indieCart Seller's Blog

Hey everyone,

I made just a few small changes today, based on some usability testing I did earlier in the month. It was fascinating (and sometimes mortifying) to watch HC-newbies navigate the site for the first time, and I made two changes based on some of my observations:

1. Shopping cart icon: this probably should have been a no-brainer, but having an e-commerce site without a shopping cart icon is not a good thing. I had considered and dismissed the idea before because, as you know, HCS stores don’t use shopping carts. Plus, it seemed confusing to have a cart icon on the main site pages when shoppers have to check out of each store separately. After some thought, I think I’ve come up with a good and usable compromise. What do you think?
2. Grayed out purchase buttons: OK — turns out some people don’t read all the text on a page (that should have been a no-brainer too). I watched a shopper get more and more frustrated as she attempted to purchase an item that was previewing and could *not* find an “add to cart” button. She hovered over the “XX available on such-and-such date” several times, but never read the text. So, on every page now, if the item is previewing, there is a grayed-out “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart”, etc. button that, when clicked, pops up a window explaining that the item will be available for purchase on a future date. Hopefully that will make things more clear to people

Please let me know your thoughts and also any other input on how to make the site better for newbie visitors.

Thanks everyone!

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know I’ve just added the capability of putting your store in vacation mode for both HCS and HCM 🙂 Just scroll all the way down to the bottom of your Store Settings >> Profile page and you’ll see the field.

Along with that, I’ve re-extended the time that shops are usable after paid time expires. Recall it used to be forever. Then I cut it back to two months. Now it’s 6 months (we’ll see how that goes for now, maybe we’ll extend it more if it causes no issues). That means shoppers can still view your store and purchase listings for 6 months after your paid time expires. As before, though, your store will not show up in the directory and your listings will not come up in the site search if your paid date is more than two months old.

If you are taking a break and you don’t want shoppers to be able to purchase items, then you should put your store in vacation mode.

When your store is in vacation mode, no listings will show up, and if a shopper happens to have the url that takes them directly to a listing, they still won’t be able to purchase it. You can put a vacation / away message in the Intro / Header section of the Profile page to let your customers know what’s up. Please let me know if you have any questions / issues. Thanks!

Hi all,

Great news! I’ve just upgraded HC Standard so you have the same customizability of shipping options as HC Multi. On your Store Settings >> Profile page, towards the bottom, you’ll see a field called “Shipping Option names.” If you leave it blank, it will default to our current five shipping options: “First-class, Priority, UPS, FedEx, International”. But you can define up to 5 shipping options of your own (for example, “First class to Canada,” “Flat-rate Priority”, etc.) Please let me know if you have any issues with this new capability.

One other quick note: to request feedback transfers now, please go to your Store Settings >> Request changes page and follow the link from there.

Thanks everyone!

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to make you aware of the HC Multi Seller’s manual that has just been created (you can access it via the Help menu on your vendor pages). It covers many basics that may be old hat to you if you’ve been on the site for a while, but may also clear up some questions you’ve always had, like “why is there sometimes such a delay in order creation on my auctions / drawings?”

Please check it out and leave feedback in the comments here or at the helpdesk (support [at] hyenacart.com).

I say it’s “semi-complete” because I’d still like to add a section on creating professional listings (photography, grammar, spellcheck, etc.) and will also look to you to point out areas that were mystifying to you when you started out, and still aren’t explained in the current version of the manual.

Thanks everyone!

Hi everyone,

OK — the storetop icons are rolled out as the default store view. You still have the option of turning them off by clicking on this link:

http://hyenacart.com/index.php?sticon=0

And the HC Multi end dates I talked about last week have been rolled out. So, the things to remember:

• Items whose end dates are passed or not set to “0000-00-00 00:00:00” will no longer show up in your stores
• These items will also not have an “Add to cart” button, so it won’t be possible to purchase them
• Auctions and Drawings will continue to show up in your store until a week after their end dates have passed (to allow shoppers to see how things ended up). For that week, items will show up in both current and past items. After that week has passed, they will only show up in past items. If you would like your item to move out of current items sooner, you can edit the end date to a time further in the past. Hope that all makes sense

Sorry if this has caused a lot of disruption in your store. However, it was something that needed to be fixed at some point, and it was going to be painful no matter when it happened. If you are having issues getting your end dates edited, please contact the helpdesk at support [at] hyenacart,com and we’ll see how we can help you out.

Thanks everyone!

Hi all,

I would love to get your feedback on this idea:

• First click here: http://hyenacart.com/index.php?sticon=1
• Now go to any HC store and notice the icons in the menu bar at top

What do you think?

For now, you can turn them back off by clicking http://hyenacart.com/index.php?sticon=0

Oh, and we can thank the lovely Andrea of WANTED for the little icons 🙂

Sometime next week, I’d like to fix the way HC Multi handles End Dates for items. At the moment, End Dates are pretty much ignored for Standard, Buy Now and Hold listings. If the End Date is passed, the item continues to show up in your store and be available for purchase.

After the changes are made, listings with End Dates in the past will

• No longer show in your store, but will be viewable in the “Past Items” section
• No longer be available for purchase (the “Add to cart” button will not show)

Note that items with End Dates in the past do not show up in searches (and haven’t since the new search system was installed).

So please, go into your listings and modify any “End dates” which are in the past on listings which you would prefer to remain active. For most listings, you will probably want to set the “End date” to “0000-00-00 00:00:00” which effectively means there is no end date and you would like the listing to remain in your store until you manually remove it.

One last thing — I am thinking about changing the “Show” checkbox in HC Multi into “Preview” like it is for HC Standard. So the “Preview” setting on the Profile page would go away, items with future “Go live dates” would only show up if Preview was checked, and all listings with valid “Go live” and “End” dates would show up in the store, regardless of whether “Preview” is checked or not. This would be retroactive, so any items with “Show” unmarked, but dates that would make the listing active would now show up (e.g., templates, etc.) It may be a pain at first, but I think ultimately, it gives you more flexibility. Please leave your input in the comments section.

ETA: For now, the “Show” function will continue to work as it always has.

Thanks and Happy New Year everyone!

Hi all,

I made a change to the code last night that has had unintended effects. I’m going to keep it the way it is, though, as it makes the most sense. But if you have listings that have disappeared from your store and your stocking page, go to Product Listings >> Batch Edit >> Dates, and ensure that the category number for all of your listings corresponds with an existing category number in your store (if you don’t use categories, set them all to 1). Everything should work fine at that point. If not, please drop a line to support [at] hyenacart.com.

Also, just so you know, the change now orders your listings in category ordering and then item ordering order. That probably makes no sense. Let’s say you have a category “chocolate truffles” which you have ordered as 2, but which is actually category number 10 (i.e., on your Store Settings >> Edit categories page, ordering for that category is set to 3, but the category number is 10). Now let’s say you have another category called “fudge” with ordering set at 5, and is category number 3. Before the change, the items were sorted by category number, and the category ordering was ignored. So your fudge would have shown up before your truffles. Now, the items are sorted by category ordering, so the truffles will show up first. And you can rearrange the listings easily by changing the category ordering on the “Edit categories” page. Clear as mud? Good! But I bet you’re hungry, anyway.

If you have questions, please post here or email the support desk. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Me again 🙂

OK – first of all, I added one more category, “Household and Laundry,” for cloth napkins, unpaper towels, laundry soap, etc. Also, if you check out the main HC page, you’ll now see that the text under each category is hotlinked to a search for those items. I’m hoping to make the site more browsable and also introduce items to shopperS who may not be aware of them: “Dryer balls? What are those? What are mei-tai’s? What about I-spy bags? Oh, I didn’t know HC had *toffee*!!”

So, you’ll want to be sure that the items you sell under each item type have the right tags to come up in that search. For example, under knitted items, the search for socks is “knit socks”. Just make sure those words occur in your title or tags.

I’ve also re-organized so fabric stores are now categorized under Patterns, Fabric and Sewing Supplies, leaving the Yarn category for Yarn & Knitting Supplies. Please ensure your store is showing under the correct category.

I’ll take suggestions on item types and search wording in the comments — so please feel free to give your input 🙂

In other news, I’ve changed the way I coded BiN handling for HCMulti stores. If you recall, last week, I set it up so each BiN click creates a new order. However, I wasn’t thinking about big BiN stockings where shoppers would be buying a lot of BiN items at once. It made for a ton of extraneous orders who’s items got paid for together in a different order. The seller would have had to go through and manually cancel all the extras. So, what I’ve done is changed it back to the way it was (i.e., the order for BiN’s is not created until the shopper checks out), but all of the BiN purchases can now be viewed via the shopper’s Auction, Drawing, BiN page (in their My HC pages). So buyers can see immediately if they stalked successfully, and be linked directly to their haul. Also, if someone clicks BiN, but doesn’t pay, the seller can re-stock, and no order is created. Unfortunately, this means the seller can’t flag the buyer, but please keep track of it manually, and if a shopper is a repeat offender, you can blacklist him / her and notify the helpdesk. I think this is the best compromise for now, but am still open to suggestions.

I also updated the feedback page so feedback cannot be left for orders with “New” or “Cancelled” status.

Ok — that’s it for now. Thanks everyone!

Hi all,

Guess I’m on a roll lately 🙂 Just a few more additions to the site:

• The “Jump to store” feature now also searches congo vendors, so if you’re looking for any store hosted on HC, whether it’s a standalone or part of a congo, it should now come up in that search
• I’ve edited the feedback function so feedback for sellers (HC vendors or SC sellers) can not be left by the buyer if the status of the order is “New.” This keeps shoppers from leaving feedback on unpaid orders (i.e., transactions that never really happened). Also note that if you have a buyer pay via Paypal invoice, the HC system will not automatically mark the order “Paid” and you will have to do that manually in your vendor pages in order for the buyer to leave feedback for you
• Finally, I have changed the way HC Multi handles order creation for BIN’s, auctions and drawings. These three types of transactions now create an order immediately (as soon as “Buy Now” is clicked, or the auction / drawing ends and has been refreshed) rather than waiting until the shopper completes the checkout process. The shopper can still go back and add more items to the order and pay for everything at the same time. The difference is that you and the shopper will both see an order in your histories right away.

As always, let me know if anything seems to be buggy.

Thanks hyenas!