Archive for the ‘OSS e-Commerce’ Category

Sometimes the developers of the core Magento e-commerce system forgets that most people that use the software spend a huge amount of time doing data entry. One of the UI problems that we’ve run into is the fact that if you have a significant amount of product attributes it doesn’t sort them alphabetically. We ran in to a particular problem with one of our clients. They have a massive amount of Manufactures.

With more than 300+ entries, it was quite the problem for them to manually sort them alphabetically. Instead of writing a plug in to address this problem we came up with a simple hack. We wrote some SQL code to copy the attributes, sort them and then copy then back to the original table.


SET @ordering_inc = 1;
SET @new_ordering = 0;

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS my_new_sort_order;
CREATE Temporary TABLE my_new_sort_order (
option_id INT (10),
attribute_id SMALLINT (5),
sort_order SMALLINT (5)
);

UPDATE eav_attribute_option
JOIN my_new_sort_order ON my_new_sort_order.option_id = eav_attribute_option.option_id
SET eav_attribute_option.sort_order = my_new_sort_order.sort_order;


If your sorting a different attribute, simple change the eav_attribute_option.attribute_id=66 to the attribute ID that you’re sorting.

If you’ve deployed your e-commerce site, you’ve probably taken the time to test for functionality. How much did you test? Testing is an ongoing task that needs to be executed by your team after each and every time you update a CMS page or line of code, anytime there is an major OS update or browser update. Have you tested your key systems?

Today, you’re not focusing on performance testing or conversion testing. We will detail a future post on how to increase the speed and performance of your website and how to increase your conversion rates.

Today, we want you to test for functionality. Nothing is more frustrating than when you’ve launched your site, spend innumerable hour marketing and not understanding why you don’t have any sales or conversions.

We recommend that we test the following area’s of your website thoroughly:

Browser Testing
Operating System Testing
Security Testing
Touch Testing
Transaction Testing
Feedback Loop Testing

Browser Testing

Since you’ve already set up your analytic you’re going to be able to know what browser your visitors are using. This will give you insight as to what browsers you need to test for. As you can see from one of our clients, our testing plan would have to include Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows XP and the Mac OS. The remaining 14% is broken up between the iPhone, Android and Linux Operating systems.

Our testing plan includes testing for each one of these operating system. In the next graphic, you can see that we have an even more complex breakdown of browsers. The clear leader is Internet Exploder 8, but the remaining 60% of browsers are mix of everything else.

Using this information from our analytics, we would need to test for Internet Explorer 7,8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari. If mobile is important, you would also test for Android and iPhone as well.

Operating System Testing

Once again, using your analytics your able to see what operating systems your visitors are using. Our client’s site is made up of about 70% windows based, 20% Mac OS base and the remaining 10% is made up of iPhone, Android and Linux.

This means your testing plan has to include 6 Operating Systems and a minimum of 7 browser. This gives you 42 different combinations of Browser/OS. Now in real life it’s less than that, There is certain  compatibility issues like Internet Explorer 8 Will not run on Windows Vista or The Mac OS, Linux, iPhone or Android. That being said, it’s a formidable amoun to test.

We develop on the Mac OS. We recommend getting VM Ware or Parallels and setting up testing environments for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS 10.5, Ubuntu or Redhat Linux and if you don’t have access to an iPhone or Android phone, use their virtual environments to test your site on each of these. Once these are set up, we recommend setting up the major browsers on each os.

Make a test plan to go through each OS/Browser combination when you’ve updated your site and test for functionality.

Security Testing

Many of you would think that we’re talking about penetration testing or SQL injection testing. We’re not. SSL on your site is one of the most important features in keeping your customers transactional information safe. Online merchants are throwing away sales with faulty SSL certificate installations that trigger browser alarms that scare the customers away before they have the chance to complete the sale.

According to Qualys, there is more than 21 million incorrect set up SSL Certificates on the web. You can use Qualys’s free SSL test to see if you’re set up correctly. If you’re not. You need to talk with your IT person to get this taken care of immediately. All of our clients score 92 or higher on their scale of 0-100. Does your site pass high security testing?

Have you set up an EV SSL Certificate? It’s a much longer process to acquire, but it’s increased conversion rates almost 10%. It’s worth the extra effort, especially on high traffic sites.

Touch Testing

Touch testing doesn’t mean you’re putting your fingers all over the website. It’s testing what you say when you communicate with the customer. Many times, you e-commerce system comes with premade email templates that communicate with your customer. Have you taken a look at each and everyone of these? Do they have your correct Telephone Number? How about Email address? Are they conveying the complete message?

Have you tested those email addresses to make sure that your customers can talk with you? Do you have auto response messages that don’t go to a working email address. Nothing is more frustrating to a customer than when they want talk with you and their email bounces. Worse yet, you’re a faceless corporation and you use a “No Reply” email address. Nothing says “I don’t care you’re my customer” like a null address.

Transaction Testing

Have you ran some test transactions? How many times? What OS/Browser have you run those test transactions on. We’ll bet that you’ve done it at least once, but you’ve not done it on multiple browsers or OS’s. Use the same setup from above and run those transactions to make sure your customer can complete the transaction and exchange money for your valuable product or service.

What Credit Cards do you take? Do you take checks? Have you tested your system for these. Most systems will allow you to set it to test mode. Use the numbers below to test your ability to take Credit Cards:

Test Credit Card Account Numbers

Feedback Loop Testing

Do you solicit feedback from your customer base? Do you ask them to be your facebook friends. Do you ask them to take surveys in exchange for promotional gifts, coupons or discounts. If you do, you need to test those survey/feedback systems. Do they offer discounts? Do those discounts work?

Nothing is going to make you look bad like not testing your discounts or surveys. Make sure that these work in all browsers/os combination. Make sure they have the correct marketing message. You’ll be happier in the long run.

Make e-commerce testing part of your release cycle routine for your e-commerce system. This will prevent you from scratching your head when you have a drop in conversions on your site.

One of our products of choice is the Magento platform for eCommerce development. Recently they’ve announced an application for mCommerce. They’re touting it as the newest hip application for the iPhone and the iPad. Let them manage your store and you’ll be rich!

Yawn. Ok, I’ve said it. They’re touting this as a revolutionary way to promote your brand as a native store front. I’m calling BS. This is not revolutionary… it’s a step backwards in development. Maybe a future version might be better, but we’ll have to wait to see.

I’m not a typical technology user. Using Rodger’s Bell Curve of the Diffusion of Innovations, I’m right there in the early adopter/innovator portion.

I have an iPhone and an iPad. I refuse to put applications on them that do not offer something that has a useful function; a game, a productive application, or a reading program (I absolutely LOVE the Kindle app). I’m not hyper loyal to places that I shop online. I’m always looking for the best deal I can find for the products I need. Does anyone really think that I’m going to want to browse through 52 different apps to find the best price on a product? I think not.

Do you really think that I’m going to put 52 different “Mobile Shopping” apps on my device so that I can shop at company A or B? Really? Even though I purchased the largest iPad that Apple offered, I’m not going to waste space with apps from the Gap and Wally World. This is NOT going to happen. Is this type of mobile shopping experience better than shopping with Safari?

Varien is somewhat of an open source provider. I personally don’t really care for their model, but they have produced a very nice platform for eCommerce. They keep very tight controls on the community edition of the software (community means Varien, not outside developers). They’ve started to accept changes to the code base, but as of yet, I’m pretty sure they haven’t released it to the generally community. Their driving the direction of their “revolutionary” application without input or feedback from the OSS community that has made their product what it is today.

Even if Varien opens up the Mobile Software to it’s very large base of installers and developers, I still stand by that people are not going to want to download hundreds of apps to shop from their mobile device. They’re going to want a richer experience with HTML5 and access to millions of shops that Safari can offer versus the tiny cookie cutter niche app that this type of mobile shopping app represents. Again, we absolutely love their main Magento platform for eCommerce development…it’s one of the best and most complete solutions available today in the open source community, but we have doubts about their mobile solution. Perhaps time will tell…

What do you think?

Recently I had to create some custom code for a client to integrate Google’s Affiliate program into the checkout Process. I was surprised to find there wasn’t an explanation on how to do this easily. After a lengthy search on Magento’s community board with no avail.

Google asks you to render an image file with the following code:

<img class='PxgGlobalImage'  src="https://clickserve.cc-dt.com/link/order?vid=[Vendor ID] &oid=[Unique Order ID]&amt=[Sub-Total Amount] &prdsku=[Product 1 ID^Product 2 ID^Product 3 ID] &prdnm=[Product 1 Name^Product 2 Name^Product 3 Name] &prdqn=[Product 1 Quantity^Product 2 Quantity^Product 3 Quantity] &prdpr=[Product 1 Price^Product 2 Price^Product 3 Price] &prcatid=[Product 1 Category ID^Product 2 Category ID^Product 3 Category ID]" alt="" width="1" height="1" />

Here is the steps to implement this on your site.

Open up app/design/frontend/default/theme_name/template/checkout/success.phtml
Cut and Past the following code into the bottom of the page:

<!--Start Google Affiliate Integration-->

<?php
$lastOrderId = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getLastOrderId();
$order = Mage::getSingleton('sales/order');
$order->load($lastOrderId);

$order = Mage::getModel('sales/order')->load($lastOrderId);
foreach ($order->getAllItems() as $item) {
        $productArray[] = array(
                "product_sku" => $item->getSku(),
                "product_magento_id" => $item->getProductId(),
                "product_name" => $item->getName(),
                "product_qty" => $item->getQtyOrdered(),
                "product_price" => $item->getPrice(),
                "product_discount_amount" => $item->getDiscountAmount(),
                "product_row_price" => $item->getPrice() - $item->getDiscountAmount(),
                 );

        };
?>

<?php
$_totalData = $order->getData();

$_subtotal = $_totalData['subtotal'];

$_orderID = $_totalData['increment_id'];

?>

<img class='PxgGlobalImage'  src="https://clickserve.cc-dt.com/link/
order?vid=KVENDORID&oid=<?php echo "$_orderID"; ?>&amt=<?php echo "$_subtotal"?>&prdsku=<?php foreach ($productArray as $key) {echo $key['product_sku']."^";};
?>&prdnm=<?php foreach ($productArray as $key) {echo $key['product_name']."^";};
?>&prdqn=<?php foreach ($productArray as $key) {echo $key['product_qty']."^";};
?>&prdpr=<?php foreach ($productArray as $key) {echo $key['product_price']."^";};
?>&prcatid=<?php foreach ($productArray as $key) {echo "your-product^";};
?>" width=1 height=1>

<!--End Google Affiliate Integration-->

Save the file to your server and Voilà, you’ve implemented the Tracking Code.

It’s a hack, so if you know a better way, please share in the comments. I still need to work to add code to properly add child categories where “Default_Category” is being placed in the pixel tracking.