Consultant

When developing new versions of the software, aside from bug fixes, the developer really needs to take a step back and remind themselves what the main purpose of the software is. In this case, TO SELL THINGS. Sell more things, make more money. Every business wants that. I am a big CS-Cart fan. But from day 1, I always thought some of the design features (specifically the checkout process on earlier versions) reflected a lack of experience from a seller and buyers point of view. One of the easiest ways for any business to increase their sales is to list their products on Amazon and Ebay. Any shopping cart developer that hasn't yet realized this and implemented some type of integration into their product is failing to accurately estimate the potential SALES INCREASE BENEFIT of any new functions or features they are currently working on or currently have planned. But this is a common pitful that any of us techies can fall into. We can get too focused on bells and whistles that don't provide a business benefit that is commensurate with the time a resources it took to develop them. Ebay/Amazon both inventory and order integration has such a huge potential benefit, we would gladly pay Simbrisk the same cost of the CS-Cart software itself just to get those modules.

Well it's been a while since I've come back here. Let me first say that I like the CS-Cart product as compared to other products in the same space/price point it is easier to work with - in other words, it's coded cleaner. Maybe I'm missing something but I've never considered CS-Cart to be missing anything significant as far as CORE features (other than E-bay integration.)

It's a cart. It's suppose to be used to SELL things. Why do we sell things? To make money? What's the objective of every business usually? To sell MORE things to make MORE money. As an E-Commerce Consultant I have many times sat at a table with business managers and technology people. It is plain crazy from a business standpoint to say you would rather see CS-Cart work on features other than ones that provide the highest potential to increase sales. Ebay integration has that potential.

When I first started using CS-Cart I was a bit shocked and how poorly designed the checkout feature was. Heck, it's pretty easy to more or less mimic most of Amazon's features. They've been thousands of hours of programming and analytics and research into the design of their checkout. Just copy them (more or less.) But not CS-Cart (and they are not alone.)

These things reflect overall a product that is being designed and grown from a techies perspective not from a profit optimizer (business persons) perspective. IMHO. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe all the CS-Cart Developers all run several retail stores of their own selling various types of items. But I'm guessing not. The fact that E-bay integration is being indefinitely postponed reflects a techie mindset typically focuses on bells and whistles as opposed to SALES ROI of various features.

Maybe if I searched first that would help.. duh.

http://forum.cs-cart...__fromsearch__1

Note the function on my version didn't have _companies in the name.

Wonderful! This actually should not take that much time to develop. All you are doing is importing order information and exporting inventory information using well documented APIs. Keep in mind though, some sellers may have complex business rules as far as which products they can sell on E-bay and Amazon and at what prices. Some brands won't allow resellers to sell their products on Ebay and Amazon at all. Some only at full list price. Some merchants like to markup their price 5-15% to offset the Ebay and Amazon fees (this is technically against Amazon Seller Central Policy though.) Most importantly, some sellers use a dynamic pricing service that automatically adjusts their Amazon price based on their competing sellers price. So here are a few features I would suggest including in your scope aside from the basic core inventory export, order import functions.

#1 - Ability to flag which products are eligible to be fed to Ebay and Amazon. You should be able to flag it on a per item, or per category, or per brand (supplier) basis if possible.

#2 - Ability to specify an alternate Ebay and Amazon price (separately) either a fixed price, or as a percentage (negative or positive) to be added to the normal price.

#3 - For Amazon, ability to enable gift wrapping and gift message options on or off for all products with override capabilities on a per item basis

Note that each time a product or multichannel site-wide setting is changed, inventory details on Ebay or Amazon may also have to be updated or products removed.

Actually, now that I think about it, this could get a bit complex depending on how complete and full-featured the implementation is. Here's a few of the possible more difficult issues you may have to deal with, off the top of my head:

Issue #1 - Maping CS-Cart Categories to Ebay and Amazon categories. I'm not sure how the other solutions address this. With our current solution, (this is running on a non CS-Cart system) we had to manually build our own cross-reference file that maps our store's categories to corresponding Amazon categories.

Issue #2 - Reconciling payment since checkout occurs outside CS-Cart. No problem for Amazon as order only comes through if it is paid for. I would assume Ebay's API provides payment status but that would only be for PayPal. Some merchants (the minority) use third party checkout outside of PayPal. I suppose in that case the merchant has to manually maintain payment status within CS-Cart. This issue could be eliminated if the merchant's listings are all Buy-It-Now with immediate PayPal payment required. Then the order only comes through when it has been paid for.

Issue #3 - Auctions. You can't cancel an auction within 12 hours of ending. If CS-Cart supports auction format, the inventory qty would have to be decremented either at the beginning of the auction or at the 12-hr to go mark. Otherwise the merchant risks overselling by selling the item directly before the auction ends. It would be nice to have the option to choose between Buy-It-Now and Auction format as Auction format is good for Clearance Items that need to be liquidated. But I would be fine with only BIN listings as supporting the auction format would make the module more complex (starting bid, reserve, starting time, auction duration, etc.)

Issue #4 - Shipping. I know Amazon Marketplace like the back of my hand. Handling shipping rates is not easy. You can setup shipping bands (based on price) on Amazon that effect all products and then you can upload override amounts. The bands and overrides are specified for many many different shipping options. This doesn't become an issue if the Amazon model the merchant chose is weight based and CS-Cart feeds the weight. Then the prices are all controlled on Amazon. But many merchants use band shipping rates and then selectively upload override shipping costs on oversized items. The override can either be a replacement amount or an additive amount. However the additive amount may not be constant across all shipping methods and destinations so just having one additive amount field probably wouldn't work. Seems you will have to either have the merchant control per item shipping override manually themselves, or, you will need an entire screen for entering delivery-type and location specific override amounts (replace or additive) for various destinations on a per item basis. That's a lot of fields.

I think this page is the best page to foster discussion about necessary and like-to-have feature ideas:

https://openbaypro.u.../142928-general






Issue #2 -

kmolchanov, on 13 June 2012 - 02:26 PM, said:

Top thread with 7 pages. Someone over at Simbrisk has to start getting the message. This is a larger issue than just E-bay. I am expanding and continuing this discussion here:

http://forum.cs-cart...prestashop-etc/