I am still using Mal's eCommerce FREE Shopping Cart, so it's not surprising that I am having trouble getting it to do everything I want it to do. But, thanks to the support forum, I did find the code I needed to add to each BUY NOW link to stop people from ordering more than one of an item. Well, it almost stops everyone. All someone has to do is click on an item more than once, and it will show up multiple times in the cart. But at least they can't change the number available in the cart any more. That will have to do for now, since every page in the Catalog has a prominent notice that they need to contact me before buying, if they want more than one of an item.
We ran into an unexpected glitch on selling two of an item to a customer recently. Our toys are not new, although we do strive to offer ones that look new or close to it. The buyer was pleased with one of the items, but in comparing the two was not happy that one looked like it had been washed and had shrunk in size a little. I didn't even notice it, but the buyer sure did. We offered a small discount and all was well. But that has caused us to rethink allowing anyone to buy more than one of an item, since the comparison might cause this to happen again. Particularly when we have already received a request to buy that same item again at full price, but we don't have any more in stock.
We have had our first experiences with abandoned shopping carts, too. I abandon carts myself occasionally, so I can't really complain. It's just at this stage of the process I would like to know why they left. I tried emailing one person who abandoned the cart, to ask for some help understanding if it was something in my setup that caused them to leave, but did not receive an answer.
As I get more and more items listed online, the sheer physical task of being able to find the items that have been sold is getting more difficult. That's not going to be an easy problem to solve, since storage space is my problem. Looking for an item means stacking and unstacking quite a few plastic tubs, looking for the specific item. There has to be a better way, but I haven't figured it out yet.
We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Problems with Quantity Orders
We have had several orders from out Catalog lately where buyers are paying for more than one of an item. It is rather unusual for us to have more than one of a particular lovie in stock at any given time, although there are a few, such as Rumples, that we do have lots of, as we buy them every time we can find them. There just does not seem to be any way to stop this multiple ordering from happening. I started by putting a disclaimer on each catalog page cautioning readers that most of our toys were only a quantity of one and to contact us if they were interested in buying more than one. When that didn't turn out to be enough, I went through all 300 items and added a Quantity Available number to each listing, right by the link to buy it. We are still getting orders for more than we can fill.
Mal's cart just doesn't have any way of preventing someone from ordering more than we have on hand. At least I haven't found any way of preventing it. I am going to ask a question about this on the Mal's Cart forum to see if anyone can help. Until then, I will just have to refund payments and email buyers, explaining we can only sell them 1.
Other than that problem, everything else is going quite well. Our Auction Sage program we have used for years with eBay auctions has come out with a new version that makes adding in website sales a whole lot easier, so that will be a big help. I think they were seeing the handwriting on the wall. eBay is in trouble. They have finally pushed the sellers to the point that those little guys like us are leaving in droves. I know we are not listing much for auctions any more, although we do have a respectable size inventory in our Store. It's just too expensive to do business there any more.
Even though we are selling from our own site, eBay still gets a piece of the action because they own PayPal. That means they get a fee from us every time we make a sale. We do have one pending sale waiting on a Money Order, but all the others have been immediate pay through PayPal.
Of course, if we opened a merchant account with a credit card company, they would take a percentage of the sale, too. But it would not be helping eBay. That's almost enough reason to open a merchant account. Well, almost. We are just too small potatoes to do that right now.
We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.
Mal's cart just doesn't have any way of preventing someone from ordering more than we have on hand. At least I haven't found any way of preventing it. I am going to ask a question about this on the Mal's Cart forum to see if anyone can help. Until then, I will just have to refund payments and email buyers, explaining we can only sell them 1.
Other than that problem, everything else is going quite well. Our Auction Sage program we have used for years with eBay auctions has come out with a new version that makes adding in website sales a whole lot easier, so that will be a big help. I think they were seeing the handwriting on the wall. eBay is in trouble. They have finally pushed the sellers to the point that those little guys like us are leaving in droves. I know we are not listing much for auctions any more, although we do have a respectable size inventory in our Store. It's just too expensive to do business there any more.
Even though we are selling from our own site, eBay still gets a piece of the action because they own PayPal. That means they get a fee from us every time we make a sale. We do have one pending sale waiting on a Money Order, but all the others have been immediate pay through PayPal.
Of course, if we opened a merchant account with a credit card company, they would take a percentage of the sale, too. But it would not be helping eBay. That's almost enough reason to open a merchant account. Well, almost. We are just too small potatoes to do that right now.
We hope you will find the lovie you are looking for in our DIRTY BUTTER Plush Animal Shoppe CATALOG. But we have many more toys in stock than we have listed, so please Contact Us if you don't see what you are looking for. If we don't have it in stock, we will search the Internet for it. If we still can't find it, we will post your request on our Plush Memories Lost Toy Search Service Facebook Page.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)