My site is bigtalldirect.com and is about 15 years old using PDG V4.
It has worked very well with custom programmed integrations from my “Apparel Store” system (that tracks sales from my physical store and uploads fresh inventory daily to the cart), and export integrations that I built to interface with FedEx, USPS and so on.
The strength that it has had for years is now a weakness.
These include lack of mobile offerings, sales promotions that are nearly impossible to implement (BOGO, % Off Highest price item, etc.) poor SEO because of the query URLs and all of the ?, and FRAMES <–don’t shout at me LOL.
Also, lack of gift certificates, no way for a customer to see his purchase history, lack of integrations with Amazon, eBay, etc.
PDG discontinued development of the “Cart” product and the SQL version still lacks some very important features (like Mobile). So, I’m looking for something more modern and complete.
What makes my store unique and hard to transition is that my stock is very broken and has many sizes. Like a shoe store that has a lot of lengths and widths, this means that on a given day, a particular style can have sizes and colors that are out of stock. It’s impossible to be fully stocked for a product in every color and size combination. And, I wouldn’t want to be.
Further, I often buy an assortment of closeouts that do not have complete size runs.
So, I love that my present implementation allows me to ask the customer his sizes and the cart only shows whats available to fit that particular customer… like sifting through sand at the beach to find your treasure!
I can’t use most other carts that show products first, then its combinations of attributes.
We have about 10,000 items that we upload each day to freshen up the databases.
I don’t call them products because each “item” has its own SKU (“Apparel Store” assigned number), color, size, and style identification. I don’t organize into “products” that have “attributes” to avoid the issue of broken stock.
I simply assign each SKU its a category (or categories) and the magic happens when the customer selects his his preferred size and category and the database is queried for results. Example: you are looking for blue jeans in size 80 waist. Or, you want tee shirts in 10XL Big. There is no need to show you 95% of my other inventory that stops at waist 60, or 4XL Big.
It looks like CS-Cart might be a good transition with its filters.
That said, I don’t want to change what works unless it is a BIG IMPROVEMENT. So, any thoughts?
To give you an idea of volume, in 2007 (at its peak) I would process about 1,000 orders a month. Competition has brought that down.
I’d love to hear from you!!!
Hello robschlein,
It looks like you need the custom development service. We can develop the special script which will transfer the database of your store to CS-Cart and then develop the customizations you require. Please contact us if you are interested in it.
Thanks.