ModYourCar.com.au - heaps more changes...

[♥MYC267 0]

Hi all

 

Our OSC site has bee running for a few months now and it is doing very very well! We currently have about 2600 products online...

 

We have made a heap of changes over the last couple of months... too many to mention. Tell me what you think...

 

* Note: The 'powered by Oscommerce" exists in the footer.

 

Check it out at http://www.modyourcar.com.au/

 

PLEASE BE AWARE THIS IS A LIVE SITE... THERE'S NO NEED TO CREATE A PROFILE IF YOU DON'T INTENT ON ACTUALLY BUY ANYTHING.

 

 

 

*Edit* - the original 'development' thread can be found here

[jodo 0]

Great functionality! Looks good too.

 

I'm new to osc and I don't always recognize the features that are stock and those that are contributions. It would be great (for me) if you would list the contributions you are using. I do recognize shipping in cart but what else should see?

[cdi-buy.com 0]

It's not hard to tell stock from mods if you just LOOK at the demo store at http://www.oscommerce.com/shops/demonstration

[AXM 0]

Dan,

Great job on your website. I often referred to your website as a benchmark of what mine should attempt to attain. As so far from what I have seen you have the best automotive themed OSC site. *THUMBS UP*

 

But then again mine is still under the knife. B)

 

Hey this could be a good thing. Since we are on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean and we won't compete over the same customers, competition like this could be beneficial in improving our site design and expanding the capabilities of what one could do with OSC??? Just a thought.

 

Just be easy on me though. I've only fooled around with OSC and PHP for less than 2 months now.

[Mibble 0]

you have made many improvements.

 

the thing i found hard to see is the 'NEW' . . i know what it says from so much work on numerous sites but others may not

[bluepony 0]

You should block some of your folders from being indexed. For example: http://www.modyourcar.com.au/images. It helps to prevent someone from snooping around or downloading files.

 

You can use .htaccess with the 'Options -Indexes' option. Or just create a empty file named index.html in that folder.

[♥MYC267 0]

AXM - I appreciate your comments. I have worked extremely hard on the site, you wouldn't beleive how many mods have been donem in fact there's way too many to list. Most of what I do is custom as well. Some mods I have pulled from the contributions but most didn't work well enough. I like a bullet proof site in every single way. My admin area has also been majorly changed with plenty of custom mods, mostly around reporting and making it easier to process orders. With on average 4-5 orders a day it can get too difficult to process them all with the default functionalist that OSC provides.

 

There's one thing you can't see from the site which is a great feature and they are shoplets. I have built an entire shoplets feature which allows webmasters to display shoplets on their site which display products or banners. At the moment I am able to track click throughs from sites and shoplets. I am about to take it to the next step and that is pulling reports that show me ROI (Return on Investment). Once I get that I will be able to fine tune my advertising and online promotion.

 

There's plenty more to come as well!!!

 

 

Mibble - Sorry I know it's hard to see what the NEW features are but to be honest there are so many it's impossible to list them all. In fact I couldn't even list them to be honest.

 

 

 

Bluepony - Mate I didn't even pick that up! Well done! I am very security conscious I can't beleive that one slipped past me! I'll fix that ASAP!!

 

 

 

Keep the feedback rolling in people it's great!

[AXM 0]

Yup great job Dan. I really admire some of your modifications. Hmm...good idea about the shoplets. It would be a nice challenge to see which does better: a good animated GIF/flash banner or actually seeing some products...hmm. Thanks for the idea...that'll be this week's project. ;)

 

About your admin side. I too did a decent amount of customization on the admin side but only on the product/category add/modification group. This is my first e-commerce site so I'm not aware of potential difficulties OSC might have on the order handling side...hmm

 

Thanks a lot Dan. Now I'm gonna have a couple more sleepless nights trying to think of what situations might occur. :P

 

If you have any hints they'll be greatly appreciated. I'm am not yet blessed with a site with 3-4 orders a day *crossing fingers*.

 

One quick question...does having the MSRP(List) price help or harm you? I've been contemplating the benefit of it. I have added the admin and database fields for it and added to the product info page, but then decided to take it off. I know in our industry the list prices are usually over inflated and some product lines usually sell for at or only slightly under MSRP (i.e. Sparco, Mugen, etc.). Also using the php math functions you can hide the MSRP if the difference is less than say 5% or $25 or whatever. I just haven't seen a lot of sites with the MSRP on it. And for me personally I only use it as business research to compare what the competitors giving off.

[AXM 0]

Ok I'm getting curious now. I have a couple more questions for you if you don't mind. This might help other OSC site operators cause I'm going to be asking about some of the custom touches you did. If I'm getting too nosy just ignore me :D .

 

How many of your users utilize your engine code search feature? The only guys I can think of using that would be the hardcore JDM guys and the general public has no idea of what engine code they have let alone their chassis number or even trim (unless it was badged on the back of the car).

 

Is the Shipping Estimate just a modified version of the checkout_shipping page? Looks like its a heavily modified one but still based on it.

 

And can you give us OSC newbies a little clue into what admin modifications might be beneficial for websites that have a fair amount of volume like yours? Purdy please :rolleyes:

[Chance 6]

I think the engine code search is the best thing since sliced bread. I am not a hardcore engine mechanic, but I know what engine is in *my* car.

[AdamPGT 0]

Not bad, but I've got my resolution at 1200 x 1024 and the home page seems a bit cluttered, there's too much happening on one page. Maybe wanna trim some of it. :shrug:

 

--Adam

[♥MYC267 0]

Hi guys, I only just saw your comments!! I will post a good reply here for you in the next couple of days.

 

I have made more changes so check out the site for the latest!

 

www.modyourcar.com.au

[♥MYC267 0]

First things first... I have added the POWERED BY OSCOMMERCE back on the site!! Sorry O took it down but I didn't realsie people still wanted to talk about it!

 

Now...

 

 

AXM - RRP Prices

I decided initially to show the retail prices of products (where possible)

so the customer can see how much they are saving. To be honest I wouldn't know for sure if it had a positive or negative influence over the buying decision of the customer but if they can see what they are saving they know the deal they are getting. Maybe for products with a small discount it's not worth showing the RRP, so for example I could set it up so it only shows if our price is at least 5% lower than the RRP. Either way I am happy the way this is for now and it's a nice feature.

 

 

AXM - "If you have any hints they'll be greatly appreciated. I'm am not yet blessed with a site with 3-4 orders a day *crossing fingers*."

Work on it, things don't happen with luck. I'll be straight, I see lots of

OSC shops on here for review but 99% of them in my opinion won't go

anywhere. They just lack a unique and customer-centric user experience. The site neesd to sell and provide features relevant to the subject area.

 

On top of that there is the marketing. We invest heavily in online marketing and offline marketing and I have built my own tracking tools into OSC to allow me to track impressions and click throughs of our adverts on other sites. It also gives me an ROI so I can determine which adverts are best bang for buck etc...

 

The way I see it and the way I have built our site and the process is that

3-4 orders a day is small. I want to grow to 10 orders a day or more.

 

 

AXM - "How many of your users utilize your engine code search feature? The only guys I can think of using that would be the hardcore JDM guys and the general public has no idea of what engine code they have let alone their chassis number or even trim (unless it was badged on the back of the car)."

Lot's use our advanced search features. A lot of car modifiers know what engine is in their car and it helps them find the parts we have available specifically for their engine. Instead of having to sift through nearly 3,000 products they can search for just those products that are for their engine. We also categorise each product unto universal or non-universal and for every non-universal product we assign it a set of car year/make/models. We call it our Car Fitting Guide and you will see it in action on every product page. For example check out this page - http://www.modyourcar.com.au/product_info....roducts_id=2475

 

You will see at the top the Fitting Guide says 'Toyota Soarer'. Basically meaning the product is for that car.

 

This categorisation of the products allows us to push products proactively on the site because we know what cars each customer has as their car details are stored on their profile. We have various techniques for this.

 

 

 

Is the Shipping Estimate just a modified version of the checkout_shipping page? Looks like its a heavily modified one but still based on it.

I utilised the shipping calculator but it had so many bugs I had to overhaul it to make it work but now it works perfectly! ;) It allows guests to the site determine what the shipping will cost them.

 

 

 

And can you give us OSC newbies a little clue into what admin modifications might be beneficial for websites that have a fair amount of volume like yours? Purdy please

Admin features ay... well there's heaps. All I can say is make sure you are setup to handle heaps of orders. I have created a number of tools on my admin to allow me to process orders efficiently. I have added a heap of other mods that go hand in hand with the new features like shoplets and ROI tracking, car fitting guide, cross selling and more.

 

 

 

 

Phew.... I'll take a breathe now.

[♥MYC267 0]

Hi all

 

I thought I would share with you all some of our latest enhancements!

 

THIS IS A LIVE SITE SO PLEASE DO NOT PROCESS ORDERS

 

Enhancements (from what I remember) include:

 

1) Gift Vouchers / Discount Coupons

2) X-Sell products on Shopping Cart screen

3) International ordering

4) Enhanced category pages with sites of interest and category descriptions

5) Enhancements to ADMIN which unfortunately you can't see (sorry)

6) .... plenty more.

 

 

I have customised ModYourCar so much I honestly couldn't tell you what's been done over a stock shop so for those looking to check out a robust site that works then check out ModYourCar.

 

All the enhancements I do are thoroughly tested and modified to integrate with the site seamlessly.

 

Any feedback or questions are welcomed.... enjoy.

 

 

CLICK HERE to check out ModYourCar.com

[niknakgroup 0]

OK - first off, is this an e-commerce store, or just a place to chuck loads of irrelevant ads? I mean, HOW many partners, baneers and other junk can you cram onto a homepage? As soon as I arrived at this store, I wanted to leave, and I dont mean earning you affiliate money either!

 

The only other thing I would say is that your reviews look decidedly dodgy - I couldn't find ANY that weren't 5 stars - out of 118 reviews, surely one of them would have been knocked down at least 1 star??? And also the comments included things like "so why not add one to your order today" which makes it very much seem like these are self penned reviews.....?

 

Otherwise, nice site, good layout, easy to use etc. etc.

 

Oh, one other thing - the reviews infobox - if the product has only a small image, it gets blown up and looks like crud in this infobox ( I think a neon light strip was the one I saw)

[Teun van Wely 0]

I just had a quick look: Your footer isn't centered in firefox

[♥MYC267 0]

There's only two partners on the site.... there's ONE bannner ad on the main site. I don't really see that as a big issue. There all towards the bottom of the site as well.

 

With regards to the reviews... they were written by customers, I can't help what people write! There are actually quite a few that are not 5 star.

 

I'hh take a look at that review infobox.... I know EXACTLY what you mean there. Maybe i will pull the image from it. IN f act nope I'll just fix that image (make it wider with some blank space).

 

Footer is fixed. Don't you just hate how IE and Mozilla display differently, makes it almost impossible but that's life I guess. Even my <UL> is displaying with a huge indent whereas in IF it doesn't due to the CSS.

 

Cheers for the feedback.

[♥MYC267 0]

I am looking for the review that you say says "so why not add one to your order today"... can't find it' Which one is it?

 

I am having a good look through them now which I do anyway when they are submitted and they are very good, I don't really see what your problem is with the reviews. At least we have reviews... most sites I see don't have any or they are very poor.

 

If you can point out any that you say look self penned let me know I'll fix them up.

[BlackSheep 0]

Man that is so nice, can you tell me who helped you style it or how you learned? I'm building a similar site and mines so crap compared to that :( Any help would be great.

[♥MYC267 0]

I designed and built the site from the stock osC design. I have experience with this sort of thing.

 

The best thing to do is start with something then build on it. Choose colour scheme first then run with it.

[BlackSheep 0]

I designed and built the site from the stock osC design. I have experience with this sort of thing.

 

The best thing to do is start with something then build on it. Choose colour scheme first then run with it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Man I just don't understand how to adjust even simple things, I'm a king at vBulletin and horrible at this haha.

[BlackSheep 0]

If you wouldn't mind, how did you style this? You made the top parts of your category the color you wanted and you took away the little arrows next to each link, like this:

 

[♥MYC267 0]

Go to /includes/boxes/categories.php and make changes there. If you can make changes to vBulleting you should be able to do this. It just requires some time and patience to learn how osC works.

[♥MYC267 0]

I have seen quite a few people come over from OSC to view the site but not much feedback.... I guess then I'll take that as a good thing!

[Pooky 0]

It looks cool, if only I could do something like that for my shop.

 

Ho hum, might get somewhere in the end.