Date Info Prompt

[brian.mc]

I'm looking for help in changing the default Date Info Prompt. It currently displays todays date, and some customers fail to notice this and proceed to checkout, only realising when they get their order confirmation that their order will be delivered today when they really wanted a future date. As it's a florist site then it's important that the correct delivery date is entered. I want the Date Info prompt to display in the same manner as the credit card start & expiry dates in Checkout (ie "Month" "Year") , so that an error message would appear if customer failed to select a date. Can anyone help with this? Thanks
Brian

[Nadeem]

Hi Brian,

Does the data prompt appear on the checkout of your store? If so, you could try changing the shopping mode for that section to "Quantity on Product Page". This will have the date prompt to appear on the product page, so customer cannot miss it and will fill it in with the required date.

I'm still unsure what you mean regarding the following:

I want the Date Info prompt to display in the same manner as the credit card start & expiry dates in Checkout (ie "Month" "Year") , so that an error message would appear if customer failed to select a date

Please could you give us an example of what you mean?

Kind Regards

[jont]

.. proabably as a drop down selection list

[brian.mc]

Thanks Nadeem. I currently have Business Settings|Ordering "Request Location Information Early" selected, and this seems to prevent changing settings in Shopping Mode. However, I unselected this option and set Shopping Mode to Quantity on Product Page. I ran a Site Preview, and now the Other Info & Date Info prompts appear on the Product Page, but with a default date of 1st January 2005. I previously had the site live with these settings, and a large number of orders were coming through with 1st January as the delivery date. The way it's currently set up (Location Info Early) gives the current date as default, and an equally large number of orders come through with current date selected, only to be followed up soon after with an irate email or phone call from customer claiming delivery date is wrong and that they weren't asked to specify a date! So they're obviously not noticing the date prompt and selecting the correct delivery date. If the date info prompt was blank by default they would have to select a date or they would receive an error message when attempting to move to next page. If you enter my site www.flowergallery.co.uk and place a dummy order you will see what I mean. In the checkout, when you are requested to enter credit card details, the fields for Start Date and Expiry Date do not have a default date entered - just the words "Month" and "Year" in the respective fields. This means customer MUST select dates or the error message will appear when they try to confirm the order. That's how I want my Date Info field to appear on the order form, but I can't figure out how to achieve it. I tried changing Business Settings|Options|Default Product Date Range to blank, but it just produced a default date of 11 May 0000.

I'd appreciate any help you can give me with this.

Thanks
Brian

[Nadeem]

Hi Brian

Yes i see where you are going,

Okay please go to "Design | Text"

Phase -1
ID: 2162

Change

%s<SELECT NAME="%s" SIZE=1>

to

%s<SELECT NAME="%s" SIZE=1><OPTION SELECTED>

This will now give a blank selection in the beginning of the date prompt.

Kind Regards

[brian.mc]

Thanks Nadeem, that's done the trick.

Regards
Brian

[brian.mc]

Nadeem, I'm still having problems getting this to work properly. After reading you fix yesterday, I changed the code as suggested, with Quantity on Product Page, and selected Web Page Preview for several products, and they all displayed what looked like I was after - the date info fields were blank. However, when I later uploaded the site and started placing test orders, deliberately omitting to select a date, expecting to get an error message when adding to cart, it simply let me proceed without any date! Then I clicked View Cart, and it had selected a delivery date of 1st January 2005.

I then changed the setting to Quantity on Confirmation Page, and uploaded again. Now the date info prompt showed the current date, as it had previously done before making the code change you suggested.

So it seems that if the date info prompt is left blank the customer gets no error message, and Actinic automatically applies a default date to the order.

Any other ideas?

Brian

[wjcampbe]

Sound like you could use a second other info prompt. Make it a required field.

Confirm your delivery date -

[brian.mc]

Further developments

Nadeem

Any further ideas regarding the issues raised in my previous post?

There has been a further development which has only just come to light.

The site is currently running with Quantity on Confirmation Page, with the following required fields: Quantity; Delivery Date; Card Message; Customers Country/State; Delivery Country/State.

If the customer completes all of these correctly, there is no problem, but if they omit one of them the delivery date is changed to January. So for example, if customer selects a delivery date of 27th May 2005, but forgets to enter a card message, or selects delivery to USA or Canada and doesn't specify a State or Province, then they will get an error message telling them what they have missed, but the date is changed to 27th January 2005. (Whatever date they have selected, it will change the month to January, but leave the day and year unchanged - so 16th May 2005 becomes 16th January 2005; 3rd April 2006 becomes 3rd January 2006). Customer doesn't notice this, completes the fields requested in the error message, and proceeds to Checkout, unaware that the date has been changed to January.

Is this a bug?

Regards

[Nadeem]

Hi Brian,

Sorry for the long delay, I would get this checked out with Support. I believe you have cover, so contact Support on 0845 129 4848.


Kind Regards

[BeerHunter]

Sound like you could use a second other info prompt. Make it a required field.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

"Please enter delivery date (mm/dd/yyyy)" and use the other info prompt as a required field.