Most of us are geeks with pretty freaking fast computers and DSL or Fios connections. Maybe it's time to take advantage of our hard earned capabilities and get a little more info on the main product edit page.




Without clicking off of the product edit page, I'd like to see/edit:



Choices and modifiers (Simple list of names. If shared, marked with a *),

Up sells (Thumb and product name),

Cross sells (Thumb, and product name),

Categories,

Volume discounts,

Inventory,

Add'l images (Thumb, and img name).....





I'd also like a snapshot of product performance, such as:




# sold last month/year,

Other products sold in the same orders as this product,

What products use this product as a up/cross sell....





I'm willing to scroll - REALLY - a little scrolling beats the crap out of clicking and loading sub-pages or running around the store to see how products are set up. Most of the product edit page is white space. Let's put it to work.



I think it's time to re-design the product edit page to cut out all the damned clicking and page loading.

Marcus, if you ran a store with 100's (some of us have 1000's) of products you'd know that looking at a products' vital info. is like looking at an Excel speadsheet through a soda straw.

We've got too many pages, each feeding us a very small part of the big picture. When computers were on 32K modems, it made sense to break up the information onto many pages. That condition is pretty much gone now, it's 2008. I'd bet most of a product's build could be formatted onto one page showing on two screens (short scroll) - if you tightened up on formatting.


Properly formatted, this is easy to scan, and many of these are easily edited on the product edit page:

Name: Big Boy Shirt - SKU: 1234567890 - ___ Active - Product type: <drop-down> - Manufacturer <drop-down> - Vendor: <drop-down>
Cost: $100.00 - MSRP: $200.00 - Store Price: $200.00 - Alternative Text (displaces price info): ______________________________
Volume pricing: 1, $25.00 - 4, $20.00 - 8, $18.00
Weight: 1.00 - L:xxx, W:xxxx, H:xxxx - Extra ship fee: $2.00 - Ship Mode: <drop-down> - __ Non-Shipping - __ Ship Separately
Category(s): Shirts... Other shirts..... Formal shirts...... Special clothes...... Room for 4 more cats expandable to a second row.
Up-sells: Other shirt, SKU 98765432 - Blue shirt, SKU 3456789....
Cross sells: Other shirt, SKU 98765432 - Blue shirt, SKU 3456789....
Choice names: Size list 1, Color, Button down collar, allegator on the pocket
Modifier Names: Size list 1, Color, Button down collar, allegator on the pocket
Inventory: ____ Enabled - ___ # avail - ___ OSP - __ Reord point - ___ Reserved - ____ For sale -
Any reviews to audit? <yes/no> Since last visit to this page? <yes/no>
What sales apply to this product - <name - ending on...> <name - ending on...>
# sold last month/year: ______

What products use this product as a up/cross sell....



Long Descr: <Editor>

Short descr:

Search keywords:

Meta title:

Small Img:

Lg img:

Additional images: <Thumb> <thumb> <thumb>


There you go. 90% of the product's info. in a nut-shell. I've compressed 6 or 7 pages into one. Less clicking, easier to manage a lot of information and makes BVC workspace look efficient. Anyone launching a new e-commerce package wouldn't consider using 7 pages to show this stuff.

Will it take an extra second or two to load - yes. But our shoppers wait for this and more each time they look at a product.




Anyway... you don't ask, you don't get. My $.02

The main reason that product editing is broken into many pages is that the web is still a stateless protocol. ASP.NET is a hack on top of HTTP that allows us to mimic Visual Basic like applications on the web. However, it's not as good as a true desktop app. There are alway compromises. What works for some merchants is terrible for others. Many of the settings like choices/options can vary in size from just a line or two to hundreds. In Mitch's example above it would be a nightmare for one specific customer I know who has hundreds of greeting card choices/options per product. Having them display on the main page would make it unusable for that merchant.

Matt, interesting feedback on the speed of the catalog page. Do you notice that the individual product pages are slower than BVC 2004? One of the goals of the product page in BV5 was to put all of the basic product information on the first page so a new merchant can enter a product without choices/options on a single page.

Some of the options that I'm looking into include javascript tabs/collapsable sections, silverlight controls, and flash to improve the usability of the pages.

Mitch, your first post sounded like the pain was in the speed of page loads. Your second post sounds like you're looking for reporting/performance information on products instead. Can you clarify what you're trying to accomplish when you get frustrated with product editing?

Marcus, this is easy to understand - here's what you need to do. Spend an afternoon building 10 products from scratch, each with 3 non-shared choices and one price modifier, 4 cross sells, and a few with volume discounts and inventory controls and 2 add'l images each.

Now that you've done this, pretend you've had a change of suppliers and go back and remove one of the cross sells, change half of the prices $2.00 up and half $1.00 down, add $1.00 shipping fee, change an inventory parameter on a few of them. I guarantee, you'll understand what the problem is. You'll lose count of the 100's of page loads.



Editing and error checking should and could be so much easier with far fewer page loads.

If I want to see the basics - price, sku, shipping, URL rewriting the first page is fine. Main product page load, 2 seconds.

Look at volume discounts, 2 more seconds - back to main page, 2 more seconds.



Check choices/modifiers, 2 more seconds - over to inventory page, 2 more seconds.



Look at up/cross sells, 2 more seconds - over to add'l images page, 2 more seconds.



Page load, after page load, after page load.... X 20, 30, 50, 100 products.... Way too much time clicking and waiting.







Products with many choices/modifiers will be a problem on the one-comprehensive-page.... show only the first 5 or 10. That takes care of the products with many choices. The choice/modifier page will still be the way to edit these.





I won't mind going to a page to edit something that'll take up a lot of space, add'l imgs for instance. I do mind leaving a page merely to look at that information when putting the thumbs on the page will do.






Don't get me started on the order page. Order paid by check???? 5 clicks!! Should be zero - How? Leave the information spaces for payment inputs at the bottom of the page IF P.O. or Check is the payment method. Once filled in, remove from the page to keep safe from prying eyes. For later review, click on "payment" to go to the payment page.