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I posted this same issue in the technical section, but thought I would add it here as well.
We just upgraded BVC5 to 5.4 and am starting to work with Kitting. I can easily add products to the kit, but those product that have product variations will show those choices.
I am trying to create ski packages to sell online using products already loaded in the store. The skis, boots, bindings, and poles within these kits each have product variations (i.e. sizes, lengths, etc.) I can't get these customer choices to show in the kit. The Main product shows and the four elements of the kit can be added to the cart, but the customer cannot select sizes and options. Is this not possible? Very disappointing if customer choices can't be selected. Can anyone help here?
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Rank: Member
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Kitting in version 5.4 does not support products with choices or options. It only supports products without choices. If you need to add choices you'll have to add more kit parts that do not need to link back to actual products.
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Rank: Member
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Skinny, Have a look at this site: http://www.akers-ski.com...p;Category_Code=Race_PkgThey offer ski equipment 'kits' without a structured choice system. Text feilds are filled in to gather size info. |
Optimists invent airplanes,
Pessimists buy parachutes. |
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Rank: Member
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Originally Posted by: "Marcus" 
Kitting in version 5.4 does not support products with choices or options. It only supports products without choices. If you need to add choices you'll have to add more kit parts that do not need to link back to actual products.
I'm very dissapointed in this. Over half my products have choices. So i either have to not use kitting, which i have been waiting for. Or create all this single products based on all the choices for the products. So 1 product with 1 choice with 2 options, a 2nd choice with 3 options, would need to be made into 6 different products to be able to use the Kitting. Very Dissapointed! |
Dan
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Dan, IIRC this (choices within kit parts) was discussed about 18 months ago and not having this capability made kitting a moot issue for me too. BUT... I don't know of any moderatly priced software that offers choices within kitting. Dell, HP and others have this capability when building computers (ie: hard drive size, processor speed, etc) but I'd imagine they've got an in-house staff of geeks that we can only dream of.
Even the big boys have their problems. I built a laptop at Dell's site and added it to my cart. Two of the choices I made changed. I edited the choices back to my preferences and again they changed back to something I didn't select, and the price didn't calculate correctly adding $7.00 just for the heck of it. LiveChat says the components are in-stock and legal, it's a bug. I'll have to call them to order I guess.
Marcus is breaking into a sweat about now. ;) |
Optimists invent airplanes,
Pessimists buy parachutes. |
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Mitch,
When Internet Retailer magazine includes an article with e-commerce budgets, they are always in the millions of dollars. In the latest issue, they have an article about adding customer pickup as a shipping option. One of the retailers estimated that that one feature cost over $100,000.
My thoughts go in a flurry when I read those figures. As a merchant, can I compare my $500 BV site to million dollar competitors? Should I be disappointed when BV does not have one-click checkout or thankful that it works at all?
On the other side of the coin, I sell a customer pickup option for $150 (for a non-BV package). Almost no one buys it because it is perceived as costing too much. I still haven't figured out what to make of that. |
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I looked carefully at supporting products with choices inside kits and made the decision that it would not be available in version 1.0 of the kitting feature. The user interface gets very complicated very quickly when you think about it.
As for Dell, one of our target scenarios was machine configuration site like Dell and Apple. With the kitting feature in 5.4 you would create a kit part of "hard drive" and then add 250GB, 300GB, 500GB, etc. as options for that kit part. It should work in a manner almost identical to those bigger sites. You can add a logo graphic for the section and as the customer makes choices the prices are updated via ajax in real time.
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Rank: Member
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Originally Posted by: "Andy Miller"
Mitch,
As a merchant, can I compare my $500 BV site to million dollar competitors?
Well, yes. "Our" sites are every bit the equal to Sears' of 5 or 10 years ago. (10 years ago, I could only dream of having a site like mine on my budget) I am glad that we benefit from the trickle-down of features, developement tools, etc., etc. Imagine needing Ajax and having to pay for it's creation before you launched your site. We ride huge coat-tails practically for free and I'm glad to wait for the next big thing. Kitting V2.0 will come... and more.... perhaps after one of the big boys pays to have next cool tool written. |
Optimists invent airplanes,
Pessimists buy parachutes. |
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Originally Posted by: "MitchA" ...I am glad that we benefit from the trickle-down of features, developement tools, etc., etc. Imagine needing Ajax and having to pay for it's creation before you launched your site. We ride huge coat-tails practically for free and I'm glad to wait for the next big thing. Kitting V2.0 will come... and more.... perhaps after one of the big boys pays to have next cool tool written. Good point! |
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I made a custom packaging component for bv4 for about $3500. $100,000 is a STRETCH.
once i recreate it on this system i'll post here.
i'm way more concerned with the very buggy inventory tracking components combined with a less-than thorough codebase to track and manage product options.
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Originally Posted by: "vrinteractive"
I made a custom packaging component for bv4 for about $3500. $100,000 is a STRETCH.
Big (I mean BIG) companies develop 10-15 modules for every one launched. The years' overhead gets budgeted/ammortized to whatever goes successfully out the door, so the weighted cost on any one product could reach $100K despite it only taking a week or two to produce. After-care and on-call fees (maintenance) are usually included in the ultimate invoice further driving up the numbers. My wife does exactly this as a consultant for IBM, Verizon, Avaya etc, and has shown me some billing figures that would choke a horse, nothing as small as $100K in years. ...And she just wiggles her fingers on the keyboard. If Dell put 5 people on staff just to run the website (not unreasonable), it'd hit $700K to $1Million /year easily. We're getting a bargain here. I'd like more, but I'm not Dell. |
Optimists invent airplanes,
Pessimists buy parachutes. |
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HIJACKING THREAD...LOL...Going out on a limb here for BV so don't throw me under the bus! :)
I think it's reasonable for BV to charge a yearly support/license fee to the tune of $199, even higher. It's obvious that resources are tight.
I pay yearly licenses of varying size on a slew of necessities for my little operation. I tag the ecommerce application as a necessity and am more than willing to pay a share in fueling current and future development. Available funding equals more hands on deck, resulting in faster tech support response times & solutions, faster turnaround time on code fixes and upgrades.
By freeing up the time of the primary developers, we'd see our base $500 application (...peanuts) skyrocket to the level we all have our sights set on.
IMHO, The ROI from this application properly utilized, designed and marketed, more than justifies a yearly license fee of $199 on top of it's low entry fee. |
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I'm with Matt. Marcus you really need to consider adding at least nominal fees for upgrades and updates now that you have reduced the upfront price. We'd rather pay a few hundred a year for a nominal support structure and product development than only pay ever 2-3 years on new releases. Re kitting, I'd rather see it rolled out like it was than potentially break what all of us not using kitting are doing. PromoManagers
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Thanks for the feedback. We are evaluating the costs of upgrades/updates and may institute a limit on free updates in the future. If it ultimately will deliver a better product to all customers it may be worth it.
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<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">At the risk of overloading the limb and getting up close & personal with the undercarriage of the bus...I agree.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> <o:p></o:p>
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">I don't know of any successful, mature, software company that doesn't charge for support in some recurring form unless their business model is advertising driven. Most of the really successful ones also have a greater proportion of recurring revenues than new sales on an annual basis.<o:p></o:p>
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> <o:p></o:p>
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Bottom line is that it's cheaper (more efficient & better for me) to pay a bit more & get timely support and SPs etc than end up facing the choice of moving platforms for whatever reason...either some critical unresolved show stopping issue or the vendor goes bust.<o:p></o:p>
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> <o:p></o:p>
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Now having said that, I recall the "BV Up to Date" announcement and my perception was it was not well matched to my needs and too expensive. This is not a criticism per se as I know it’s really hard to get the balance right. The problem is also exacerbated by a low initial cost as further charges can seem relatively high particulary if tied to the cost of delievry on a smaller customer base. In the space I know (BI & Analytics), annual support tends to average 20 - 25% of license cost and provides free "same product" updates and upgrades along with email support. I think here though, there are also different needs between developers and merchants in terms of demand and what they might respectively regard as "reasonable cost". <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p></o:p>
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> <o:p></o:p>
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Marcus, there's no easy solution to this in terms of working out a charging regime but in my case with 3 stores for "own use" as a merchant if you offered a support plan and delivered to a reasonable expectation I'd happily pay 25% on an annual recurring basis.
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Cheers
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">John
<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p></o:p>
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Thanks John.
The major issue with the Up to Date plan was that most of the support requests were problems with hosting companies or customizations that had been made to the base product. We had difficulty in resolving the issues because they were essentially "out of our control."
Any suggestions on how we should handle these type of issue going forward with support? When you are looking at a 25% annual charge are you assuming that's just updates or updates + support via email?
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Hi Marcus, Just to be clear...I don't think I have all the answers here...just an educated opinion at best. Re: the issues with the up to date plan. <UL> * Exclude customized (ie: deviations from what can be achieved though standard configuration options in the UI) from standard support, if there is demand meet this through premium paid support on a time & materials basis (you have the opition to offer a fixed price on a case by case basis) as its really more like a consulting gig. * Hosts require different support than merchants I think and will be highly variable...the good ones will actually be a net benefit and provide as many solutions as they do enquiries. The poor ones will drive you crazy...so I think the "support instances" basis might be safer here. </UL> Re: 25 % annual charge. <UL> * I'm assumming Updates (ie SPs) + Upgrades (ie: BVC 6) + standard email support...all contigent upon being up to date with the support plan...no dipping in & out. Where this occurs support must be back paid or a new license is required for Upgrades in particular. </UL> Anyway, just MHO. Regards John
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Originally Posted by: "JP3" Re: 25 % annual charge. <UL> * I'm assumming Updates (ie SPs) + Upgrades (ie: BVC 6) + standard email support...all contigent upon being up to date with the support plan...no dipping in & out. Where this occurs support must be back paid or a new license is required for Upgrades in particular. </UL> I'd have a problem with NEEDING to be 100% up to date.... dipping in & out... Many of us have no use for Vista, I can't use it for lack of 3rd party drivers for some shop tools (so I need to hold Microsoft updates, even some of XP's, at arm's length). I waited for months to let the dust clear on SP3. I've got no use for kitting, so 3.2 is where I'm happy to stay for a while and I have no idea if I'll even want BVC6 - BUT - I'll still need security upgrades. We can't use the latest version of Quick Books yet for lack of a connector - so if Intuit forced an upgrade onto it's clients, it'd be a problem. If those clients had the clock running for maintenance/upgrade costs, it'd be money poorly spent. I don't use a developer to run my site and I don't need the hot potato of another SP2 tossed at me just to stay on-course with a maintenance/upgrade plan. Maintenance has to be flexible, and I agree with JP... back payment of the fees for the next voluntarily chosen update is reasonable. Careful though!!!! If the fees are too high, the door opens to loosing the client to another cheaper cart. Shelling out dough causes hard decisions sometimes. I found BVC because another cart got greedy, and lazy. The 25% per year of the current $499.00 price doesn't scare me, but I paid $1700.00 for BVC4 back in March of '06 (and got a 'free' upgrade to 5 before even loading 4). The price for monthly maintenance would have to be based on something solid and valid. In my case, I'd go with $499.00, right???? What happens for people who paid $499.00 if the price goes to $1,200.00 or whatever $ lies ahead? And visa-versa, anyone paying fees based on $1,200.00 will be upset for another licensee paying fees based on $499.00. |
Optimists invent airplanes,
Pessimists buy parachutes. |
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This *25% Fee* concept sounds like something my Mortage Broker was trying to sell me...LOL.. |
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Rank: Member
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Hmmmm could have sworn they were talking about this on CNN... smiles Richard www.somethingmorestore.com
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