Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

[gjt]

Ability to designate sale prices...

...and display both the sale price and the regular and/or MSRP on category and product pages.

I'm surprised I haven't seen this one yet. I realize there are already ways to do this, but they are somewhat convoluted and sometimes lacking in flexibility.

Suggestion:
Add a "sale price" field below the price and cost fields in the Product tab. If left blank, this field is ignored. If a sale price is specified it supersedes the regular price field and is used by the cart as the price. Both prices are displayed (or better yet, you have the option to display both prices if you like) with a strike through on the higher price (or the option to do so).

I can even see the need for MSRP Price, Our Price and Sale Price fields, but I don't want to get too greedy...

Why this is needed:
Without the Product Template Manager module there seems to be no way to label prices as, for example, "Our Price:" for non-sale items and "Sale Price:" for sale items using the method from the Miva Tips N’ Tricks page (essentially putting the sale price in the standard price field, creating a custom product field for the higher price and entering the higher price there, and then using SMT to display both prices in a template). With only one product template, whatever price is to be used by the cart, whether a sale price or regular price, would have to share a common label which most merchants would probably decide has to be "Our Price:"

And even with the Product Template Manager, which would allow you to create a template just to display a "Sale Price:" label, you’d have to undergo the extra step of assigning sale products to a "sale" product template. All this in addition to having to add the higher price as a custom product field no matter what method you use. That’s a fair amount of work just to display both the MSRP price and a sale price and would obviously be problematic if you had lots of stuff on sale.

Most everyone who uses Miva has sales from time to time. This would make things much easier, especially since sales prices could then theoretically be importable.

[William Davis]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Display a warning message after performing category/products/attributes, etc... Miva import, to the effect that if you are using a third-party search module, you might need to manually update/rebuild search module databases.

[photodon]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

One other productivity idea.
"Duplicate this product button"

All information stays the same except you would need to change the product code.

=======
Ok one more:
It would be nice if someone could list the Dream Features already suggested so someone like me would not need to read 26 pages of forum to see if my idea has already been listed.

Thanks Don

[ktrumble]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

I'd like the ability while I'm in admin on a tab of a product page to do a search for a new product from that page. Then when I click "Edit" I go to same tab as I was on before.

Now I have to go back to the Products admin page, enter my search then edit and go to the tab (so often the same tab as before) then make the change to the product info.

I often spend as much time clicking about as I do making the changes now.

[RayYates]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

I'd like the ability while I'm in admin on a tab of a product page to do a search for a new product from that page. . . I often spend as much time clicking about as I do making the changes now.

I completely agree. I often open links in a new tab, to get more screen space. If we can’t get a search box then, at the very least, the Product(s) tab (that is with an s, not the product tab) should stay visable. That would at least get you back to the search.

The same is true for the Categorie(s) tab, Page(s) tab, the Attribute Template(s) tab. If we can't get a search on the screen, at least don't hide the tab that gets us back to it.

In general, every left column link that ends with a plural "s" (e.g. Groups, etc.) displays a tab with the same name on the right. Just keep that tab visible while editing a single item. (e.g. Group)

[papi34]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

When working on templates, it's great to be able to Save Your Work and Revert to an Earlier/Later Version if need be.

However it would be nice to thin the herd and disgard select Version roll-back entries which I'll never re-use.

Right now the only option is to clear history - but that wipes out everything but the original and latest.

It'd also be nice to have the system include a time/date stamp automatically even when a description of the change is entered.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Some way to control what casual admin users can actually insert into custom fields. Being able to define a regular expresion for what is allowable in a custom field would be AWESOME!

For example, I allow an employee to update product information. That employee has to enter info such as if the product has gift packaging or not. The data that should be entered is a 0 or 1. Not the words yes, plastic wrapped, no, pretty pink box with blue ribbon. That breaks the code big time.

We also use the custom fields as flags to display things like new icons, best seller icons, etc. But an hourly worker just doesn't care about data entry like me. So, limiting what is allowable is desireable.


In some fields we require only number no alpha. I want it so that even data entry on the admin side can be controlled.

[chucklasker-BANNNED]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Some way to control what casual admin users can actually insert into custom fields. Being able to define a regular expresion for what is allowable in a custom field would be AWESOME!

I have been asked this question, too. What would be great would be for the custom field to be able to be set like attributes, selecting either text field, drop down, radio buttons, check box or text area. This way data entry could be limited, easier and consistent.

[RayYates]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

K, By Regular Expression, do you mean client side JavaScript expression to qualify characters as you type or do you *nix expression where values are qualifed server side.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

client side wouldn't be ideal. there is too much room for bugs due to browser implementation to creep in.
But If that's the only way it could work, then I would want it.

I want to be able to set allowable characters for the fields. regular expressions would be even better. that way I can define explicitly what is allowable. Maybe also be able to have a plain text definition of what it is to display on the category and product admin extra fields screens.

It could be simple lists like

[yes|no]
[1|0]
[true|false]
[plastic|paper|cardboard|ceramic|wood|melamine|acrylic]
a-zA-Z
0-1

or a little fancier like

*.(jpg|jpeg|gif)
a-zA-Z0-1-_

or yet fancier like

\b[A-Z0-9._%-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b
[a-z0-9-_]+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png)

[netblazon]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Some way when viewing or after adding a module, for a store owner to see what the primary feature type is. One of our clients is frustrated that she has to go in search of where the actual admin screen is.

[tbogus]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

It'd be nice if there was a link that would take you to the admin area, once it's installed -- this has been a common frustration when installing modules for me as well because it often requires another step to find where the developer put the instructions in their documentation.

Plus I've seen newbies get confused and 'fret' when not able to find where to change the actual settings.

I've always thought of something much like wordpress would be good where you install the 'plugin' and once it's activated there's a direct link to the settings and the learning curve is decreased....

tim

Some way when viewing or after adding a module, for a store owner to see what the primary feature type is. One of our clients is frustrated that she has to go in search of where the actual admin screen is.

[gjt]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Don't think this has been mentioned...

On all Edit Product: screens (i.e. for all the tabs Product, Images, Related Products etc.) please display (and make selectable) the product code in addition to the product name, which is already displayed.

In some stores with large numbers of products often product names are identical (and even if they are not this feature would still be helpful in many ways). For example, my product image filenames match the product codes. Having product codes displayed and available for selection would save a lot of back and forth.

[classiccutlery]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Ability to add dimensions to products so postage could be calculated on oversized packages.

[classiccutlery]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

One more thing. The ability to select "sell similar" when posting product. On eBay, when building listings, you can build one, save it and then select "sell similar", make a few changes and have another listing. I'm hoping there are other users out there that would find this a useful addition to Miva.