Is your StoreFront based website ready for Windows
XP Service Pack 2?
Microsoft is preparing to release Windows XP Service Pack 2 any time now
which will alter the default settings of millions of users' browsers and
most importantly, add a built in pop-up blocker which will affect the
functionality of your StoreFront 5.0 based website and may affect your
StoreFront 6.0 based site.
As we're all painfully aware many sites abuse pop-up windows and an
entire industry has appeared to provide pop-up blockers. Some free ones can
be found at Google and Yahoo through their toolbars. They all share one
common thread; they prevent pop-up windows which appear without user
interaction such as clicking a link. The issue is the pop-up window
StoreFront generates in response to adding a product to the cart is done via
script through no interaction by the customer which is exactly the situation
pop-up blockers look for. This negatively affects the customers' shopping
experience and leads to a dramatic increase in abandoned shopping carts
resulting in lost revenue. What happens is the customer adds an item to the
cart but nothing apparently happens. What really happens is the item is
added to the cart but the confirmation message is never displayed. As far as
the customer can tell, the site doesn't work. This leads to the customer
moving on to another site taking their business with them or an increase in
support calls; neither of which is desirable. If you're tracking
inventory it gets even worse as even if the customer figures out to go
directly to the checkout page items will, from their perspective, be
mysteriously removed. Again, the real reason is the inventory message
stating the item has been removed from their cart is blocked but since they
never see it, they continue to add the same product to their cart over and
over until frustration takes over and they move on.
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The easiest method is to simply redirect your customers to your checkout
page and bypass any confirmation message. You can find instructions on how
here. The potential issues with this method are you lose the ability to use
the suggestive selling feature found in the confirmation message and if your
customers tend to buy multiple products in the same order they may find it
annoying to continually be redirected to a different page and have to figure
out how to get back to where they just came from. The back button will not
take them to where they expect and they have to know enough to hit the
continue shopping button, assuming they even find it.
Alternatively you can turn to a third-party StoreFront 5 add-on such as
the Pop-Up Eliminator which gives you the ability to display the
confirmation message on either the calling page or on the order page.
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Pop-up
Eliminator for StoreFront 5.0 |
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StoreFront 5.0 uses pop-up windows to present information to customers in
response to specific actions such as adding items to the cart. However, the
prevalence of pop-up blockers is beginning to negatively affect the customers'
shopping experience and is leading to a dramatic increase in abandoned shopping
carts and resulting in lost revenue. This occurs when the customer adds an item
to the cart and nothing apparently happens. What really happens is the item is
added to the cart but the confirmation message is never displayed. As far as the
customer can tell, the site doesn't work. This leads to the customer moving on
to another site taking their business with them or an increase in support calls;
neither of which is desirable. If you're running StoreFront 5.0 AE and
have inventory enabled it gets even worse as even if the customer figures out to
go directly to the checkout page items will, from their perspective, be
mysteriously removed. Again, the real reason is the inventory message stating
the item has been removed from their cart is blocked but since they never see
it, they continue to add the same product to their cart over and over until
frustration takes over and they move on. With the advent of Windows XP
Service Pack 2 which contains a pop-up blocker built in, this is a must have
add-on.
Features:
- Thank You pop-up is removed
- confirmation message can be displayed on calling page or order.asp
- configurable to automatically send customer to checkout page or send
back to calling page
- setting to display checkout link in the confirmation message
- Out of Stock / Back-order pop-up is removed
- message can be displayed on calling page or order.asp
- upsell message appears in confirmation message
- More information - |
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If you're running AE and not using inventory then the discussion for SE
applies to you. If you have inventory enabled then you have one additional
issue, the inventory adjustment notifications are handled via pop-ups. The
redirect to order.asp will function just the same for you however your
customers, from their perspective, have their products mysteriously removed
from the cart. The real reason is the inventory message stating the item has
been removed from their cart is blocked but since they never see it, they
continue to add the same product to their cart over and over until
frustration takes over and they move on. The only option short of hiring a
developer to fix this is to turn to a third-party StoreFront 5 add-on such
as the Pop-Up Eliminator which gives you the ability to display the
confirmation message on either the calling page or on the order page. This
add-on offers another benefit beyond the base StoreFront package, namely the
suggestive selling feature becomes available for inventory products just
like it was with non-inventory products.
Note the following StoreFront 5.0 features can remain as pop-ups because their
functionality results from the user clicking the image/hyperlink which pop-up
blockers permits. It is script driven pop-up which do not result from user
actions which are blocked:
- Email a friend functionality
- Inventory status (AE only)
- Volume discount (AE only)
- Coupons (AE only)
StoreFront 6.0 has the functionality built in to place the confirmation
message on the page itself instead of using a pop-up window. You simply need
to enable this through your StoreFront tools:
- Design and Layout --> Catalog Design
- In the general tab choose your desired confirmation method
- Save
If you track inventory and you're running a version prior to 6.2.5 you
will need to upgrade to the latest version as releases prior to this version
implemented inventory through a pop-up window regardless of the confirmation
method selection. |
You can no longer afford to have your site using script generated pop-ups
as occurs for adding products to your shopping cart. The situation was
getting worse as pop-up blockers were moving from fringe use to widespread
distribution via free tool bars. Now that pop-up blocking will become the
default behavior with the release of WindowsXP SP2 you need to prepare your
site now.
This article was last updated on Saturday, November 24, 2007 12:00:00 AM
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