Category: All HC Users

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.

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/

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 🙂

Just wanted to let you know, that because of a request from Karren
(Muggum’s Nugglies), you can now add a little introduction at the top
of your store (just below the logo). There’s a space to do that on
your profile page. Feel free to leave it blank and your store will
look the same as always. To see an example of a store with an intro,
check out the test store: http://hyenacart.com/Test_cat/

Also, a few of you have responded to the poll about the auctions and
it seems that auction capability isn’t necessary for you all right
now. The next thing on my list is a request from Yvon (Storm in the
Attic) for a way to edit many items at the same time (say from preview
= 0 to preview = 1; or to delete a bunch of old items), so hopefully
that will happen in the next few months.

Finally, a few of you haven’t joined the Yahoo group yet. Please do so
if you haven’t. It will make it easier for us all to keep in touch.
I’ve made it announcements only, so you won’t get much e-mail in your
inbox.

Just wanted to let you know I’ve added customer logins to your HC
stores. That means customers will now have to create a password
protected account in order to make purchases. In addition, the
accounts can only be activated from real e-mail addresses. This should
cut down on people “fake” buying with random e-mail addresses and will
hopefully deter people from stalking for each other. Also, it will be
easier to make purchases since the customers only have to click “Buy
Now” rather than filling in their e-mail addresses.

I’m hoping the accounts are self-explanatory, but you may want to send
out an e-mail to your customers just so they know what’s going on (I
don’t have a way to contact all the HC store customers).

The customer database will be common among all the HC stores, but the
information in it will be kept strictly private. It will absolutely
not be shared or sold.

I hope this makes life easier for you all. Please test it out (you can
make test purchases in the Test Account Store:
http://hyenacart.com/Test_account/