Certain products unavailable to certain territories

[eeore3]

Hi all

We haven't yet upgraded to V9, but we are likely to soon as part of the change to Actinic payments.

Here's what we would like to achieve:

Customer selects their country before entering the shop. The shop then switches certain products to 'Cannot be bought on-line' so they are still visible, but no buy button is available. It would be nice if we could replace the buy button with a 'product too large to send to your country' message (or similar).

At present, I understand we can do a similar thing, but the item has to be added to the cart first. This must be quite frustrating for the customer to add something and only then find out they can't have it!

The problem relates to parcel size restrictions in certain countries with ParcelForce. We are currently waiting for other carriers to get back to us, which might solve the problem by other means. But I'd like to get ahead of the game if possible. Particularly if the answer is a simple 'you can't do that!'.

I appreciate the dropdown list of countries in the opening page would be huge and this might be a problem.

Any ideas?

[chris ashdown]

You can use say Dreamweaver to make your own front end pages to offer a selection of countries who can purchase so that it opens before you get to actinic

My personal view is anything you put in the way of gettin to the products would loose you a lot of customers especially at the the front end of the site, this page is what gives the customer the quick view of the shop and you probably only have a few seconds before they move on the the next site

If they want the product really badly then they will find someone else to have it delivered to in say the UK for forwarding, so telling them you dont send to their country at the end will probably not hinder all the sales just a few

[eeore3]

Maybe I didn't explain too well.

I don't want to exclude certain countries. What I would really like is to taylor the shop content dependant on country. i.e. exclude certain products for certain countries.

Or are you suggesting that the 'select country' page could lead into different Actinic calalogues?

I understand the minimum click to the buy button principal, but I am struggling to come up with any other viable option. The only other way we can see, is to 'tag' the items that cannot be sent to certain countries so they throw up a notice when selected by the cutomer telling him he can't have it. I can't help thinking this would be very annoying to the potential customer. Surely it would be better just to not show that item in the first place? Or show it, but have it set to 'cannot be purchased'.

Of course, the ideal solution is to be able to send all our products to all countries..... but that comes down to finding a carrier who can do it. And, so far, they haven't been exactly helpful!

[chris ashdown]

Could you not include small country flags for acceptable countries at the bottom of the product description for i.e. union jack and Euro flag forEngines and other very heavy items etc and just put a note explaining this on the first page

Have you considered buying from India for your "Minor" spares, they produced the same car up til quite recently and may give good prices for a container load, Just a Thought

[eeore3]

Could you not include small country flags for acceptable countries at the bottom of the product description for i.e. union jack and Euro flag forEngines and other very heavy items etc and just put a note explaining this on the first page

I'll have a think on trying to explain it up front. It would be so nice to get it to work though

Have you considered buying from India for your "Minor" spares, they produced the same car up til quite recently and may give good prices for a container load, Just a Thought

That's actually a myth generated by a misquote in the Telegraph (IIRC) some 20 years ago. The Minor has never been produced in India! Many parts have been reproduced there and the misquote was based on a statement by Charles Ware saying that, in theory, a complete Minor could be made!

The Hindustan Ambassador was produced which was a revamped Morris Oxford.

We import many parts already, some from India.... but the quality can be a bit variable!