Mod ideas for you developers... Options

[Bits4Vits]

Consantly thinking of improvements to my store - www.bits4vits.co.uk - and have a wishlist, and thought I'd post it here to see if any of the develooers in the community wanted to develop them for sale? Not as one-offs for me, but as commercially available mods I mean?...

1. Payment Surcharges

I've searched all the modder's stores I can find for this solution, but can't find it available anywhere... The idea being to have a backoffice screen where surcharges can be set as a fixed fee or a percentage of the total sale, for each of the payment methods available. So that, for instance, we store owners could charge a fixed fee for international transfers (NatWest charge me £7.50 for instance) or a 2% charge for using Paypal, etc...

And then a warning message pops up on the store front when a customer selects that payment method.

2. Auction Items

With eBay now charging 10% as a final value fee, I and most other store owners must be loathe to use eBay, but still on occassions want to get the best price we can for an item... so I thought that it would be fairly easier for you developers to have an extra table in the database for bids for a specific item, and an end date for the auction, so that the higgest bidder wins...?

3. Offers

Again, taking a bit of an inspiration from eBay... Would it be possile to have an offer button, whereby a potential customer could offer the store owner a price for a given item, and the store owner could then accept or decline the offer. The button could be set to only appear on certain items, where the store owner thought they were slowlines and may be open to an offer to get rid of the stock...?

just a few thouhts that I thought we'd like as store owners, and you developers may like to pickup on?

Dave, Bits4Vits

This post has been edited by Bits4Vits: Jan 14 2012, 02:07 PM

[www_UKwins_co_uk]

Consantly thinking of improvements to my store - www.bits4vits.co.uk - and have a wishlist, and thought I'd post it here to see if any of the develooers in the community wanted to develop them for sale? Not as one-offs for me, but as commercially available mods I mean?...

1. Payment Surcharges

I've searched all the modder's stores I can find for this solution, but can't find it available anywhere... The idea being to have a backoffice screen where surcharges can be set as a fixed fee or a percentage of the total sale, for each of the payment methods available. So that, for instance, we store owners could charge a fixed fee for international transfers (NatWest charge me £7.50 for instance) or a 2% charge for using Paypal, etc...

And then a warning message pops up on the store front when a customer selects that payment method.

2. Auction Items

With eBay now charging 10% as a final value fee, I and most other store owners must be loathe to use eBay, but still on occassions want to get the best price we can for an item... so I thought that it would be fairly easier for you developers to have an extra table in the database for bids for a specific item, and an end date for the auction, so that the higgest bidder wins...?

3. Offers

Again, taking a bit of an inspiration from eBay... Would it be possile to have an offer button, whereby a potential customer could offer the store owner a price for a given item, and the store owner could then accept or decline the offer. The button could be set to only appear on certain items, where the store owner thought they were slowlines and may be open to an offer to get rid of the stock...?

just a few thouhts that I thought we'd like as store owners, and you developers may like to pickup on?

Dave, Bits4Vits

I'd be interested in all three of those too!!

[Bits4Vits]

Hmmm, very little response, especially from the modders

I'm still particularly interested in the Payment Surcharge Mod.

Let me explain.

Take a months sales, so in November I sold £14,273.18 of 4x4 parts through my store.

This was broken up as -

WorldPay = £7,158.72
Paypal = £6,971.24
Transfers = £ 143.22

Now, look at the processing fees paid that month -

WorldPay = £ 117.29 made up of £19.95 WorldPay Service Charge and £97.34 through NatWest Streamline, i.e. so much per debit card, and a percentage of credit cards
Paypal = £ 264.46 as it's 3.4% Merchant Rate (from Memory)
Transfers = £ 15.00 as NatWest charge me £7.50 per international transfer received... ouch!

So, I hope this goes to show the disproportionate fees us store owners are paying, hence why I'd like to charge a fixed fee for an international bank transfer, and a percentage (2%?) to re-coup some of the Paypal Fees...

I know there's the age-old argument that I should increase my prices if I don't think I'm making enough to cover my payment processing fees, I am of course, BUT it's disproportionate and I'd like to charge to cover it, and discourage customers from paying by Paypal... And not penalise customers paying through WorldPay by increasing prices to cover (Paypal's) transaction fees...

Surely there's a marketable mod lurking here?

I'd hoped more store owners would have expressed an interest...?

Dave, Bits4Vits

[dannio]

Hi,

I am currently looking into all of these mods, writing them into packages.

I am especially interested in the auction mod personally. Ill be starting work over the weekend so drop me a line with any feature/settings ideas.

[MarksCarts]

First thing: These are some good mod ideas, especially the auction mod and the "make an offer" mod. Of the two, the "make an offer" would be least difficult and a nice mod for many stores, even ones with no interest in auctions.

Second: Just go ahead and drop PayPal if you are that disenchanted with their fees.

I know there's the age-old argument that I should increase my prices if I don't think I'm making enough to cover my payment processing fees, I am of course, BUT it's disproportionate and I'd like to charge to cover it, and discourage customers from paying by Paypal

Anyway, if you do this you will probably lose the PayPal gateway in the end. I believe this type of practice is strictly forbidden by PayPal TOS, and it will take only one PayPal user to lodge a complaint for PayPal to investigate your store. You could lose your ability to offer PayPal gateway. You should think about this carefully, and check the TOS on your other gateway providers as well.

[Bits4Vits]

Nice to see some positive comments on these ideas...

As far as Paypal are concerned, I think I/we just have to live with it... I did look at a simple idea with a developer of just multiplying the order total by 1.02 before it got sent through the Paypal gateway - very much like Parcel2Go do (suppose they are big enough to "stand up to" Paypal?) - so that the customer would pay a 2% surcharge on their order. But, after much deliberation and with advice from the developer, I chose to just swallow the Paypal charges...

It does seem a bit steep when compared to other card processing methods though, but it (Paypal) does seem a popular choice with shoppers due to it's customer protection features.

I am now on the Paypal Panel and get sent regular e-questionares, so I hope to have a moan about their high percentages that way...

[Dirty Butter]

I use PayPal exclusively, and I'd rather not use them, either. BUT, as a customer online I'm far more likely to spend my money on a site I'm not familiar with if I can pay with PayPal - not so much for so-called buyer protection they offer - but because I know the website will not have access to my credit card number. I've backed out of several carts while doing Christmas shopping on unfamiliar sites for just that reason.

[Bits4Vits]

Yes, they are a "necessary evil"

Dave

[dannio]

Quick update on the surcharges mod....should have it packaged up and ready for sale in the next couple of days!

Also....got the base of the auction mod written and in the process ofolishing off as we speak!

Watch this space

[Bits4Vits]

Quick update on the surcharges mod....should have it packaged up and ready for sale in the next couple of days!

Also....got the base of the auction mod written and in the process ofolishing off as we speak!

Watch this space

Look forward to seeing them!

Dave