I have recently reviewed Magento and I am seriously considering moving from our current solution (osCommerce based) to using Magento as the core solution.
However before such a move I would need to add some of the features we are currently using. I am going to add these “missing” features as separate posts to see what people think.
What I would really like to know is:
1. Although I have searched, does anybody know of this or a similar feature being discussed elsewhere?
2. Will the Magento team state whether this or a similar feature will be added to the core solution within the next 6 months?
3. Any comments from the community to improve my suggested feature.
Feature:
Aim: To allow customers to ask a questions about a specific product and to allow new customers to see previous customers questions
Suggested Solution: Add new page to front that allows a customer to ask a question, hidden field in form obviously needs to include the product they were looking at. After form submitted administrator received email. Administrator logs into admin section to answer question. After administrator answers question, customer is sent email telling them to visit the product page they were interested in to see the answer. The administator needs to see product questions in two places: 1. all questiosn for all products located in new section under “catalogs” tab and also product specific questions only when looking at product information via catalog > manage products > product edit
Great idea, gets my vote. Anything that is tried and tested on big sites like eBay can almost only be a good thing. It’s a great way to demonstrate you are ready to assist.
My suggestion is, you need to keep the customer moving in the direction of buying and not be redirected to another alien page and feel lost. I would invest in your extension, if it had an option to choose a new page or popup.
The popup would need to be non obtrusive or of similar design. And if it’s a new page, than also include the product information so they can reference it. Either option would need to keep the customer moving in the direction of buying the product i.e. buy now, add to shopping cart, etc.. (if their question has already been answered) or buy something else. And the most important feature is to keep it simple.
I’m sure this is very easy to implement with your skills; also seeing you already have the infrastructure.
Please PM, if you decide to implement this, so we’ll buy it. And I’m sure a lot more people would too.
I completely agree. Ideally I would love to see all of aheadWorks extension be capable of offering the feature on the actual product page in a tabbed interface. I hate the fact that Magento creates new pages for features and aheadWorks, unfortunately, is following the same path. Ideally, for ‘duplicate content’ reasons any product page feature should stay on the actual product page. I don’t quite understand why you can’t just put the form and submissions at the bottom of the products page, instead of creating a new page for the extension? Any input from aheadWorks would be greatly appreciated!
AW, thanks for taking the time to write a response. It truly does say a lot about your excellent customer service.
Based upon what you said, how about simply placing the product info on the newly opened product question and answer page? And the threads could be minimized with page numbers, so it’s not one long page, i.e. (imagine tens or thousands of them).
What do you think, is it plausible or is it busted!
Aw, thanks for the vote of confidence. I look forward to seeing the new improvements. I think the paging should still be an option. But, I leave that up to you.
Can you please post to this thread when the new version comes out, so I can be notified.
Thanks for being so communicative, and look forward to the new release.
