Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Since we`re just getting into automated pricing and shopping, I thought I`d bring this up. It seems "obvious," like a lotta things, but it turns out it`s not so obvious. In fact, due to the nature of our product, we`re discovering it`s not so easy to just jump into a any ol` shopping cart.

Think about how often you walk into a brick-and-mortar store to buy something, like candy. You walk around and pick up whatever looks good. That`s one method. Or, you go to the counter person and say, "I`d like two of those...yah, the ones on the second shelf...no not that one...one over, to your left...no, your other left. Yah, two of those."

A computer is one of the absolutely dumbest possible things you can have, other than maybe a rock. It can`t do anything at all unless someone explains exactly, and that means *exactly* what to do, step by step, first one then another. Each step has to follow the previous step or it gets confused.

In the first method above, looking around, how would you do that online? You have to have images for each and every item in your store. Each image has a unit price, and the shopping cart has to calculate.....what? The quantity. Then there`s shipping. Do you know how much 1 piece of candy weighs? What if the shopping cart won`t handle anything under one pound?

But worse, suppose you have an item like in the second example, where there are all sorts of questions involved. We offer flags--26 of them, where any number can be chosen, in any order, for different basic product lines. So you can have flags on a horizontal rope, a window curtain, or a vertical ladder. Same flags, different configurations.

What we`re finding is that because of shopping cart technology, we had to go back and take A Real Serious Look (ARSL) at our pricing structure.

It seems easy, when you`re talking with someone, to say, "Well, on your 1 horiztonal and 1 vertical banner, what do you want them each to say?" Then use Brain Power (BP) to *figure out* how to place the order, ship it, and charge for it.

Not so easy to capture when you`re dealing with a dumb computer. We originally had a base rate of $30 for a vertical banner, then $9/ea for additional flags. Reason being, it costs more to make the vertical ladder. Seems reasonable, right? Except for one thing:

The flags are all the same. So how come 1 flag is $9, and another of exactly the same flag is $7? The computer sure as hell couldn`t figure it out. So we had to go back and figure out a way to charge the same flag price, and do something different for the "base rate."

Have you really examined your pricing structure on a per-unit basis? What about volume pricing? Is there anything where if you order This, you MUST order That?

That`s an interesting way to put it, but you have to ask yourself. . . did the customer actually use a physical shopping cart? Could a customer go into a large brick and mortar store and buy your flag system? How would all the SKUs work with this? It may be that you`re asking a virtual shopping cart to do something that a physical shopping cart could never do. How exciting.
Virtual shopping carts are designed to mimic the world of BIG shopping, where everything is packaged with a nice SKU#. You wheel it to the check-out and a machine goes "beep". You`ve opened a store that is not playing by the rules.

That`s actually my point, about "did they use the actual shopping cart." In the candy store example, they went to the shelf or bin, extracted a piece or pieces (units) based on visuals.

An online "shopping cart" isn`t actually a cart like you`d find at a supermarket. It`s a database system, where your pick list can be by check-box, or by vision. THAT`s what I realized, suddenly.

Although the computer has no way at all to know it, YOU, the living human being, when you go someplace like Amazon, can pick a book simply by looking at its cover, and recognizing it from seeing it at a friend`s house.

Our product has 26 letters, but they can be configured in many different ways. We could put a SKU on just each flag, but that won`t help us when it comes to the orientation of a banner, or whether it`ll be a rope one or used as window dressing.

We could also put a SKU on every possible configuration, but that would leave the person with a pile of junk to wade through.

What I saw is that we`re actually building a "reverse" shopping cart. You know ahead of time what your banner will say. From there, you go backwards, and extract each flag, one at a time, put it into its bin (a variable), and the computer counts the flag, and where you put it. When your "shopping cart" is empty, then you know how much each item cost, and what the total will be.

Odd...I know. But it really has me pondering the mechanics of human price calculations, and how to translate that to machine understanding.

Craig, why not have a single type item ... with a drop-down for the different configurations. Then simply have the customer type in an "input Box" exactly what the banner is to say?

When the customer places it in the "Shopping Cart" and processes the order you get a copy of the entire order with the banner info and message ... all in the order.

Just follow this to see what I mean ...

http://www.boxerhaus.com/cgi-bin/acart/apple-search.pl?& id=1159909925&prodcodes=BH014cc

Now it opens up the possibilities for a variety of "Customized Messages" ...

 

 

Blondieblue, This is a good idea, but Carig has to charge more for each letter that is typed.

Craig, What if you break away from the idea that you are selling letters (flags) and think of it as selling different sized banners. Is it really important for the computer to know instantly that the banner "BEER" has two Es in it and now your stock is down by 2 Es?

What happens if you set up a cart that has

• banner 1 letter $2
• banner 2 letters $4
• banner 3 letters $6
• banner 4 letters $8

The customer clicks on banner 4, It takes you to a page like the link above (boxerhaus). The user then types in "BEER". Then there is an option button for vertical or horizontal, or rush assembly ect, Add $10.  They then press ADD TO CART, and can then start ordering another banner, or check out.

The 2 downsides to this are

• They can type in 5 letters. You can decide to just have faith, or call out the programmers.
• The software is not keeping track of your flag inventory. 

BlondieBlue,
The issue here is that you don`t just choose 1 repeating flag. Each letter is a different flag, and they can come in any quantity, depending on the message. I basically did use your thinking, then had to figure out how to make PrestoSell do it.

Here`s what I came up with so far:
Working order form

There isn`t much error trapping, so someone could order 5 flags, pay for 5 flags, but tell us only 3 letters. For now, with not a lot of orders, we do the error-checking manually, looking over a customer`s order and emailing them what we understand it is they said they want.

Degrees,
Another issue was minimum ordering. We originally THOUGHT we were wanting a minimum of *flags.* Turned out, after working with pricing, that we want a minimm *dollar* amount.

P/S offers volume pricing, where I was able to force the pricing to our minimums. It`s a kludge, but it showed me some of the background issues of working with a full-featured Shopping Cart.

In fact, our original system was to sell banners. But we get orders for ROPE banners that can have 5 flags, or some that have 24 flags. To list each banner, in increments of +1 flag would be cumbersome and redundant.

Then there`s the issue that we can have a Rope banner that can go any length, but also a vertical hanging banner, that has constraints due to wall height (or door height).

We began to see that we have to sell flags. A flag is a flag. They`re mostly all the same, except for casing, and that`s yet another variable. I can trap for the "Banner Type" (1,2, or 3), and based on the variable, assign a casing type. But not in PrestoSell. That`ll require a programmed shopping cart.

wow
Ok, I`m going to shut up now. When I read about wall height limiting the vertical banners i realized this is getting really complicated. Yes, you have to sell flags, not banners.
I`ll be interested to see how this works out. Take Care.

LOL! Nobody has to "shut up." :-D

The reason for this post is that BEFORE we started trying to put SKUs and order forms together, we were using Human Brain Power to casually assign pricing. Little did we know that a human brain is entirely different from a machine computer.

It was only after we started trying to structure our *interpreations* that we began to see just how many of them were involved. So I got curious about how many people sit down and try to build an order form as part of their business plan.