AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Hi Everyone at AC,

Can you comment on a few open issues on the feature list so that we can determine priorities here at our end? We need to finish customization of our site as soon as possible.

1. Checkout - Are we going to get a non-Account anonymous checkout capability soon? We feel that we must have this for our business. Is there a way to do it ourselves if need be? This was category 1 requirement for us and we would like to have it working by the end of FEB.

Also, we really prefer a multiple page checkout that provides an option for the customer to Review and then Confirm their order before submitting it... we have gotten dozens of double orders and customers are not used to this. Will there be a multiple page checkout available? If not, maybe we need to explain it better.

2. XML and Google Feeds - is this coming? Will it have all the required attributes ( see below )? Can we add in custom attributes? We are doing a manual feed now so I guess we could map in your feed to ours in order to customize it.

3. Options - Ability to choose a default option for color and/or control the order in which they display on the drop down display - alphabetical or numerical as a default.

4. Shipping Zone - Contiguous USA - does this perform a zip code lookup. We have received 2 calls from customers telling us their USA zip code is not valid and not letting them order. Is there a lookup table or can we not use it? If we need to use it, how do we keep it up to date? Do we need to fill in the zip codes in the Dashboard box via a Wild Card to cover the USA?

5. Interface to a shipping program - Are we on our own here? We can do an XML feed that would do this but is something coming? How are others doing the Feeds to Shipping Programs?

Thanks, Don

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NOTES:

Google Attributes - required
Attributes for all products
You are required to include these attributes for all of the items in your feed. If you do not have information for an attribute, you may substitute a different attribute instead, such as a specific item type attribute or an additional attribute.
*
brand
condition
description
expiration_date
id
image_link
isbn
link
mpn
price
product_type
title
upc
*

Hello Don,

1. Will be available by end of Feb.
2. We'll be using the product template feature in 7.1 for the ever changing requirements of google.
3. There is a sort option on both Variants and options, so I'm not sure what I'm missing here in your question.
4. I don' think that we're doing zip code lookup.
5. There are a couple of shipping programs we've looked at integrating with, which one are you using?

Mike,

I think on number 3 he's talking about the variant choices.

Let's say you create a product for a shirt. It has 3 colors and 5 sizes, so you create a Color choice entry and a Size choice entry.

When the product page displays, the dropdown for Color will default to blank. Once you select a color, the dropdown for Size will display, again blank. Don needs to be able to set what the starting option is for each choice group.
I think Don (and several others) would also love to see all the option fields display at once instead of having them render one at a time.

Don: You can change the sort order of a each choice you create. Go into a product and click the Variants button. Click the little notepad icon next to one of your choice entries to edit that choice. The next page will show all the options for that choice and you can click the green up-down arrows to adjust the sort order of those options within that choice.
That doesn't fix your default issue but it does let you control the order in which the options for a particular choice will be displayed to the visitor. that's how I get my lifejackets to show size in the correct order i.e. S,M,L,XL, XXL.