Google Checkout

[RuralWeb]

Ok - we are straying off thread here which is why I deleted the thread last week.

[leehack]

This thread is dead anyway. I thought we were allowed fun after it had died. Tuning up well to be a mod tho Mal.

[Darren B]

You must be joking - its terrible:

You have to create an account
Its got as many stages as Actinic
Gives secure/insecure warnings on every page
Crashed before I got to the final page
Very slow

I agree, but i think he ment the delivery options right by the location and delivery addresses and invoice address together aswell.

Maybe a another, nother, nother, nother new thread about check stages me thinks NOT

Darren

[Stereo Steve]

Well, SVP moved away from Actinic for some reason. I have no idea why. I do know that City Link send a trunker there every day plus a good few vans and Parcel force and Royal Mail also take more orders away than most of us see in a year so I suppose they must be doing something right.

I was talking about the first page of the checkout and went on to state what I would like the second page to do. This is not the same as SVP's system so, no, I'm not joking.

I don't work for SVP. I'm a direct competitor but I have enough respect for them to see what they are doing right and try to learn from it as best I can. I have met the boss man and he's a nice guy who employs a lot of people.

The fact that they moved away from actinic should be some cause for concern, shouldn't it? Maybe they just got too big and needed more flexibility and got their own team in. Maybe they want to employ things like Google Checkout at the same time as UKDVDR.

[RuralWeb]

This thread is dead anyway. I thought we were allowed fun after it had died

I dont think so - as its a wish list thread then it will stay open until the feature is added - thats the whole idea of a wish list

[Froogle]

The reason they moved away from Actinic is because the product is poor and out of of date. They wanted a product that was flexible and Actinic isn't.

Their product has all the features you'd expect from software such as stock control, customer accounts (which I don't like but most people do), unique coupon codes, proper vat rounding, upsell, you can sort products by price, quantity or name, better search results, I could go on.

It must have been hard for them to ditch actinic after working hard on seo and page rank. While I am not too keen on the layout of their site and prefered the old one I can see why they've done it. If Actinic don't buck up there ideas then a lot of people will be doing this.

I mean a V8 piece of software that can't do stock control or unique vouchers, what is that all about....

[pinbrook]

The reason they moved away from Actinic is because the product is poor and out of of date.

is that fact, or your mere speculation

[Mark H]

Their product has all the features you'd expect from software such as stock control, customer accounts (which I don't like but most people do), unique coupon codes, proper vat rounding, upsell, you can sort products by price, quantity or name, better search results, I could go on.

I mean a V8 piece of software that can't do stock control or unique vouchers, what is that all about....

I think the fact that Actinic doesn't do the above. plus has a poor checkout, plus doesn't work with GC when many others do, is pretty much fact isn't it?

[los_design]

I think the fact that Actinic doesn't do the above. plus has a poor checkout, plus doesn't work with GC when many others do, is pretty much fact isn't it?

So why did you use it in the first place then if you spotted a flaw (exc. GC as it wasn't around?)

Surely you evaluated the product first for your clients?

[Mark H]

My first Actinic client was me (about 4 years ago) and it was judged at that time to be one of the best. The issue here is that is hasn't developed as fast as others and is now looking shoddy. However, many people have invested a lot in it and find it difficult to move away. I suspect those same people wouldn't choose it now if they were looking for the first time.

[RuralWeb]

Part of the problem here is that people are comparing Actinic with systems that cost far more. Remember it is a shop in a box and is IMO still the best in its class - if you want to spend £30,000 (recent quote from a competitor for an upgrade to an Actinic site) on a website then of course you can get a far better system.

[buspassjohn]

Part of the problem here is that people are comparing Actinic with systems that cost far more. Remember it is a shop in a box and is IMO still the best in its class - if you want to spend £30,000 (recent quote from a competitor for an upgrade to an Actinic site) on a website then of course you can get a far better system.

Good point Mal, then 10000 users shelling out say average (low estimate) £300 each for Actinic equals £3,000,000
Three million ought to be enough to buy a good program, didn't it?

[RuralWeb]

Three million ought to be enough to buy a good program

Not sure about that one - Ive just got back from NZ where a company was looking at spending $42,000,000 on a website so £3 mill may be a bit on the cheap side!

[los_design]

Part of the problem here is that people are comparing Actinic with systems that cost far more. Remember it is a shop in a box and is IMO still the best in its class - if you want to spend £30,000 (recent quote from a competitor for an upgrade to an Actinic site) on a website then of course you can get a far better system.

Zen cart costs more than Actinic?

I have developed a site with a bespoke cart (not zen, os, act etc) that is in the final stages of testing (online db etc) and can be configured in anyway the client wishes. The last snippet is the GC integration, now this is much easier for us, as I have built the cart from scratch (TBH it ain't that hard) but I have to say, on the surface, integration looks seamless and I have scoped 60 man hours for this, BUT our code is not as established or multi-facet integrated as Actinic and IMHO our added features are not suited to the home/non-db orientated user (bit of techy support is required and the ability to sql dump and manipulate), but I COULD NEVER ENVISAGE CHARGING £30,000 FOR THIS OR ANY ACTINIC PROJECT (wow)...

In conclusion, Actinic is fantastic for beginner, intermediate companies with less than 5k items, anything greater then careful evaluation is needed to look at your local IT resource blah blah blah....

Regards
Daren

[los_design]

Not sure about that one - Ive just got back from NZ where a company was looking at spending $42,000,000 on a website so £3 mill may be a bit on the cheap side!

Thought my quote was lower than that