Added documentation and add-ons with quantities

I’ve added one more feature to the choice options, and I hope it will be useful to some of you. It allows you to have add-ons with quantities (so a customer could order 3 extra doublers or 2 bars of wool soap, etc.). And I’ve finally documented how to use the various options on your stocking page with instructions, so hopefully it will be slightly clearer than mud now. I’m still getting bug reports here and there and fixing things along the way, so please, if anything seems weird, let me know so I can take a look at it.

Here’s the documentation for the choices (and it’s on your vendor pages too):

OK — choices. This option adds a lot of flexibility for you and the customer, but as a consequence, it also adds some complexity. So please bear with me through this explanation 😉 Regular choices: At it’s most basic, the choice options are designed to be used for in-stock items which are mostly the same, but have a slight difference (for example, color or pattern). So if you had five pocket diapers, 3 red and 2 blue for $10 each, you would enter “red”, “3”, “10”; and “blue”, “2”, “10”. If you also had one frog print to offer for $12, you could also add “frog”, “1”, “12”. In this case, after you hit submit, the stockpage would automatically sum all your choices to get the main item qty (the one that shows in your store table). Take note, that means if you enter 12 in the main qty field (at the top of the stocking page), then enter some choices with numbers that add up to 6, your 12 will be automatically overwritten by the number 6. Hope that makes sense. On the item page, the customer would see a drop down menu with the choices 0 to the number of that item still available. The items would be inventoried and decrease as customers purchase them. This allows you to sell more than one item at a time. If your customer tries to make a purchase with all the drop downs still showing 0, they will get an error message telling them to enter a quantity greater than 0.

999 (yes/no) choices: Now let’s say you have an add-on feature that costs extra. For example, snaps on a diaper. You want the customer to be able to choose whether or not to have snaps and also for the total price to reflect the add-on. Basically, you’d like a choice that shows yes or no in the drop-down menu. That’s when you enter a choice qty of 999. So, for example, if you enter, “Snaps”, “999”, “0.50”; an extra 50 cent charge will be added to each diaper your customer purchases if they click “yes”. Note that choices with qty of 999 don’t add to the total item qty. In fact, if all your choices have 999 for a qty, then the main qty you enter for your item will not be altered.

1000+ (add-on) choices: Finally, let’s say you have add-ons you’d like to offer your customer and they don’t have a limited inventory. For example, doublers, t-shirts, wool soap, etc. For this type of item, you would enter 1000 plus the max number of this add-on you would like to offer. Say you’re selling an AIO shell and would like to offer up to 6 extra snap-ins at $3.00 each. Then you would enter “Snap-ins”,”1006″,”3″. The customer will see a drop-down menu offering 0 to 6 add-on snap-ins and can choose to add those to their purchase. These types of add-on options are *not* inventoried. That means of customer 1 comes in and gets an AIO with 6 snap-ins, the item page will still show a drop-down offering 0-6 snap-ins for the next customer. If you have a very limited quantity of something, then using the 1000+ add-on option is not the way to go. However, if you have 20 bars of wool soap, for example, then you’re totally safe offering up to 5 bars of soap with each of your 4 in-stock soakers. Like the 999 option, 1000+ options don’t add anything to the main qty.

Shipping: The additional shipping per item field only applies to regular choices, not 999 or 1000+ choices. If any of your add-ons will add significant weight to your customer’s package, you should include that additional charge in your choice price.

Multiple inventoried items: There’s one last way to use your choices, but it’s a little unconventional. Let’s say you had 24 prefolds ($2.50 each), and 3 pink snappis and 4 blue snappis ($1.50 each) to sell, and you want your customers to be able to purchase all of those items at one time. You could enter “Prefolds”, “24”, “2.50”; “Pink snappis”, “3”, “1.50”; “Blue snappis”, “4”, “1.50”. All of these items will have separate inventories and won’t oversell, but on your main store page, in the table, the Main Qty will show as 31 (24 + 3 + 4). That may or may not be confusing, but it would work. Note that in that case, you’d have to sort of average your additional shipping charge as each prefold and each snappi would add the same shipping charge to the total.

Hopefully this huge explanation doesn’t deter you from using choices. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Also, I have some test items shown in this store.

Oh — one other thing — when you make your payments, could you use the Paypal button at the bottom of your vendor pages? If you would like the option of typing in the amount rather than it always being one $5 monthly payment at a time, let me know and I’ll add another Paypal button.

One more change…

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.

Test items to illustrate use of choices

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.

Choice option still being tested…

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.

Doing some coding today

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 🙂

Okay — things should be back to normal

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 🙂

Re-hyenaproofed the code and added order #’s

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.

Hyena Cart is *really* hyena-proof now!

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.

New graphics customizations available

OK ~ I got distracted with one other item before I got to the mass
edits thing. If you go to your Profile page, you’ll see there are a
lot of extra graphics customizations you can now add to your store,
including button images for the link back to your main page, to the
past items page, etc. In addition, if you’d like to add a counter to
your store, you can go to statcounter.com, sign up for an account, and
C&P the counter code into the text box on your Profile page.

I had to make quite a few changed to the store pages, but everything
should look exactly the same. If you notice anything acting funny,
please send me an e-mail. I tried to make sure I entered the correct
data for everyone who had a counter or any customized graphics in
place. If I forgot you, please let me know!

Also, I fixed a bug with stocking items in a category store. When you
add a new item now, the category you define will stay set (previously,
you had to go back and edit the category).

Also, if you haven’t already, please join the Hyenacart Yahoo group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Hyenacart/

Thanks and new feature suggestions…

We have had a *serious* influx of new HC stores the past few days and
I just wanted to thank you again for your wonderful support!

All this action has re-inspired me to get coding on some features I’ve
been meaning to add for a while. The first one will be mass edits to
allow you to change the preview status of many items at the same time.
I was also going to make it possible to delete a lot of items as a
group as well. Is there any other toggle you’d like to be able to
switch en masse?

Another idea I had was to have a directory of HC stores broken down by
category to make it easier for the customers to shop. It will probably
replace the “powered by HC” page and will just have our banners in
random rotation at the top. It would have a list of wool soaker mamas,
fitteds, AIO’s, etc. and you’d be able to list in multiple categories.
Please e-mail me with a general category name for your store if you
think I might forget to list it.

I will try to get at least these two things implemented in the next
few weeks. I have a bunch of other things I’d like to code, but I’d
love to get input from you as well.

Oh, one other thing. I just wanted to be totally clear on payment. You
do *not* have to pay for months when you aren’t planning on stocking
your store. So you could stock your store, then have a baby and take a
one year break. Then just pay $5 and start stocking again. In the time
when your payment is expired, customers will still be able to purchase
things from your store, but you won’t be able to edit or add items.

Thanks again everyone. Please feel free to contact me with any
questions/problems/suggestions 🙂