Downloadable product variations- same price- one button?

[shana]

Hi, I would like to have one buy it now button and a drop down menu with different downloadable products to choose from. I want to avoid having tons of buttons since all the products will have the same price. I thought I could do this with variants, but when I tried it only let me upload one product. Is what I want to do possible? :)



Thanks,

Shana Rae

Florabella Collection

[E-junkie_Ninja]

E-junkie will only allow you to upload a single file for each product.



You may be able to set up your site with custom scripting that will allow you to have one button for all your products that you have in E-junkie.

[terryfreeman]

This is very confusing. I think I am asking the same question. I have one digital product for one price. It's a financial template that comes in 12 variations.



I wanted to have 3 options that have several values each. When the customer selects the appropriate choice, he is delivered the correct template. That would mean I have 12 dfferent digital files that comprise the one purchase.



So your previous answer "E-junkie will only allow you to upload a single file for each product" would apply in my case?



Thank you



Terry Freeman

[E-junkie_Guru]

You would need to have 12 different products created in Seller Admin, one for each file. If you don't want the buyer to select from among 12 different purchase buttons, you could have some custom-programmed scripting in your site that picks which product to order based on the criteria you described. If you're not a programmer, we can recommend the competent, E-junkie-experienced developers listed in our directory here:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/developer-directory.htm

[twisted]

You should really add this feature or at least consider it please. People sell digital products with variations quite often.



I'm sorry, but it seems like e-junkie has little desire to make real improvements to the cart . I like e-junkie, don't get me wrong, but its lack of features is going to result in me taking my business elsewhere, when I really wish I didn't have to. Wish it wasn't so...



Issues:

Variations for digital downloads

No customer profile/admin where customers can download files.

Flash based admin.

Lack of membership system or recurring billing for products.

Xml import/export for coupons.

Better coupon system with coupon combinations.

Poor sales stats.



Do you have any plan to ever add those things or will you always just suggest custom modifications via a developer? There are plenty of other carts that do those things that you will have to compete with sooner or later.



Again, please don't get me wrong. I'd LOVE to not to have to switch carts, but it seems that is the only option other than custom modifications.

[E-junkie_Guru]

This recent forum post goes into more detail about general development progress and philosophy, the nature of our service and its market niche, and related concerns:

http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/5588



Addressing some of the specific issues you raised:



- Variations for digital downloads

Digital products can use Variations and Variants, although those cannot affect which file is provided for download. If you want to provide a single Add to Cart button with a menu to select which file to download (e.g., software in Mac vs. PC versions), you can set them up as separate products and then follow the advice here:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/tips.custom.buttons.item-menu.htm



We've also recently been contacted by a third-party download service that a client of ours developed called Continuata, which integrates with our service and can provide more sophisticated download functionality, which several E-junkie clients are using already; we'd just send the order details to them via our Integration feature, so downloads would then be handled entirely from Continuata's end:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.file-downloads.htm#continuata



- No customer profile/admin where customers can download files.

This would be quite tricky, as we depend on third-party payment processor sites for most checkouts, so any customer account profiles are maintained at that end; this is unlike traditional "licensed" e-commerce software that gets installed on your own server and manages all stages of shopping and purchase entirely within your own site, where the buyer could trivially create an account on your site as an inherent part of checkout.



- Flash based admin.

Our current Flash-based Admin interface is indeed the "dam" behind which most pending feature/functionality improvements are backed up; much more, and more frequent, progress will become possible once the new Admin we've been building in DHTML is finally ready (see related forum thread linked above for further detail).



- Lack of membership system or recurring billing for products.

This help page covers the matter of recurring payments and offers some suggestions:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/faq.payment.recurring.htm



-Xml import/export for coupons.

We can add that to our wishlist for consideration as a possible new feature.



-Better coupon system with coupon combinations.

I'm not sure what you mean by "coupon combinations", if you'd care to explain, and we'd welcome any suggestions on what specific improvements you'd like to see for our Discounts feature.



-Poor sales stats.

What type of stats would you like to see? If you use our version of Google Analytics tracking code together with the standard E-junkie Cart button codes and thank-you pages, we can provide GA Ecommerce Tracking data in your thank-you pages for GA to pick up from there:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.tracking.htm

[twisted]

Thanks for taking the time to respond!



1 - Didn't know about the download variations tip, thanks for that. I will give that a shot, seems easy enough.



Continuata seems interesting, though I don't see the connection to downloadable variations yet and seems pricey.



2 - Regarding a user account/admin section. I'm no expert, but it seems like e-junkie could/should be more like traditional e-commerce software, though as I see that's not part of the roadmap you discuss in that other thread.



3 - Bummer about the FLASH system.



4 - Are the recurring payments suggestions are Paypal only (no google checkout)?



5 - XML import/export for coupons is really important. We've got 100s of coupons to manage and that drop down menu is really inconvenient.



6 - As for coupon combinations, I'd like to be able to offer people flat or % coupons they can use in addition to a flat or % off a bundle for example. Right now it is either or. I'd also like to see discounts offered to customers who own x number of products already.



7 - I'd like a quick way to see which customers own which products. How many people own product 1. How many people own product one and two. How many own product three and 5. Who owns those products? etc.



I'd then like to be able to sell those people and only those people a specific product. If they don't own product 1 already, they can't buy product two. Etc. This ties into the lack of membership discussion though I can't see why it isn't possible given that the sales log has the necessary info.



Thanks!

[E-junkie_Monster]

Thank you for your feedback. To address points 4 and 7: Many payment processors do offer some kind of recurring payment solution, it's just that our cart is not compatible with any of them. Any kind of method you want to use for recurring payments would have to be handled outside of our cart entirely, be it through PayPal or Google Checkout or something else. You can still use our cart to handle orders that don't have any recurring billing alongside that if you wish.



As Guru discussed in the top link in the above post, E-junkie is a very simple, low cost, one-size-fits-most service intended to meet general and basic needs and in some cases we may honestly not be the best choice for a particular merchant if they are looking for something more specific and robust.



When it comes to keeping track of a buyer's previous history we don't have any way to know what any given individual has purchased in the past. We will not receive any solid information until the sale has been paid for and reported back to our system, so it's not possible for us to screen a buyer's order or discounts based on their previous purchases ahead of that.



Our system can report that kind of data to an outside data base as we get it, so it would not be impossible to build in an extra layer to your site which references past order data, but that would be a major customization that is outside the scope of our service itself.