Being able to customize the redirect on the HOME button is part of our major release scheduled for mid year. Stay tuned!
Thanks for the comment.
- Rob
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Can you give us some insight into the features being added for the mid 2007 release?
Thanks,
Daniel
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Hi Daniel
We are refactoring the Storefront, changing the templates to a CSS based system that will enable more flexibility for the Admin to create a particular look and feel to their site. For example, more themes and customization of the themes, we'll have html available in the headers and footers so you have more options for placing logos and links, breadcrumbing, improved search, re-order search results, customization of menus, improving and speeding up the publish process (for example only publishing new images instead of all images each time).
We are hoping you will all like it and will get value out of it.
Regards,
Rob
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Hi Rob,
We recently signed up for QSC because we already had hosting/domain names with GoDaddy so we thought it would be an easy integration.
So far, everything is very easy to use.
The major limitation is that I can't add custom graphics to the page. For example, at the top of the cart I'd like to replace the generic color banner with a custom banner, and the same with the footer and other various parts of the site. From what I can tell, there is no way to do this. Is this in the works? If it's coming soon, we will continue to use QSC, but if it's not, it may be a deal breaker as we need the ability to customize the look of the site further. Maybe I'm missing something (I hope).
Also, I would like to the ability to have more than one featured product, is this possible? If not, is it in the works?
Thanks,
Daniel
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Hi Daniel
Good to hear that everything has been easy to use so far.
Our mid-year release is going to provide more options for customized graphics (refer to a previous post for more details). As for featured products, at the moment it is one only and it will be that way for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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Rob,
Thanks for the Froogle update. Went smooth.
Is there a way to accept credit cards via YourPay Connect? I use Linkpoints Yourpay manually, but now the number of online transactions is eating up too much time and it's time to automate the process via a gateway. I do not see YourPay or Linkpoint on the payment options page. Is there a way/workaround since I do not want a second Merchant processing account?
YourPay.com says that just with a few simple HTML lines you can add their gateway to your website or go full API. Is there a way we can do this, or, if not now, how far away is this?
Many thanks for an ever improving SC system.
Andy
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Hi Andy
Good to hear that the Froogle update went well for you.
There are many alternatives out there for payment gateways and we continue to evaluate our options. We have actually looked at Linkpoint and this is something we have strongly considered adding. We don't have a decision or timeframe for it yet, but gaining more support from input like yours will help us to determine its priority on our overall development roadmap. There are not really work arounds for us per-se for alternative gateways as there is a lot of backend work required in the setup and management of the gateway in the application.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Dear Rob,
Welcome to the team!! I'm glad to read that there are enhancements planned for release mid year. I am in the process of building my website to sell jewelry and have found some of the limitations of QuickShoppingcart quite frustrating. I have a few specific questions I hope you can help me with.
1) To sell jewelry a picture is worth a 1000 words, and I would really like to have a category view similar to style 4, but with larger pictures. This is standard practice for jewelry websites. Will this be possible in the new release? I'm also glad to hear that in general there will be more flexibility regarding the look and feel of the site.
2)Could you confirm if the new release will have International shipping capabilities? I have read some of the options for work arounds and will try them in the short term.
3) Will the new release have an option for 'additional pages'. What I mean is will I be able to add a tab called FAQ's for example. Could you please provide some help with how I can work around this in the short term. For example, you have a featured website www.yorkietreats.com where a page has been added for 'testimonials'.
4) That same website has photos that flash through on the home page, instead of the 'standard' look and I would like to do something similar, but have no idea how to do it
When I purchased this product I thought 3 & 4 could easily be done since it was on a website you feature, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I tried to get some of these questions and answered through customer support a few days ago, and was unsuccessful.
When I called Customer support, I also asked about how to get a 'Add to Cart' button added to the category page (in addition to (questions 3 & 4) and the representative was unable to help me. After over half an hour on the phone I finally had to hang up to put my daughter to bed. I later learned through the blog, that this is simple thing to set through preferences.
When I signed up I was aware that quick shopping cart doesn't support international shipping, and I specifically asked the representative that since I going to link my site to Paypal for payments, and Paypal does support international payments & shipping, if this would work, and the rep said YES.
Although everyone I have spoken with in customer support is very NICE, I have been less than impressed with their knowledge of the product.
The last couple of months have been quite frustrating - To build a site that will offer hundreds of products is actually quite a tedious process, beacuse even with the Excel upload, many of things still have to be done manually for each product.
I really hope that you can help me out with my questions.
Sincerely,
Paul
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Hi Paul
To respond to your questions.
1. Right now a product can support 3 sizes of an image so you can get a larger picture displayed by clicking on the "click to enlarge" link when you are in the product description.
2. Inbuilt international shipping is on our radar and is a priority, but it won't be in the mid-year release.
3 & 4. The new QSC will not have the option for additional pages of free form content. The example of the featured yorkie treats was actually using a regular website as a front end to the shopping cart. We do have quite a few customers who have a website front end with flash pieces and other customized pages and then use the QSC for the shopping experience.
As for Paypal, it is a payment method only and we have custom shipping where you can set a flat rate and manage shipping yourself. So, between these 2 you can work around getting products shipped overseas.
Thanks for your contribution,
- Rob
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Hi Rob,
So far, I'm very happy with QSC. Two questions . . .
I wanted to get an idea of what the priority is for adding gift certificates to QSC. Is offering gift certificates going to be available in the near future?
Also, I would like to be able to have a discount coupon for a percent off plus free shipping? Right now, I can either offer a discount or free shipping but not both. Is the option to include, for example, a 10% off coupon plus free shipping, in the works?
Thank you,
Laura
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Hi Laura
The notion of gift certificates has been talked about a bit, but defining all the rules around them and then getting that onto our product roadmap has not occurred yet. So, that feature is in the future somewhere.
As for the current QSC, the free shipping coupon is an implicit coupon in the sense that when it is applied, it applies globally so everyone gets it. Its a sitewide discount. So, you could also have dollar value discounts active and then a customer could apply that coupon on top of the free shipping.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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Hello Rob,
Thank you for taking the time to contribute to this forum...
I have a question regarding QSC and SEO compatibility...
I have utilized the integration with the google webmaster tools and that is great however, that is about as far as I have been able to take the SEO...
Is there a way or WILL there be a way to add individual custom page titles and meta info?
Also, it would e helpful to have access to the page HEAD(s) in order to insert tracking code for google analytics for example as there is currently no way to track traffic statistics in QSC, and traffic stats are very important to the "Salability" Factor of using the QSC.
So far I have found it very difficult to generate new traffic or boost search rankings due to the fact that I cannot add important elements to the pages within QSC.
It would also be a huge benefit to be able to add additional pages to complement the QSC i.e. Adding a Links Page or something similar...
I do like the QSC however, I feel as though it limits the potential of the revenue and benefits that could be attained by QSC users by its inability to provide a more SEO freindly option set. As SEO becomes more important to online business, so to should it be important to QSC.
Again, thank you so much for you time and effort... I look forward to your input and comments...
Please let me know if perhaps I am just missing something regarding the SEO options in QSC or maybe there are a few workarounds within the current archecture...
Thanks Again...
Best Regards,
S. Casper
HerbalEarthShop.com
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Hi Sheldon
Search engine optimization is indeed an important aspect of e-commerce. Right now the Webmaster Tools page allows you to input key words and meta info into the description fields that search engines use.
Go-Daddy has a stats tool called Traffic Facts, and we are assessing our ability to integrate to that tool which would give you stats on page hits etc for analysis.
Allowing storefront owners to have links pages etc is something that has been brought up before but there are concerns about scalability and performance associated with opening up those parts of the product to customization.
I am sure there are other customers out there who are doing things to boost site traffic....anyone want to add to this thread?
Thanks for your contribution Sheldon.
Regards
Rob
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I'm coming across the same limitations as Sheldon, and really feel that the lack of SEO tools in QSC is its weakest point. The most important improvement that I would like to see is the ability to add individual custom page titles and meta info. Could you comment on whether this may be available in the next update? Thanks for responding to all these comments; it has been really helpful.
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Hi Sarah
Thanks for the additional comment. Right now we don't have plans to extend the customizations offered in the Webmaster Tools for page titles and meta information. But, we acknowledge that SEO is an important part of getting noticed on the web so we will add it to our list of interesting areas to explore on the roadmap.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Hi, new QSC, from Mexico, trying to do bussiness with spanish speakers in Mex and USA.
Can I after getting a SSL cert. Work with mexican online credit card services (mex pesos). Is such a waist paying twice money (exchange profits) to get the money back in pesos. (pesos-usd-pesos)
Is there a walk around to handle both languages, english-spanish, especially on the menus
Thanks
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Hi Jorge
The QSC performs all transactions in US$. Some of the payment gateways do not even provide a currency field so it is pretty locked down.
As for the language support, that is significantly far in the future to provide localized user interfaces. You do have the ability to enter text into html fields for products etc, and you can type Spanish in there if you wish (limited to the basic ascii character set). Menus are fixed, so unfortunately no workaround there.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Hi, how long does it takes comments to show up?
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Hi Jorge
The Comment Rules on the home page of the blog on the site says that it typically takes a few days. It also depends on the nature of the comment. If its a technical question that requires us to do a little digging, it takes a little longer.
Thanks,
Rob
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Are there any plans in the works to add a spot for the three digit code on credit cards for those of us who use there own point of sale system? My system requires this code. Your customer services solution was just to call customers after they have ordered and ask them for the number. This solution is absurd and tacky. Most system now require the input of this code as a layer of fraud protection.
Thanks,
Mike
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Hi Mike
We used to collect CVV value on a transaction using the POS method but we had to eliminate that to be PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant.
We do collect the CVV value if the merchant is using a Payment Gateway, and the PCI requirement is that the value is not stored in any database. So, QSC passes the value straight thru and the merchant does not even see the value.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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Is there any functionality in the roadmap to provide electronic download products to customers, when there is no cost for those products? I sell only downloaded software. For a year, the customer receives free updates. I have to distribute those updates completely outside of this product, because this product will not generate a download link and release a download to a customer until a PayPal transaction completes. And PayPal (or your product, I don't know which) can't handle a $0 transaction, so the order for a "free update" remains unfulfilled in the order screen, requiring manual intervention. I'd love to be able to distribute these free downloads within the security of a customers log-in. Will this feature be supported in the future?
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Hi Jeff
Most of the payment gateways have a minimum order amount (credit cards usually about 50 cents). So, unfortunately within the QSC you can't sell a "free" product connected to a payment gateway. You could set up the "Print and Call" option and then have the update product listed at $0.00. But, you would run the risk of having people select this payment option on purchases of other products as it is presented in the checkout process.
We are working on an integration with a GoDaddy product called Express Email Marketing (Visit EEM) that will enable shoppers to sign up for emails. Also, within this product you are able to set up email campaigns. So, this may provide a slightly tighter method of getting your updates out than what you are currently doing. Within EEM you are able to manage your groups and send out emails to specific groups.
The other aspect of your suggestion is the notion of a members only area. This is something that we continue to talk about and flesh out what particular features a members only area might provide and this seems like a good candidate.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I am well aware of EEM. I used it for 3 or 4 months, but found it so lacking in fundamental key features that I had to cancel and migrate to another product.
I've never seen a customer marketing program that doesn't let the company customize the opt-in email to tell the customer what the heck they are opting in to in the first place. The generic email resulted in less than 50% of my customers opting in. With the new service, I am at 89%, simply because I could customize the email to explain things. Similar problem with multiple complaints with this product - it lacks customization to explain things to my customers (i.e., post-sale email, etc.).
The last straw for EEM was a product for customer mailing list management without any ability for the customer to manage anything. They can't change their own email address? I shouldn't be burdened with such a fundamental issue for the money EEM costs. Once they opt out or don't respond (because the optin email isn't customizable) it takes technical support assistance to get the status changed. Not good.
You guys have a great portfolio of products, but the problem that I see right now, is that the products get 90% of it right. But that last 10%, in many products, is lacking fundamental things, and it is getting very frustrating to deal with those shortcomings product after product. Some of the new services with Ajax interfaces, that get it 99% right, are making it tough to stay loyal to these products.
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Hi Jeff
Thanks for the additional comments. EEM itself does not make the text customizable (for a bit of history, the text was customizable but it was abused by people adding spam in there, so we shut it down), but with the QSC integration, we will be allowing the QSC admin to customize the opt-in message on the EEM side. As a side note, EEM is in development to reintroduce customizability and we'll see how it goes.
We are always working to make our products better and we appreciate the feedback.
Regards
- Rob
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I am very new to QSC, and actually our site is not posted yet. But one function I do not see which would really help would be for customers to be able to enter information such as a name to be embroidered on an item. I did see the attributes, but I also saw that I have to give them the options instead of them typing in what they want. Are there plans down the road for this
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Hi Doug
We do not have a field for custom text entry yet. This feature request has seen some solid support and it is on our roadmap (couldn't say exactly when yet as there is a lot on our roadmap).
However, a work around that some customers use is to prompt the shopper to use the Special Instructions box as a spot where they can enter in custom information. This could be done by, for example, by including instructions in your product description to do this.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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Does the upcoming product roadmap supporting the selling of subscription based products, or customers making monthly payments rather than a single payment using the PayPal Reoccurring Payments and Subscriptions functionality?
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Hi Jeff
Right now we do not have the ability to support auto payment methods. However, that is a good suggestion and I can see how its useful for the digital product sector. We will add it to our roadmap for future consideration.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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We struggled to create a matching color scheme with the limited templates available, had to use javascript redirect trickery to set the Home, About, Contact links to our liking, and various other things to link our existing product catalog into the cart. But that's okay! It is working now.
The HUGE problem is the qsc.js file - it's half a megabyte! You wouldn't notice this developing locally, and it's maybe only a minor slowdown on broadband, but it's completely unacceptable for someone on a dial-up connection (they're still out there!).
The most aggravating part about this is that the size is totally unnecessary. See this site http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/10/16/pageweight-yui0114/">http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/10/16/pageweight-yui0114/ for information about how Yahoo developers compress and strip-down their client-side code (step one: take out all the comments!).
It's one thing if during cart setup I was required to download a 451k administration engine of some sort... but when you are sending out that full code to our customers when they simply want to add one item to their cart, there's a problem. Most of the functions in there are only relevant to creating and publishing the cart. There is no reason they should be sent out to end-users, and is even a possible security risk.
So please, I beg you, put immediate developer attention to
1) Modularize the javascript. At least make a separate .js file for the published cart so that our customers have only the bare necessities. The next step would be to make a stripped-down qsc.js file for order processing (when on a page in the QSC control panel that has nothing to do with changing colors, arranging products, etc)
2) Minify the code. Check out JSmin at http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html
3) Strongly consider turning on some sort of server-side compression such as gzip, at least for .js files. Again, read at http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/10/16/pageweight-yui0114/">http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/10/16/pageweight-yui0114/ why this is a good idea
While caching helps subsequent visits/cart adds, if our customer has to wait at a blank screen after adding the first product, they're going to head straight over to the competitor's site.
Thanks for listening,
Ryan.
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Hi Ryan
The good news for you is that our upcoming mid-year release is going to remove the problem of the combined javascript file. That release will also increase your flexibility and range with templates and color schemes.
On the aspect of minifying the code, our research indicates that you can't do that with a SSL in place, so we can't do anything on that front.
Thanks for the contribution and sharing your observations.
- Rob
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I would like to know if it is possible to view the "canned" emails that are automatically sent to customers for order confirmation and shipping confirmation, and how we can edit these messages to better communicate to the customer what they can expect for delivery times, etc. I have found that good communication is critical for keeping customers expectations realistic and when you can keep them satisfied you can convert more into repeat customers and free word-of-mouth advertisers for the seller.
Thanks For a Great Service.
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Hi Ken
Unfortunately there is no way to view or edit these email templates that we have in the system. We understand that different customers have different needs, and adding email customization to the system is on the roadmap, but a timeline for it has not yet been established.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Hello Rob,
I sell taxable products and tax-exempt services in my QSC. My service customers love the fact they can purchase from me online. I wrote several months ago and your team said that implementation of a taxable and tax-exempt option for product set-up is in the works for QSC. I really enjoy the many features of QSC, however, this additional feature is really pertinent to me. Is this something that is going to be put into QSC soon? I noticed most good shopping cart services out there have this particular feature.
I will continue to enjoy QSC and look forward to hearing from you regarding this issue.
Thanks!
Mike
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Hi Mike
There has been some discussion about adding a taxable flag at the product level to complement the selection of tax method at the cart level. Upgrades to our tax engine is on our roadmap, including a product level tax setting, but a timeline has not yet been established for it.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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WOuld like to have a way to add a fixed charge to orders, such as a setup charge, additional to product unit or lot cost. Any chance of that happening?
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Hi Dennis
Right now you have the ability to add a Handling Fee to your shipping cost calculations. This is done in the Processing | Shipping section of the Admin. This fee is a universal fee, right now the QSC does not have the ability to make it available at the product level.
Are you more interested in having it available at the product level?
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Can't speak for Dennis, but we would be interested in having the option for Accessory types Y and Z to ship free when you buy it with Product type X. In our specific case, this would mean buy an Umbrella, get free shipping on a Bracket and/or Replacement Fabric ordered along side.
We also would like to offer reduced shipping on item quantity 2 and above. (i.e, first item shipping is $12, each additional is $6) We're making use of the set Handling Fee to sort of fake this functionality now.
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I really (I mean REALLY) need to be able to generate reports based on manufacturer and other criteria (e.g. How many Bates boots have we sold to date.) I realize that automatic report generation is a big programming project but is there any way I can just download my order history? Spreadsheet or even an SQL query would be great. If I can download the history I can extract the information I need in a variety of ways. Help! Desperate! Thanks!
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Hi Brannon
You are correct that it is a large undertaking to build reports. Having said that, the report tab in the admin console offers a variety of reports, and each report can be downloaded as an Excel file (when you click on the button to generate the report it opens a new window and there is a link to download to Excel). Once you have the report in Excel you can sort.
There is a report of sales by product available. So, while it is not to the detail of manufacturer, you can at least get the dollar value of the product sales over a date range you select and get that into an Excel spreadsheet and you can do some manipulation there.
Unfortunately we do not have the ability to bulk export order details. That is something that has been considered for the roadmap, but is a lower priority (compared to things like bulk image mgmt, international shipping).
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Rob,
We've been asking your support desk for a "Delivery Date" feature so that our customers can choose when they want their item shipped. We would add more items on if we had this option but right now it would just be too much work if we do. Further, our customers can personalize their orders on a per product basis. We'd like them to be able to enter their message or note in a text field on a per product basis. Is this possible? Is this on the roadmap?
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Hi Vinny
A Delivery Date feature is an interesting idea, I don't think we have had that come up before. We will look into it further and monitor to see what level of support is out there for this feature. Enabling shoppers to enter custom text per product certainly has been brought up before and is on the roadmap (couldn't say when it is going to get worked on though, we have a lot of items on the roadmap!).
Right now there is a Special Instructions box in the checkout which allows the shopper to enter text. As a workaround, you could add language to your product descriptions advising customers to leave a note there. Or have them send you an email (I know this is an extra step though).
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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How can I add a field to the store so that we can record the name(s) of the person who is registering for an event?
Thanks,
John
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Hi John
Unfortunately we do not have custom text fields yet for products. A work around is to advise the shopper (e.g. in the product description) to add the required information into the Special Instructions box in the checkout process. We do have custom text fields on the roadmap for future development.
Thanks for your contribution.
- Rob
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Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately, generating a report by product code does not help me determine how many pairs of Bates boots we have sold, at least not without manually going through the resulting spreadsheet and extracting suitable SKUs then dividing the total of each product by its price then summing that column. Bulk image management and international shipping are very important to me as well, but the ability to manage and track sales information goes directly to my bottom line. Thanks.
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Hi Brannon
Agreed, there are a few extra manual steps needed once the data is in the spreadsheet. Your report request has been added to the roadmap.
Regards,
Rob
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hi all,
is their a way to switch the inventory count so that it keeps track of an items size availability?
if i am selling 7 shirts where everything is the same but for the size. i would want to upload the picture once, create just one item and have the ability to list that i have 3 larges available, 2 medium available, and 3 large available.
right now, i can list that i have 7 available. if i sold the two medium, 1 of the larges and none of the small my inventory would show that I have 4 available. The next customer coming along that wants to purchase the shirt in medium will see that I have 4 available but not know that I am sold out of her size.
I know the work around is to list the product by size but this seems a bit tedious to me.
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Hello
Unfortunately our inventory is only able to monitor at the product level, not the option level. So, as you have noted, the workaround at present is to make each item a product. We are looking to get an improvement to the inventory management on our roadmap.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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First of all, I would like to praise QSC for offering those of us with limited web design knowledge a convenient option for creating a shopping cart!
The one difficulty that I recently encountered is regarding how sales tax is collected. In Ohio, businesses are required to collect sales tax on shipping/handling as well as products. However, after publishing and testing my site today, my fears were confirmed - sales tax for Ohio orders is not being collected for shipping/handling as well as the items themselves.
Customer support assured me that QSC was designed according to each state's tax laws, but this does not seem to be accurate regarding Ohio.
I am very pleased with QSC thus far and would like to remain with Go Daddy, but not being able to collect sales tax on shipping/handling would create an accounting headache. Are there any plans to address this tax issue? Thanks!
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Hi Diane
QSC has a tax table wherein you are able to set the state sales tax on a state by state basis, this could be what Customer Service was referring to.
On the issue of charging tax on shipping, we are currently limited in the QSC to either have that on or off. Our research has indicated that the majority of the states do not charge sales tax on shipping so we have it turned off for now. We have identified this issue and it is on our agenda to be addressed in a future release (date to be determined).
Thank you for bringing this up.
- Rob
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Is there currently a way to pass shopping cart information to the app without having to use the very limited display pages? I'd very much like to do my own UI and CSS and catalog, and add items directly to the cart, then do the checkout as normal.
Is this possible at all? The lack of html, display, and formatting customizability is severely limiting.
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Hi Chris
We have a release coming out mid-year that will vastly improve the templates and your interactions - we are introducing CSS based templates and increasing the customization options. So, you should find most of your wants will be satisfied.
We have started to explore the possibility of things like PayPal's "Buy it Now" button as a way of increasing the flexibility of how you can direct shoppers to your QSC site. It is good to get feedback like this as it helps us establish priorities of all the things we are trying to do.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Hello. Is it possible to place a text box in the checkout for customers to enter their county?
Starting in 2008, Ohio vendors are required to collect sales tax based on the destination county of the items. This is in addition to having to collect tax on shipping/handling. Too bad there isn't a way to block Ohio customers from my QSC...it would be a lot easier!
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Hi Diane
At the moment, the option for county is not available. However, thank you for flagging this issue with tax. We have heard from people in 3 different states now that they have particular tax treatments and this is valuable information for us.
We are putting it on our more immediate term roadmap to improve our tax tables to allow for variations in tax at the county level (for example, we could go to a zip code based table) and hopefully we will be able to include handling for states that charge tax on the shipping cost.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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You can add GA to the list too. Right now I keep track of instate sales amnaully and have to lok up each zip code....can be very time consuming.
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Requested changes:
1. Add a place for shipping notes. Our orders are shipped truckline and I'd like to be able to add freight "after the fact" or a note to the customer as to what freight will be after we have figured it out. So it will be either added to the order or the customer sees a comment on the order as to what freight charges are.
2. After we received an order, the customer contacted us with a change to the color. I can't edit the order to show the actual color shipped on the invoice.
Right now, I'm having to generate a new in-house invoice and email it to the customer with the appropriate information.
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Hi Karlene
Your requests have been noted! We recognize that the Admin side of the QSC could use some additional flexibility to work on orders post the shopper submitting it. We are looking to get into some Admin refactoring further down the roadmap.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Some of my customrs have complained that the shipping address presumes they are shipping to the US. If a shipping address must be reqd, then cld you make Papau New Guinea possible. But since I have No Shipping options enabled (since shipping is included) then ideally they wld not even be asked about shipping information. Furthermore, wld it be possible to cusomize the "Instructions" box so that i can say, for example, "Include the recipient name, town and house number number along with a message to go on a card." or something? that wld be really great. Thx alot!
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Hi Richard
Thanks for the comments. Yes, even with no shipping options, the checkbox for shipping address is still present. Unfortunately that is not a configurable item yet. At this time the cart does not properly support international shipping, so only US and Canada addresses are recognized in the system for shipping addresses.
The instructions box is typically for the shopper can insert their instructions to you, the merchant. The place for you to put instructions specific to a product would be in the product description area. We do have on the longer term roadmap the ability to add a text box to the product description for special messages (e.g. engraving on a trophy).
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I just launched my new pottery site which includes your "shopping cart" The more I think about it the more it bothers me that the splash page has to be everyones "home" page. The shopping cart is not my home page, it is just one component of my site. Linking back and forth between the two should be seamless, not as though you are browsing two separate websites. If someone is browsing my website and clicks on "shop" it takes them to my store front, but when they click on "home" or my logo expecting to be returned to my websites home page, they are stuck at my store front. I did put a link back to my home page within the "welcome message" but this is too easily overlooked by people that are browsing. I should be able to modify the "home" links to bring people back to my primary site. Is there a way for me to do this? will there be anytime soon?
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Hi Eric
You will be pleased to know that we have a big release coming soon that we have been working on for quite some time (I have made some references to this in other posts), and one component of that release is that the menu toolbar is customizable. So, now so you can add links to other urls.
This release should be out in a couple of weeks or so so keep an eye out for it. The current version of QSC is 1.9.7 and this release will take us to the 2.0 version.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Hello,
Will the upcoming update offer new or more flexible "themes"? It does not seem that there is currently a "theme" available that can be made to utilize a 1024 x 768 monitor resolution.
Thanks,
KJ
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Hi Karl-John
Yes, we will have a lot more flexibility with the themes including the ability to size out to larger monitor resolutions.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Hello. I have few complaints about GoDaddy products. I think you guys offer top notch products and service but as a webmaster of 15+ years, I do have a few comments.
First of all, I agree with comment above, I wish our Web Site Tonight could be seamless with the Quick Shopping Cart page. As it is difficult to create a real thorough theme in QSC, I worked more at it on the web home page. As a result, the two look very different and again, no strong linking between the two. My biggest beef however would be the QSC Header. No offense, but its very weak. My suggestion would be to somehow let advance web designers create their own header block based on the sizes you specify. I am not thrilled with our phone, fax and email is on the top of every page, I'd rather it was just listed on the Contact Us page.
My last gripe is that the registration form does not include a drop down Country list. Its really set up for USA and even lists Canada as International under sales reports. European buyers have real trouble with registration as the system keeps kicking them back with Invalid data on the postal code, state, etc. As I sell worldwide, this is not a good thing. Perhaps I'm missing something (and that's highly possible) but a registration form that a seller could customize but would be awesome! (Check out www.wire-2-shop.com sometime. I have worked with them and their templates and forms are amazing!!!)
I know that you are planning some improvements and I'm hopeful that some of my ideas might be included.
At any rate, I dont want this to end on a negative note cause overall, I'm quite pleased. Keep up the good work and hope to receive a reply to my post soon! Regards, Heather
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Hi Heather
Thanks for the feedback. I am glad to hear that overall you like the QSC. We know that it is a constantly evolving marketplace and the challenge is to stay up or ahead of the competition and to spend our time developing features that are important. International support is an aspect of this. Our ecommerce solution started out as a "quick shopping cart" designed for the local US based market. Over the 3+ years that it has been out there, we have seen it grow and the market space for ecommerce has grown as well. Globalization of all our activities via the internet has been a part of that and a focus for us over the upcoming months is to enhance our ability to support international ecommerce by our QSC owners.
You will be pleased to know that the impending 2.0 release (in its final QA stages now) opens up the Storefront to provide the customization that people have been asking for. Html in the header and footer will be there, plus the ability to add your own menu buttons so you can link off to other websites.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I happen to have been a GoDaddy international customer for a few years now; multiple domains, hostings, websitecomplete, online file folder, etc... and now the QSC.. Damn it because when I bought this package (order telephoned in) the GoDaddy tel attendant forgot to point out that if I sell from Australia to anywhere in the world, I cannot use the QSC as it is (State/Prov and Postal code fields are set to USA only).
What do I do in the mean time with my QSC while I have now to wait for GoDaddy further developments? Is there a way to tweak these 2 fields to match my location?
Please advise...
Patricia
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Greetings Patricia,
There presently isn't a way to change the state / province field to reflect that. Realistically without a lot of additional workarounds from non USA shoppers this probably isn't the most usable option for yourself at present. E.g we often suggest non USA customers place in their address in the special instruction section and type in your USA address for themselves which isn't friendly but has been used succesfully by others)
We do have planned support for international shipping / sales in our roadmap . This is one of our most requested features and we are working towards inclusion of it within a future version.
Regards
John
QSC Team
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I am based in Montreal, Canada. If I understand correctly, I cannot ship products from Canada? Only from a USA adress?
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Greetings,
If you are located outside of the United States or Canada, you can use the flat rate or weight-based shipping option, and then ship packages on your own to any location you choose.You cannot use the USPS or UPS options in Quick Shopping Cart to ship orders to or from locations outside of the United States. There's also a workaround required for people wishing to buy from two international locations which requires the use of a US address in the shipping (usually we suggest using ours) from the buyer who then uses the special instructions box to fill in their real address. It's presently possible in other words but it's not too neat. Providing better support for international transactions is in our road map for inclusion in a future version of Quick Shopping Cart.
RegardsJohn
QSC team
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Thank you John for your answer but it is not clear.
I understand I cant use the USPS or UPS options but dont understand the rest.
Could you please explain in a different way?
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Greetings,
I'll give it another try but it may still seem odd .This is very much a workaround to a product feature that we've yet to implement fully.
If your Customer is outwith the United States
If Customer is within the USA then it's really only the shipping that's the concern and needs to be set to Custom shopping. The registration / payment will then work for all methods. Please let me know if this has helped, or clouded the waters further.
Regards
John
QSC team.
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Thank you John, it is now clear.
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I see that Featured items appear on the home page in their own little box... Is there a way to add a box that contains sale items with a link at the bottom that will take our customers to all items on sale?
thank you,
Harry
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Hi Harry
Thanks for the enquiry. Unfortunately we do not have that flexibility at this point. We have talked about the notion of gadgets/widgets where you can add products and links, but this is something still in the conceptual stages. This is an interesting area to consider and thank you for bringing it up. We'll add it to the mix for future development.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Is there a way to send email notification to two email addresses when an order has come in to the QSC?
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Hi Patrick
Yes you can. In the Storefront | Email Notices page you have 4 different types of notices that you can set up email addresses for. The System Notice can only have 1 email address, but the others (including new order notices) can go to multiple email addresses. You can have as many email addresses up to a total of 100 characters in the field.
Regards,
Rob
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Can the "time out"...when GO-DADDY'S computer signs you off...be increased?
The time...I have not clocked it...seems 5 minutes or less. If I am busy doing something, or talking to customer on phone, it is frustrating to have to sign back in again, and start all over again. I lost one sale because the customer did not want to wait any longer!
Since all data is supossed to be secure under "SSL", why can't you leave the time "on" longer?
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Hi Martin
It is set at 15 minutes and this is a requirement of the Payment Card Industry standards.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Hi there - We have been using several godaddy services for a few years now including 2 QSC accounts. While the product does a lot of basic functions necessary to ecommerce, there is a huge frustration connected to using the cart(s). We, like some of your previous posts absolutely require international order processing and shipping. E-commerce as you know is GLOBAL business. It should not be restricted by the shopping cart when your competitors are offering international capabilities. I have been reading the developer blogs for quite a while and I see many many request for features that are not offered by QSC. Most all of the responses from you and other GoDaddy folks is "we're looking into it", "possibly scheduled for a future release.." etc. but I see no real improvement in the basic service. Again, these 'basics' are currently offered by your competitors and have been for quite a while. Our business has thankfully grown to the point where we can no longer take the time to manually process international orders to make up for QSC's inability to offer these basic services. I am sorry to say that we are currently looking for a replacement for QSC. I was hoping that the new release would offer more "useful utility" but unfortunately it does not. Thanks
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Hi Chuck
Thank you for the feedback, we appreciate any and all input from our customer base as it helps us determine what is important for our products. Support for international shipping has been committed to by the company and that is the focus of future development effort. The bad side to that statement is that it is not an overnight fix. There is significant work required to the underpinnings of how QSC is built to enable it to be expanded to support international shipping. Current projections estimate it as being about a 12 month project. Our roadmap for future development has many feature requests on it and I agree that having solid basic functionality is very important. So, its an ongoing process for us to sift through all the feature requests to prioritize appropriately.
Thank you for the contribution.
- Rob
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We do quite a bit of drop-shipping. One problem we have is that we often don't receive shipping confirmation from our manufacturers until well after the customer has received the package. Where this creates an issue for our customers is that once we receive this confirmation and change the status of the order from Invoiced to Shipped an e-mail is automatically sent to the customer. Now, two weeks after they have gotten their item they get an e-mail saying the item has shipped. This causes great confusion. Would it be possible to make it so that the status of the order can be changed with the option to NOT automatically send the e-mail? I need to change these orders so they don't show up when listing Open orders.
Thanks.
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Hi Brannon
Thanks for the comments. We have had a couple of people write in about drop shipping and we have that as part of our shipping improvements to increase the flexibility of the email management.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob.
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Most of my clients are international. When will the shopping cart be set up to accept international addresses? I have an international merchant account, as told to do so, but clients still cannot order at their leisure. This is really hurting my business. I can run the order manually, but some clients have left due to the hassle of placing orders. Please advise.
Thanks
Marie
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Hi Marie
Your points are validly noted. International shipping support is at the top of our list, unfortunately it is not just a quick fix. Its a few months of development effort.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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I like the product and the blog is great! I am trying to figure out how to set my order to 100 minimum. At 1st I thought bundle the item to 100 but I want my customers to be able to mix and match items to get the 100 items. Any ideas?
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Hi Jenny
One way that I can think of is that you make your product to be 100 items and include that information in the product description, but unforunately that does not allow the mix and match. Another way would be to use options. We have seen sites that list the different options for a product and allow the shopper to enter the number of each option. The downside would be that you would not have control over whether the customer correctly added up to 100, so you may end up having to call customers to talk about their order.
Does anyone else have ideas?
Regards,
Rob
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Hi,
I just opened my Quick Shopping Cart website to the internet. Afterwards I made a trial run by ordering something on the site just to see if everything was working right. I chose to use the manual payments way because I already have an ecommerce where I can check credit card payments.
Anyhow, everything seems to be working find. Then I went to cancel and delete the order in my manager section. Well I was able to cancel it but not delete it. After submitting an email to the customer service I found out that it could not be deleted.
My suggestion is that there should be a way to be able to test you site before you submit it to the internet. If not you still should be able to delete information if you want to or if needed for any situation where you no longer will use it. Like for example putting someone on the Block List for reasons of fraud protection.
Thank you,
Carol North
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Hi Carol
Thanks for the feedback. Your comments have been noted.
Regards,
Rob
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Is there a field for the code on the back of the credit card. Most cards it is 3 digits?
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Hi Jenny
That field is the CVV number. If you are using a payment gateway, that information is collected in the QSC checkout process and passed on to the 3rd party payment provider (eg Innovative, Authorize.NET, QBMS). If you are using the QSC POS (point of sale) option, by the Payment Card Industry regulations, we are not allowed to store that data, so that field is not available. If you are using Paypal, the credit card transaction taken care of in Paypal's site.
Thanks for the contribution.
- Rob
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Just curious...
I know 2.0 was installed and then pulled due to server stability. Is ther any update on when we will see it again? Is there a site where news such as this QSC update will be posted. I did not see any thing here in this blog.
Also, let me add my name to the list of requests for International order capability. Many Int'l customers, but I have to process them manually.
Thanks,
Andy Masters
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Hi Andy
Thanks for the inquiry. We are working through some testing scenarios and as yet have no definitive release point. I am hoping early August. The place where we would put notices that we know everyone will see is in the System Announcement area on the landing page of the Admin console.
Thanks for the vote for international shipping. It is our next big ticket item to address.
Regards,
Rob
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We just opened a shop through Go Daddy. Our store in not a'public" store. Only officials who for work us can purchase items. As the Officials registers with the NSA, they are asigned an individual number. THis number allows them to shop our store. All members have a number. When we purchased the store, we were told a box can be added to the check out page or the page asking customer information. I have called Tech help many times and they say this cant be done. The so called ability to add this option was the main reason we went with Go Daddy. I MUST find a way to add this option on the check out page. The option would say Sanction Number with a box for the number. Can this be added soon or can you tell me a way I can add it to the site?
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Hi Pam
It is probable that you were being referred to the Special Instructions box in the checkout process which a text box that the shopper can enter information into. Unfortunately you can not add text into that box, so you would have to make a note somewhere else on the page (eg the product description) to tell the shopper to enter their Sanction Number into that box.
Customization of the shopper information is something that is on our future roadmap, thanks for adding your vote to that feature.
Thanks for the contribution,
- Rob
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Hi Pam,
Have you thought about creating a coupon for those Officials? Perhaps this may help you. Just a thought.
Take Care
Marie
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I am eagerly awaiting the returen of VS 2 of the shopping cart. Can you please give us an update on when it will be re-released. There are many features that we could be taking advantage of right now...
Thanks for all your work!
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We have been working through the stability issues and things are looking good for an early August release. We will be putting a System Announcement up in the Admin when we get a firm date lined up. We are pretty keen to get it out there too!
Regards,
Rob
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Dear Rob,
Is there any way to re-send an invoice to a customer? I have a lot of customers who back out of the order processing because it looks like you need a PayPal account to pay. Once they back out, though, how can I recover the invoice to resend them to submit payment through PayPal? Right now, I am cancelling their orders and re-entering them as new all over again to get it through which is a huge pain and makes my look pretty Mickey Mouse. Thanks for your help!
PS - Instead of saying PayPal on the final checkout page, could it just say Credit Cards? The PayPal working is spooking people and making them back out of order payment.
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Hi Stacy
In the Order Admin, when you click on an order to look at the detail, on the left hand side there is a box called Tasks, and in here is a "Resend Email" option which will resend out the email of the invoice at whatever state it is in. Unfortunately its an automatic email that has canned text so you are not able to customize the message. But, that email contains a link to their order history in QSC (but if they don't have an account they can't see it, so for people that shop as guests they would have to create an account in your storefront) so when they then look at the Paypal order that is not complete, they see the button to pay now at Paypal.
As for Paypal, we have an enhancement to the final checkout screen coming out in 2.0 that we hope will alleviate shoppers' concerns about the process and let them know they can pay with a credit card and don't need a Paypal account (although I see at Paypal they are getting stricter about that, but that is out of our hands).
Thanks for the contribution,
- Rob
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Hi,
I think it would be great to have a gift registry available for those of us who sell goods and would benefit from having one to offer.
Also would like to see more templates (ie: ones that would allow information to be put at the bottom of the page, like the welcome message at the top, but at the bottom and options that would allow us to choose whether to have sub categories showing in the "our products" menu without having a link show in the center of the page, ex: baby bedding, then have the option to list the manufacturers offered underneath the link ).
Thanks,
Patti
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It is very frustrating that alerts are not published for the QSC product. Why aren't there notices published via announcements when calling into tech support or on the admin console?
Carnell Borden
www.ThePureBed.com
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Hello Carnell
We do actually post System Announcements to the home page of the admin console. We posted one there on Wednesday advising of this impending 2.0 release and the changes that were going to impact the custom colors and fonts. To access the home page of the admin, simply click on the image of the shopping cart in the upper left corner.
Thanks for the contribution,
Rob
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When I go to look at an order I should not have to switch to a new page. It takes to long to go through each and every order and update its status.
The orders should be listed on one side of the page in its own frame, like the favorites in Internet Explorer. When I click on an order it should have all of the information in a Pane of its own, on the same page. I should be able to edit, update and save the order from there. It should be the same for the items. It should all be on one page. Having to load a new page everytime is time consuming. When running a small business, this time is valuable.
This is the process I have to go through to process an order:
Open shopping cart and run mouse over orders button and highlight all orders and click.
A different page loads and lists all of the orders, order number and by e-mail address(why E-mail, should be customer name).
I click on the order I want to edit and it loads another page with order info.
I then have to click on the plus button to see the info.
I have to pull down the status menu and click on shipped.
I then have to open the shipping details section and enter the shipping information, then I have to press update order button and wait for a new page to load.
I then have to run mouse over orders button and highlight all orders and click. A different page loads and lists all of the orders, order number and by e-mail address(why E-mail, should be customer name).
And the process goes on.
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Dear Zack,
Thanks for taking the time to outline the process you follow and suggestions on how we can improve this. I'm in agreement with you that the information should be closer to the surface for each transaction as well as aggregating all the functions that make sense into a single area. We're taking a look at the workflow and will heed your comments and get you some of that time back.
Regards
John
QSC Team
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Dear QSC,
I am patiently waiting for you to add a per product tax-exempt option to your orders. I offer services on my store that are completely tax exempt, in addition to physical products that are taxable. I am hoping this is something that will be added soon, as almost all of the reputable shopping cart services out there have this option. I really enjoy QSC and Go Daddy and all you offer. I am very surprised this option has not been added yet. Can I expect this added feature soon? Please let me know.
Thanks,
Mike
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Greetings Mike,
This is an item that is on our road map , and quite a common on as you have pointed out. As to a timeline to inclusion I'm afraid I don't have further information on that presently but will update the blog when it's imminent.
Regards
John
QSC
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How can it be that will not work in the new templates? After "talking" to Customer Service I was told I had to put in to get paragraph breaks on my Welcome page - talk about poor coding!!
If you all want to help increase our website businesses we MUST have SEO tools such as 1 or more pages to put recipical links on or our websites don't get any ranking - THIS has to be more important than pretty templates imho.
1st - Give QSC users pages to put links on
2nd - Use templates that have been TESTED before hosing our QSC sites - This cost too much time & I've quit working on our site after being told we have to use in the coding instead of the WELL known to get line breaks - geeze!
disgusted and disappointed in the "new" release...
3rd - TEST, TEST, TEST then dump our sites with
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Greetings,
Thanks for taking the time to raise your concerns with regards to QSC and the last release. I'm taking a look at SEO in relation to QSC and while it's likely to be a blog post shortly.
Points two and three are definetely understood with the seriousness regarding your point about the loss of time when things fail to work to expectations and will be foremost in my mind prior to any changes to the underlying templates / site that would alter how an existing user interacts with QSC.
Regards
John
QSC
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Hi John! I had the same problem with the welcome message but luckily my son added the bit of code to add the spacing. Overall, the updates were needed and I'm happy too see them. I love the bigger pictures for the categories and the overall look of some of the templates. One thing I would also like to ask, is it possible for someone to edit the CSS file? - I would like to rearrange some of the category pictures and wanted to know if this was possible?? Thanks, Mary
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Greetings Mary,
Presently editing the CSS file is not an option but the recent changes to the templates have made it's future inclusion possible. It's certainly on our "to-do" list
Regards
John
QSC Team
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John,
Thank you for the quick reply. I have been waiting almost one year for the tax exempt per product option for QSC..I will look forward to this addition..hopefully, soon!!
Thanks,
Mike
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So customers have to be told that there is a coupon? Why can't I automatically offer the discount? Is this just not possible at present? Will it be possible in the future?
Thanks for the swift reply!
-marcelo-
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Hi Marcelo
That is correct, customers have (to be told there is a coupon) to type in the code to activate it (automatic just isn't an option yet). Its not on the immediate horizon to make it automatic, we have other things more pressing on the roadmap. If its going to be available to everyone, you could use it as advertising on your site to gain attention.
Thanks for the contribution,
Rob
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What are the chances of LinkPoint being added to your list of compatible gateways?
I am mostly satisfied with QSC but would be completely satisfied if LinkPoint was compatible.
Thanks
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Greetings
Linkpoint is indeed on our roadmap for future inclusion where we hope complete satisfaction is achieved.
Regards
John
QSC team
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Hi Rob:
I just finished setting up a web site for a bakery and I would like to make a comment. The bakery allows some customers to order on line for shipping items, and others to order on line for (pick-up) only. Given the nature of the business, not all the products can be directly shipped to the customer.
There currently is no option which allows the customer to decide to have the product shipped, or order on line, and pick up the items directly at the bakery, if they live in a close vicinity. It would be wonderful if you could incorporate this into the on line shopping cart.
Just thought I'd share some ideas for you! Thanks for all your great work!
Janet
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Greetings Janet,
Thank you for your feedback with regards to the shipping / non shipping choice. Other than having the local users always select "will call" when they are checking out and then take the payment from them at the time of the transaction, inconvenient if there's no PC nearby to do this then it's clear we could add a little more granularity to the process to mark items as "pick up only" and if I can think of a better way to enact this in the meantime I'll add to this post.
Good luck in your venture.
Regards
John
QSC Team
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I use the Blue Photography Template. Regarding the up-sell feature, the
border is not being applied. I set the color as follows:
Under Storefront - Customize Colors and Fonts - Product Page - Highlight Colors
- I set the border color for #ff33ff; however, I do not get a border. Is it possible to get this fixed?
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Hi Pamela,
Thanks for bringing up this issue - in looking into it, we realized that there are no borders to set on the "highlight"; so we should remove that option in the Custom Colors and Fonts.
If you're looking to set the border on the entire upsell box, you can set the "Category Page: Product Box (Content Box)" border color. This will set the borders on the Category page product boxes as well as the border around the upsell boxes. This could be explained better.
I hope this helps solve your problem.
Sincerely,
--Steve, QSC Team
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We have not yet purchase QSC but am in R&D mode. We will use to sell on-line seminars; no shipping required. Will this work? Slight concern since the Qickbooks transactions won't post until status = Shipped.
Also, there was a lot of documentation on how to use Qucibooks and the QSC but both areas had individual print screen; several hundred in all. Sugeest combines all these into 2 downloadable PDFs; one for QSC and one for QB and QSC.
I'm not familiar with this blog. Since you have my e-maio address now, will your respnse be em-mailed to me or do I need to check back?
Not enough graphics of how QB interfaces desktop with on-line. Very confusing and not convinced that this will work for us. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I've read several thousand now.
Tahnks for this outlet and discussion.
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Greetings,
You can certainly sell non tangible items such as the seminar via this method.
Thank you for the suggestions regarding the presentation of the documentation we'll certainly take a look into that.
Regards
John
QSC team
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We are trying to decide if the QSC w/QBooks integration will work for us. We already use QBooks.
Questions:
1. Invoices come to QB under a single QSC Customer. Will we be able to produce a report of the individual "real" customers (per the individual sales receipts)?
2. Will we be able to track that the real customer (from the individual sales receipt) is a returning customer?
3. Has the functionality been added to allow a combination on taxable items and non-taxable services on the same invoice?
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Greetings,
Thank you for your inquiry about the Quick Shopping cart. In reverse order.
3) We currently do not have the ability to exempt some items in an order from the Tax rate set. This is planned for an upcoming version .
2) We believe you won't be able to track whether the real customer is a returning customer
1) We dont believe that you'd be able to produce a report based on the "real" customer.
I'm afraid we hit three strikes there but I hope the information is useful to you in making a decision.
Regards
John
QSC team
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We just set up and published our QSC. Er use our QSC site to sell seats in a class. Works pretty well so far.
We would like to have the ability to change, via a user-defined variable or QSC-customized code, the description of an item's stock status. I understand that the QSC was designed as a traditional shopping cart application, where items are either 'In-Stock' or 'Out-of-Stock', but for our purposes the Stock Status description would be more meaningful (and less confusing!) to our customers if they could be set to 'Seats Available' and 'Class Closed'.
What are the chances of finding a way to accommodate this scenario?
Thanks,
Tom
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Greetings Tom,
It's certainly a useful idea as we have quite a few users that sell events, tickets and ,in your case, classes through QSC. We currently don't have any plans for that on our roadmap but I'll certainly add it to the list of items that we could consider for a future release.
Regards
John
QSC team.
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2 semi quick fixes come to mind for the event ticket sales... Option called Availability with only 1 called either 'Seats Available' OR 'Class Closed' though this would require someone's imput up to the minute... or
your catagory is tickets perhaps with the product being the # of tickets you have - set the alert to notify you when you get to say 5, 10, 20 seats left?
Just my 2 cents
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Any plans to integrate the QSC with Google Analytics? This is a powerful tracking tool that assists site owners in determining the overall demographic of their customer base along with general site statitistcs. Thanks!
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Hi Stacy
We do not have an explicit integration, but with the ability to customize the footer html, you should be able to insert your Analytics code.
Thanks for the contribution,
Rob.
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I've successfully uploaded a sitemap for my shopping cart. The new pages were indexed within a couple days. Way cool! BUT there is a major problem. All of the titles and descriptions are exactly the same. There MUST be a way to add specific KeyWords to the individual products so that they show up on Google with individual product info about what that link is going to. I don't see any fields under products to add this, but I was thinking perhaps it can be added under "title or description" as a meta tag??
Please any help would be great!~
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Greetings Randy,
Sorry for the delayed response. I was double checking this situation as this was something that we did have within QSC. We're taking a look at this and hope to reinstate this in a future edition of QSC. What's meant to happen is that the product name becomes part of the title. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Regards
John
QSC team
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HTML Title H1 and alt tags, need to be on the product input.
as product attributes
So that each product page can have a unique HTML page title, h1 and alt tags.
Respectfully,
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Greetings,
Thank you for your feedback on this matter. I am taking a look at the ways in which we can improve the searchability of items within the store and how they are read by seach engines. We hope to add these improvements to a future edition. Meanwhile if I see any ways to improve the situation using the existing storefront I'll post an article on my findings.
Regards
John
QSC team
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Hi. Is there any plan to have statistical data within the shopping cart software to track individual product page hits? This would be extremely helpful.
Thanks,
Daniel
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Daniel,
At present we have this ability , though not directly built in the QSC, for the cart owner if they have enabled Google's webmaster tools. It's under the site promotion tab.Setting this up should provide the information you are looking for. I've included a link to the help file that contains more detailed information. http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?prog_id=GoDaddy&article_id=3075#generate
Regards
John
QSC Team
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When will you be adding the capability for international addresses. Registered customers can pick their country, but they can't enter their address (state and zip won't allow any text). Many of my customers are international, and it is difficult to process their orders - I can't even add them manually. Please help - this would be much more useful than favicon!
Thanks,
Gary Giebler
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Gary,
It's on our roadmap to do this but I'm afraid I don't have a time line for this. There are workarounds for the shipping that function but it's not so easy for us to do on the payment gateways apart from paypal. I agree it's more relevant than a favicon but the implication / impact of a small feature many have requested didn't materially effect the time line for the international shipping feature.
Regards
John
QSC team
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I agree with Gary on the international shipping. Maybe just set up something using paypal only. We've had requests too - more recently, an increase - don't know if it has something to do with the dollar but the internationally market is calling.
I think this is more timely than you think.-Mary
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What are the work-arounds? I'm only using PayPal for payments, and I can send a request for payment using PayPal alone, but I can't enter them in the Quick Cart system, not even manually since it requires a State and Zipcode.
Please help,
Gary
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Gary,
The workaround was to use the address for your store , or have the buyer use the address for your store and then put their information in the custom section. Hence it's a workaround that's not pretty but some people have found it practical. Sorry for the confusion I thought I'd linked to it.
Regards
John
QBC team.
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