Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

An admission that ZenCart doesn`t do something that AppleCart does real well? Nah, say it isn`t so !!

blondie: "it isn`t so"...

Example of customer rewards using Zen Cart

~Roland

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Great example Roland!

Vince, it sounds like you take very good care of your customers!  And that was a good idea Bert.  Sites that include shipping might have wanted to do that before those postal rates went up! 

I don`t believe anyone is in an adversarial position against AppleCart, so I guess I don`t understand the sense of belligerence in blondieblue`s posts. That being said, we`re still looking for a shopping cart and have AppleCart as a candidate.

We`ve been adding notes of features to a little database record so we`ll know what to ask about when it`s time.

As for the idea of "rewards," I didn`t come up with this as a unique, never-before-heard-of concept! It`s just another idea, based on talking with folks here on SuN. I hadn`t seen it yet in our discussions, and thought I`d add it to the mix.

Vince, I think you offer more than only decorative flowers, right? It`s more about how many purchases overall the customer would make. At yours and our stage, we can still afford to monitor every customer personally. But as the companies grow, with orders increasing, that`ll be harder to do. So having a reward system and a "surprise" gift would be a great thing to have in the shopping cart software.

I`m assuming one might simply enter the data for the gift item and set the parameters in the cart-ware, then the cart would automatically generate the pick list for the order.

Of course there are lots of ways to offer incentives and care for repeating customers. But so far, I don`t believe I`ve seen in my own experience the idea of the "surprise" gift. Not that I`ve shopped every e-commerce site in the world. :-)

CraigL, simply give Spads.com a call at 303-697-1019  ------ Vince Creazzo will gladly answer ALL your questions about "Discount Programs", the use of the AppleCart Shopping Cart and Data Base Management System, and ALL the resources that Spads.com offers.

Also feel free to ask TJ Graff of GoTruckStop.com anything you want also. I believe he can be reached at 480-544-4671.

Beth Downey (Showboxers) of BoxerHaus.com can be reached at admin@boxerhaus.com .

Now, how`s that for giving you hard resources and actual web sites that can give you actual actual real life experiences using AppleCart and the resources of Spads.com.?

If that`s an adverserial attitude - than I just don`t know what to do !! (But I will challenge the concept of "group think" that seems to occur here at SuN sometimes.)

Craig, the key difference between what you describe and these rewards programs is the element of surprise. In each of the examples given the customer would  know in advance to expect the reward.

To implement a surprise reward like you describe would require some custom coding but would not be difficult to implement. You would need a shopping cart with an online database of customer orders that could be queried when the customer logs in. If their purchase pattern meets the reward criteria you would display a message telling them about the special offer. To accomplish this you would need a system that was designed and written to be extensible. 

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Steve, that`s what I was thinking. I understand databases, but don`t care to learn about online coding (e.g., Javascript, etc.). But my thinking is that if you can do something offline or on an internal corporate network, you probably can do it online using one or another of these "newfangled gizmos" for Web programming.

:-) So you`re right...the surprise element is what attracted me. I have no idea how hard it would be to implement...just had the thought and figured I`d toss it out there.