HC Blog

Sorry — a bit loopy. I couldn’t sleep until I figured out what was going on. It should be fixed now. Sorry about the slowdown today and the multiple emails.

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the issues with HC Multi stores. I realize they are running very slowly. I think this is due to database size and I will try to correct it as soon as possible. Hopefully by tomorrow night but it might be the night after. I realize this is very inconvenient and I apologize.

First of all — sorry about the down time this afternoon. The database server crashed, but I moved the database over to our new server (something I’ve been meaning to do anyway) so we should be good now.

I have two more goodies for HC Multi users. First — if you go to your orders list, you’ll see a “Download order history” link. This will download your order history to your PC in CSV format. Just in time to do your taxes

The second thing is, there is now a “Show” option when you stock or edit an item. This determines whether or not the item listing shows up in your store. I added it to the multi-edit page too. Hope that gives you more of the functionality you need.

HC Standard users — you’re probably starting to feel left out and neglected. I’ll be getting you up to speed soon. First I need to code the utility so customers can change their email addresses (this has been on my to-do for over a year!) and then it will be your turn.

Thanks!

Ok — I know this has been a long time coming. I finally got around to adding a multi-edit feature for the HC Multi users. This allows you to edit all of your items simultanously. Should be especially helpful as you set your shipping pricing. You’ll see the “Multi-edit” link on your left-hand menu.

And the HC Marketing campaign is starting to get in gear. There are fliers to printout and business card graphics to download and customize on the HC Marketing page. Also, you might want to consider buying some of these beautiful postcards:

at the HC Marketing shop. I am really pleased with the way these came out! These are perfect for handing out to playgroup moms, craft fair shoppers, family and friends. If every registered HC shopper were to bring in 10 new shoppers, we’d have over 100,000 hyenas out there!

Which reminds me — if you do pass out HC materials, make sure to put your referral id number (found on your My HC shopper page) on them and ask people to enter that when they register. The person who brings in the most new shoppers who buy at least one item at HC will be eligible for a prize later in the year

Thanks everyone!

HC Multi users — you have two new things to play with:

1) You now have the option of adding shipping prices to each individual item. Instructions are on the stocking page. You enter both a main shipping price, to represent the shipping price if that were the only item to be ordered, and an add-on shipping price, which represents the additional shipping an already exisiting order would incur with the addition of this item. If you do start adding shipping prices, be sure to enter “999″ for shipping options that you don’t want to offer your customers (FedEx, for example). You’ll probably want to try it out on a few items and test purchase them so you can get a feel for how it works. The final shipping price is calculated using the max main shipping price plus the add-on prices of all the other items. Also note, if you use this option, you’ll want to zero out the flat-rate shipping price on your “Store Config” page. If you choose not to use this option and leave everything as is, your store will continue to function as it has in the past.

2) You now have room to add 6 choices per listing and a price associated with each choice.

If you have trouble with the new options, please post here: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=21735

Also, I’ve gotten feedback from newbies that the homepage is scary, lol. So I’ve experimentally removed the left sidebar from that page. You can sound-off about that move here: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=21729 . I can easily be convinced to put it back. Consider it a short-term experiment.

Everyone else: the marketing campaign for HC is just getting started. If you are interested, there’s a forum here: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=26

And we have a CafePress store now, where you can buy t-shirts, bumper stickers, even stamps : http://www.cafepress.com/hyenacart . I’ll shortly be adding more items, specifically ones with this cute little guy:

who was designed by my sister

I’ll keep you updated as the campaign takes shape.

Thanks!

Hi all,

Ok — I finally got around to adding additional Product Type capability for congos. Congo admins can now go to their profile pages and choose *one* secondary Product Type category for the entire congo. They will still show up on the Congo category page. In addition, I coded up a detailed congo page which lists all of the stores in each congo and how many current or previewing items are listed in each store.

ETA: if there’s a store in your congo that you don’t want to have shown on that list, just set the Order number to greater than 1000.

Things have been busy this week so I haven’t made any progress on the HC Multi stores. I will keep working on those as I find the time.

You may have noticed that I did not raise the store sign-up fees on Jan. 1 as I had planned earlier. This is because I had another thought. You can read about it and respond here, if you’re interested.

As far as feedback goes, my current plan is simply to more closely integrate the HC stores with the feedback on the WAHM Feedback forums. I believe these written reviews are a lot more informative than simple numerical ratings. In the future, it will be simpler for customers to get to this feedback as well as leave feedback for purchases.

One final thing — with lotteries… as you’ve probably noticed, lottery entrants are cleared two weeks after they enter. This is causing some lotteries to choose new winners at the two-week mark. To prevent this from happening, you should delete lotteries before the two-week mark, or change their stocktype to “Standard.”

Thanks!