Hi Jo Ann. I am talking about the options that already exist in cart creator. They can be used for other things other than colour, or size etc. Those options are passed as a field in the cart, to the payment processor.

If you think about it, the only time you know when someone has placed an order and what they have ordered, is when you get a communication from the payment processor advising you of a sale.

With the forthcoming inventory control, if it works like it does in other carts, it will remove an item for sale when the stock level is less than one (zero). It usually does that by removing the add to cart button.

Some people will only have one item for sale, if it's an original piece of artwork etc so a re-order facility wouldn't be an option for them as when the item has gone its gone.. Others will simply be out of stock of an item and will be able to re-order to offer the item for sale again at some later stage (if their own suppliers are not out of stock). The only real workaround is to have something in your item description, saying that if they want to know when an item is back in stock to click here. Have that link send you an email with the item number as the subject.

oh that's a really good idea to use those Field options which I hadn't thought of for that, thanks.

I understand what you mean on the link to notifiy me when someone wants to know when something is back in stock, and I like the idea, but wouldn't that be a ton of work to try to code that for every item? Or do you mean to use the options for that, *is so confused* LOL. I love the idea though, just not sure how something like that would be implimented. I would imagine it could be just a snippet or part of a form code maybe? But I'm not sure I may be way off base here lol.

Thanks on the Field Options idea though for sure, and ignore my suggestion as I hadn't thought of using those for other things besides product choice options (ya i know, my brain doesn't think in a very big box these days lol)

Your link can be a single field 'enter email address' with submit button. You can even set it up as a form with radio buttons along the lines of what you originally proposed.

Your options can be set up in a multitude of ways to suit your needs. Have the uppermost (default) box as 'back order if out of stock' and the one below it as 'do not backorder'.

I see so using the Form Builder I can create a small snippet of code to enter in each description, that's a good idea I like that too and would be useful too. How would the Item number be put there though? Would that mean creating seperate code for each item's form setup then? I know I ask so many questions lol.

Probably via the keyboard.... lol

Offhand I don't know of any practical way of auto populating the data. There is probably a way of auto incrementing the form, but that wouldn't do you any good unless you actually know what product 347, or product 263 actually was.

Well I can do that with item numbers pretty easily in a form, but... that would entail making a form setup for every single item I sell which would be tedious work I think. There are settings in the form builder for being able to put default text or such in the boxes, and even making it so it's not removable by the end user so it is greyed out mostly. And I would think the use of the hidden fields might help with this too, but.... as I said it would be tedious having to do this for every customer.

I'll start a new thread with my next question about email codes so we can get it out of this thread since it's not really a suggestion anymore but more questions. Thanks for the feedback Will and I'll post in a different area for more info

Glad it's gone some way to resolving your problems.

On a different topic Jo Ann, looking at your developing site, it dramatically brings home the need for better shipping options in cart creator.

Without sounding too negative, your current wording on the cart page, which interprets as we may give you some money back, or we may send you a bill for more money really isn't a viable solution and would deter many potential customers from doing business with you. When people go to the payment processor, they quite rightly expect to know the actual price they will be paying.

Yeah, I'm hoping I won't have to worry about that when the Pro version comes out also, but no worries on the wording part, it's all in experimentation stage at the moment and nothing concrete, I just add things to see how it looks and hopefully get feedback like this so I know if it's good or not

We'll have to see whether the initial release of the Pro version, actually has any improvements to the shipping options. It may come as no surprise, that detailed studies on shopping cart abandonment, put excessive shipping charges as one of the major reasons. I think it is fair to presume, that none of us want to lose any potential customers.

As many forum members have already indicated, they would prefer the initial Pro release to be delayed, if it means more feature requests can be incorporated. We'll just have to wait and see..

Scott,
What about the ZOooom feature here:

http://www.strawberrycycles.co.uk

to replace the light box?

Baz.