[tei-council] Shopping cart tryout

[Lou]

In addition to James's comments:-

1.

"With this new webstore, the TEI can now ... (we will be introducing an 
option for on-line registration of institutions later this year)"

Time-specific wording like this is generally a bad idea on a website. In 
six months time, when this wonderful shopping trolley has bedded in, 
we'll look really silly claiming that this is a "new" webstore. Will we 
remember to go back and change it? I doubt it. Likewise "later this 
year". Which year? Why give a hostage to fortune anyway? Just give us 
the facts now.

2. The text "about the TEI" repeats matter given elsewhere on the site. 
Why would you ever get to this page unless you already knew about the 
TEI? Repeating it is, in James's fine phrase, "just annoying". And if 
you remove it, then the plug for the 2009 conference at the foot of the 
page wouldn't be hidden.

3. Please change "shopping cart" to "basket" passim.

4. "In the meantime, we greatly appreciate your feedback. Can we improve 
the information, aesthetics, or ease of use of this site? Please let us 
know!"

This looks pretty lame to me. There isn't a feedback link on this page, 
and where should such feedback go anyway? If you really want to keep it 
please change "aesthetics" to "appearance".

5. More seriously, the text talks about "subscribing as an institution 
or a project", which is very confusing. Elsewhere on the site, we've 
been careful to use the term "membership" and variants thereon strictly 
for what institutions do, and the term "subscription" and variants 
thereon strictly for what individuals do. (At least that's what I 
remember us doing"!). This is a handy distinction which your current 
wording obfuscates. Please change it to "Become a member institution or 
project" passim.

6. Please lose the "filter results by" drop down. It looks silly when 
there are only two possibilities.

7. The "Call for price" text goes somewhere useful, but the identically 
worded button just above doesnt do anything. Either make it a link to 
the same place, or lose it.

8. On the membership page, I would suggest highlighting the voting 
benefit, since this is the crucial distinction between members and 
subscribers. We used to have a table showing the actual level of 
discount applicable to the geographically challenged potential members 
-- was that removed consciously?

9. "Because most institutions prefer to be invoiced for their 
membership, on-line registration is currently disabled." I don't think 
that's actually the reason is it? Anyway, why not just say "Membership 
fees are invoiced annually: please contact...." leaving open the 
possibility of online servicing without making a big deal of its current 
absence.

10. Why do the registration details *require* a phone? And shouldnt 
there somewhere be the standard disclaimer promising not to sell my 
contact details to anyone?

I couldn't get any further than trying to registrate myself ("Email 
Error: SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host"), but maybe that's 
intentional.









James Cummings wrote:
> Hiya,
> 
> Some css-related annoyances:
> 
> 1) Is there are reason there are such weird Quantities of things? Looking at the Register for Conference/Workshop page it gives me a Qty. column with 130 (conference) and 25 (workshop).  I can even sort the list by these quantities, but have no idea what they mean.  (Since they don't seem to be related to price.)
> 
> 2) The side-bar navigation style doesn't match the TEI website: The top bit has the same colour but you don't get informed they are links by having the colour change and underline appear when you hover over them.  There are also two colours of blue (i.e. 'Privacy notice' is a normal blue link rather than TEI blue.)  There is nothing that distinguishes 'How Can I...' 'Shopping Cart' and 'Information' from each other even though Shopping Cart is a link.  When I went to the shopping cart and came back, the text 'Shopping Cart' disappeared (well white on white, turning yellow on hover).
> 
> 3) 'Item starting with' dropdown alphabetical selection box is just annoying.
> 
> 4) Site Map has an extra blank nested list item.
> 
> 5) You should be able to opt-out of 'Newsletters' on the registration page.  The only place I could find to do this was on My Account -> 'Subscribe/ unsubscribe from newsletters'.
> 
> 6) geekhost.ca seems fairly expensive for just hosting a zencart installation for the number of registrations we're likely to get.  Why aren't we doing this at Virginia? (Also I happen to know some of us already have hosting solutions that allow custom installations of zencart and so we could do this at no charge -- but I recognise having it separate from any individual person has its benefits.)  
> 
> All that I notice with a first glance at it.
> 
> -James
> 
> 
>>>> We are very close to launching a shopping cart for online conference
>>>> registration and subscription. I'd appreciate volunteers for a dry run.
>>>> Here's the development URL: http://zencart2.kakelbont.homelinux.net/
>>>>
>>>> You need a username and password to access the URL: /u guest /p tseug
>>>>
>>>> I won't give any more instructions: let me know how well you can see
>>>> what you need to do and whether or not it works. An error arises at the
>>>> very last stage of a purchase or registration because the email is not
>>>> set up on this test server. We are particularly interested in the
>>>> conference registration, since that has got to open very soon.
>>>>
>>>> There are other ways of doing things, so let me know if this is not
>> clear.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> tei-council mailing list
> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council