internetretailer.biz - not finding it easy - advise please

[birstallbabe]

Hi guys nice 2 chat with you all new here, tho got to say great site with lots of good advice

After reading reviews etc on this site I decided to go for a free shop with internet retailer biz.

Having a few technical issues with the following;

• adding products, we are typing the product description and selecting update, when we go back in to edit the same product it does not display nearly half of what we have just typed
• Does not appear to like copy cut n past from text we have prepared
• can not seem to upload any pictures it continually displays a message that basically its too busy
• Home Page the first paragraph we have written is in Bold and will not be amended, no matter how many times we try.

Having said this, this is our first try at an internet website shop so it could be that we are doing a few things wrong. Any advice on the above & more info would be appreciated, just driving me nuts at the mo!

Keep smiling BB

 

[birstallbabe]

OK so either peeps not replying cos

a - too 'crap' at this website thing
or
b - something wrong with internet retailer & i choose wrong

your thoughts pleasssssssssssse

 

[zone1creative]

Hi guys nice 2 chat with you all new here, tho got to say great site with lots of good advice

After reading reviews etc on this site I decided to go for a free shop with internet retailer biz.

Having a few technical issues with the following;

• adding products, we are typing the product description and selecting update, when we go back in to edit the same product it does not display nearly half of what we have just typed
• Does not appear to like copy cut n past from text we have prepared
• can not seem to upload any pictures it continually displays a message that basically its too busy
• Home Page the first paragraph we have written is in Bold and will not be amended, no matter how many times we try.

Having said this, this is our first try at an internet website shop so it could be that we are doing a few things wrong. Any advice on the above & more info would be appreciated, just driving me nuts at the mo!

Keep smiling BB

Not a good advert for free ecommerce. Do internet retailer not have free support to go with their free shopping cart?

To help you, I recommend never copying and pasting from word or web pages to the cart. Always copy the text to notepad and then copy to the cart.

Secondly looking and browsig through internet retailer, there site is having problems loading pages and I keep gettings oops messages. So you will definately have problems with uploading images.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

And on top of the above,your potential clients will also have problems trying to view your products LET ALONE buy them!

 

[birstallbabe]

ok so dump this one then - no good get the point guys thanks

 

[OldWelshGuy]

why not get hold of zen cart or one of the others. Many hosting packages come with Zen in easy install mode pont and click.

 

[birstallbabe]

OK Seen zen website looks easy n free

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Zen cart is great

 

[birstallbabe]

Like your blog n would love to stand under your umberella one day

 

[quikshop]

Hi guys nice 2 chat with you all new here, tho got to say great site with lots of good advice

After reading reviews etc on this site I decided to go for a free shop with internet retailer biz.

Having a few technical issues with the following;

• adding products, we are typing the product description and selecting update, when we go back in to edit the same product it does not display nearly half of what we have just typed
• Does not appear to like copy cut n past from text we have prepared
• can not seem to upload any pictures it continually displays a message that basically its too busy
• Home Page the first paragraph we have written is in Bold and will not be amended, no matter how many times we try.

Having said this, this is our first try at an internet website shop so it could be that we are doing a few things wrong. Any advice on the above & more info would be appreciated, just driving me nuts at the mo!

Keep smiling BB

Hi Debbie,

Its a shame you didn't wait just 56 minutes it took for your support email to be answered at 8'o clock at night.

1 & 2) As I and others pointed out, copying directly from Word is not recommended because Word has lots of styling attributes that come across with the words you are copying - this can quickly cause a product description to reach its 8000 character limit, or cause formatting errors.

It is better to copy text into Notepad and then into your product description, this removes all erroneous Word formatting.

3) Image names need to be alphanumeric and not have any unusual characters in them such as % & * ( ) etc. They also need to be no larger than 600 * 600 pixels in size.

4) If you apply several text formatting changes to one block of text, the formatting code (called HTML) can sometimes overlap and make it difficult to apply. The easy fix is to click on the HTML tab of the contents box and remove the offending styling.

Or, you could have called our support line to talk through any problems directly

Our service is used by over 700 shop owners, many of which run their shops as full time businesses and some alongside high street retail outlets.

Getting used to any new system always take a bit of time, especially if you are new to these types of things which is why we provide the support when requested.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

HI Dave, you knwo the saying ? "When ALL else fails, read the instructions"

How easy is it for people to screw things up. Copying directly from word is a killer I have had to deal with it so many times, people just don't get it, same as they don't get that text in an image isn't text

I think in future we should ask the OP whether or not they have tried customer services.

Oh and congratulations of the sub 1 hour response out of hours. I have waited 48 hours for a customer service response on paid services .

Hopefully now the OP will come back and tell us all how easy things are when they read the customer service emails

 

[smellyskelly]

Hi - I have used internet retailer for 2 years and have experienced the same problems as you - which i know are very frustrating.

However, rest assured the majority of mistakes or errors are due to me, the user!:| not the system.

Once you fully understand the system (which you will need to do with any cart you chose as a beginner) it is Great and actually very easy to use.

As for support - i too recieve support email replys at all times of day and night - Not convinced i would find that level of service anywhere else to be honest.

Stick with it.......

All the Best

Scott

 

Hi, like Scott I've been with Internet Retailer for quite a number of years now (5 in fact!) and was one of the earliest adopters of the software so have seen the huge number of changes and improvements over the years.

The support has always been superb and lets not forget that it comes from people who use the software to run their own businesses as well so its not a faceless bunch of customer service bods, but people who know first hand how to operate the software.

Text shouldn't ever be copied from other websites or from pre prepared text in word, word creates its own formatting and this causes significant problems, if you prepare text in notepad then you should not experience any of these problems, also its worth bearing in mind not to overload it with huge numbers of simultaneous changes, like most text editors you need to make a set of changes then save and then carry on editing.

If you're experiencing issue out of office hours then it seems a little bit rash to come onto a business forum and voice these issues without giving the company any time whatsoever to answer your calls or emails? Especially when you've chosen the free service, I have 6 premium shops and I dont expect an instant answer

I'm sure you'll get the hang of the shop and the software, its a good bit of kit and a great service, so hang on in there!

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Good to see users coming out and helping with advice.

 

[cubzworld]

I've used Internet Retailer for over 2 years and gone through the same problems as you.

Here's my advice:

If you are copying text from a supplier website or word document if you don't want to go to the trouble of adding to notepad first just click on the html tab at the bottom of the product description box, past in there. Then click on the design tab and add your own preferred font, size, paragraphs etc.

Problems with loading images - I found the most common cause of getting the busy page was trying to load images with spaces in the name. If your image name is blue doll.jpg then make sure your rename the image beforehand so it as dashes in it e.g. blue-doll.jpg

All software packages are trial and error while you are learning. Good luck with yours.

Tracy

 

[birstallbabe]

thanks david appreciated - do you have a users guide?

 

[quikshop]

thanks david appreciated - do you have a users guide?

There are help buttons that show as question marks next to various features that pop-up explanatory text, but if you're in any doubt just drop us an email or call us on the support number.

We've version 4 of our software coming out in the summer with a host of new features, we'll also make sure those issues mentioned are made more intuitive from a users point of view

I think what's come out of this discussion is a need for a shop owners forum, somewhere were you can raise issues, report 'bugs' and swap tips and advice on getting the most out of using our service. I'll make sure that's an additional feature of our software upgrade this year.

 

[deskjet640c]

Being totally new to E-commerce the reason I chose Internet Retailer was when I was talking to David about his product initially I found him to be very helpful and up-front about his systems capabilities. I decided at the time that as a beginner customer service was more important to me than features and David seemed like he would be a good guy to work with.

Over the first few weeks even though I literally bombarded him with questions day and night (and over the Xmas break) David was always quick to get back to me, helping me solve every teething problem I had and 2 weeks later I was very proud to have my own functioning site.

Working the site now seems very simple but I do have to say I do think that instruction was quite lacking for the beginner - I could have done with a more comprehensive users guide and perhaps then I could have worked some things out myself - rather than relying on David so much.

I think with a users guide and a forum David would actually save himself a lot of personal customer service work