What do you want in V11

[chris ashdown]

As it says what major items do you want in V11, not bug fixes etc but new or improved functions

For me the areas that are poor are the reporting ones which are basic to say the least, when you look at other software packages they have a much better understanding of the type of information we need as retailers, what selling, whats moving up the sales list, where we make most money, graphs to show growth , Average profit margins on sales, amount of money tied up in back orders etc

Another area is Analytics which should be totaly intergrated into Actinic rather that the half hearted attempt at present (based upon my use of V9.5 so may have changed on V10)

[Jan]

I'd like my customers to be able to create and edit accounts online.

Online order history would be nice, as would the ability to click on an order offline and have a new one placed for the same customer / products.

Regards,

[Duncan Rounding]

Online account creation and management.
Online order tracking.
Online order history with ability to repurchase.
Ability to track repeat customer visits and report pages visited for marketing.
Actinic API libraries.
Online wishlists.
Single use vouchers.

[wesleythorne]

full customer account creation online, sales history, ability to reorder same items from history.
For us to is a must if v11 does not have then bye bye!
been waiting too long now.
The only thing that keeps us from switching now is actinic payments integrations for off-line orders.

Another major bottleneck is the incredibly tedious way of adding a product to more than one section/sub section.

Far too long winded and time consuming at present what with duplicate product creations, sub section creation and management, file name renaming etc.
If we want to list a product in several sections then it takes about an hour per product. With over 600 products this is not an option.

We had to abandon actinic for our second site as it was just too long winded.
With our other software provider i can know have someone with very little knowledge of the programme add a product to several sections in under a minute.

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Online account creation and management.

Sales history with ability to repurchase.

Better handling of product choices, including images to associated with individual product choices so if the customer buys a blue widget the basket/checkout image displayed is blue and not the default image.

Single Use Vouchers.

Improvements to the backend to better handle customer returns and back orders.

Improved Reporting

Actinic API

[Duncan Rounding]

Be interesting to see the v11 roadmap at the User Conference on October 13.

[plantsforshade]

My wish list would include;

Postcode based shipping charges.
Single use vouchers.
Proper searchable reports.
Auto spp from mpp.
Online order tracking.

plus a list of approved and properly integrated add ons via an api.

Nigel

[Mike Hughes]

Key items for me would be:

1. Proper website interactivity, customer feedback system.

i.e.
- Product reviews
- Ask a question
- Customer feedback

Must be on-site, readable by Google, etc.

2. Order management

Be able to flag orders automatically and manually based on a number of factors such as Aged days, Shipping method, Pending stock, etc.

3. dated Transaction records for items such as returns, refunds, etc.

Mike

[Goz]

My clients are asking for :

online accounts plus order tracking and order history
single use vouchers
An easy method to create duplicates with SPP

I'd also like to see an API and a change to the way in which the Section Link Layouts work (if you want sub-section Section Links to display differently to their parent you have to change each sub-section individually...... unless there is something I've missed all these year? Perhaps someone can enlighten me?)

[leehack]

I'd also like to see an API and a change to the way in which the Section Link Layouts work (if you want sub-section Section Links to display differently to their parent you have to change each sub-section individually...... unless there is something I've missed all these year? Perhaps someone can enlighten me?)

The sectionlevel variable is really useful here, for example if you want layouts on shop top to be different to the rest, you can use that to have the layout change dynamically according to which level its at. Blockifs really key too, can get a layout to change so it is unrecognisable.

All depends on the level of design change really, give us a typical example.

[leehack]

Proper online customer accounts so both retailer and customer can use this info to their advantage.

Better dreamweaver integration, crossing over of variables and layouts so an actinic interface in dw in effect.

Better standard product layout features, so basic at the moment, no bullet points is a shocker in my eyes.

A much better product description field, much bigger and easier to manage large amounts of data. Zoom is ok but lacks the toolbar, so you either work like a sardine or have no styles available.

CSS completely rewritten, it is currently sitting amongst the worst CSS I have ever seen. Now google are on the case with page load times, this area simply cannot be an area allowed to be ignored any further.

A commitment that no matter how small or tedious the change is to do, under no circumstances will a bug be allowed to exist across 3 or more different versions of the software.

Scrap crystal reports, they're about as useful as the java applet.

A breakup of site options and the tabs, too overloaded and illogical now.

Better toolbar, large obvious buttons for the common tasks.

A correct page preview, current one is in need of some TLC.

Interaction between the page preview and the content tree, so its a two way communication. Click on a link in the preview, you're taken to that page in the content tree for example and the page preview changes according to that click.

HTML emails possible and print to pdf possible.

A surprise.

At least 150 people to reply to this thread, so we can all see what real people are wanting to really happen, putting to an end once and for all the mystery of how certain features are included or not. I think it'd be great to see me asking for a feature, that i thought the rest would want, but instead seeing that 149 others didn't mention it. I can then understand and see why my ideas were not included and rightly so then etc. See with our own eyes that it really isn't an important addition in the bigger picture of what people want in other words. It'd be great to pick up on top 10 requests and then poll it to see which one people would choose.

[pinbrook]

online database!

Actinic's original stength was output html pages, hence desktop DB. Times have changed and now features such as wishlists, customer accts, tracking, wishlists etc require online db.

Most peeps seem to be asking for stuff that is only really served by an online db. So for me it all needs to go online, and chuck the sync online to desktop scenario.

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

In addition to my earlier wish list:

html emails that can be customised much more than the present ones, as at the moment large chunks of the emails are fixed with little or no control over them.
It would also be nice if the emails could be controlled with blockifs or a rules wizard so the text could be changed depending on delivery/invoice country, payment method, shipping method, etc so taht more tailored information is provided.

Also replace crystal reports with something more user friendly, customising the look and layout of invoices and packing lists should be something that anybody can do without requiring a separate package or paying a thrid party, possibly using html and Blockifs or something better.

[Paul Bulpit]

Hear, hear! All of the above.

Online account creation would save much time for a B2B site, AND avoid the need for a customer to have to wait for us to do it manually and then upload. These two things can take more than 24 hours in total and that's not acceptable. My competitors manage it.

Ditch Crystal Reports so we can tailor our own - in Multi-User, different reports for different sites.

Multi-user connectivity over a local network. Now I know very little about it, but having looked at an alternative, if it is possible to build an ecommerce site 'online', then surely it should be faster over ten metres of cable? Even on V10.2 I suffer aforementioned inputting delays and dmps.

[brucet]

I can't say too much at this early stage, but v11 will have some significant new functionality along the lines of the most popular requests in this thread.