Finally Open for Business -- Critique Requested. Coupon for Forum Members!

[sushob]

I finally took the plunge and cut the binary ribbon :D

www.sushob.com/shop

I have 1000+ products listed thus far, with more updates each day.

How about a spiffy little coupon code for you guys :rolleyes: Enter "modelrrforums" (without the quotes) at checkout for an extra 5% off any order over $10 (good through the end of September). I know it isn't much, but that's all I can afford at the moment. I've been spending lots of money developing the site, and I haven't been bringing much back in lately!

I'd appreciate some feedback. Likes? Dislikes? Suggestions? Anything at all? Quite frankly I'm tired of staring at PHP code, SQL queries, and gigantic Excel sheets...I want some real English conversation :)

I'm working on support for Canadian orders. The biggest problem, as was mentioned in another thread, is determining the shipping costs. I obviously don't have the weight of each of the 10,000+ items in my database, but I can still generate a pretty accurate shipping charge for US orders by using a formula involving the number of items and the total cost. I have a feeling that shipping for Canadian orders will be determined post-checkout on a per-order basis.

If anyone 'north of the border' is interested in purchasing anything, we'll have to use good 'ole email until I get this international commerce thing figured out ;)

Thanks!

[jbaakko]

osCommerce? I'll look around, and bookmark it, doubt i can buy for a while.

[sushob]

osCommerce?
Nope. I played around with osCommerce, AgoraCart, and CartIt back in the spring, but none of the freebies had the capabilities I need, and I had trouble following the logic to modify anything. I needed something that could handle importing thousands of items, without creating each one individually, and I was a little suspicious of the effectiveness of the security measures in free/open source software.

I finally broke down and bought some software in August. I hired the company to do some programming customization (for backorders and advanced reservations), and I've been modding little things along the way. There are some more cosmetic adjustments to be made, but the main functionality, and most importantly, the security, is all in place.

I just hope it's all worthwhile...

[Lady_Railfan]

Looking GOOD, Nate! I hope your enterprise will be wildly successful, and you can soon branch into Large Scale. :)

[sushob]

Looking GOOD, Nate! I hope your enterprise will be wildly successful, and you can soon branch into Large Scale. :)
Thanks LR! :o

I don't think my distributor handles much Large Scale...it's not as popular here where the rails spend 3-4 months under snow :rolleyes: Heck we have trouble keeping sidewalks level...can't imagine maintaining trackwork :eek:

I added support for Canadian orders. The shipping costs will be determined on a per-order basis once everything is packed and ready to go. I'm not out to rip anybody off on shipping costs, so hopefully not having a cost specified up front won't be too discouraging...

[RexHea]

Hi Nate,
Just went over and checked your shop out. Looking good and I have you bookmarked. I'll give it a closer look in the next few days.
REX

[jbaakko]

Ok, I was wandering looking at the H22a's and I have a question, how will we know the quantity you have in stock? Say I order 20 of the H22a's what happens if you have less? You just back order them?

[sushob]

Ok, I was wandering looking at the H22a's and I have a question, how will we know the quantity you have in stock? Say I order 20 of the H22a's what happens if you have less? You just back order them?

It will limit you to the number in stock unless I have backordering enabled for that particular item. So, for instance, if I have 12 of an item, and you try to add 15 of them to your cart, it will simply knock your total back down to 12. If I have backordering enabled for that product, it will show up as "Partially Backordered" in your shopping cart.

[jbaakko]

Cool, as I keep wandering, another thought comes to mind, custom complete kits for the Bowser locomotives? Like combine the locomotive, and the detail kit into one item?

I gotta say too, I'm loving the stock, the H22a's, the G39's, S12, DS4-4-1000, and the steam, *drool*, if I had the money, you'd have a huge order!

[sushob]

Cool, as I keep wandering, another thought comes to mind, custom complete kits for the Bowser locomotives? Like combine the locomotive, and the detail kit into one item?
That's what I usually run on eBay ( http://stores.ebay.com/susquehannahobbies?refid=store ), but it makes it difficult to keep track of inventory (some people already have the loco and just want the detail kit, etc).



I gotta say too, I'm loving the stock, the H22a's, the G39's, S12, DS4-4-1000, and the steam, *drool*, if I had the money, you'd have a huge order!
I take plastic :rolleyes: Sometimes it's really tempting to grab a box off the shelf and rip it open...until I walk back to the work bench and see how many projects I already have started :eek:

I'm rounding up the Atlas cars and locos next. They'll start to trickle in tomorrow evening...

[jbaakko]

Sounds good, I'll check again late tomorrow. I plan to buy some stuff in a few months, you defently have alot I want. Lemme elminate some projects ;) .

[stripes]

"I added support for Canadian orders. The shipping costs will be determined on a per-order basis once everything is packed and ready to go. I'm not out to rip anybody off on shipping costs, so hopefully not having a cost specified up front won't be too discouraging..."

Calculating Shipping will be your greatest headache! I know it is on my site.
Good luck with your site!!!!
David

[Attaboy]

Looks good, being a PRR fan myself you may be getting some business in the near future. And with a name like Susquehanna Hobbies you must be in my neck of the woods. So shipping may not take so long.

[sushob]

Calculating Shipping will be your greatest headache! I know it is on my site.
Good luck with your site!!!!
David
Sure is! It isn't bad on eBay, since I can weigh items as I list them for auction, but that just isn't practical when you start listings thousands of items.

I can create some different zones, so that shipping costs are slightly less for east coast areas than west coast areas (I'm in central PA), but now I can understand why most places end up charging a flat rate.

[sushob]

Looks good, being a PRR fan myself you may be getting some business in the near future. And with a name like Susquehanna Hobbies you must be in my neck of the woods. So shipping may not take so long.
I'll just seal 'em up good and toss 'em in the river...shouldn't take too long to get there :D

[sushob]

Sounds good, I'll check again late tomorrow. I plan to buy some stuff in a few months, you defently have alot I want. Lemme elminate some projects ;) .
First 550 or so Atlas items are up :D TONS more to come.

Backorder-able Stewart engines are updated.

Lots of advance reservation items too.

This is kinda fun :)

Let me know which product line you want to see next! Walthers & Life-Like, Kato, Intermountain, Kadee, Micro-Trains, and lots of others will eventually be added, but if there's any in particular you're anxious to see, I'll steer in that direction next.

[HaggisKennedy]

I think you have a drop-down menu frame problem. If you go into the home page, and scroll to Bowser, Rolling Stock, the listing that comes up cuts off part of the Roadrailer entry, as well as the entry below it. You can't really scroll down to view the lowest entries.

The way around is to make sure that the dropdown menu is at the top of the screen, which gives more room for the lowest entry on the last dropdown list.

My monitor is at 1200x900.

BTW, I can't tell now, but does your invoice page have a 'printer friendly view' ability?

Kennedy

[jbaakko]

Kennedy, I hdan't thought of mentioning that. The JS for the menu should push the menu upwards if its too long, right?

[sushob]

Thanks for you input!

I think you have a drop-down menu frame problem...

Can you guys post a screenshot of the problem? My monitor is 1680x1050, and although I've tried it on 5 or 6 other computers, I haven't seen this problem yet.

As for alternatives, if you have a scroll wheel on your mouse, just use that once you're over the last category. Arrow keys work too. Or just click on any of the higher level categories and it will take you to a seperate page with a list.

For what it's worth, the flyout menu is pure CSS. There's no sluggish Java involved. That's one thing I didn't like about some of the other sites...you wouldn't see a menu until the Java finished loading, and even then it was sometimes slow or full of errors. I don't use frames anywhere either, at least as far as I know :rolleyes: It's all based on tables and templates.

BTW, I can't tell now, but does your invoice page have a 'printer friendly view' ability?

Yep, it's already in place.

[jbaakko]

Does this help? I'm set to 1280x800 on this comuter, but I resized it down a little for attaching. I also left the mouse in the shot so you can see what we're talking about.

I'va also thought about it, you don;t have a weight module you can install? osCommerce has a weight module built in for calculated shipping.

[sushob]

Does this help? I'm set to 1280x800 on this comuter, but I resized it down a little for attaching. I also left the mouse in the shot so you can see what we're talking about.
Thanks. I see what you mean...that is annoying. I'll take a look at it. Are you sure you can't just scroll down with your mouse wheel though? I know that isn't an option for everyone...I'm just trying to figure out a way around it until I get it fixed.


I'va also thought about it, you don;t have a weight module you can install? osCommerce has a weight module built in for calculated shipping.
Absolutely...however I don't have the weight for all 10,000+ items in the database I'm using (and unless I can find a group of about 20 people willing to work at $2 an hour for the next 6 months, I don't see myself getting the weights of all 10,000+ items either :rolleyes: ). I'm also listing 'advance reservation' items and 'backorder' items (items that other distributors have in stock that I can order), so I don't have access to those weights either. It works great on eBay, or maybe if you have 500 items, but it just isn't a practical system for this many items.

As I get a better idea of the average costs, I'm going to divide the country into several different zones, each with a different shipping calculation. It obviously costs me more to send stuff to the Left coast than it does to send it to the Right coast, and I want my shipping charges to reflect that. I don't believe anyone should pay more in shipping than absolutely necessary.

[HaggisKennedy]

Nate,

I just tried, and scrolling DOES NOT work to bring up the rest of the listing. When I use the scroll wheel, it scrolls the whole screen, and the rollover menu disappears.

Kennedy

[sushob]

Nate,

I just tried, and scrolling DOES NOT work to bring up the rest of the listing. When I use the scroll wheel, it scrolls the whole screen, and the rollover menu disappears.

Kennedy
Huh...mind if I ask what browser you're using?

I'm trying this on every computer/browser combination I can get a hold of (everything from an old version of IE on the school's Windows '98 machines, to the latest Firefox on my XP machines), and I haven't been able to recreate it yet.

I definitely want to address it, it's just that it is difficult to do so without being able to experience it myself. :(

[HaggisKennedy]

Netscape 7.1
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

It's what they gave us at the office....

:D

Kennedy

[jbaakko]

XP SP2 with Mozilla 5.0 here, but it allows me to use the scroll wheel.

[sushob]

Must be an XP feature then I guess. I really don't now how to fix it for other versions...there isn't anything obvious in the code that allows/disallows scrolling, which is what leads me to believe it is a browser/OS issue. I don't think there's anything I can do to bump it up either, since it is pure CSS, and not Java (and I want it to stay that way).