Going on Holiday - Actinic Settings?

[i-sounds]

Hello,

My partner and I run our website together and we are going on a much needed holiday in a couple of weeks. We still want to be able to take orders and leave the site visible (for crawlers, google, etc), but we want to have some kind of message come up telling the buyer that there will be delay in processing their order as we are closed for a week. Not ideal to say the least, but we need a break!

Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to implement this message into Actinic? I seem to remember seeing a pop up box come up on one Actinic site that offered me a brochure. I am not sure if this was on all pages though or not? However, perhaps Google would index this mesage.

I suppose it would make more sense if this could come up at checkout stage as it would avoid Google indexing the fact we are on holiday and our CGI is blocked in the robots.txt. If anyone has any ideas then please let me know. Hope you are all enjoying the much lovely sunshine!

Best wishes,

Jan (i-Sounds)

[Mike Hughes]

I usually put a rolling marquee message in red on each product and checkout page just above the content. I'd rather let customers know before they try and place an order just to avoid them getting frustrated.

If you want to you can always just put the message on the checkout pages.

In terms of the business impact. I find that sales drop to about half their normal level and that this also applies to the first week back. After that things are pretty much normal.

Mike

[i-sounds]

How do you add a note to the checkout?

Hi Mike,

Thanks for getting back to me. I think we will probably put it on the checkout pages. I realise this may be frustrating for the buyer, but we have spent 9 months working hard to get decent rankings and traffic, so it makes sense not to disrupt this.

Do you have any idea how we can do this in Actinic? Is there somewhere in the software that we can add a checkout message? Or is this a customization thing? Thanks again for your advice Mike. Look forward to hearing from you,

Best wishes,

Jan (i-Sounds)

[leehack]

Why do you think that a 'we are on holiday message' is going to trash any search engine traffic? Its the products they come and search for not your holiday messages and when they click a link, they go to the current page not the cached one in the google index.

Undoubtedly IMO you should be clearly stating the fact that you are on holiday on your home page. Be honest and reduce the hassle and pissed-off factor for your users. This should also be cascaded onto the important pages.

In fact to make things easier why not have a second logo with the fact mentioned, you haven't got to faff around messing templates up then if you are unsure what you are doing. Home page, section pages, T&C's and checkout pages mandatory IMO.

Cut the stress, relax go and holiday and come back refreshed. SEO does not hinge on whether you have a holiday message or not.

[Mike Hughes]

It's a customisation thing. If you edit the primary template you use for your checkout pages (Act_PrimaryCheckout.html ?) then you should find someplace to put it. I usually put mine above this block of netquotevars (in V6 - V7 should be similar). Not immediately above, but in some space where it will display correctly.

NETQUOTEVAR:HEADER
NETQUOTEVAR:FORMBEGIN
<a name="top"><input type=HIDDEN name=RANDOM value="NETQUOTEVAR:RANDOM"></a>
NETQUOTEVAR:HIDDENFIELDS
NETQUOTEVAR:BULK
NETQUOTEVAR:FORMEND
NETQUOTEVAR:FOOTER

Looking at my code I can see that I don't use the marquee any more. Just some text in red. (so no flaming please from those who dislike marquees)

And Lee is right. The search engines couldn't care less about it, so why not be up front with your customers. Trying to hide things from them is the easiest way to destroy any credibility you have.


Mike

PPS. Once you've done this the first time. Just put comment tags around the message rather than delete it so it's all ready to go the next time you need it.

[i-sounds]

Thanks for the Advice!

Why do you think that a 'we are on holiday message' is going to trash any search engine traffic? Its the products they come and search for not your holiday messages and when they click a link, they go to the current page not the cached one in the google index.

Thanks for this. I was going to add a note to the homepage anyway, but we are well indexed for all of our product pages and section pages, so not everyone who buys visits the homepage. The last thing we would ever do is mislead our customers... Our logo is not big enough to include the amount of text we need to put in, as we also sell DD's, which should still go through fine. So I will see if I can get a holiday setting into the product pages and checkout pages, as well as the homepage...

Mike... Thanks for the advice and the code. That is really helpful. I will backup the Act_PrimaryCheckout, then try and customize it (in the early hours when we are quiet) to see if it works. I am very surprised Actinic does not have an integrated way to do this though. Even eBay has holiday settings. Anyway, thanks again for both of your help. I will let you know how it goes! Thanks again!

Best wishes,

Jan (i-Sounds)

[bowstock]

In my opinion its better to say 'We are performing a stock-take' or ' Due to temporary staff shortages' rather than letting the world know you are not on your premises - especially if you have a postal address on your site.

[TraceyHand]

I agree, Steve. That's what we do.

[acompton]

This year, that's what I did. I was able to get away with saying we were affected by flooding and postal chaos (which was true).

[Moxey]

We normally add a section to our homepage and advise that the site is having maintanence, though orders can still be placed. We also edit our automatic email to back this up, so customers receive further confirmation that orders will be delayed. We never say that we are "away."

David

www.diecastdevon.co.uk

The site for Obsolete, Discontinued and New Release Diecast Models.
Promotional Model Trucks with Your Logo.

[jont]

Another option, depending on your page layout, is to incorporate a line of text above the standard add to cart button to advise away, delay etc. A client has just done this very thing to great effect (and it is only the one item to upload not all the pages)

[leehack]

If i ever see these different messages, i read them all as saying 'we are on holiday'. They remind me of the timers you used to buy for lamps, so they came on at 19:30 each night without fail, you could stand outside and watch it happen. Old hat, outdated and not fooling many, if at all any IMO.

Honesty at all times for me, if someone wants your stuff, it will make very little difference whether you are on holiday or not.

[bowstock]

It makes a difference to us Lee, we take our Rottweiler on holiday with us!
Burglaries in our street - only one, the house without a dog.

[leehack]

At last, a use for dogs.

[TraceyHand]

At last, a use for dogs.

says he...who has cats!