HC Blog

Again, I want to thank you for bearing with me through HC’s growing pains. I think we’re almost there with changes to the code!

I have re-coded the pricing calculation for options. For non-999 options, the price is the qty of that option multiplied by its price. For 999’s, the option price is multiplied by the total items included in the order.

For example, in a custom diaper purchase listed like this:

0-5 Red …. add $10 each 0-4 Blue … add $10 each 0-8 Print … add $12 each Yes/no touchtape … add $0 each Yes/no snaps … add $1 each Yes/no extra doubler … add $3 each

If the customer clicks on 2 Red and 3 Print, yes snaps and yes doublers, they will be charged:

2*$10 (Red) + 3*$12 (Print) + 5*$1 (Snaps) + 5*$3 (doublers) = $20 + $36 + $5 + $15 = $76 plus shipping.

As you can see, adding the doublers option means one extra doubler for *each* diaper ordered. If you put an option that says, for example 20 doublers available, the code will sum your diapers and doublers together to get the total qty. This is probably not what you want, so I don’t think it makes sense to have options with quantities that aren’t part of your main listing. If that’s the case, it will still be better to have doublers and diapers listed separately and have the customer e-mail you for the total. Or have them note in the comments box how many doublers they’d like and invoice them the total. I know that’s not ideal, but we’re pretty much stretching what HC was originally coded for and I think that’s the best I can do.

Again, thanks for your patience and help. I appreciate all the bug reports and suggestions. Please let me know if you are still confused or need help trying to decide how to list your options.

Sorry for so many e-mails lately. This has been a pretty major change and has entailed a lot more coding and testing than I realized. However, I *think* everything’s working the way it should, but I need everyone to test it. I know it’s a little confusing at first, so I’ve listed a bunch of test items to give you some examples of how to use choices, especially the difference between qty choices and yes/no (qty = 999) choices.

So I’ve stocked the HC test store with a bunch of examples: http://hyenacart.com/Test_cat/

Note that with the choices, you now have the flexibility to list some add-ons with your items. For example, a wool wash bar, a matching t-shirt, snappi’s, etc.

I really appreciate all your help in debugging the code. If you are prone to frustration, I suggest you wait a week until most/all of the bugs are found. But if you are interested in helping, I welcome all comments/suggestions/questions.

But I think it’s working pretty well now.

I’ve added this feature: if you have choices that don’t affect the total quantity of items available (like addition of aplix, drawstring, yarn being wound into center-pull ball), enter a quantity of 999 for that particular choice. Then on the product page, this choice will be shown with a yes/no option. You can still charge additional fees for this type of option. The option will be applied to all items. So if someone buys 4 diapers at $10 each, and chooses yes on the snap option which adds $1 to each item, their total will be $44. Yes/no options don’t figure into additional shipping. I hope that’s clear. Please e-mail me if you still have questions or if things aren’t working the way you think they should.

Just to clarify, quantities for choices should be used for in-stock items that have an inventory. Like if you have 4 red diapers, and 3 blue ones to sell.

Also, I’ve added a comments field to the product details page. I thought about making it optional, but for now it appears for all products. If you find this annoying, e-mail me and I can change it.

Just wanted to let you know I’m going to be doing some pretty extensive re-coding of the stocking page and a few other things today. Your stores will remain open, but it will probably be much less frustrating for you if you hold off on stocking any new items until tonight. I’ll send out a message at the end of the day to let you know about the new features

I changed a lot in the code so *please* let me know if anything is acting funny or not working. I’ve tested as much as I can stand, but I need to take a break now

You’ll see the main addition at the bottom of your stocking page. You can now list choices for your products. This may include colors, fabrics, custom dyeing, scents, etc. For each choice, you enter a descriptive title, the quantity you have available, and any additional charge (you can also set this to 0 if there’s no additional charge). Also, there’s a field for a flat additional shipping fee per item. This will be added to the base shipping price you use in the normal shipping fields. If you enter some choices, the quantity field will automatically be filled in with the sum of all your choice quantities.

Also, you’ll see that if you list choices, your customers will now be able to specify the number of items they’d like to purchase (via a drop down menu). To see what I mean, here’s a test item:

http://hyenacart.com/prod_details.php?id=32059&vid=1

If you don’t fill in any choices, the product details page will work as it always has (i.e., customers will only be able to buy one item at a time). If you only have one choice, but you would like customers to be able to buy more than one item at a time, fill in the first line in the choice table and they will have that ability.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Probably the easiest way to understand how the choice options work is to go ahead and play around with them. Stock a few fake items and make some test purchases.

I added a comments field to the orders list that will list quantities of each choice the customer purchased.

Oh, one other little thing. When you get your confirmation e-mails now, you can hit reply and they will go to the buyer, not back to purchase@hyenacart.com . Same goes for the customer’s e-mail. When they reply, it will go to the seller. That’s just to make life a smidge easier for everyone.

Thanks so much for using Hyena Cart

Well, I decided I didn’t like the two-click buying. It was possible for a customer to click “Buy Now” and take something out of stock, but never follow through with the second click, which sent out the confirmation e-mails, etc.

I’ve switched back to one-click buying, but added a double-check to the database which should cut out any overeselling. If you do have an item oversell, or any other issues, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thanks to a suggestion from Christina of Baby Bloomrs, I have added an extremely useful feature — order numbers for tracking purposes. I had never thought of this because I sell in such small volumes, but from now on, when you sell an item, an order # will be attached to that sale. It will be in the subject of the confirmation e-mail as well as the Paypal payment (assuming the customer pays via the Paypal buttons). In addition, you now have an “Orders List” link at the bottom of your vendor pages which will show you a listing of your orders. I’ve retroactively entered items into this database based on any past sales you had in your product tables. Hopefully, this will make it easier to correlate sales and payments.

Finally, I hope to code up a payments page that I can link through the customer’s confirmation e-mail, in case they don’t click through to the payment right after they make their purchase. That should be implemented in the next few days.

If anything in the code is acting unexpectedly, please feel free to contact me.

Just wanted to let you know I have *really* hyena-proofed hyena cart now. I had to add a confirmation page in during the purchase process, but it’s just one extra click, so hopefully won’t irritate the customers at all. If you’d like to see the difference, you can make a test purchase here: http://hyenacart.com/prod_details.php?id=2&vid=1 . This has eliminated the need for turning confirmation e-mails off so I’ve removed that option from the stocking page. It really is impossible to oversell an item on HC now.

One other little detail you’ll notice if you login from the link at the bottom of that page is that after the customers logs in, they will have the option to click a link that takes them directly back to the page they were last viewing. I’ve tested it out a few times and it seems to work fine.

If you have any trouble stocking or if any of the pages seem to be acting strangely. Please feel free to contact me. I tested everything as thoroughly as I could, but sometimes little bugs are still hiding in the code.