HC Blog

Just wanted to throw out another idea for the HC forum store. Remember, that’s the store where posters at the HC Forums can spend HC$ they earn by posting on the boards.

http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=535

Here’s the thought: you could stock percent off coupons to your store and set a price in HC$. For example, list a 25% off coupon code in the HC Store forum ( http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=14 ) for HC$5. When someone purchases it, you send them a discount code they can use for 25% off anything in your store. The nice thing is, your customer will probably try to spend at least $20 in order to get her money’s worth. You can then use the HC$5 you earned to buy advertising time at HC.

Have fun with it!

I’ve received some reports of lottery glitches lately and I think I *might* know what’s going on. I just checked the database and there are over 10,000 entries in the lottery table. It may be that the code is searching for a winner, and doesn’t find one right away, so it goes ahead and chooses a new one. I’m going to delete all lottery entries older than two months.

In other news, the Hyena Cart forums are really coming to life. If you had wanted to participate in the giveaway, the new rules are posted here:

http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=535

If you’d like to earn ad money, just post something in the Store forum. When someone purchases your item by donating HC$ to you, you can then go ahead and purchase ad time from me using this listing (it’s a sticky at the top of the store forum):

http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=536

Thanks everyone!

Just a couple of quick items. If you’ve been considering switching to HC Multi, I’d appreciate if you could decide by mid-April. After April 15th, there will be a $5 charge to switch over. Hope you understand

In other news, a bunch of us are trying to get the HC Forums hopping and revive the days of high hyena excitement. So far it’s going quite well. If you’re interested in participating in the giveaway, just go ahead and start posting at the forums. When you’re ready, post a message in the middle of the thread… something like “Hey, the first [fourth, seventh — your choice] person with at least 20 posts who PMs me gets [a free diaper, a gift certificate, whatever]” When you’ve done your giveaway, please email me this info:

1) the username of the winner 2) the item they won 3) a link to the thread where you posted the giveaway 4) the retail value of the item 5) your HC ad account username (sign up here if you don’t have one: http://hyenacart.com/bannerad.php

and I’ll deposit the retail value of your item into your HC ad account

Thanks everyone!

I’ve been working hard this past month and I think I’m ready to offer the new HC Multi cart. This cart is a more traditional shopping cart where customers can place multiple items in a cart and then check out with everything at once. You can see an example here:

http://hyenacart.com/HCmulti/

You can test out the admin interface at:

http://hyenacart.com/HCmulti/admin/

with username admin and password testacart.

The main features are the multiple item checkout, the fact that items remain in-stock until Paypal has been confirmed, pattern download information can be entered, and multiple currencies are supported. The main limitations are flat-rate shipping (I may improve this in the future), no auctions or lotteries, and overselling is possible in high-traffic situations. HC Multi stores will still appear in the full list of HC stores and the calendar as well.

You can read a comparison between HC standard and HC Multi here:

http://hyenacart.com/cartcomp.php

I think many of you have signed up with HC because it’s an easy cart to use, but it hasn’t been ideal for your business because of the one-at-a-time shopping limitation. I’m hoping that HC Multi will fit your business better. In addition, I’d like to limit HC standard to handmade items from now on with the exception of a few commercial accessory items like wool wash). This will probably happen naturally anyway. And note that HC Multi will feature a lot of handmade items as well, just smaller items which may not be as high-demand as those on HC standard.

If you’d like to switch your store over, feel free to send me an email. The pricing is exactly the same, and switching is free. You’ll be able to cut and paste any graphics and customization you have in your current store. You’ll also need to cut and paste your listings from one cart to the other.

Thanks for hosting your store at HC