Simple, but apparently Merchant can't do it?

[mikehaas]

It's a simple retail model I want to setup, but after weeks of forum posts here, then discussing it privately with a couple developers and now Miva themselves not calling me back when they said they would (grrrr), I'm starting to think I have to abandon Merchant and either go to another product or write it from scratch. I am willing to pay a developer for providing this, but I can't afford anymore run-around - I NEED A SOLUTION. I suggested Miva to my client, and now starting to look bad for doing it.

But it's so simple...

Using BEER as an example (now that I have everyone's attention :-), imagine you want to offer a "Six Pack". The customer gets to pick each beer (and size bottle) - but they must choose 6 items to go on to checkout. (They can even choose 6 of the same beer.)

Each beer has a different price and weight - the beers selected determine final price and shipping costs. THAT'S IT! IT'S A SIMPLE RETAIL THING.

Of course, in this model, the checkout screen must preserve the "grouping" of the 6 beers. (If the customer deletes one, they must replace it with another and price/weight re-adjusted).

There is apparently no 3rd party module to do this. One Miva partner/developer originally said "no problem", just need to talk to someone else. AFter several days, I called back - said he doesn't think Merchant can be MADE to do it (I hope the good developers here consider that a challenge) - now it's FOUR DAYS since they promised to call me back by end-of-day. Another week shot!

Merchant provides "related items", but it is nothing but a visual list of items, doesn't actually do anything (too bad, it's the perfect hook).

Previous thread is here...
http://extranet.miva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2362
(As you see, I've made the retail model description even simpler, with BEER!)

If anyone here can develop this for me, PLEASE LET'S GET TOGETHER. I really don't want to write a store from scratch.

Mike

[Kent Multer]

Of course it can be done! This one even allows the customer to select a 4-, 9-, 16-, or 32-pack, and it gets the arithmetic right in all cases:

http://www.hmangels.com/cgi-bin/miva...Code=retailbox

I wrote this as a custom project, so it'll probably take some additional work to adapt it to your site.

[d_host]

Mike,

I previously mentioned that this could be done with a bit of Javascript coding, if you were using attributes, and simply enforcing the "6-pack" restriction (6, 12, 18, etc) before the "Add to basket" button would get enabled. If any other quantity was selected, that button could be grayed out.

That part is doable... but, now you've added a lot more complexity to the mix. Not only do you have different pricing on per attribute basis (which can be done), but you also added different weights per bottle (which cannot be done on per-attribute basis in v4, but can be done in v5), and different shipping options depending on 'attributes' (bottles) selected in the process. There's too much here to handle with simple coding, and even a more elaborate custom module would still involve major work to get the different shipping options based on each bottle weight and shipping methods you allow depending on what bottles were selected.

I don't think I've ever seen any other cart that would let you do that, so don't think it's just a limitation of MIVA Merchant. It may sound like a simple model to you, but even my local BevMo store doesn't have as complicated checkout process as this, and this is a retail store without the "shopping cart" limitation. Maybe simplify things a bit, have more generic shipping option for the ENTIRE 6-bottle kit rather than changing the shipping depending on what's in the kit, or move up to MM v5 to get per-attribute weight options which could be used with any shipping modules that use weight-based shipping cost. In v4 you will be limited by not having this option, so you can pretty much forget that. You still won't be able to adjust the shipping options on the fly depending on attribute selection, but if you stick with just "shipping weight", you might be able to do this in v5 with a bit of Javascript. Otherwise, in v4, I'm afraid you are out of luck unless you get a pretty elaborate set of modules written to handle this scenario (yes, I'm guessing this would need more than one module).

[PCINET - Andreas]

Nice job and can be reused for other projects too ;)

[d_host]

Well, I take that back... wasn't aware of your module, Kent. Nice job!

However, will it handle different attribute weights and allow for changing shipping options based on which specific items are selected on a page? In the example you have you pretty much select the number of items and total weight up-front, which is a little different from what Mike described..........

[PCINET - Andreas]

The weight shouldn't be a problem. The only thing you would have to do is add the weight by using the Basket_Insert function.

Still pretty complex but Kent is already very close :)

[d_host]

Andreas,

How can you assign weight to individual attributes in MM v4? The option is there in v5, but I don't see it in v4...

[PCINET - Andreas]

not the single attribute weight ... but the total (do the math) and insert it to the basket.

[klassic]

http://www.mivacentral.com/page/m/PROD/SS/SS-OPTWTPRO
Attribute Weights Pro by Sebenza Studios

[d_host]

Okay. If you meant keep track of various attributes' weight in a Javascript or some other code that handles the "kit building" process, then this might get a little dated and complicated to use for the storeowner should they wish to add/delete some of the options in the store. I'm thinking if you go that route, perhaps have a custom field added to these products to hold the weight and then do the math that way - which would also make it easy for the storeowner to make changes to the available options quickly and easily. Is that what you were thinking?

[mikehaas]

Of course it can be done! This one even allows the customer to select a 4-, 9-, 16-, or 32-pack, and it gets the arithmetic right in all cases:

http://www.hmangels.com/cgi-bin/miva...Code=retailbox

I wrote this as a custom project, so it'll probably take some additional work to adapt it to your site.

Glory be, thanks! Yes, let's get together, will reply to your PM. Others: Thanks also. I am a total newbie at merchant, well, less so after this investigation, but not by much.

I haven't changed the spec, apologies if I wasn't clear in the other thread. In explaining it to others, I have refined the description. And using beer seems to help in the understanding :-)

No I don't expect bevMo would implement this exact retail model, but it is a simple one to do in a brick & mortar store. Like I mentioned "related items" hints at the functionality but stops way short.

The javascript code discussed in the other thread solved the product selection issues but not the checkout issues. With that realization I left that thread saying I was off to find a 3rd party developer. If I had contacted Kent first, I'm sure I would have been much less frustrated.

Assuming Kent's module is the ticket (sound like it is!), as a newbie I would say a noted deficit here is not merchant or even the developer community, but the inability to identify the right 3rd party module for an application. I spent a lot of time looking for a solution on MivaCentral, but all I found was discount modules. Not sure what keyword I would have needed to find Kent's product. I posted that other thread and separately asked several developers (and Miva themselves more than once) if they knew of a product - nope. Developers, if we customers can't find out about your module, we can't buy it.

But I'm glad to have finally hooked up with kent, now let's see if we can both sell some wares. Thanks all!

Mike

[PCINET - Andreas]

<grin> the Attribute Weights Pro by Sebenza Studios module for v4 is of course the easiest way

[Kent Multer]

Just to clarify, since the module I wrote was a custom project, it's not listed at MivaCentral or anywhere else. I do see requests on the forums/lists for this feature from time to time; but there doesn't seem to be enough interest to justify making it available off-the-shelf. No yet, anyway ...

Thanks --

[klassic]

It's nice to be able to help. Sometimes everyone gets so caught up in complicated scripting and coding and forget that someone has already done the work.

So have we solved everything with Kent's solution and the Attribute weights module?

[mikehaas]

It's nice to be able to help. Sometimes everyone gets so caught up in complicated scripting and coding and forget that someone has already done the work.

So have we solved everything with Kent's solution and the Attribute weights module?

It looks that way, Kent's looking at the site now. We may be nearing the end of a long journey. I will certainly sing his praises if successful.

What a roller coaster ride but I can't thank you all enough for putting up with me.

And you guys don't know it, but you may have dodged a bullet. One possible path was to dig in and become a developer myself. "Well, there goes the developer community..." :-)

Mike