New to 3dcart problems confused

[bonniesplants]

It has taken months to get my shopping cart up and running. Lots of hoops to jump through. A lot of this is confusing.
I have been selling on line 9 years and just finally decided to add a shopping cart. The reason I held off and the problems I am having are

I ship live aquatic/pond plants

I use assorted boxes and they can weigh from 1 pound to several pounds. Combining shipping is a real hassle unless I can see the order (then I can calculate how many boxes) THIS is primarily the reason I held off from adding a shopping cart for so many years.

I only accept GCO

Most all of my customers are confused with checkout. Most of my credit cards are processed for free since I also do Adwords. So I then have to send an email invoice and it ends up being double work for me. If I dump 3dcart this will be the reason.

I am open to suggestions. Maybe I have missed something in setup.

Bonnie at bonniesplants.com

[Mark]

each product can have the dimensions put in and the weight. Also, there is a "ship seperately" checkbox. Third, there is a maximum box weight setting in the "store settings" section, I think. With the max box weight, you could limit to like four pounds, and if the order exceeds four pounds, a second box will be used. I do not believe there is a feature to build an order based soley on dimensions, which may or may not help you.
In your situation, perhaps a flat shipping fee is in order. Sorry, that's all I can think of.

[bonniesplants]

Thanks Mark

I have checked all those options and am using them.

I do use flat rate boxes when possible. Problem is a lot of my plants do not fit in them.

I am interested in any other thoughts.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or is interested in critiquing my web site?

Bonnie at bonniesplants.com

[glowsource]

Well, I can tell you I was confused by your cart too, haha, I sympathize with your customers.

Number 1: "How do you even buy things?" Far as I can see you MUST click the "Bonnie's Online Shop" link to be directed to 3dCart, and from there you can browse, but before that everything is just info on your products. I assume that if a retailer is selling online they'll be selling it right in front of my face, I don't want to have to search around for how to buy.

Number 2: "How do you even buy things?" Yes, I know that's the same question, but I asked myself it more than once. Why are you requiring a registration and login to even add things to your cart? I've yet to hear a decent justification for this on ANYONE's page. Online shoppers add things to their cart willy-nilly if they think they like it, want to calculate shipping, want to save it for later, etc.etc.etc. and it's my conservative estimate that 50% of online shoppers (at least) won't go any further if asked to register at that point (myself included). Actually, that number's probably closer to 75% or 90%, I can't see why anyone would agree to that right off the bat.

It's not a bad site, overall, but I wouldn't be surprised if that registration thing alone is killing you, not to mention how to even GET to shopping cart.

As far as the shipping goes, like Mark said the "ship alone" (after entering the dimensions, weight, etc.) option is your best bet whenever it's applicable.

With things that don't fit in normal boxes, how ARE you shipping them? Is the problem when people order 20 plants of different sizes and shapes and you simply don't have the proper boxes to ship them all out together or in a reasonable bundle? If it is then really the only thing you can do is invest in boxes that fit your needs, I can't think of a much else, if you don't want to ship them all separately (which you probably don't). What's the problem with having a lotus weigh, let's say, 1 pound, and then when you buy 5, your "package" weighs 5 pounds... then putting them all in a box and shipping out. We do this with our products (we have a lot of small things, etc.) and we simply add a minute amount to each product's weight to account for the box's weight, packing material, etc. and simply notify our customers that that's how we do it. Rarely do we have a package that's not within 1 pound of it's target.

[bonniesplants]

You make a good point

I have gone round and round with tech support.

If I do not require them to log in they can not see the prices. Then I would get emails complaining that there were no prices. I myself would not want to look around a site that has no prices. So tech support advised me to require registration first so that there would be prices. To me this is a major flaw of the cart.

My web site is not new, I have had it since 2000. And every page, 1,000's of them were recently updated to a newer look and to accommodate a link for a shopping cart. Previously I sold only by email inquiry.

One huge advantage I have is I have lots and lots of repeat buyers, folks who buy every spring to replace what did not live through the winter because they did not remove it from the pond in the fall. My address book contains over 15,000 customers. And I send out a monthly newsletter with tips and tricks and generally offer special pricing on a particular item.

Many of my old time customers just email every spring and say duplicate my order from last year. So I just send a GCO invoice.

I ship USPS and I have 100's in stock of every box that they make. I use a lot of tube type boxes because of the height needed. Depending on the plant, I may only get one per tall box.

And of course each order has special packaging to make sure that it does not arrive damaged.

Bonnie

[Mark]

There should be a setting somewhere that "Login is not required" to view or purchase products or something like that. I would say most, if not all of us, have this set to off. Check you STORE>SETTING> section to look for something like this. HTH :)

[bonniesplants]

Changed

Ok I changed it not to require log in. But I think that hides the prices
Can some one check for me, please?

Bonnie

[glowsource]

That worked great, I can see the prices fine.

I'm not sure how tech support came to the conclusions they did, if they did indeed tell you the prices couldn't be shown, as Mark said, most of us have it set up like this (by default I would imagine) from day one. Glad you've got that solved, though, either way!