Absolute nightmare

[StuartDH]

I can't believe the problems that we're having with Express.

Our charity chose the software to sell a 2007 calendar running up to Christmas, and we chose Express because of the Actinic brand, reliability, security etc.

The problem is that Express is proving to be an absolute nightmare. The lack of flexibility, design and instructions has provided many problems. Customers are giving us lots of complaints and we've got about 60 orders (approximately half of our total orders) abandoned in the cart.

To top it all, we've just found four orders up to four days old that have been paid in Paypal, but were given cart status in Express, rather than pending. :confused: As a result, they didn't show up on our received and pending list to send out the calendars.

This software looks like it's costing us serious money in lost sales. I phoned sales yesterday and asked for info about any upgrade offer to catalog. There is a discount, but it'll still cost £350+ and after the problems with Express we're fast losing confidence in Actinic altogether.

What can we do? We need serious help in getting a shop working properly before we lose any more money.

Any tips would be very much appreciated.

Stuart

[Ali00001]

What are your customers complaining about?

[StuartDH]

The whole shopping experience.

We couldn't have a more simple setup, with just one item for sale and no variations available, no tax, no shipping etc. Even so, they're having problems making a purchase even after several attempts. Some of them are new to shopping online, but others have done it before and some even run their own sites.

Our site also has a forum, so many got in a mess when they tried to use their login name and password in the shop's login (which we can't remove). Others are having many other problems - each of the following comments were made by different customers:

"I have just tried to order 5 calenders but was stymied by the security number!!! I typed in what was there but it kept coming back as being incorrect I got my wife. to double check that it was correct IT REJECTED IT AGAIN now I am shut out HELP"

"After much hassle and hair depletion, have managed to place my order."

"Glad I wasnt the only one tearing hair out"

"Slightly clunky experience but placed my order!"

"After several attempts at logging in using my WAB ones (our forum logins) I gave up and just ordered mine without creating an account or anything."

"It did take a little working out, but i got there in the end!"

"I think it might be worth pointing out to anyone who is having trouble
that the checkout button when looking at your basket contents does not work."

"I give up. Opened account, can,t log in, tried again, no go, been 45 minutes now trying. I will pay by cheque, is there a link to print the invoice and yes I have tried getting to that page again but can't."

"I had trouble with checkout tab, so used the the word checkout at the top and it worked"

and these are just the ones we know about. As mentioned before, we've got masses of abandoned attempts sitting in the cart :(

As the charity is staffed entirely by volunteers, we expected to be able to be up and running with Express with little/no problems, but this is creating so much extra work and using up time that we just don't have. Last night I was up to 2am checking paypal records against the express records to check for anomalies...I don't have any faith in the Express system to do its job. Now it looks like I'll be spending the entire weekend trying to find an ecommerce setup that actually works like it's supposed to. :mad:

We're fortunate to run a site where we get lots of feedback, so we get to find out when things aren't working properly. I wonder how many other Express shop owners are having the same problems, but don't even know it. Most of the customers on our site having been waiting for this calendar for several months and they can't be buy it anywhere else, but if we were selling ordinary products they'd have probably just left and bought from a different shop. Even so, we had pre-orders of 400+ calendars and yet after having the calendar available this week we've only sold about 150, which may show something of the level of problems they're having.

Stuart

www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk

[Ali00001]

That does sound like a complete nightmare! I really hope the Express support guys can help you out.

I have just had a quick look at the site (sorry, you will have another abandoned cart) and certainly once you go to the cart once you have added the calender the checkout button is not working. I guess this is confusing many people. Have you told Support about this specific fault? It really should not be happening (works fine on all other Express sites I have used including my own).

It sounds like many of the other problems customers have been having are with using Paypal to pay with their credit card. I must admit that I think that that was the reason why we had a high number of abandoned carts in the beginning. I always had to check the Paypal account incase it hadn't returned customers to the shop pages making the transaction incomplete. And I think the whole thing just put people off and confused them. Since we got Paypal Pro set up (customers stay on your site to pay with their card) we have been flying (so far - touch wood, fingers crossed!). It is free until the end of december so might be good for you!

It must be especially frustrating as your product is not a long term one and you can't take time sorting problems.

I have to say that I am really glad we went for Express. I have found it to be the quick and easy set up that is says it is. It is working well and we are gradually building customers at a much faster rate than I ever expected. The support people have been great. There are a few things that need to be changed to make it better but I am hopeful that over time these will get sorted. I looked into free shopping cart software and soon realised that I didn't have the techy understanding to sort it out and that it would require a hosting package with such a high level of technical support it would cost a fortune.

I really hope you get it sorted. Try again with Actinic support to get that Checkout button working and think about Paypal Pro - we have found it to be so much better than Paypal (which was rubbish).

Good luck with it.

[BRAD_UK]

I just tried your site too so another abandoned cart !

This really should happen and Actinic should sort this out for you. My website had a few teething problems(as you might possibly expect) but not this bad ! I am sure Actinic will get it sorted though. Just ring up and speak to support.

I am generally pretty pleased with Express and its a good solution to small companies that want to administer their own site. I have a few grumbles ( as I and others have mentioned on the wishlist link) and I am sure Actinic will solve these in the next update or two. I hope :confused:

I also recommend paypal Pro :)

All the best

Brad

www.baseballandsoftball.co.uk

[cdicken]

Hi there

I believe Mark in our support team is about to contact you (or already contacted you) about this. It's a problem in your domain forwarding configuration, which we can help sort out for you.

[Ratty]

Did you get it sorted to your satisfaction?

[faitang]

Hi there

I believe Mark in our support team is about to contact you (or already contacted you) about this. It's a problem in your domain forwarding configuration, which we can help sort out for you.


hi chris,

we are at the moment using the actinic express. Since the shop set up nearly 1 months , but we just got only pending cart . Can you tell me what is the reason?
tks
faitang:confused:

[TraceyG]

Hi Faitang,

Can you post your URL so that I can check that the site is working as it should please.

[faitang]

Hi Faitang,

Can you post your URL so that I can check that the site is working as it should please.
hi TraceyG,

tks for the reply ,
here is our link .
http://www.all2ugiftshop.co.uk

tks and awaiting for your reply.
fai

[faitang]

Hi Tracey,

I'm having the same problem - could you also have a look at my site....?

www.thepolarshop.com

Can somebody tell me what the following payment code means:-

0 - PSP-Pending

Customers are saying they have paid successfully by Paypal - but nothing visible in my Paypal account?

And a ‘1st post Newbie’ big Hello to everyone!

Regards,

Simon
hi simon,

i notice that you also got the same problem like me. I am the user actinic express. may i know what is your payment method? by paypal or protx ?
we got so many pending cart , but the customer simply didnot put any contact information, so we dont know people just playing around or they are really interest in that.

[TraceyG]

Hi,

Simon,
Can somebody tell me what the following payment code means:-

0 - PSP-Pending

This means that we have not received a response from Paypal saying that the order has been authorised. Can you check that you have your URL in the 'call back' part of your Paypal account.

Customers are saying they have paid successfully by Paypal - but nothing visible in my Paypal account?
You would need to check with Paypal as to why nothing is going into your account as they deal fully with the payments

I've checked your site and everything looks ok. Obviously, I can't go through Paypal as I'd have to pay for goods. I have placed a test order using the 'cheque' option so you should have an order with status of 'Pending'. To get it to completed you have to mark as 'payment received' and 'order shipped' (but you can delete it if you like).

Faitang,
I've checked your site and again I can't see anything wrong with it (some of the titles in the checkout are hard to read because they are 'pink' on a sort of 'sea green'). If the orders are 'Pending Cart' and no customer information is going in then your customers are adding something to cart but not proceeding. It's hard to say why your customers are not going any further but it definitely works fine. Maybe you could create a header on each of your pages, asking for customers to feedback about the site by clicking on the 'contact us' link (just a thought).

[faitang]

Hi Faitang,

We use Paypal (ordinary not Pro)...

Regards,

Simon.
hi simon,
tks for your reply . we got paypal pro and paypal and we jsut registry protx and it will get start next months.
could you pls tell me did your customer fill up their information and then just abandone payment?
thank you
fai