Additional Recommendations for SMF Store

[Michael Vail]

Greetings. We did some redesign work together on your SMF store a short time ago. The changes we made have been well-received and have enhanced the store software tremendously. I would like to work with you to do some more changes that will make your product even better than it is now. I'm willing to pay you for the work, which will benefit all your customers.  Are you still interested in further improvements? If so, I'll post my specific requests here. I know your customers will like them!

Thank you,
Mike Vail
Stevensville, MT USA

[SMFHacks]

Sure, go ahead I love feature requests since it gives me ideas on what to work on.

[alain54100]

BIEN SUR QUE OUI

[Michael Vail]

Well, 7 wildfires, a flood and a pandemic later, I'm finally able to post the list of recommendations for SMF Store I wanted to send a year and a half ago. Sorry for the delay due to the insanity that is now normal life for many of us here in CA.

These additions are in no particular order:

• Rather than having a checkbox in the settings area to allow guests to purchase items in the Store, add an "Allow Unregistered Guests to Purchase item" checkbox for each item in the store.
• Add a setting option to each item screen to select which membergroups can purchase the item and default all usergroups to selected.
• Add a "Copy Product" feature that allows you to duplicate another store item rather than recreate a listing from scratch every time.
• Allow storekeepers to set the product ID for their items and incorporate an seach function to for storekeepers to list items by product ID and lookup an item by its product ID. This would be helpful when troubleshooting problems.
• Make shipping an option for the buyer by having them check a shipping box during the checkout process. Currently, I need to list every item twice, once for local pickup with no shipping charge and again using the 'Requires Shipping" option for buyers who need the item shipped to them. When adding a product to the store, rather than having a Requires shipping checkbox, how about changing that box to say "Offer shipping option to buyer” and let the buyer decide if they want it shipped at the shipping cost shown or local pickup?
• I sell clothing in my SMF store. Using the current store system, I am able to add a drop-down selection for a size choice the buyer can choose from, but there is no way to tie the size to the quantity in stock. The quantity shown is how many shirts I have overall. The only current way around this is to add each clothing item separately to my store by its size and again by its color. This means I need to list the same item separately for every size and color I offer in order to get an accurate inventory amount. I get to do it all again to accommodate shipping vs local pickup as well.
  It would be great that when adding an item for sale, you can enter the quantity and price of each sub-category, in my case size and color, so the inventory of each sub-category item can be tracked separately. This would help to avoid over-selling an item that you no longer have a certain size or color for and account for items that are a different price because they're a different size, color or of some other sub-category feature.
• On the add product page, change the "Add Product" button at the bottom to "Next" where the storekeeper will be asked to add their pictures. At the bottom of the pictures page, change the "Edit Product" button to 'Finish'. This creates a more intuitive workflow experience for the storekeeper.
• On the Add and Edit Product pages, change the 'Add Product and 'Edit Product' buttons at the bottom of those pages to say 'Finish' or 'Submit'. Again, better workflow experience for storekeepers, especially less experienced ones.
• In the start and finish date areas of the Add and Edit Product pages, the field message above the start date says: "Optional settings for when a product will appear in the store and when it will disappear/expire". The word 'disappear' is misspelled
• Also, in the start and finish date areas of the Add and Edit Product pages, can the fields for the dates be set to free-form auto-populating when you start typing in them rather than selecting the drop-down button for each field?
• The "Up" and "Down" buttons used to re-sort and move items on the Product List page are backwards. Additionally, I suggest changing them to "Move Left" and "Move Right"  or <-Move or Move-> instead as that makes more sense because they are actually sliding right and left, not really up and down. Ideally, having an easier way to sort items would be better. Perhaps assign an item number and item type to each item and allow for sorting by item number, alphabetically, or by item type.
• The Store Configuration button in the Admin area has an dropdown that is not needed. Recommend users be taken directly to the Store Configuration screen when clicking that button rather than having to click dropdown with the same name to take thrm to the configuration screen.
• Add a button option for members of the storekeeper member group to switch from 'Store Admin View' to 'Non-Store Admin View' so storekeepers can see what their store looks like to non-admin users without having to login as a non-storekeeper user.
• In the store settings screen, the word "premeir" is misspelled and should be Premier in the field description area above the Paypal section
• Make the settings menu items buttons instead of hypertext and give them roll-over and selected images so storekeepers know what sub-menu page they’re on. Using more buttons and less hypertext would give the store a better feel and make things more visible to users.
• What is the "Shipping Conditions" page for and how does it work? Perhaps place a paragraph of text at the top of that page that explains what it's for and some text above the fields that explain what the fields mean?
• Bug fix? When adding a product with a future start date, you cannot go back and edit the product until after the start date has occurred. Upon attempting to edit a product before its release date and clicking the edit product button, the store returns the following error "An Error Has Occurred! - This product is not available in the store yet."
• Reword the settings option "Receive copy of sales email" to say "Email copy of customer sales email to Store Admins"
• Change the setting 'Contact Email' function to say 'Admin Receive Store Emails'. When doing so, eliminate the email option field and just make it a check box that when checked, it will send Store Admin emails to any member with Store Admin permissions on the forum. The option notes could be worded  something like this:
  
  "Used to email notify members with 'Store Admin' permissions of low stock items and codes, sales notifications and other important Store messages".
  
  On my forum, I created a Store Admin sub group and placed the members I wanted to have 'Store Admin' permission into that sub group. Works great and this change would make it cleaner and more integrated into existing Store Admin functions rather than in having to set the email group in a seperate place.
  
  I you don't like this, then perhaps leave it as it is and just change the setting option wording to read more clearly as something similar to this: "Store Admin Email Address(s), "Used for store notification of low stock items and codes, sales notifications and other important Store related email to Store Admins. May use multiple addresses separated by commas.”
• Lastly, in the start and finish date areas of the Add and Edit Product pages, the minutes drop-down option only goes to 58 and not 59.

Thanks for your consideration of all this and as before, I'm willing to pay a reasonable price to cover some of the development costs for these changes. I really love the SMF Store and just thought the above would make it even better. i hope you feel same and in no way want my message to be construed as being critical of your great work.

Have a great weekend!
Mike Vail
Stevensville, MT. USA
Stevensville, MT. Now! WOOHOO! Good Rittens CA!

LAST REVISED: 03/07/23 @ 11:42 MST

[Michael Vail]

This original content of this post has been deleted as it was posted in error. The original thread is still valid however.

Thank you.

[SMFHacks]

Good list will see what I can do will be a while have some other projects working on at the moment.

[Michael Vail]

Hello,

It's been while since this was written and you have clearly been busy making improvements to a lot of things here at SMFHacks. GREAT JOB!

I was wondering if you could move this topic to the Feature Request area so it doesn't get lost? We would very much like to pursue these changes with you when you have time.

Happy New Year 2022!

[SMFHacks]

Have moved it to the request area. Will take a look at them all for the next update for the store.

[Michael Vail]

Thank you, I hope all is well!

Warmest Regards, from Montana.
Mike Vail

[Nicole]

WIll any of those be included with a soon to be released update?

[Michael Vail]

Hi Nicole, in Sept 2022, I PM'd SMFHacks to see if he was still interested in the features I proposed and a possible timeframe he might have them available to users. He said he was incredibly busy with little free time and had no ETA on implementing them. Just an FYI.

Happy Sunday,
Mike Vail

[Nicole]

Hi Mike, thanks for your feedback. WOuld be nice to get a response on this from SMFHacks

[SMFHacks]

No time frame. a new major update for SMF Store is in the works no eta though probably six months out at least. Just have no time snd not enough people interested

[Nicole]

Hello, what would the major update contain? If you can give more details, I would possibly be interested in contributing funds for the development. Maybe other would, too. But I need to know what new functions would be added. Thank you

[SMFHacks]

I generally go by feature requests on the forums or other ideas that I can come up with. Haven't decided on anything yet.