AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Hello All
When a product is purchased from a wishlist by someone else, should the product be removed from the wish list and the checkout process allow the the item to be sent to the wishlist owner?

On the tests I am running, the product when selected from the wishlist seems to be treated like I had clicked on a product in the store. The wish list item remains in the wishlist and the checkout process has the purchasers details for billing and shipping.

Have I set this up wrong or is this the 'correct' process that ablecommerce is supposed to do? I would have thought the purpose of a wishlist is you can buy the owner something from it, like in Amazon?

Any help much appreciated as i cant find anything relating to this in the forums or documentation, or in the settings in the admin section.

Thanks

I tested my wishlist and when I added it to the basket, it was removed from the wishlist. I didn't see any way of adding part of the wishlist to the basket- like add one of a product when there were 3 in the wishlist. I didn't see any way of marking how many had been receive either.

Let's get back on the wishlist topic again.

What exactly is the purpose of a wishlist if it cannot be used like the amazon.com wishlist as referenced above? Here's an example of how it should work...
CustomerX adds ProductABC and ProductXYZ to their wishlist. Then CustomerX sends a wishlist notice to the family members so that they all know what CustomerX wants for Christmas. CustomerX's mother decides to buy a gift for her son. She clicks on the link in the email she received and it takes her to her son's wishlist where she can see exactly what he wants. She decides to purchase ProductABC for her son and adds it to her cart. In the process the wishlist is updated so that CustomerX knows that someone has purchased ProductABC for him. Then CrazyCousinQ, from CustomerX's fathers side of the family decides to buy CustomerX a gift, too. So CrazyCousinQ clicks on the link in the email he received and sees that ProductABC has already been purchased but ProductXYZ is still on the list. So they add the item to their cart. Once again, the wishlist is updated with the new purchase. Now CustomerX knows that all of his dreams will come true and Mrs.X and CrazyCousinQ are delighted that they had such a wonderful shopping experience.

As it is right now the AC7 wishlist does absolutely none of this. In fact, even though it asks you to enter a password to allow visitors to see the wishlist there is no way that anyone can actually see the wishlist. Is this a case of the cart coming before the horse? Are we going to see an updated wishlist soon or should we all forget that it exists and move along to our next project?

Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

The purpose of the wishlist is to provide a easy method for site visitors to store a list of interested products. It works fine as designed, however it does have some limits.

Be sure not to confuse a wishlist with a gift registry. They are two completely different features. The fact a wishlist in AC7 can be sent to another person doesn't automatically make it a gift registry.

It would be nice if a 3rd party purchase automatically removed or somehow marked the item in the original wishlist as purchased. However, since there is no guarantee the purchase will be completed during the checkout phase, you run the risk of wishlist items being removed/marked without them having actually being purchased. The backend coding to manage all of this would be extensive as there are all sorts of purchase possibilities once the visitor arrives to the site.

What would be far more elegant (and simpler) would be a way to "apply" a completed order against an existing wishlist. Only at that point in the process is the purchase guaranteed and fully known. It is then you could easily compare order line items to wishlist items and allow the buyer to indicate which ones are gifts thus removing them from the wishlist involved.

Not everyone has the development budget of Amazon

wave_werks wrote:Let's get back on the wishlist topic again.

What exactly is the purpose of a wishlist if it cannot be used like the amazon.com wishlist as referenced above? Here's an example of how it should work...
CustomerX adds ProductABC and ProductXYZ to their wishlist. Then CustomerX sends a wishlist notice to the family members so that they all know what CustomerX wants for Christmas. CustomerX's mother decides to buy a gift for her son. She clicks on the link in the email she received and it takes her to her son's wishlist where she can see exactly what he wants. She decides to purchase ProductABC for her son and adds it to her cart. In the process the wishlist is updated so that CustomerX knows that someone has purchased ProductABC for him. Then CrazyCousinQ, from CustomerX's fathers side of the family decides to buy CustomerX a gift, too. So CrazyCousinQ clicks on the link in the email he received and sees that ProductABC has already been purchased but ProductXYZ is still on the list. So they add the item to their cart. Once again, the wishlist is updated with the new purchase. Now CustomerX knows that all of his dreams will come true and Mrs.X and CrazyCousinQ are delighted that they had such a wonderful shopping experience.

As it is right now the AC7 wishlist does absolutely none of this. In fact, even though it asks you to enter a password to allow visitors to see the wishlist there is no way that anyone can actually see the wishlist. Is this a case of the cart coming before the horse? Are we going to see an updated wishlist soon or should we all forget that it exists and move along to our next project?

Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

That more sounds like a "Gift Registry" then a wish list.

Has anyone here actually used the Amazon.com wishlist? It functions exactly like what I described above. I can describe it from memory since I have used it for many years. It's has been an absolutely wonderful addition to their site since the day it was added. The wishlist should not be confused with either the Amazon.com Wedding Registry or the Baby Registry. They are similar but entirely separate entities. Please take some time to visit amazon.com just to add an item to the wishlist and see exactly how it works. Once you've seen it you'll appreciate how well it works just as much as I do.

wave_werks wrote:Please take some time to visit amazon.com just to add an item to the wishlist and see exactly how it works. Once you've seen it you'll appreciate how well it works just as much as I do.

Why? Nobody is disagreeing with you. It is elegant and well designed, as are many other aspects of the Amazon.com site. The backend merchant administration is quite sophisticated and far more advanced than AC7 as well.

But declaring a feature in AC7 as a "dead horse" simply because it doesn't perform as well as a Fortune-500 website feature isn't a reasonable comparison. The checkout process isn't as flexible either - should we declare it dead and move on as well?

The beauty of AC7 comes in that you have the power to change the system to suite your particular needs and preferences. There are many developer firms listed on the Able Partners page that would be happy to help customize your needs for a fair price. Or pick up a few .Net programming books and start putting the power of customization into your own hands.

Able does listen to their customers. There's a complete forum here for posting suggestions and specific improvements to the AC7 product. Post your suggestions for improvement there so Able can be fully aware of them and add them to their list.

Sorry to ruffle your feathers, Joe.

I understand very well the power and flexibility of AC7. I'm not debating that. I was simply pointing out that the wishlist function is very weak. So weak in fact that, for us, it is practically unusable in its current state.

Also, I'm currently working with one of the development companies you spoke of on two different websites so I'm also quite aware of their existence - and their price of admission.

I also know quite well about how to use a forum - thank you. I was bringing up a discussion that had been left in the dust. The member that started the thread voiced their opinion and brought up a few valid points. Then Judy, the forum Goddess, even responded siting that she could not find a way to view what the first member remarked about. I simply expanded on what they were saying by adding a more detail and insight as to what I thought should be done to make it a "functioning" wishlist.

I will still gladly voice my opinion - on this public forum - that the current functionality of the wishlist is more along the lines of a post-it note.

I'm sorry you don't agree, Joe. And again, I'm sorry I ruffled your feathers. That was not my intent.

I thought a lot about this overnight and I think you are on the right path toward making this a whole lot better by doing the following...

What would be far more elegant (and simpler) would be a way to "apply" a completed order against an existing wishlist. Only at that point in the process is the purchase guaranteed and fully known. It is then you could easily compare order line items to wishlist items and allow the buyer to indicate which ones are gifts thus removing them from the wishlist involved.

Can we all take a deep breath and relax a bit? Things are rough enough out there. There's no need to get so deep into this that this wonderful forum has to go downhill, too.

I'll even tame my opinions, too.

Joe, your more elegant with your words, and your obviously quite respected around here... why don't you expand on your thoughts and add a new thread to the feature requests section? I'm sure it would go a long way coming from you as well as being very well spelled out for those that need to know what it is that the people are after. If not, I'll do it. I'm fine either way.

Hello,

Hey i`m here not to discuss any technical aspect of shopping or hipping, i just want to know, about your wish list, recently i bought items from my previous wish list that includes, gifts, handbags, food basket and CD's, now i`m planning to make another wish list, this it will include heavy items like home furnishing accessories, but not sure what kind of accessories, i`m working on this direction.

Regards,
sarah_9