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SamC
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Posted Fri 21 Oct 2016
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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 9 Sep 2019
Posts: 27,
Visits: 117
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| Hi,
Something that I'd find really helpful - and I suspect many others - would be some sort of abandoned cart process so that you can easily follow up potential customers who have added items to their cart, provided their contact information but who don't complete their order.
I know that you can find these people in the unfinished order section, but what would be really great would be to be able to either manually or automatically send them an email with a permalink to their abandoned cart so that they can quickly and easily complete their checkout if they choose.
We've been manually emailing people with suggestions on how to complete their abandoned purchase - and many do complete after receiving an email - but its much more completed for us to manually send them a separate email ( i.e. not through Kartris ) and for them to have to start the ordering process again without a direct link to their stored cart.
Just an idea. |
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Tiggywiggler
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Posted Sat 22 Oct 2016
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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 6 Dec 2021
Posts: 235,
Visits: 750
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Hello mate. I wasn't sure how to fully respond to this suggestion so I have left it, but I don't want to leave you without any comment so I will put my thoughts down here.
Yes, what you are asking for is relatively simple (not a single line of code, but not four months of coding either). The only consideration is what you want to do with this list of baskets that have not been used.
You could send a mail to people asking them if they want to return and view their basket (relatively simple), or you may want to offer a coupon for 10% off (this is a recommendation from several experts in E-Commerce, if the customer doesn't purchase, give them a discount and follow up), but you can get problems with the coupons expiring or the baskets being purged from the database.
To do this you would need to define an email template and put that in the templates folder, then ask the server to iterate the email addresses and send the send that email to each address.
However, this can cause you a problem in that you get identified as a source of spam by some ISPs and it can work against you. At present nothing exists in the central project to allow this to happen. Some of Kartris' development partners have come up with solutions to this and you can approach them about developing it, but I am not sure anyone is looking to add this into the main project build because of the concerns above.
We are always willing to help out the community or pitch in to help you fix a problem. However, if you want a complete solution made such as a code module or new feature added you have two options. Either
1) Reach out to the Kartris internal development team at http://www.kartris.com/Contact.aspx.
2) Contact one of the Kartris approved partners at http://www.kartris.com/t-Worldwide-Developers.aspx.
Have fun and good luck coding.
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SamC
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Posted Tue 25 Oct 2016
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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 9 Sep 2019
Posts: 27,
Visits: 117
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Hi,
Thanks for taking the time to reply and for your thoughts on this, that's very helpful.
So it sounds like it would be possible to code something up for this within the existing Kartris framework; do you have a rough idea of how much something like this might cost to do if we approached you guys at Kartris directly to have this customisation made outside of the main development? Alternatively, do you know which of your development partners has developed something like this?
I understand the valid concerns with regard to ISPs and spam etc, but in someways this is perhaps not so different to the confirmation of order email that Kartris sends out anyway, its just a confirmation of not ordering.
Anyway thanks again for your time.
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Mart
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Posted Tue 25 Oct 2016
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Group: Administrators
Last Active: Wed 18 Nov 2020
Posts: 148,
Visits: 3,450
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Serpentine (25/10/2016)
Hi,
I understand the valid concerns with regard to ISPs and spam etc, but in someways this is perhaps not so different to the confirmation of order email that Kartris sends out anyway, its just a confirmation of not ordering.
I guess the difference is that when you order you expect and want an email, so it isn't unsolicited.
If I pull out of ordering at some way through the process, I might claim that I did so for a sound reason, and didn't expect to be emailed. However, since we're talking about people who got far enough to put in their email address, its a grey area. I know on other sites where I've gone most of the way through but then not ordered, I often get an email with my "new account details", that is sent before I hit the payment stage.
Do you think something like this would work best if it were manually fired by the shop owner from the back end, or scheduled daily (eg vbs script). Scheduling it to run daily automatically would mean fewer emails sent in one batch so less likely to trigger any spam filters.
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Tiggywiggler
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Posted Thu 27 Oct 2016
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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 6 Dec 2021
Posts: 235,
Visits: 750
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Hello and sorry for the delay in responding to you, I have been travelling and away from any decent internet connections!
I think the answer from Mart is a sound comment, if you wrap the emails up into a 'once a day' event that is automatically triggered, then you are less likely to trip spam filters. At the same time you will also have control over how long after someone leaves that you send these emails so you would have less trouble with the baskets expiring.
The only issue I see is that firing this via a VB Script on a periodic basis can fall over without warning, it normally requires the Windows Scheduler and this is not always an option in a hosted environment.
Full disclosure, I am not a member of the Kartris development team, I work for a development partner called Deadline Automation Ltd. Considering that I am a development partner it would be wrong of me to suggest one, because there would only be one that I suggest 
Reading the comment from Mart, this may be something that the Kartris team are willing to do natively, which will always be a better approach in the long term.
My recommended way to make this work is that there should be a button in the backend that allows you to manually trigger this. In this way you have full control over the process flow. In the event that you later want to make it fully automatic it would simply be a matter of exposing this 'button press' to an API or aspx page with query string, and then you trigger this with a VB Script or batch file fired from Task Scheduler.
Mart, is this something that Kartris are looking to do internally or would Serpentine need to approach you for custom development work?
We are always willing to help out the community or pitch in to help you fix a problem. However, if you want a complete solution made such as a code module or new feature added you have two options. Either
1) Reach out to the Kartris internal development team at http://www.kartris.com/Contact.aspx.
2) Contact one of the Kartris approved partners at http://www.kartris.com/t-Worldwide-Developers.aspx.
Have fun and good luck coding.
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SamC
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Posted Mon 31 Oct 2016
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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 9 Sep 2019
Posts: 27,
Visits: 117
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Hi Guys,
Thank you both for your replies and your for time and sorry for my delay in getting back onto the forum.
From my point of view I think that both the manual and automated options have their own merits from a store owners point of view.
I like the idea of having a manual option that you could trigger as appropriate, as this does give you a greater element of control. For example, some customers, especially those using a system like Worldpay, sometimes have to have multiple goes at getting their payment through ( in our experience Worldpay can be very fussy and can decline a customers payment for very small inconsistencies in their address details ). For a customer like this, who might have had say 2 or 3 goes at getting their payment accepted before succeeding, I wouldn't need to send them a follow up email, because they have managed to successfully order in the end.
However, on balance, perhaps having an automated process that ran once a day - or a set period of time after the customer fails to complete their order - might be best. In our experience of sending a manual follow up email the sooner it gets sent the better the outcome and also its much more reliably likely to happen if the process is run automatically than if someone has to make the time each day to run through and fire the process manually.
Thanks for taking the time to outline the possible process so thoroughly Tiggywiggler, that's really helpful. Is this something that the Kartris team might look at Mart?
Thanks.
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Tiggywiggler
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Posted Sat 12 Nov 2016
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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 6 Dec 2021
Posts: 235,
Visits: 750
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Hello mate, did you get a response on a PM or similar to this question? If so can you mark it as closed please
We are always willing to help out the community or pitch in to help you fix a problem. However, if you want a complete solution made such as a code module or new feature added you have two options. Either
1) Reach out to the Kartris internal development team at http://www.kartris.com/Contact.aspx.
2) Contact one of the Kartris approved partners at http://www.kartris.com/t-Worldwide-Developers.aspx.
Have fun and good luck coding.
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SamC
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Posted Mon 21 Nov 2016
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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 9 Sep 2019
Posts: 27,
Visits: 117
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Hi Mate, No I didn't get a reply actually. I'll perhaps follow it up in the new year when things are a bit quieter and see where it gets to then. Thanks for asking anyway.
Mon 21 Nov 2016 by
Serpentine
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Paul
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Posted Tue 22 Nov 2016
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Group: Administrators
Last Active: Fri 15 Sep 2023
Posts: 806,
Visits: 2,737
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Follow ups is definitely on our radar, but we're pretty busy on things for next month or so, but Christmas looks like it might give a few free days we can go at this.
We'll probably need to set up a windows scheduled task which would preclude using it on a shared server, but many people are running on a vps these days, or hosted with a developer who has a vps, so that's less of an issue than it used to be.
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