Angsty Post: SEO Question + Fundamental Issues with Cart Software (re: Shipping, Condition Labels, SKU)

[fizzbang]

Hi there,

>>> Are SEO keywords still a necessity?

 

>>> What condition labels can l use? Only "new" "used" and "refurbished"?

If so, then we need to evolve a bit and allow miscellaneous condition labels. Example: antique, new oldstock, new - other, and so on.

 

 

>>> Do you really think it's wise to force Product Code to be made visible?

What if the product code contains info that is not meant for customer e.g. date of original listing? We are not all manufacturers. Some of us sell used goods. We need to know when it's time to start discounting, so we need to keep track of how long an item has been listed for. Ideally this info would go in the SKU aka Product Code.

You haven't changed this from stock open source cart script. I know this issue from other carts too.

 

 

M O S T     I M P O R T A N T L Y   -   P L E A S E    R E A D    T H I S :

 

>>> I need a courier database upload template but there just isn't any.

I know it's complicated but at the end of the day, it all ends up on a database, so why not have a template spreadsheet? I'd like to coin a term: Museumware. You can elegantly display your stock. But forget about shipping it ANYWHERE, EVER. Why you wanna ship it? It looks good on your shelf, you should keep it, no?

 

 

>>> Why is there no courier policy ID column for the product upload template?

I want to link a policy - offering many couriers for many nations, some nations having multiple couriers - to a specific product, and upload it all in one go.

This is how eBay does things. This is, really, the correct way to do couriers.

If we just did it by weight, then we would no longer be looking at the stock qualitatively + quantitatively (100g jewellery piece is WAY different to 10 x 2A fuses in a polythene bag, even if they both fall under the <100g Large Letter category, the jewellery must go express and be heavily insured, you see?), it'd just be quantitatively alone. Many many people buy and sell random odds and ends, we need to take each piece of stock for what it is. We haven't imported 1000 pieces all same model with 4 colour variations, it's not that simple for me, sorry.

 

 

>>> Sorry guys but it seems like we're just taking open source code and tweaking logos. I mean, there's another shopping cart that uses a virtual identical backend as yours, and they have the exact same things lacking as l've just pointed out here. I've seen a few carts now and they generally have the same issues that l've listed here.

 

I get that there's no such thing as a free meal. The software corporations want you to eventually hand over cash for a service or extension. Maybe adding a bespoke courier array is a special service that we must pay money for. If so, then just say so. Better still, don't make couriers an obstacle, make us a catch-all spreadsheet template so that we can upload courier policies (l have about 60 policies, each with about 75 columns), generate a policy ID for each policy, and then put that ID into a Policy ID column per inventory item for the separate inventory upload spreadsheet.

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by fizzbang

[fizzbang]

By the way, you're not even doing carriers properly. I'm not talking about uploading them via spreadsheet template.

I'm talking about the carrier database per se.

It needs to have a Nickname field, that is the name by which it will be recoginised by YOU, so that you quickly know what it's for. For example: "<100g for Jewellery", or "<100g for 20 x screws in polythene bag."

It also needs an expanded "Policy description" field, where you explain a bit more e.g. the box or envelope size used, or the maximum box or envelope sizes permitted.

It also needs unlimited extra columns for "Outlying areas" where you get to explain what the Outlying Areas are, and the surcharge levied.

 

Gosh, l honestly think none of these shopping carts - not just yours but ALL of the others too - actually have thought about actually posting things. They are all museumware. You look at it, why you wanna sell it and post it? Just look at it, if you are a professional then you will enjoy just doing that, why you wanna sell?

 

Seriously, if you want to know my idea of a template courier spreadsheet, l can show you. I hope it would be a fairly minor upgrade to make the cart software work from that.

 

Changes you'd need to make:

- Make Shipping Policy ID part of the inventory spreadsheet too.

- Make the software match Shipping Policy ID on inventory spreadsheet (i.e. per inventory item) to the relevant shipping policy on the Shipping Policy database.

- THEN look at customer's country

- THEN filter out all options that have nothing to do with customer's country

- THEN all customer needs to do is choose an option

 

- ON TOP OF THAT you can have - and l believe you already do have something similar - additional discount options taking in the entire cart contents all together. Ideally, it would be this: add an overarching multi-item rule (i.e. grand total cart discount) assembled via drop-down menu:
 
Quantity / price / weight of total items in basket over X value --> get Y percent or absolute amount off of entire basket / cheapest item.

 

That way, you can give your customers extra buying incentives but not ONLY that: if the customer buys multiple items each with a different shipping policy, then the situation will be ameliorated by the grand total cart discount aforementioned. Customer will be happy at paying a reduced shipping amount, and vendor can figure out how best to proceed with the mixed cart, but at least the vendor will likely have enough money to cover the shipping, after the grand total cart discount aforementioned.

 

 

Please, don't dismiss this post, l really want to help out, if you want to see my template shopping policy spreadsheet just ask.

 

 

[fizzbang]

Plus you won't even allow selection of individual countries in the Shipping Locations section. Gah!

[dynambee]

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Angsty Post

Well you got that much right.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

What condition labels can l use? Only "new" "used" and "refurbished"?

You can use any label you want, even "angsty" if that's what floats your boat. It's an ENUM type and the options are listed in the `condition` column of the `product` table.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Do you really think it's wise to force Product Code to be made visible?

Nothing is forced, you can show or hide that field and any other field. There are also two product code fields, `reference` and `supplier_reference`. You can use `reference` for customer viewing and `supplier_reference` for your own viewing. Best of both worlds.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

I need a courier database upload template but there just isn't any.

TB includes a very functional API. You can use it to upload any collection of carrier definitions that you wish. Personally I have nearly 300 different carriers defined on my site, multiple carriers defined for every country. Functional APIs are quite rare in open source shopping carts and the one included with TB is what first attracted me to PS 1.6 and then later TB.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Why is there no courier policy ID column for the product upload template?

What you really want to do is limit carrier availability based on the total value of the items in the shopping cart, not based on the price of any individual items. If someone buys $1000 worth of cheap widgets or a single piece of jewelry for $1000 you are going to want to send that order with good shipping, tracking, and insurance. TB does not include functionality that does this, and I have not seen any other shopping cart (open source or very expensive) that does this properly.

Shipping solutions are really, really hard. What happens if someone buys 5 different items that need different shipping solutions? How do you present those options during checkout without making the checkout process a nightmare for the customer? Make the customer choose shipping for each item individually? Do it automatically for the customer? What if there are two items that absolutely cannot be shipped together due to size or weight restrictions? Maybe one item needs to go in a long tube by courier and another item needs to go on a pallet by truck.

To give you an idea of how hard this really is, most sites just give up and offer "free" shipping by including the cost of shipping in the item price. This is a giant pain in the ass for international shipping as the cost to ship to the country next door can be very different to ship half way around the world. And while customers love the idea of "free" shipping what most do not realize is that there is no such thing as free shipping. The shipping costs just get included in the price of the item which means if they buy multiple items they are usually overpaying for shipping costs.
 

10 hours ago, fizzbang said:

This is how eBay does things. This is, really, the correct way to do couriers.

eBay's shipping system is a nightmare. eBay's platform is a nightmare.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Sorry guys but it seems like we're just taking open source code and tweaking logos.

People will be more willing to help you if you have better manners. You never know who might have a full solution to your shipping problem but not be willing to share it because of your rant.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

It also needs unlimited extra columns for "Outlying areas" where you get to explain what the Outlying Areas are, and the surcharge levied.

Couriers like DHL that charge for rural delivery and charge for shipping based on volumetric weights are a nightmare for a general cart solution. Presto-Changeo has some good modules that help with this, but they aren't free.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Gosh, l honestly think none of these shopping carts - not just yours but ALL of the others too - actually have thought about actually posting things. They are all museumware. You look at it, why you wanna sell it and post it? Just look at it, if you are a professional then you will enjoy just doing that, why you wanna sell?

Do you seriously think you're the first person to think about this? Every single merchant running their own shop thinks about this. Every time they ship something they think about this.

Shipping, especially international shipping, is a massive pain in the ass from an accurate cost calculation perspective. To get accurate shipping costs you first need to calculate which box the items in the shopping cart will fit into. That means you need an accurate size and weight for every item, and you need an effective 3D Bin Packing system. 3DBP is an NP hard problem and even companies that have thrown substantial amounts of money at this (Amazon...) don't have a good solution. 
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Changes you'd need to make:

Those are changes you want for your particular needs. Other merchants have different needs. If you want a custom shipping solution that exactly fits your needs then you will probably have to pay to have a shipping module written specifically for you. You might find one that is "close enough" from somewhere like Presto-Changeo (link above) but you might not. Custom work is expensive so most people end up going with a "good enough" solution that mostly fits what they want to do.

If you look more deeply into the system TB offers already you will find that it is actually more flexible than you think. It's not perfect but it's not bad.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Plus you won't even allow selection of individual countries in the Shipping Locations section.

Of course you can do this. You can define shipping zones however you want to define them. If that means you want one country per zone or even one state per zone, you can do this.
 

9 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Gah!

Well your very first word and very last word are accurate. So you've got that going for you, which is nice.

You need to learn that there is no perfect shopping cart out there. It doesn't matter if it is an open source cart like TB or one you pay monthly for like Shopify, there will be limitations and decisions they have made that don't fit your needs. The thing with an open source cart like TB is that if you are willing to learn the skills (or pay the money for custom development) you can make it do anything you want. 

[fizzbang]

Hi there okay i think ur confusing software with your own person. I got like that playing Dink Smallwood on Debian so l know where ur coming from but still, it's not correct to do so.

 

I'll address the rest of your post anyhow but please bear in mind l'm not a coder. Life's hard enough buying and selling. Maybe you are able to do all these things:

"You can use any label you want, even "angsty" if that's what floats your boat. It's an ENUM type and the options are listed in the `condition` column of the `product` table." 

Alright l really didn't know that. It's a good idea.

 

"Nothing is forced, you can show or hide that field and any other field. There are also two product code fields, `reference` and `supplier_reference`. You can use `reference` for customer viewing and `supplier_reference` for your own viewing. Best of both worlds."

Nice one. I didn't notice that field. There's no explanation with the upload spreadsheet.

 

TB includes a very functional API. You can use it to upload any collection of carrier definitions that you wish. Personally I have nearly 300 different carriers defined on my site, multiple carriers defined for every country. Functional APIs are quite rare in open source shopping carts and the one included with TB is what first attracted me to PS 1.6 and then later TB.

 

Going back to  my question thoguh: I don't see how this can be done, sir.  I'm not a coder if that helps. There's no courier template spreadsheet on offer.

 

 

15 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Why is there no courier policy ID column for the product upload template?

What you really want to do is limit carrier availability based on the total value of the items in the shopping cart, not based on the price of any individual items. If someone buys $1000 worth of cheap widgets or a single piece of jewelry for $1000 you are going to want to send that order with good shipping, tracking, and insurance. TB does not include functionality that does this, and I have not seen any other shopping cart (open source or very expensive) that does this properly.

 

Dude, no, you misunderstand my entire post. $1000 ring vs. $1000 for 10,000pcs widgets is easy peasy for my solution.

 

Customer buys 1 x ring worth £1,000 + 10,000 widgets for £1,000

My solution:

Select Courier Policy Nickname for Ring advert: "Jewellery policy <100g Spec Delivery 1pm"

OR: Select Courier Policy ID: "06"

Local customer in UK sees: Royal Mail Special Delivery 1pm

Cost: £8.50 inc. VAT

Processing time: 1 day

Allow transit: 1 day

---> Customer buys 1 ring for £1000 + £8.50 P&P

 

Select Courier Policy Nickname for Widget advert: "100 Widgets policy <100g Economy 3-5 days"

OR: Select Courier Policy ID: "42"

Local customer in UK sees:

Royal Mail 2nd Class: £0.00 / £0.00 per extra item / Processing time: 1 day / Allow transit: 3-5 days

Royal Mail 1st Class: £2.00 / £0.50 per extra item / Processing time: 1 day / Allow transit: 1-2 days

Royal Mail Special Delivery 1pm / Cost: £8.50 inc. VAT / Processing time: 1 day / Allow transit: 1 day

---> Customer buys 100 lots @ Royal Mail 2nd Class (free delivery). Total: 10,000 widgets for £1000 + free P&P

 

At checkout l have special rule: Buy 2 items, get 20% off cheapest item.

Buy up to 5 items, get 40% off cheapest item

Buy up to 10 items, get cheapest item free

Buy up to 100 items get cheapest 5 items free.

 

Therefore Buyer gets 5 free lots of widgets (100 widgets per lot) for free. That is a £50 discount.

As for the postage, l decide its better that l send the ring separately because the ring absolutely must go special delivery, but the widgets actually weigh 2.75 kg, and therefore that's a small fortune to send by special delivery. That will go at the originally stated tariff: Royal Mail 2nd Class.

Guess what, l actually make £10 profit from the postage and packing. Covers mishaps from other customers plus miscalculations from my own policies.

 

^^^^ See how it works so elegantly?

 

 

 

Shipping solutions are really, really hard. What happens if someone buys 5 different items that need different shipping solutions? How do you present those options during checkout without making the checkout process a nightmare for the customer? Make the customer choose shipping for each item individually? Do it automatically for the customer? What if there are two items that absolutely cannot be shipped together due to size or weight restrictions? Maybe one item needs to go in a long tube by courier and another item needs to go on a pallet by truck.

To give you an idea of how hard this really is, most sites just give up and offer "free" shipping by including the cost of shipping in the item price

In case l didn't make it clear in my OP, l've made it clear just above.

Oh l know about the vicissitudes of shipping, and if you read between the lines, l'm desperately trying to help you guys be the best, as l'd do for any other cart forum i come into contact with.

Please examine my solution.

Most website owners offer free shipping? So they bump prices off to cover shipping policy laziness.

Then they get abandoned carts when customers do a quick price comparison a la Google or eBay.

Then they hound customer via cart abandonment plugin. Woo woo!

How about boxing clever? Look at my solution. It's a direct copy of eBay's solution. It works.

 

eBay's shipping system is a nightmare. eBay's platform is a nightmare.

 

eBay's shipping system works beautifully and keeps me competitive. Once you get the courier policies down, and futurerproofed for 3 years, you're singing.

eBay's platform is repulsing me, true, that's why l and many others are looking around for alternatives. Why not take the best of all platforms without prejudice and incorporate them.

 

 

People will be more willing to help you if you have better manners. You never know who might have a full solution to your shipping problem but not be willing to share it because of your rant.
 

I already said in title it is an angsty rant. Also, i said "sorry guys" at the start of the sentence you're replying to. What more do you seriously want? I'll be willing to hear you out but make it on point.

The point is couriers and such. Please don't stray.

 

 

15 hours ago, fizzbang said:

It also needs unlimited extra columns for "Outlying areas" where you get to explain what the Outlying Areas are, and the surcharge levied.

Couriers like DHL that charge for rural delivery and charge for shipping based on volumetric weights are a nightmare for a general cart solution. Presto-Changeo has some good modules that help with this, but they aren't free.

Maybe you really don't get what l'm saying.

My idea = FACELESS SHIPPING POLICIES. They may even name DHL or UPS or whatever. But in themselves, they don't connect to anything. If you want automated label generation, then add a UPS extension. Let customers see the price difference though, between your pre-defined "faceless" policies and the direct-via-courier prices offered by extensions.

So, example policy:

Nickname: "25kg Fragile hence EXPRESS --- includes World"

Personal Note: "This is for Paracelforce Worldwide Express @ 50x50x40cm cost to you is £175"

Relevant area: OCEANIA

Outlying area: Micronesia - Global Express Courier @ £190 inc. insurance - 7-10 days

---> Customer in Micronesia pays £190

 

When it comes down to it, you go to a courier aggregator website and then suddenly see UPS are doing a really good promo - same location, £140, 7-10 days.

 

See how it works now?

 

 

Do you seriously think you're the first person to think about this?

No, l've literally said do it like eBay does.

But apart from eBay, yes, it would appear l'm the only person that has thought about shipping, ever. I mean that, l really do.

Look at your complicated replies and then look at my simple solution.

Also look at my offer to show you a template courier spreadsheet, and look at my OP where l showed you how the cart software would / could / should operate from that spreadsheet.

 

15 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Changes you'd need to make:

Those are changes you want for your particular needs. Other merchants have different needs. If you want a custom shipping solution that exactly fits your needs then you will probably have to pay to have a shipping module written specifically for you. You might find one that is "close enough" from somewhere like Presto-Changeo (link above) but you might not. Custom work is expensive so most people end up going with a "good enough" solution that mostly fits what they want to do.

If you look more deeply into the system TB offers already you will find that it is actually more flexible than you think. It's not perfect but it's not bad.

IOW: Changes you'd need to make

 

14 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Plus you won't even allow selection of individual countries in the Shipping Locations section.

Of course you can do this. You can define shipping zones however you want to define them. If that means you want one country per zone or even one state per zone, you can do this.

I've just checked out the zones in a different section. I guess that's what you meant. I nearly ran away screaming. What is that? What IS that?
 

14 hours ago, fizzbang said:

Gah!

Well your very first word and very last word are accurate. So you've got that going for you, which is nice.

 

Sorry but once again: please keep this about couriers. Please don't let ego get the better of you and walk off in a huff. I'd like to hear back from you about my ideas re: couriers.

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by fizzbang