52teas NEW shopping cart experience!
Hello Steepsterites! If you are still awake at this hour, I would love to hear what you think about our new cart. It’s not perfect, and I’m still working on it, but it’s functional and I think it’s going to be a much better solution for our customers. Check it out at www.52teas.com/in-stock/
I look forward to hearing what you think. This is going to allow our customers to have access to past orders, tracking information and your own address book, among other things. It will also make it easier for me to run promotions and sales, process and manage your orders and a lot more. I’ve still got some work to do with it, but we’re getting there.
LOVE the archived sold out blends and Facebook liking idea!
As for the new layout, I find it somewhat less appealing than the former layout; there’s a lot of navigation involved to find out what’s in stock, and a lot of “dead space”. Drag and drop is clumsy; I dislike dragging things up a whole page (but I just found the table option, and add to bag clickability; that’s nice, but I like having the pictures there). I’d prefer a “click” to add to the shopping bag alongside the pictures. I also very much miss the # of each blend in stock and would be pretty disappointed if that wasn’t a continued feature.
Also, have you increased shipping? A mock order of two teas gave me a quote of $2.99 shipping….
Thanks for the feedback. I’m not a big fan of the drag and drop either, but even in grid mode, you can click on an item and see it in detail and click the add to cart button (Quantity on hand is also listed there). A bit more navigation, but it should allow me to provide more information, and more search terms, etc. (See the Southern Boy Teas entries to see what I mean—I’ve included country of origin, growing region, leafstyle, steeping times and temps, etc. with each of them. I will be updating the others over time.
To work with the cart system, I did change the shipping for Canada and overseas, though just barely. It WAS $1.99 for the first pouch and $0.50 for each additional to Canada and $2.99/$1 for overseas. With the new system, it’s a flat $1.99 + $.25/ounce for Canada and $3.99 + $.50/ounce for overseas orders. SO, if you mostly order 2oz pouches, you can think of it as $2.49 for the first + $.50 for each additional for Canada or $4.99 + $1 for Overseas. (The overseas shipments were really killing me.) So we’re looking at roughly a 50-cent increase on orders to Canada (though not necessarily (see below)) and a $2 per order for overseas orders.
On the PLUS side, we now have the ability to do things like set up the Southern Boy Teas as .5oz and they and the 1-ounce pouches will not have as much impact on your shipping costs as they used to. [Since someone is going to ask, I did set up the 1.75oz pouches as 2oz for the time being and may leave them that way to compensate for the weight of packaging/envelopes/boxes]. We are also now in a better position to create promotions offering free or discounted shipping. =)
It’s really not my desire to charge a lot for shipping, but a 1.75oz or 2oz pouch will cost me $3.30 to ship to Canada. I’m not even charging our customers my cost.
In any event, thanks for your input. I look forward to serving you in the future.
Ok, I missed the quantity on hand in the detailed pages; if it’s there that’s probably good enough. I just saw “in stock” and “out of stock” on a couple blends I accessed. I’ll check things out again when you’ve put everything back in place – I see it’s currently down as you’re probably still updating it!
As for the additional shipping – that’s acceptable to me; I thought that you had increased the per pouch rate to $1 for Canada, which would result in way high fees, IMO. I can’t help but wonder though, if shipping within the US itself isn’t what really causes problems – people in the States will frequently make 1-pouch orders (and pay zero shipping, which has gotta add up), whereas at least for me in Canada, I try to amalgamate orders because it’s tough to pay so much extra each time I want a single blend. I don’t have a clue how much postage costs within the US, but it’s gotta at least be about $1?
Anyhow! Excited to see the new updates to the site :D
Whoops. Sorry. I had no idea I had turned it off temporarily. I was up crazy late last night working on it. It’s back up now, though I still have some tweaks to do, it should be working fine.
I LOVE the separation of new, revived, permanent and out of stock. Way better for shopping ease!
Great updates!!!!!
The only problem I found with the new system is the extra navigation. Even at that it’s not a big deal, it’s more of getting used to it than it being an actual problem. Otherwise I found the experience to be just fine and I like that you can see past orders and tracking info.
I wish you could see all the teas on one page. Unless I’m missing something, it only lets me see 15 teas at a time.
I also miss being able to see how much of a product was left. There were times when I impulsively bought tea just because there was only 1 bag left and I just had to have it.
You can still see it, but you have to click on each tea and view it on the “add to cart” page. I did like seeing how much was left of the newest tea to get that extra push to buy it….
Also, I didn’t like having to go to multiple pages, either, so I agree with Rachel on this!
I’m not one who appreciates site changes (I grumble for weeks every time facebook changes things up) so keep that in mind, but I find the extra navigation a little frustrating too. It seems like there is now less info shown on each page, more digging to find that info, multiple pages to load and you don’t get to view all the products on one page. The drag and drop feature won’t work well for people on smaller tablets or netbooks who have to drag and scroll while mouseless. I played around a little with the shopping cart and one thing that took me a bit to figure out was that the discount of buying multiple applies only for multiple of the same tea, not buying two or three different teas. That part wasn’t clear to me from the start.
Sounds like there are a lot of back end pluses to the new system that will be pretty cool. If I hadn’t seen the previous version, this version would seem just fine to me. I also really like the archived section. I think it will show new customers that your business has history and shows a larger extent of your creative capabilities.
I agree on the discount- I wondered if I could buy ANY two teas and get the discount, or if I have to buy JUST that tea… Clarified wording would help here!
I’ve got some posts on the forums with the cart developer, trying to find a way to display all of our in stock items on a single page with their quantities displayed. I’m SURE there’s a way to do it. I just wish I had studied web development instead of accounting. The cart is actually VERY flexible, IF I knew anything about programming/designing. Sigh. Someday.
Sigh. I hate to say this but this version looks worse than the previous one (and that one was pretty bad too)… :(
We at AM Design have used the exact same shopping cart as you
here: http://www.mfantiquesilver.com/index.php
and here: http://www.theresesaintclair.com/shop.php
At some point hiring a professional just makes sense.
Playing with it a bit more- I also like the “list” instead of “grid” option, as I can view a bit of the description (not just a picture) before clicking on each tea picture…
I think all your pages are down. I tried clicking on the link above, and that took me to a ‘page not found’ page, then when I tried to access the site, only the index page appeared.
Yeah, when I try to go to anything other than the main page, I get a cartoon of an alligator telling me the page isn’t found. Stupid gator. :(
Sorry, I thought I fixed that little electronic burp yesterday. Pretty sure I nailed it down now.
I fixed this again and I’ve put a post in to the cart developers. Something they are doing is messing with my wordpress settings. Hopefully will have a more permanent fix soon. Thanks for the heads up.
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