Order Confirmation Email

[Mike Hughes]

Quote:
The Customer order email shouldn't get in the way as it's not triggered until later in the process.

if the mailserver is busy, then checkout hangs and waits for it, i would be better to separate the 2

As I said before, I assume you're talking abouty the 'new order' email as the Customer email isn't sent until after checkout has been completed. There's no reason for the customer email to cause the checkout to hang unless Actinic has a serious bug there.

Can I suggest you create a new thread on this as this one was intended for a specific problem with customers not being sent the customer email?

I'd still like Actinic to reply to my earlier post on why this problem isn't being addressed in V10.

Mike

PS. I do agree with Jo though. If Actinic are putting a load of work into the checkout they should make sure they fix any problems associated with the way it worked before.

[pinbrook]

Sorry Mike...

No, i am talking about the customer confirmation email too. Just thought I'd jump in here as we are both talking about the same thing but are affected differently. Esp in light of the fact that the checkout has been rewritten for v10

[Mike Hughes]

OK. Let's carry on here then.

I assume we're talking about this problem, reported here: http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=23339

I'm having a similar issue, whereby the final receipt page can take absolutely ages to display once the customer has entered their details and pressed 'Next' (even when using the pay by cheque option)

I've narrowed my problem down to busy mail servers at my hosting company, Verio, as Actinic will just wait and wait for it's confirmation e-mail to be sent to the customer, before completing the transaction and showing the receipt page.

I guess if we're talking about checkout hanging before showing the final receipt page then I can understand how it happens. At this stage though the order has been created, the customer has completed checkout and paid so we're just waiting for the receipt page to be shown.

The solution for this as you say, is to separate the two software threads / processes. One to show the receipt page and another one to send the email. The email one is slightly complicated because it needs two triggers:

a) The PSP callback

or

b) An alternative Actinic trigger (could be a phantom callback) when a non-psp payment is chosen (such as Invoice, Send cheque, etc).

Either way it doesn't seem too complicated and would fix both problems.

Mike

[Mike Hughes]

OK. Looking at this, it seems all of it is done in the OrderScript.

The easiest way to fix this looks to me to be:

1. Make the customer email sending a routine on it's own. At the moment it's a subset of the Display Receipt Phase.

2. Call the email routine if a PSP is used and the payment callback received.

3. Also call the routine if a non-psp payment is used after the receipt page is generated. Right now it's sent just before the receipt page is generated which is what's causing Jo's problem.

It looks like a very simple thing to fix and should be done now while the checkout phase is being worked on. At least the developer will have everything fresh in their mind rather than having to revisit the checkout 6 months down the road.

Mike

[plantsforshade]

PayPal has grown for us as a percentage, maybe 10% a couple of years ago now 30% or more. Can not paypal put a mod on their payment page to bounce back automatically for Actinic users. Actinic have 10k users and I believe represent 50% of small uk business online shop software so a big market.

One of the big pains apart from having to manually send the emails is analytics I am losing quite a bit of data because customers are not reaching the goal ie the receipt page.

Regards

Nigel

[brucet]

AFAICS there are four issues raised here so far - please correct me if I've misunderstood any of these

1. Some customers are not receiving confirmation emails with PSP orders because they don't go on to the receipt page. The fix would be to send email confirmation for PSP orders as soon as payment confirmation is received from the PSP

2. Sometimes the Checkout appears to hang, apparently due to email sending. (It would be helpful to know what you mean here. At what stage is it hanging? Eg do you mean you don't receive the order? Or that the receipt page does not get displayed? And what makes you think that email sending is the cause? Have you had a support ticket for this where I might find some more information?)

3. Some of you want information about what events take place at what stage in the checkout process

4. Analytics data is lost if customers don't reach the receipt page

The first thing to say is that we have very little influence over the various PSPs, so with the exception of Actinic Payments, the final stage of the process from the PSP confirmation page to the Actinic receipt is outside our control. You could try approaching them directly, they are more likely to listen IMO if they get the same request several times direct from their own customers.

Tweaking the checkout to fix point 1 certainly looks like an option. It's not addressed in the v10 checkout spec ATM, but I will look into it. Unfortunately this thread started long before my incumbency, and that issue was not on my radar, so thanks for raising it again.

I was under the impression that V10 was supposed to be a 'catch up' release (as well as other things) where all the little, and not so little, problems that have crept into the software over the years were supposed to be addressed.

v10 will fix quite a number of usability and performance issues and some remaining bugs, and fulfil several wish list requests. And the new checkout will be a big step forward that resolves the most common criticisms of the present one. But the full list of outstanding requests runs to hundreds, if not thousands, quite a few of which conflict with each other; one person's 'problem' is quite often someone else's preference. If we had a development team ten times its present size, we still could not address all the issues to everybody's satisfaction.

[pinbrook]

2. Sometimes the Checkout appears to hang, apparently due to email sending. (It would be helpful to know what you mean here. At what stage is it hanging? Eg do you mean you don't receive the order? Or that the receipt page does not get displayed? And what makes you think that email sending is the cause? Have you had a support ticket for this where I might find some more information?)

Our analysis on this is that if the mailserver is overloaded at the time the actinic order confirmation is sent then the checkout waits until the email is sent. The customer experiences a wait... and can then hit continue/confirm several times resulting in multiple emails.

Yes i accept that it is the hosts mailserver at fault here, but it would improve the checkout if it didn't have to wait for a sucessful send.

I guess if we're talking about checkout hanging before showing the final receipt page then I can understand how it happens. At this stage though the order has been created, the customer has completed checkout and paid so we're just waiting for the receipt page to be shown.

The solution for this as you say, is to separate the two software threads / processes. One to show the receipt page and another one to send the email.

[plantsforshade]

1. Some customers are not receiving confirmation emails with PSP orders because they don't go on to the receipt page. The fix would be to send email confirmation for PSP orders as soon as payment confirmation is received from the PSP.

This would solve the paypal problem very well.


The analytics data loss was not a big thing until PayPal increased in popularity, now it makes the data much less useful.

Best wishes

Nigel

[Darren B]

This would solve the paypal problem very well.


The analytics data loss was not a big thing until PayPal increased in popularity, now it makes the data much less useful.

Best wishes

Nigel

My % of paypal transaction was small, these days it can be as hi as 35% of transactions and most never return to the reciept page, how do i know, becaus i have a copy of all orders sent to me aswell, 80% of paypal orders never get the reciept.

So my GA conversions are not worth a toss, how they can be forced i dont know, but i think actinic should try and speak to someone about paypal making it clearer for the customer.

Alas i still think this is another of those wishes were the decision to fix / change it will be taken elsewere and result in nothing being done

[Mike Hughes]

Tweaking the checkout to fix point 1 certainly looks like an option. It's not addressed in the v10 checkout spec ATM, but I will look into it.

Thanks Bruce. It would be nice if this can be fixed in V10.

Mike.

[Simon Clark]

gets my vote...

[malbro]

Yes please, I would say that for us 90% of paypal customers do not return to the receipt page and therefore never get an email. I monitor all sales and almost all paypal sales are recorded because we get an email from paypal that a payment has been made and not from the confirmation email from Actinic.