Snorocket's Developments - Third Party Addons

As we are all aware Snorocket has provided a large number of free & “investment” modifications to the community for quite sometime now.



At this moment in time,

I know that CS2 is due to be released within the next 4 weeks but I can’t promise a date nor am I part of the development team.



Snorocket has plans to provide a new coding set of add-ons for CS-Cart 2.0



Product Tabs 2.0

Allows new “Tabs” to appear near the bottom of the product details page.

Excellent area to add any of the following: Technical documentation, Diagrams, Shipping Policies, Guarantees, Contact Forms.



There is a magnitude of potential for this to increase customer trust, loyalty and more importantly sales.



Quote / Invoicing Manager 1.0

This allows customers to request quotations.

Quotes are created by the Administrator and then provided to the customer, if the quote is accepted by the customer then the quote is automatically turned/generated into an invoice which can be paid online as if it where a product.



Don’t underestimate the potential for this addon as it will open your eyes to what your customers WANT to purchase.


[quote]

Henry Ford is commonly reputed to have made the statement “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”[/quote]Buy Together 1.0

An important improvement on the promotions addon.

Allowing your customers to bundle high profit with clearance products to do what you want for your business while maintaining your professionalism.



Remove “Clearance” from your categories and put emphasis on value for money in this economic climate.



XML Sitemap 2.0

This addon is already provided free of charge.

Previous versions of XML sitemap have ensured I keep my google rankings ahead of my competition automatically. What have you been doing to date?



An efficient way to increase google crawls and reduce bandwidth usage of search engine robots by implementing last-change times.



Admin Tools 2.0

Deliberately kept under secrecy as it’s design is expected to improve administration functions & efficiency. I know this is something I’m already investing into as I spend no less than 3 solid hours behind CS-Cart over 20 different active and established developments.



Image Gallery 2.0

A catalogue page shows a customer what you have to sell.

A product details page informs the customer what they can purchase

An image gallery proves to your customers that they should purchase from a professional website that takes product presentation seriously.



Name one person in your family who does NOT review sales material before making an important purchase?



Store / Dealer Locater 1.0

No concrete information as yet, but considering that 20% of my clientele have multiple locations and distributors than this is most likely more important for medium / large organisations (or developers who work these sites, I am one)



Task / Scheduling Manager

Information not available at this time however with consideration this may work as a rental manager. Please don’t EXPECT this to happen without first following the development of the addon(s).



[SIZE=3]What do I do next?[/SIZE]

“Donations” which I call “Investments” are made possible via Paypal payments.



Clicking on the url below,

[URL]http://www.snorocket.com/forums/awc_ds.php?do=donation[/URL]



I personally suggest a minimum of USD$35;

Once the appropriate investment target has been completed funds will be rolled over into new developments. Overtime I can expect that new “investment packs” become available that may require new donations if the run-off doesnt’ cover it.



If anyone wants to loud-mouth why it’s not free then this thread is not for you. I’ve put USD$250 into snorockets development. I’ll pay more if more is needed.



So are you with us?



Jesse-Lee Stringer

Guess I will donate soon…

As of 28th of March 2009



Addon Pack 1

Addon Pack 1 includes the Knowledge Base, Product Tabs and Buy Together

77%

Received $1140.00 towards goal of $1475.00

Donate Now



Only $335 worth of Investment needed to guarantee the developments.



Addon Pack 2

Image Gallery, Quote / Invoicing, Store / Dealer Locater and Admin Tools

31%

Donate Now

Received $825.00 towards goal of $2645.00



$1820 worth of Investment needed to guarantee the developments.

I’d like to thank everyone who has donated so far, there will be a poll going up within the next day or so on the addon dev forums, the club will need to vote on some issues, issues like the buy together addon costs $660+ and the 3 people who wanted it have never donated, does anyone else really want this addon? do we need to be spending $660+ on it? if people want it I’m all for getting it done, it’s not my call, we’re a club and everyone has a vote on which addons they want, so keep your eyes peeled the polls will be going up soon, Thanks again - Sno

This is what you get free with Magento.



[URL]http://www.magentocommerce.com/features[/URL]



[COLOR=RoyalBlue]Marketing Promotions and Tools

[/COLOR]

[quote] [COLOR=Red]Flexible Coupons (pricing rules) with ability to restrict

[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red]to stores, customer groups, time period, products,

[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red]and categories. For example: Percent Discount | Fixed

[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red]Amount Discount | Free Shipping | Buy x, get y free. |

[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red]Buy x, get y with percent or fixed amount discount |

[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red]Buy x, get free shipping on order | Buy x, get percent

[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red]discount | Buy x, get fixed amount discount.



[/COLOR] [COLOR=#333333]Catalog Promotional Pricing by percentage or fixed[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]amount with ability to restrict to stores, categories,[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]products[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Free Shipping Option[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Multi-Tier Pricing for quantity discounts[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Bundled Products[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Customer Group-specific pricing and group-specific[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]tier pricing[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Landing Page Tool for Campaigns[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Search Engine Friendly URL’s[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]URL Rewrites[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Recently Viewed Products[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Recently Compared Items[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]New Items Promotional Tool[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Up-sells in Shopping Cart[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Cross-sells on product pages[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Send to a Friend for all visitors, or registered users[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]only[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Send Wishlist to a Friend by Email or RSS[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]RSS Feeds for New Products, New Specials and New[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Tags[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Auto-generated Site Map[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Polls[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Newsletter Management[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]A/B and Multivariate Testing[/COLOR]

[/quote][COLOR=RoyalBlue]Checkout[/COLOR]


[quote] [COLOR=Red]One-Page Checkout[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]SSL security support for orders on both front-end and[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]back-end[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Shipping to multiple addresses in one order[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Checkout without account/Guest Checkout[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Shopping Cart with tax and shipping estimates[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Checkout with account to use address book[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Option to create account at beginning of checkout[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Accept gift messages per order and per item[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]Saved Shopping Carts with configurable expiration[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]time[/COLOR]

[/quote][COLOR=RoyalBlue]Upcoming Features[/COLOR]


[quote] [COLOR=Red]Support for grouped products built from configurable products[/COLOR]

Gift Registry

Gift Certificates (virtual)

Customer Balances

RMA support

[COLOR=Red]Drag n’ Drop design mode[/COLOR]

Banner Management

Affiliates System (basic) and Campaign Management

Backorders (full)

Cost Management

Warranties

Subscription Management

Required Items

Recommended Items

Strongly-Recommended Items

Multiple wish lists

Gift Wrap option

Alternative checkout methods (multi-step, javascript free)

Limited catalog access per user group

Membership management

Enterprise Search

[COLOR=Red]3rd party integration [/COLOR]… (CMS, Payment, Shipping, Affiliate, Accounting, etc.)

Improved import/export methods

[COLOR=Red]Further performance enhancements[/COLOR][/quote][URL]http://www.magentocommerce.com/roadmap[/URL]



Magento is just as easy or as hard as CS-Cart, has a community that backs and helps people 100% with everything you could imagine, it also incorperates (Tabs).

wow zardos there is too many features than csc.

And there is more.



[url]http://www.magentocommerce.com/doc/magento_datasheet.pdf[/url]



[COLOR=RoyalBlue]Call Center[/COLOR]


[QUOTE] Magento’s built-in Order management module enables

customer representatives to take orders, edit orders, issue

refunds, add items to a customer’s cart in real time and

view and edit all the information pertaining to a customer.

[/QUOTE]



[COLOR=RoyalBlue]Multiple Checkout options[/COLOR]


[QUOTE] Magento’s One-Page and Guest Checkout options invite

existing, new and on-the-fence shoppers to proceed

through a speedy, hassle-free and fully-transparent

checkout process which helps build brand-confidence and

increases conversions.

[/QUOTE]

Yes Zardos, very nice, but can a customer edit the options after adding the product to the cart?

Bob

I tested magento extensively on multiple occasions, they only have a handful of items that cs does not but not enough to really matter, besides there is alot more coming in cs, magento is still way too slow on the customer front end, even on a dedicated server it’s slow as dirt, it’s not easy to skin, the code is beyond horrific to mod, and as you could imagine, there knocking ideas off other carts like cs and interspire, not a surprise…

Magento is just good at boasting! Welcome to the BUGs kingdom of Magento!!!

I don’t think you’ll ever find a piece of software which doesn’t have bugs, i’m sure as hard as the development team are testing there will be a fair few bugs in v2.0, how fast they resolve these will be the real test.



Although i’ve played with Magento, i don’t use it myself, but i do like their Issue Roadmap ([url]http://www.magentocommerce.com/roadmap/issue-roadmap[/url]) so you can keep track on which bugs have been reported and the progress of resolving them, i’ve seen bugs in our bug tracker that have never had a responce by the development team, and have been carried over to later versions.



Another thing is their Roadmap (http://www.magentocommerce.com/roadmap), so users can see what’s coming and have some input on how things should function and progress. v2.0 has a Webmail feature, i’ve never thought how great it would be to intergrate mail, and i’m not sure i’d ever use it. The frustrating thing about CS is they never consult us, the users, they build things to how they think they should work, and most if the time it turns out to be a half hearted effort with missing obvious functions.



My opinion is that the developers should involve the community more in CS’s future development. I assume they read this forum but don’t seem to take on board what the community wants. XML Sitemap, Product Tabs, Lightbox it’s been left to Snorocket to organise the developed of these (at the expense of his own time and effort by the way) when the development team should be incorperating these as standard.

[QUOTE]My opinion is that the developers should involve the community more in CS’s future development. I assume they read this forum but don’t seem to take on board what the community wants. XML Sitemap, Product Tabs, Lightbox it’s been left to Snorocket to organise the developed of these (at the expense of his own time and effort by the way) when the development team should be incorperating these as standard.[/QUOTE]



I totally agree.



Magento is only 1 year old and they have already incorporated many great modules, can you imagine the enhancements this software will produce in another 12 months, and all for free.



I am not slating CS-Cart it is also good software and like Magento has its fare share of bugs, but paying for addons like the tabs, this is the third time that I know of that donations have been asked for on every version change, it really is not on.

[quote name=‘zardos’]this is the third time that I know of that donations have been asked for on every version change, it really is not on.[/QUOTE]

no one is more upset about this then me, there were many problems with making addons for CS and they decided it just was’nt working, which is why the software was basically re-written from the ground up for CS2, the addon upgrading issues should be a nightmare of the past, from everything I can see addons will upgrade no problem in CS2…