I was browsing a site this morning and found a really nice little feature showing “who just ordered”;
You can see it in action on the “Taunton Leisure” website – towards the bottom of the right hand column – I’m not quite sure which ecommerce application this shop is using, I can say for sure that it is not standard osCommerce!
Anyway, I liked that little feature so much that I made the same thing for osCommerce 2.3.1;
I’m not sure if this will actually help with sales, but it goes some way towards making a shop more “interactive” to customers. The only downside I see is that it would be useful only for shops that have quite a lot of orders – after all, I’m sure that shop-owners don’t want to advertise the fact that they get 1 order per month for example!
Let me know what you think? Can you see any way to make this more interactive?
I would not add the name of the cutomer to the box for obvious privacy reasons. “Steve from UK” might look anonymous enough, but some people have quite uncommon names, so their privacy might be at risk.
I would simply leave out any names.
Jan
Now I dont have the same views as Jan.
I would definately use it!
Will this be released or is it a ‘Buy me a beer’ type contrib?
It is a fantastic feature, that gives a feeling of trust to the user..
“If others shop here, it should be OK if i do too..”
I was planning on having this done later on, tweaked to look like your reviews ticker solution, displaying in the area where breadcrumb usually is.. and only vissible for a couple of minutes..
A change should be that it only changes/displays when an other user adds a product to the shopping cart.
For example “Someone just ordered ‘Product_Name + Product_image’, maybe you should have a look at it..”
That would be more usefull, as it could turn into additional sales and would probaply update more often…
Furthermore you don’t disclose any information on who it is, how often it happens or what other products the person bought.
Still waiting on a quote on that by the way 😉
“I’m sure that shop-owners don’t want to advertise the fact that they get 1 order per month for example!”
You mean you can’t come up with a script that can ‘massage’ the figures 😮
Actually rather than this idea I prefer the “where in the world your customers are”…
Next new project Gary 😉
I think thats its a great feature for a busy shop.
To avoid name/privacy issue maybe add a checkbox in the Checkout saying “Check here if you don’t want your name on the Who Just Ordered list.
I’m not too bothered about the privacy aspect, that is something that the shop owner can sort out in their sites “terms and conditions”.
Though it would be very simple to add in a flag to say (instead of “Steve in United Kingdom”)…..”A new customer in the United Kingdom” or something like that.
I think everyone knows that I don’t do contributions any more – so it’ll be a beer fee for this, as usual.
Juls – how do you see your “country” thing working?
Also, wanted to point out, in case anyone missed it, the “time ago” feature updates automatically;
Indeed I also think this gives visitors a sense of thrust. I don’t see too many privacy ptoblems here.
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“I’m sure that shop-owners don’t want to advertise the fact that they get 1 order per month for example!”
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I guess it’s the shop owners responsibility to sell more than an item a month ;-). Anyway, it depends on the shop it this tool can be seen as an asset.
“Juls – how do you see your “country” thing working?”
Map like – similar to Google Analytics but using flags rather than depth of colour.
There again it could be the same as “Who just ordered” but with the legend “Our last order shipped to” with the country flag.
Being able to have date of buying switchable may help those that don’t have a great turnover
Again it gives that feeling of trust and lets your customer know you ship worldwide