Acatalog - Changing name.

[leehack]

Maybe this is partly the cause of the disappointment some folks are feeling about V9. I don't know, but I would say the important thing is to think about what V9 might look like after a few update releases, rather than immediately start focusing on V10 and how far away that might be.

This might be a good point actually, all i would say to it is that you cannot sell a product on what it might be in the future. By the time it becomes that product you hoped for, the version is due to change again and you are looking towards the new version more - people need to have a reason to buy something, not a reason to hold back. For cover customers undoubtedly V9 is a nice step forward. People who have to pay for it would be better waiting for V10 IMO.

If your timetable and theory is correct, all they need do is to wait 6 months longer on just one version and get the timetable so that a product is released with the additions - that's basic PR IMO.

When it launches i want to hear a 50-repeater going off, not a damp rocket out the bottom of the fireworks box. What does this version now offer, to drag a new user off their existing software and into actinic - very little IMO. To get this software moving forward, they need more revenue which in turn is created by new customers. New customers and designers like me need something to convince people to come over to actinic, something they cannot do without. The biggest discussion so far has been about VAT and that was a fix.

It has to bring in new users or we will be stuck with a 10-15k user base that just doesn't create the revenue to modernise and take it forward fast enough IMO.

[Cheapprices4u]

I'm going to venture in to the discussion now

most of this i agree with, plus's and minus's

I like the quick designer wizard as a quick fix for "newbies" like me

most things are work a rounds yeah, but why should we.

My list of there improvements and what i would of liked to see;

Spell check - standard in ANY package these days even this forum.

.Google cart - i don't give a stuff but can understand why people want it

.off line ordering - yeah not bad attempt, but would be better if it integrated with Ebay/amazon etc

.checkout - nuff said

.ability to have products of alike nature grouped together eg: customer wants to see all of product "a" from all manufacturers on your site - can be done but major work

.customer accounts - would like to see, but requires live database, ability to update status of order for customer to login and check and also see past orders

.Wish list/wedding type list - to email to friends etc would be awesome


the reason we like the software is because we can work off line ( as Darren said) then upload when ready/happy most of the other e commerce software HAS to be done on a live site/internet connection
unless you have a server locally ( before anyone says)
and as Malc said out of the box the Serps are fine


ill leave it there until i have time to break it some more

G

[Jan]

.ability to have products of alike nature grouped together eg: customer wants to see all of product "a" from all manufacturers on your site - can be done but major work

This is easy to do if you add a variable to your products that lists the manufacturer (or whatever you want to search on) and mark it as searchable. It will then appear on the advanced search page as a drop down list.

Regards,

[pinbrook]

I think some peoples expectations are probably over inflated, i certainly remember older versions being released and thinking the same - ie the list of new features were somewhat underwelming - that is until you start to use it on a day to day basis and get to see all the little stuff too.

V8 was a huge undertaking and was packed with new stuff essentially because it was pretty well rewritten - so everything seemed new.

For me VAt is good, and Actinic did give the promise that it was the next big thing to be addressed, just like shipping was addressed in 8. Actinic have not made any comment on when GC and a streamlined checkout would be done - so it is nieve to think it would be in the early release of 9.

Personally I'm also pleased with actinic Payments, the wizard sounds interesting as does the product creator.

I shall stick with my upgrade pattern that i've adopted over the past 10 years ie alternate versions unless the major new features are deal breakers.

All this is without having even installed v9 yet (alpha or beta), i've only just downloaded it to see the new themes and the wizard

[Ginnys Attic]

It is - BUT one thing you have all forgotten is how much better Actinic is at getting good SERPs - its all very well having a site that can do all these other things but if you cannot get good results then its a waste of time IMO.

I thought you were talking about pensions for a second There are mod_rewrite tweaks for most of the FREE ecommerce solutions so the search engine friendly urls with a product-name.htm or product-name.html extensions are not an issue.

I might be being overly negative about Actinic and v9 and simply expecting way too much. After searching the forum it would seem that features i would expect and require for an ecommerce store have been requested time and time and time again and appear to have fallen on deaf ears and been ignored by Actinic so it would seem more reasonable to just accept what Actinic does and either deal with that or change ecommerce software.

Comparing Actinic to FREE and other paid for ecommerce solutions is like comparing FrontPage with Dreamweaver and ultimately fruitless as Actinic will develop what they see fit and feel is required or easiest not what us there customers want, need and request. Just search the forum for Google Checkout and see how many Actinic customers want and require Google Checkout for there store's and you get a pretty good idea of what Actinic's processes and thoughts regarding there customers needs are.

I was assured 9 or 10 months ago by sales that Google Checkout would be added as a PSP and soon but where is it? Just another indication of what’s considered important and also an example of classic car salesman speal sort of like “Yes Sir that is covered in the warranty” and then when it goes wrong “Sorry Sir that’s not covered as your engine falling out was not a direct result of faulty of manufacturing and is considered reasonable wear and tear”.

Taking all of the above in to account and considering the time it appears to take Actinic to develop, improve and fix the software I have been wondering if and how much it would be for Code Path to further develop the Actinic Order Tracking system into a customer account management facility where customers can login, check order history, order status, change address/shipping address and so on and with these additions and integration of the Code Path Product Review Management system within the customer account area customers could be encouraged to rate and review the store and service but also the products they have purchased it would be and almost ideal solution for customer interaction and functionality.

Personally I'm also pleased with actinic Payments.

I agree, I'm just waiting to see the rates and charges and looking forward to having a play with the system to see how easy it is and how well it works but the ability to take payments offline and part charge, pre-authorise payments etc all sounds to be everything we require but until all the details are revealed I’ll hold back on judgement.

[pinbrook]

I agree, I'm just waiting to see the rates and charges and looking forward to having a play with the system to see how easy it is and how well it works but the ability to take payments offline and part charge, pre-authorise payments etc all sounds to be everything we require but until all the details are revealed I’ll hold back on judgement.

phone actinic sales for detail

[RuralWeb]

There are mod_rewrite tweaks for most of the FREE ecommerce solutions so the search engine friendly urls with a product-name.htm or product-name.html extensions are not an issue

IMO it is - you seem to know lots about ecommerce software so I assume you did your homework before settling on Actinic so you knew its limitations before you built your site.

Its odd that you are keen to stay with Actinic when would it not be easier for you to move to one of the "better" ecommerce packages?

[RuralWeb]

I think some peoples expectations are probably over inflated

V9 is exactly what I expected and preditcted last year. Improvements in the interface and bug fixes - the addition of the payments function will be good and extra to what I expected.

[Ginnys Attic]

IMO it is - you seem to know lots about ecommerce software so I assume you did your homework before settling on Actinic so you knew its limitations before you built your site.

Its odd that you are keen to stay with Actinic when would it not be easier for you to move to one of the "better" ecommerce packages?

I took over the running of an Actinic site (owned by my parents) they made the decision based on the recommendation of the company who originally sold them a web site/ecommerce presence so not my decision at all and changing now would mean a lot of money, hard work and time wasted and not least the loss of 5 years worth of search engine listings for domain/acatalog/page-name.html url's is unthinkable.

For my elderly parents who actually own the business Actinic is an ideal solution, i can set it up so all they can do is download and process the orders without the need for them to use a web browser (which they are useless at) and they are unable to screw anything up (which they would as there not great with computers either) because the design and settings etc are all unavailable to them on there pc.

A very real reason we actually stayed with Actinic and upgraded when I took over last year was because an Actinic salesman assured me prior to paying for the upgrade and cover that Google Checkout would be a feature and was currently in development and would be released within a few months yet since the sales patter I have installed v8.5.1 upgrading the previous site, upgraded to v8.5.2 and now looking at v9 and yet there is still no sign of Google Checkout!

Actinic is nothing more than a usable solution for an ecommerce store, it’s certainly not ground breaking and is far from an ideal or imaginative solution how it goes about it. The apparent speed at which it develops to maintain pace with competitors is like a race between a tortoise and a hare and were just hanging on to the tortoise shell hoping as in the story that the tortoise comes good at the finish line albeit very unlikely as the hare is already a million miles ahead imo.

[Ginnys Attic]

phone actinic sales for detail

I like it in black and white so i have records especially since the last time i spoke with Actinic sales they assured me Google Checkout would be a feature soon and that it was currently in development and this was 9 months ago before v8.5.2 and now v9 where there is still no sign of the promissed PSP addition.

If they know the rates and charges why don't they publish them for us to consider on the Actinic Payments Page (http://www.actinic.co.uk/services/actinic-payments.htm)?

[RuralWeb]

Actinic salesman assured me

NEVER EVER trust a salesman they will promice the earth and deliver nothing. IMO I would forget GC - I started the thread requesting it nearly a year ago and have better things to worry about now. I even built a site using it and customer use was very low.

[gabrielcrowe]

There are mod_rewrite tweaks for most of the FREE ecommerce solutions so the search engine friendly urls with a product-name.htm or product-name.html extensions are not an issue.

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=32892

[Darren B]

It is - BUT one thing you have all forgotten is how much better Actinic is at getting good SERPs - its all very well having a site that can do all these other things but if you cannot get good results then its a waste of time IMO.

Personnal choice I agree actinic is good for SEO ratings but the thing is any ecommerce package can do that aswell, just need to know how to get the best out of it.

To be honest googles results are mostly a pile of shit these days and being its the uk's biggest used search engine all they seem to want to show is expired ebay listing, sites with sponsored links in them, need i go on. So as stated SEO is important but you cant sell a package because of it.

D

[RuralWeb]

the thing is any ecommerce package can do that aswell

No they cannot - I have many clients who have moved to Actinic because of the poor SERP performance of other software.

[Darren B]

No they cannot - I have many clients who have moved to Actinic because of the poor SERP performance of other software.

Well i guess we will have to differ on that then, at the end of the day its about how you build your page and what tags you use, perhaps they did not know how rather than the software could not do it. If that was the case then people who wrote pages purely using HTML would never get anywhere in SERP's sorry the argument carries no weight

But as i said you cant sell a package on it you need more than good serps and VAT calculation, example :- yep the old Google Checkout not just about a PSP, unfortunately google have marketed it very well, you get it against you adwords, you get free transaction fees against adword spend, the catchy little logo against your base products unfortunately this looks like an endorsement. And then there is the debate as to wether GC users are favoured over non GC users.