Guest Registration as Default, other U.S.A. issues

-- HikaShop version -- : 2.3.4
-- Joomla version -- : 3.3.6
-- PHP version -- : 5.3.28
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : Safari 8
-- Error-message(debug-mod must be tuned on) -- : none.

Hi/Salut Nicolas, Jerome, etc

I love Hikashop as you know but I think it needs to do better in adapting to the U.S./Canadian market:

a. Guest Registration being an option you can toggle in the back-end as the default.
[I know there is some patch that can be applied to the code but then upgrading to new versions gets messy and complicated and this is something that should really be Hikashop]

[There are MANY many statistics survey having been done on Conversion for the U.S. market and this is particularly important for the Mobile market which is now 45-55% of all U.S. visitors for eCommerce sites]

b. 1 page checkout, right now we are getting about an abandonnement of 40% of people in step 1 - the Guest Checkout
screen [this would lower if we could implement a. above without having to do code hack] and having a 1 page checkout
would help quite a bit in that arena as well - Amazon which as much as I don't like them the golden standard in terms of simplified [fewest clicks to make a purchase] site - has a 2 click to finish purchase workflow... anything we can do to limit/remove the number of clicks or page reloads can only help with improving eCommerce websites and conversion!

c. Parameters being able to be passed via Affiliate link beyond the ?partner_id=
On that note, I changed it to ?friend_id= and I don't think it is working correctly as I see NO sales data for a particular affiliate even though there have been hundreds of clicks [i.e. it should have lead to at least 1 - 2 sales and none show up - willing to give access for this]

This is REALLY important for targeted Facebook Advertising and other campaigns...
?friend_id=1&source=facebook&ads=maglite [or something like it - this would allow us to track it through Hikashop and see the effectiveness of a Facebook Platform, Campaign: Maglite in this case...

d. Is there a way inside of Hikashop to get a report of which users are Mobile/Desktop? Google Analytics doesn't give much specificity here and it would be great to have that in SOME way without having to hack the code... I don't think it is recorded anywhere but maybe it is... i.e. for example in the user record or the order record?
IF not inside of Hikashop (even though I still think this has value for people building sites for it to be inside of Hikashop ) - compatibility with an analytics platform beyond Google Analytics that integrates with Joomla / Hikashop that could do this for us?

I look forward to ANY information on these above points...
A+,

Emmanuel.

P.S.: The US/Canadian shopper is quite different than European ones or Asian ones... as much as I don't like it it's the way it is and anything that can be done to help increase and measure conversion can only help Hikashop sell better into the U.S. market

Hi,

a. Guest checkout is already an option that you can activate in the backend of HikaShop.

b. I believe that you can achieve the same as amazon with HikaShop. One step for the registration/checkout and one step with the rest and that's it, two clicks. It's just depends on how you configure your checkout workflow.
We're actually looking at redoing the checkout with a lot more AJAX to make it more user friendly in the next versions of HikaShop.

c. You can pass any parameter in the URLs of your website, regardless of whether it is an affiliate link or a HikaShop page.
For example this link: www.hikashop.com/forum/2-general-talk-ab...html?source=facebook
It will point to this same page but with an extra parameter. If you have Google Analytics, you should be able to track that extra parameter.
Then, there are probably joomla extensions to track these parameters as well, but I'm not a specialist in that domain so I don't know.

d. HikaShop doesn't have that knowledge, but I believe that this should be done by tracking/analytics Joomla extensions which are specialized in that field.

PS: thakn you for your feedback, from a USA perspective.

Salut Nicolas,

for a. I know you can already turn that option on but I was referring to being the DEFAULT not an option right now if you check on www.fieldtestedgear.com for example, the default is Login not Registration and not Guest Checkout which is what we need here in the U.S. for this type of site... 1 less click... means about 10-25% less abandonment of the cart which is a BIG deal... to be very clear by default, i mean the one that is showing up as pre-selected when you load the page. This should be an option in the back end where the user can set Guest Checkout or Login or Registration as default. [Here in the U.S. we'd pick Guest Checkout or Registration 99% of the time NOT Login]

for c. you didn't answer the part about why there are NO sales for 300 clicks, it feels like something is not quite right there...
"On that note, I changed it to ?friend_id= and I don't think it is working correctly as I see NO sales data for a particular affiliate [affiliate id=1] even though there have been hundreds of clicks [i.e. it should have lead to at least 1 - 2 sales and none show up - willing to give access for this]"

Thanks for the other answers as always

Emmanuel.

Hi,

a. Ah ok, I see what you mean. The default view displayed. That's a good idea. We'll add an option for that.

c. I missed it. I don't see why changing the name of the parameter would matter. Did you test the affiliate links ? Do the clicks get recorded when you click on the links ? If so, then it is working. If not, then there is a problem with the parameter.

Nicolas, for the affiliate links I send people to something like:

www.fieldtestedgear.com/index.php/our-st...ashlight?friend_id=1
but with additional parameters [to be able to track campaign success/stats]

so would I do this:

www.fieldtestedgear.com/index.php/our-st...1&campaign1&facebook

or

www.fieldtestedgear.com/index.php/our-st...1?campaign1?facebook

where &campaign1&facebook or ?campaign1?facebook are added by Facebook Advertising itself?

Thanks for letting me know which one should work!

Cheers,

Emmanuel.

Neither of them.
You can only have one ? in a link and when you add a parameter you need it to be like this: key=value
So either: if facebook is the value of the campaign1 parameter
Or like this: if you want two parameters campaign1 and facebook with 1 being their respective value.

FYI if we change the backend to friend_id from partner_id nothing gets tracked... we had to change it back to partner_id for things to behave a bit...

version 2.3.4.

Also when we tried with:
www.fieldtestedgear.com/index.php/our-st...ght?partner_id=1&flh

the URL that came through on the browser was:

www.fieldtestedgear.com/index.php/our-st...t?partner_id=1%26flh

I guess it's because it wasn't in the format &campaign=flh ?
as if it got URL re-encoded or something... [where flh = the campaign name]

Emmanuel.