Can we have a vote... have v8 been a worthwhile upgrade?

[george]

Mainly for the benefit of us who are are still wondering if its all worthwhile etc.

A simple yes or no, and maybe beacause blah blah would do.



*has never received a Christmas card from Actinic and suspects he's just blown the chances of getting one in 2007 completely out of the window*

[eighteentee]

Yes and no.

Yes because the product is maturing and turning out to be generally ok.

No because coming from v7 and having to 'unlearn' stuff was a bit of a nightmare.

Just my 2p worth.

[leehack]

George

V8 is great once you have upgraded, it's taken 10 months but i'm comfortable with it now. The additional marketing features and improved SEO are worth the upgrade alone IMO. They will pay for the upgrade in a relatively short time.

IMO forget the upgrade process, see it as a chance to freshen up your site. Apply a new theme to your site to get up to full V8 with all the whistles and then either tweak it to suit, or preferably apply a dreamweaver design.

[jont]

YES - definitely worth the upgrade on two fronts....

As a site owner:

* makes updating much simpler (upsells)
* easier promotion of also like products (previously manually added)
* have seen a 25% increase in order volume since going live on v8 (not purely v8 but allowed better design options)
* much quicker updating of the layouts


As a site designer:

* much quicker to implement own designs (now the bugs are being fixed)
* far more logical
* better scope to implement some nice touches


Overall I can spend less time faffing around with a multitude of nested templates and code and concentrate on either adding products or getting the right design. In terms of time saved alone it is well worth the upgrade.

[TraceyHand]

it's taken 10 months but i'm comfortable with it now

10 months?

That's not very reassuring
LOL

[leehack]

To tag onto what Jont said about improved orders, the first site i upgraded to V8 right at the start is now showing sales up by 56% on the same periods last year. This will not all be down to V8, however i would say from what i have seen and know, that at least 25% of this is down to V8.

Where rankings were generally 3rd-6th, they are now 1st - 4th, nothing changed on many of these pages apart from being changed to V8.

[buspassjohn]

Our sales are up this calender year by 150% I can't say how much is due to V8, but I hope some of it in order to pay the two and a half grand for software and machines (new machines to try and speed up MU snail speed)
So Yes, Possibly?

[RuralWeb]

Yes - all sites I have upgraded have shown better SERPs and sales. Including my own - which Ive had to close because of it You just cannot win some days.

But as lee says its been a struggle to get to grips with it.

[Stereo Steve]

Yes, far easier for an amateur like me to develop a nice looking site. SEO improvements are worth a fortune as well. I keep picking up SEO hints, only to find that V8 has done it for me. Dammit.

[TraceyHand]

Yes, far easier for an amateur like me to develop a nice looking site.

Now *that's* the kind of recommendation I need
LOL
*doubts that there are many more amateur than she is*

[Jan]

Yes

Regards,

[chris ashdown]

Yes

I think all the increased sales are due to the new marketing features of V8

Three chances to sell on each page, Great

[Coggy]

Absolutely!

Having read some of the upgrade threads I was expecting the V8 upgrade process to be troublesome. I’m pleased to say that it wasn’t

Chris

[MySweeper]

My 2 Cents

Although, it's been a nice upgrade for this user in the U.S., it can't compete with some of the other Shopping Carts on the market. I will say this. It beats the others as being a Windows based application. I don't know of or have seen any others with this feature. Kudos to the Actinic design team!

PS> I haven't seen any increased orders but can only wish.

[jont]

*has never received a Christmas card from Actinic

Only v8 users get the Christmas Card ... if there was ever a reason to stop dilly-dallying ........