Holidays

[goddard@stjames]

Hello,

I would like to stop accepting orders over the holiday period & put a message on my Actinic site that tells people that we won't be processing orders until we come back at the beginning of January. Can anyone suggest how this might best be done?

Can I stop the chekout from accespting orders?

Can I put a note at the checkout?

Thanks

Sam

[grantglendinnin]

Yes you can stop people ordering by Suspending the catalog via Settings - Ordering - check 'Suspended' and upload. You can also customise the message given via Design - Text

That should do it

[goddard@stjames]

Thank you very much for this. Can you let me know which message I should customize in the Design - Text area as there are thousands.

Sam

[grantglendinnin]

Please open Design - Text

Click the Go To button and enter the values:

Phase: -1 ID: 335

Change the 'Current Value'



Regards,
Grant

[jont]

Rather than fully suspending your cart it may be worth adding a note just beneath the add to cart button that orders placed now will be processed January nth ... people who are OK to wait may go elsewhere or forget to return back ... this way you get the orders and the customer knows.

[RuralWeb]

Just Reading today that 25 dec is going to be a big Internet shopping day as people are expecting the sales to start and more people are getting cash as gifts so they want to spend it.

As jont says don't suspend just get a message on the site - you will loose loads of orders otherwise.

[goddard@stjames]

That seems very sensible. Which text would I change if I didn't suspend but processed the orders later?

[TraceyG]

Hi,

It's probably easier to just add some text to the header and/or footer of each page (Settings | Site Options | General tab | Footer text and Header text fields).

[Kirk]

Rather than fully suspending your cart it may be worth adding a note just beneath the add to cart button that orders placed now will be processed January nth ... people who are OK to wait may go elsewhere or forget to return back ... this way you get the orders and the customer knows.

goddard@stjames-
I simply added the text below my "Add to Cart" button from the design tab.

jont -
I thought that was an excellent idea. I did just that and had orders waiting this morning when I came in.

for further discussion -
The order volume seemed a bit light compared to a "normal" long weekend. Now I'm wondering:
Did the message discourage folks from ordering? Probably.
Will they order later? I hope so.
Would I have had more orders with nothing at all? Who knows? Our business tends to be very slow at this time of year anyway.

I was trying to keep customers informed and head off a potential Monday afternoon "I ordered four days ago on the 25th and you just sat on my order" argument. (Trust me...it would have happened ) So by pandering to the 1% of my potential clients who do not grasp the concept of holidays and holiday delivery schedules, did I shoot myself in the foot?

My gut feeling is everything will work out in the end, but I still wonder if too much information confuses the customer. A confused customer buys nothing.

[jont]

You can never win with this situation. Some customers expect delivery 5 minutes after hitting the buy button ... others are OK to wait. I think it is better to keep everyone informed of the delivery schedules and at least you keep the faithful happy and don't annoy buyers who do not know and are sat waiting for their goods ... only take one irate customer to start a tirade of negative PR on some forum.

[jont]

I simply added the text below my "Add to Cart" button from the design tab.

I added the text as a GIF image beneath the add to cart ... that way I could make it stand out and then change the info on delivery dates (Christmas / New Year) by simply changing and FTP'ing a single graphic to the server.... thereby changing the whole site in seconds to reflect the changes.

[Kirk]

I added the text as a GIF image beneath the add to cart ... that way I could make it stand out and then change the info on delivery dates (Christmas / New Year) by simply changing and FTP'ing a single graphic to the server.... thereby changing the whole site in seconds to reflect the changes.

A much more elegant solution.

I upload every night to keep my prices current, so the getting the Christmas message in place was no big deal. Unfortunately I did not think it through and this morning I had to upload my site (without the message). I'll try it your way this weekend.

Thanks for the tip!

[pinbrook]

You can never win with this situation. Some customers expect delivery 5 minutes after hitting the buy button ... others are OK to wait. I think it is better to keep everyone informed of the delivery schedules and at least you keep the faithful happy and don't annoy buyers who do not know and are sat waiting for their goods ... only take one irate customer to start a tirade of negative PR on some forum.

I tend to agree with this, Christmas is only once a year.

I wonder if there is a forum memeber who looked at amazon, ebuyer and other big sites between 24-26 Dec to see what they did

[zgap111]

"Some customers expect delivery 5 minutes after hitting the buy button..."

We customers like that too!

Problem is that some people have links direct to specific pages and not just to the homepage... best bet is to change something that appears on all pages...
A quick mod on the logo pic?? - no need to change Actinic, just change the picture?