coffman Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 This may seem like a silly question but.... How does a single store owner take a vacation from a web store? Just looking for some examples/input. My wife and I are the sole owners and operators of a growing osCommerce store. Having not expected to be so busy so fast, I have not thoroughly planned on how to take a vacation. My process are not streamlined enough to bring in someone else to watch the store for a week with out the worry of messing up orders. I am thinking of just adding a line into the header that states that we will not be processing orders until such and such date... Then also adding some text to the shipping page about when to expect the product to actually ship. I don't like the idea of accepting a payment and not being able to ship. I am tempted to just disable the ability to checkout and leaving some verbage on the signup and checkout pages as to our return date.... OK, enought rambling, any other thoughts??? Oh yeah. I am planning on putting an automated responder on all my emails that give some info about the fact that we are on vacation and will not be shipping until date x... Thanks... -MichaelC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ptrau Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 Vacation? Vacation? We don' need no stinkin' vacation! There is a "down for maintenance" that you can change the wording of to suit your needs. Find it here: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1057 "Aliiiiive, it's alive, it's ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 Staff get vacations and pay checks, owners get work and bills. If it is just the working of the software that is your main concern, not putting the orders together then you could take a laptop with you on holiday and phone the orders back to someone. I would think long and hard about putting up a sign that says you are "on vacation". If you leave people without thier products then they will have to get them somewhere else and might not come back. It is hard to get customers, very easy to loose them. Have you thought about seperate vacations or taking more extended weekend trips. 4 day trips to Bermuda, or a cruise could be good also. Just my 2 cents, for what it is worth. Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olorin Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 You speak the truth, very hard to get customers, extremely easy and quick to lose them. Made me very VERY nervous about keeping my stock so low, I've run out of a few items sometimes and they are forced to go to my competitor, it really sucks because I know once you deal with someone you don't want to try another if you were satisfied the first time! Good wake up call for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryK Posted March 8, 2004 Share Posted March 8, 2004 Michael, I'm a single mom operating a one-person home-based business. I do take a vacation every year -- it's my only link to sanity! What I have always done is to post a prominent notice near the top of my pages (in this case, it could go in the header.php file) indicating that I'm on vacation until whatever date, and that orders will be processed upon my return in the order received. For the past seven years I have done this twice a year (about 10 days in the summer plus a week at Christmas). While I may lose the occasional sale, I can't say I see any noticeable decrease in revenue. In fact, I usually come home to a load of orders to ship. If you're candid in your 'About Us' section about being a 'mom and pop' type of business, and if you have customers who are satisfied with your product and service, I think people tend to be more understanding about your need for a break -- at least they seem to be in my case. (Yes, there will always be people who want something yesterday, but you can't change that.) Like you, I can't just hand my business over to someone else to run while I'm away -- for various reasons. But if I weren't able to get an occasional break, I don't believe I'd still be in business. I'd be babbling incoherently in the nearest mental hospital. :) FWIW, Terry Terry Kluytmans Contribs Installed: Purchase Without Account (PWA); Big Images, Product Availability, Description in Product Listing, Graphical Infobox, Header Tags Controller, Login Box, Option Type Feature, plus many layout changes & other mods of my own, like: Add order total to checkout_shipment Add order total to checkout_payment Add radio buttons at checkout_shipping (for backorder options, etc.) Duplicate Table Rate Shipping Module Better Product Review Flow * If at first you don't succeed, find out if there's a prize for the loser. * Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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