[ramesh]

Dear All

 

Greetings to fellow community members!

 

I wanted to take quick feedback from store owners who may have upgraded from cs-cart Version 2.x.x to V 4.x.x (or have worked with both versions).

 

How has the sales performance of your stores been on V4 (compared to V2)? I have several stores on V 2.1.3 and am happy with the conversion rates etc, but they have begun to look dated, and are now running into hosting issues (old php, mysql versions etc).

 

I am interested in knowing your experiences with V 4.x.x in terms of sales, conversion rates and other aspects, as compared to older versions of cs-cart. Looks are important, but ultimately sales is key!

 

Warm Regards

 

[The Tool]

I just recently made the jump so it is too soon to give an accurate report on sales.

 

The reason I did upgrade was for the new features such as responsive theme, additional seo functions, full https site along with the server related reasons that you described.

[ramesh]

Thanks so much - please do let me know your initial impressions, and also down the line - would really appreciate it!

Requesting other members to also share their experiences!

 

Warm Regards

[imac]

Thanks so much - please do let me know your initial impressions, and also down the line - would really appreciate it!

Requesting other members to also share their experiences!

 

Warm Regards

We've been working on 4.x.x performance improvements whole 2015 year.

Stay tuned, we will publish some benchmarks with 4.3.6 release.

[CarStickersDecals]

We upgraded to V4 mid last year from V2.2.5.   Our sales have dropped in half.  We still have not been able to figure it out. I believe V4 has just had way to many bugs to fight along the way.  While they are getting them worked out its taking way to long. Maybe and hopefully we'll get back to where we were in sales 2 years ago.  Cs-Cart has never released a stable bug free version in the last 2 years.  They just keep adding features and re-designs of their own software creating more and more issues.  Just look and the list of fixes due to come out in V4.3.6.  While we are still loyal to Cs-Cart I hope someday we can get to a stable bug free release.

 

Just Our $0.02

 

Jay

[Darius]

Not sure if it is global market, slowing economy stuff or 2x and 4x but our sales have also decreased a lot compared to what had couple years back on 2x..

[SeanDigitalSave]

I find this topic interesting because, we recently upgraded.  Not from as far back as you guys, but from 4.2.4 to 4.3.3 SP1.  Since then we've had about a 50% drop in conversions and we can't work out why.  Starting to wonder if the upgrade was repsonsible.

 

My question, not knowing a great deal about this, would be how can an upgrade to website effect sales?

[ramesh]

Thanks everyone for the responses. For all its outdation, cs-cart V 2.1.3 performs very well conversion wise- just don't know how it is with V 4.x.x

 

CS-Cart V 4.x.x is very slick, extremely fast loading (compared to magento etc), and fits beautifully in all devices, so I have very high expectations.

 

One analysis that we find useful - we count visitors, on a daily basis to:

 

checkout.cart

checkout.checkout

step_two

step_three

step_four

complete

 

and then compare ratios (above data can also be taken from google analytics, but the most accurate data is from the statistics module of cs-cart - just put checkout.cart in the URL section, and select dates). This can tell us where exactly the drop is happening.

 

Can some other members share their experiences, specially those who have worked with both versions? A lot of people seem to be developing extensive sites on V 4.x.x, so surely it should be better than V 2.x.x?

 

Any idea when V 4.3.6 is coming out?

 

Warm Regards

[P-Pharma]

We have not used v2.X so cant compare there. But we are seeing clear bottlenecks in terms of conversion, especially compared to our old (non-cs-cart) store that is still online:

 

SEO wise CS-Cart is not performing well. Google sends most of our customers in to non cs-cart pages. CS-Cart pages are not getting indexed or ranked lower. Microdata is minimally implemented. Sitemaps do not cover everything. Google does not show rich snippets as it should.

Problems with shipping cost calculation leads to high percentage of abandoned carts.

The default checkout pages cause a high drop off of customers. The one-step-checkout addon really helps with this.

For offline payments the invoices sent to the customer cause confusion. There are no clear payment instructions dependent upon payment method.

[ramesh]

Dear P-Pharma, Darius, CarStickersDecal, The Tool

 

To figure out exactly what's happening, may I suggest the following?:

 

If you have access to old Google Analytics Data (pre-conversion to V 4.x.x), you can create an excel with the following columns for a period (say 6 months):

 

Unique Visitors

checkout.cart

checkout.checkout

step_two

step_three

step_four

checkout.complete

. You can look up these query strings in the URL match area of google analytics for a date range. Then you can compute percentage of each column relative to the unique visitors. E.g. I know an average percentage of visitors who come to cart, go to checkout, then go onwards. Ideally this comparison should be done for both mobile & non mobile view.

 

You can then run the same analysis for shorter durations on the new site.

 

Such an analysis will give a very precise picture of where exactly the issue may be (maybe it's googleweblight issue, panda, penguin, or some step in the checkout process). Have attached a sample file (it's a image, apologies : can't upload xls)

 

Maybe it's a very small thing that's causing (if at all) issues, which can be fixed really easily. E.g. on checkout page, I noticed that keeping Guest Checkout option First (Left and Top) and having radio button positioned on "Guest Checkout" really helps conversions a lot (rather than standard - "Registered Guests log - in" option). Also allowing registered customers to checkout as guest.

 

After all, there is no doubt that responsive pages, better search, options etc will cause positive effect on the entire ordering process.

 

Request others to also share inputs!

 

Warm Regards

 

 

 

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[imac]

I second ramesh, before blaming CS-Cart did you do analytics of new users, existing users visits? 

How many orders per period, average check etc.

 

We should keep in mind that CS-Cart 4 is much more powerful than CS-Cart 2, and thus it have more abilities for configuration.

[Darius]

Its not about blaming someone. If cart was so bad we would not be speaking here now. Btw I am here from 1x.. There were really many out of the box things that were hurting stores seo and google rankings badly.. Maybe back in cscart 2x google was not so picky as now is...

 

Also sometimes it is a real wonder how very poorly done website has very good google rankings, while your so called powerful configuration would never be found...

 

cs-cart developers one and main goal should be that license owners would make sales otherwise you folks have no future

 

I second ramesh, before blaming CS-Cart did you do analytics of new users, existing users visits? 

How many orders per period, average check etc.

 

We should keep in mind that CS-Cart 4 is much more powerful than CS-Cart 2, and thus it have more abilities for configuration.

[SeanDigitalSave]

Darius could you expand on what features/areas of CS Cart negatively impact SEO and what you did to address them?

[Darius]

Just my thoughts, not a pro!

 

Products in store are accessed as

site.com/product-name.html

Main problem is that I sell lots of very similar products, every single product I got is mainly one or few in stock, so avoiding duplicates is tricky. I use product SKU ID in following format N001, N002. So I got seo addon modified so upon product creation or update
 it always re writes seo name to

 

prouct title + sku, so I get

site.com/product-name-N001.html

Having many products just one in stock makes another problem, many sold out products, so basically I am focused so categories would be indexed not products. As I need to delete those from time to time..

 

Categories are

site.com/category/subcategory

I want google to index only categories and subcategories including pagination, but disallow indexing all filters and I got many many of those. So in robots /*?features_hash=, cannot remeber if this comes by default now, it was not in early days.

 

Rest is content..

[imac]

 

cs-cart developers one and main goal should be that license owners would make sales otherwise you folks have no future

 

Its about providing you with powerful tool, not leading your business. 

I do a heck of a lot different tasks to track visitors at cs-cart site, group them, set goals conversions steps, track google ranking and so on.

There is no heal all thing, guys. 

 

Concerning the SEO, we tried consulting several times with specialist to "make it right" and came to conclusion that there is no consensus - opinions differ. And how SEO should work depends on what SEO guru you hire, or what SEO articles you read. Critical moments work fine in CS-Cart.

 

At cs-cart.com we do not use any SEO mods, but still SEO is the main traffic source for us. 

[mokeshop]

Product can be configured via the import... you can attach a sku to the product name and reimport and guys be serious organic search is history...it's dead end

[mokeshop]

I hope to see constructive suggestions here

[Flow]

We switched from version 2 to version 4 in September last year. After a small initial sales drop of 2 to 3 weeks, sales went up again after we got out some bugs and then we surpassed version 2 sales easily.

 

We are now still at about 10 - 20% higher. We might have grown like this anyway, but I think it's safe to say V4 does not sell worse than V2. It's probably better

[becomarius]

For me... I would have liked it... still today at my first 2.2.5 but don`t work with latest php version on some hosting company

an i was forced to update...

[becomarius]

At cs-cart.com we do not use any SEO mods, but still SEO is the main traffic source for us. 

 

Because CS CART is unique and we have good tools on the market exact the finger from the hand: ...CSCART, MAGENTO, PRESTA and others 2

 

But when i sell (hypothetical) the same products with Darius..and he have a worst wordpress (with no sitemap, and other big tools) and i have cscart and i work daily with seo tools and strategies... and i have 250 unique/day... and Darius have 1200 unique/day ?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!

 

It is a real case... i replace my competitor with Darius

After years.....and now in 2018 after last updates.... If i can not overtake my competitor this year... i will leave Cs Cart...

Aprox 2012 year...when was V2 X

Good SEO was the only reason I fell in love with CS CART