Actinic please stop ignoring Google Checkout

[Mark H]

Surely this is the point - we are all paying customers, not just for the cost of the product, but more importantly the much higher cost of development, and loss of business caused by poor software. There are many problems which require urgent action (some have been mentioned on this post), and the icing on the cake is that other packages now have GC and we appear to be a very long way from that. Many of us feel that Actinic is letting us down badly on all these issues, not just GC.

This suggests to me (not another conspiracy - just an opinion) that Actinic have ceased to be a company which is capable of maintaining a market leading position with its software, and it this which should concern them and us the most. Against this background I no longer have blind faith in Actinic's evaluation of priorities, or necessarily trust comments made by them.

[alewis]

The cost of manually updating could soon offset the savings made using GC compared to say PayPal.

Having looked at that I believe it will still be beneficial.

Google is totally free until 1st Jan 2008, on average we spend about 80p per order on PSP fees when it goes through the bank, or about 100p when it goes through Paypal.

I dont think it will cost anywhere near 80p - 100p per order in extra administration. Paying someone £6 an hour, they could check a lot more than 6 order per hour.


Beyond that date, for every £1 spent on Adwords equates to £10 worth of free payment processing. For people with adwards accounts that expend 10% of turnover (a number I see quoted often), it may as well continue to be free.

[pinbrook]

What date has been given?

they haven't given a date, which in itself is a definate date, ie sometime in the future.

your decision is whether that is acceptable to you

[buspassjohn]

I thought they killed JR. Although my personal feeling is they are getting a kickback from Clairol as my purchasing of hair dye and hair replacement products has increased dramatically recently.

Thats another TV program I'm proud never to have seen and your'e lucky you've still got hair!
I found the answer to GC and Actinic - go elsewhere for your software, we will and get gift vouchers, wish lists, stock control etc.,

[Reefdreams]

Its 600-800 DAYS, not hours guys and gals.

It does seem extremely high, I can only assume they are including total development resource. Project management of IT projects is my day job, a rough rule of thumb is 1/3rd Specification, 1/3rd Programming and 1/3rd QA and documentation. So that would bring it down to around 200 days just for the programming which is the only part of the process most people consider.

Now the reason I think it is high is that my last project was re-writing from scratch a full ERP system to rival SAP/Peoplesoft/Sage etc That's full ERP from SOP to Accounts, Web, Warehousing, etc etc. That was turned around in approximately 60 man years, so 2-3 man years for just a checkout does seem a touch excessive, if they wanted to do it then it would have been finished by now.

Just my opinion, GC won't get my own business going any quicker so it is not a deal breaker for me. Sure I want it yesterday as do my customers, but they will buy from me for other reasons.

Steve.

[leehack]

That was turned around in approximately 60 man years, so 2-3 man years for just a checkout does seem a touch excessive

Imagine starting a job at 16 when you left school and finishing it at 76 just as you're about to croak it.

[Reefdreams]

Imagine starting a job at 16 when you left school and finishing it at 76 just as you're about to croak it.

That's just how I feel...

What made it worse was after the pilot, a 1,000 user system (100,000 customers) covering 3 countries went live on one day!!!! GC is a breeze, I'm glad I only sell corals and dry goods now!

Steve

[RuralWeb]

Just out of interest I thought I would mention that I have not had one client ask me about GC so they dont think its that important.

[Reefdreams]

Just out of interest I thought I would mention that I have not had one client ask me about GC so they dont think its that important.

That's my view, I did have one customer ask about it so I opened a discussion on one of the forums I sponsored.. I think the response was fairly poor to be honest, certainly not a show stopper. I am a new business still trying to build up customers so probably not representative, you are welcome to read the responses at http://www.reefcove.co.uk/forums/ind...showtopic=1403

Steve.

[Froogle]

GC is not the great deal breaker....if a site does not offer it, do you seriously believe that your customers will walk away?

I don't think GC will be a deal breaker but this is what I think...

As they're offering the £10 discount then it would be a good incentive to bring new business as people who may not normally order from you will do because you're doing the £10 discount. I frequent many forums and sites are getting massive publicity in them because of this discount.

There is also the additional presense in google adwords by having the icon below your add.

the bottom line is google have created a big band waggon and if we want to benefit from some of this business that's generated then we need GC now. Not 6 months down the line when the thunder has died down.

[buspassjohn]

I spend over £20000 pa on adwords, that results in offset card processing for £200,000 of sales that I could potentially pay no card handling fees on.
That would pay for my car, I call that a benefit even if the biased developers on here don't.
Anyway I've found new software, so if it works I can be an Actinic free zone in a few weeks.

[george]

Anyway I've found new software, so if it works I can be an Actinic free zone in a few weeks.

Aaaaahhhhh, but do they have Goat Points on their forum?

[buspassjohn]

Hopefully they won't need a forum George, they will sort out the bugs themselves, not rely on users and designers to do it!!
Besides, I never got a Goat Point, but my brother in law has won cups for his Goats! (thats like prizes, not cups that the goats fit in, or on, or drink out of etc)

[TraceyHand]

Hopefully they won't need a forum George, they will sort out the bugs themselves, not rely on users and designers to do it!!

Well..you must have found the Holy Grail of e-commerce software then
Good luck with that...I'm sure that kind of rigorous "on the job testing" by the software company can't come cheap..

[jont]

Let us know how you get on John