What ecommerce features do you want?

Jazajay

Active Member
Hi All
If you could build any feature into an: Ecommerce website - doesn't matter how wacky or off the wall - what would you build / add?

Jaz
 
Not sure if it's there already or not but the ability to create the 'stock list with details' from a spreadsheet/text file or csv file which then can automatically link up to folders or names based on the stock list.

So example - spreadsheet with products and details
uploaded to server are a folder(s) with each item from list of products with 'standard format' of labelling.

Ecommerce site scans spreadsheet and creates the 'database' (they use database don't they?) which then creates a 'page' with all the details and imagery being pulled automatically from folder xyz or the spreadsheet.


Option 2 - tool to automatically do them 'rich snippets' for twitter/pinterest/facebook etc using schema/og/twitter/pinterest tools :)
 
Good Navigation
Good Payment Gatewa
Privacy Policy
Good Return Policy
Customer login & registration
Good Graphics
Delivery Information
 
You're really pushing the boat out there faster recruitment!

I think for a lot of people the issue of being able to see what an item of clothing really looks like is still an issue. It's come a long way but wouldn't it be cool to have some pre-recorded (or live, let's get whacky) video that you could control and interact with in some way, of a model wearing the clothing, and perhaps you could choose some options, like "jump" or "turn around" that would demonstrate the clothing in a more interesting way.

Maybe there could be a live fashion room with real models walking around, talking.. or what they like to call "working", with various different camera view options, and the ability to interact with the models by suggesting scenes (not those kind of scenes....) and every so often they all change into different clothes. There could also be options to vote on the next clothing theme/style.

I haven't put a lot of thought into it, just thinking out loud really.

From a development point of view, I'm with Levi, the worst part of building a new e-commerce site is creating the product database.... I'd love for there to be a simpler way of doing things! Maybe there is and I just don't know about it... I know you can create databases from CSV lists, that can be produced with spreadsheet software, Expanding on Levi's idea, it would be great if you could populate the spreadsheet easily with a set of pre-defined values that simply +1 for each row, which would help

So if you were to create the first row with the following columns:

Product Name | Description | Price | ID/SKU | Image(s) |

You could set the default, for example image, to something like "/images/products/product-1.jpg" or more if you wanted to have each product use a set number of image each, and then after hitting the magical button, it would populate the list of possibly thousands of products, just adding +1 to the product file name, (to product-2, product-3 etc ID/SKU and Product Name. or possibly assign x number of images per product..

So it would take the first products ID/SKU and assign it the following images: "images/products/1-image-1.jpg, images/products/1-image-2.jpg, images/products/1-image-3.jpg" and then for the next row it would add "images/products/2-image-1, images/products/2-image-2.jpg etc" and then it's just a case of using the right naming convention when creating the images and putting them into the right directory! Maybe this has already been done, I don't know...

I still think the biggest issue with clothing is the variation in sizing and things not being the size they claim to be, and until that is resolved then certain people are not going to bother with online shopping because it's a hassle to have to keep returning things when they don't fit. I don't think there's a way to solve that issue with technology.
 
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Sean Lee-Amies said:
Maybe there could be a live fashion room with real models walking around, talking.. or what they like to call "working", with various different camera view options, and the ability to interact with the models by suggesting scenes (not those kind of scenes....) and every so often they all change into different clothes. There could also be options to vote on the next clothing theme/style.
I take it you never saw the 'women's lingerie' store that had video's showing different models (different body shapes/sizes) in their products.... it was being posted around loads of forums a few years back. Not sure how useful it was for women but most of the male members on the forums approved lol

Oh and don't get me started about clothes sizes being completely stupid... nike are even trying to make us use their american sizes over the UK ones in stores now.... I've seen xxl t-shirts smaller than xl which are too small. It seems clothes aren't being made to fit us 'westerners' anymore, they seem like they're being made to suit the 'eastern' bodies of the people who seem to make all of them at super cheap prices.
 
It's like the only thing stopping online retail from literally destroying the high streets, even more so than they have already done.... Yet, with so many people demanding their clothing at the cheapest possible prices, it's probably not going to be an issue that gets resolved any time soon because of all the sweat shops and what-not. If they used better machinery and smaller batch sizes, the garments would come out at more even sizes - I believe.

Imagine that, buying a piece of clothing that is actually the size it says it is...!
 
how one can forget a responsive design, which allow more user engagement and smoothest performance , if site is responsive then it can be a good competitive advantage
 
Attractive graphics,easy payment option,authentic contact details with email id,feedback option etc are some of the features required in ecommerce website.
 
I had an idea a little while back to bring a more data driven approach customer/product matching. In a similar way to how sites like e-harmony work, customers would answer more abstract details to be directed to a product best suited to them.

For example, if someone was shopping for a washing machine they might be asked questions like, how big there household was, budget, are they patient, outgoing etc. A product would then be recommended for them.

For this to work, a large database of information would have to be collated. Customers who had answered the questions would need to be surveyed a few months later to gauge their satisfaction, this would allow the system to be improved and genuinely insightful recommendations to be made.

The concept would work for a huge range of products or services.
 
I like that idea, but yes, the database would require a monumental number of man hours to complete for the size of catalogue required for this to be successful. It's the kind of thing that everyone would use - if it works. If it didn't, on the first few attempts, everyone would ignore it.
 
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