Limitations
We want our clients to be happy with what they purchase, and to not feel that they have been mislead. With that in mind, we are listing some of the most common limitations that clients will experience with this Shopping Cart System.
You are going to need a site that is unique, and your business needs will be different than any that we have handled before. So we can't begin to list all the limitations you might run into. Such lists are impossible to compile. We can help you figure out the major points in a phone call - but still not all. We won't engage in a site build with you though, unless we are reasonably certain that what you want can be achieved within our systems.
Limitations come in three categories:
1. System limitations. Things it simply cannot do. This may include things like the way it handles categories, the kinds of taxes the cart can calculate, or how it handles discounts. They may be issues of how things can be moved, what kinds of things can be controlled page by page in the site and which kinds of things have to be controlled globally. Normally these issues are not ones of whether or not it will WORK, but just whether or not you will have to use a temporary workaround, or whether you'll have to compromise and use a simpler structure than you thought you might. There is usually a way to achieve a result that is functional. Long term, system limitations become more of an issue of how much you can afford. But to begin with, the system will determine many of the possibilities.
2. Financial limitations. When you purchase a solution that is systemized and designed to fit a budget, you will have to make compromises in some things. It means we will always recommend the simplest method of achieving the goal, but it also takes into effect something that we call the 10/90 rule. You can get 90% of the results and function, for 10% of the cost and effort. It has to be the RIGHT 10%. We are experts in that. But it means that some things are not worth fussing over - they are a matter of preference, not function or earning capacity. So if something would be costly, without returning any significant monetary increase, we will recommend against it. And if some things you really WANT are not included in the initial price, this is why - because they won't help you earn more with the site. The financial limitations are yours though - if you really want more costly enhancements and tweaks, you can have them if you are willing to pay for them.
3. Technical Limitations. Some things just cannot be done. We tend to think that just because computers do so much, that they can do anything. But they can't. And some things they CAN do, it is not necessarily WISE to do. So you may run into a few of these. Some technical limitations have to do with environments. A large business can do them because they can control everything about their website environment. You cannot do it because it cannot be done unless you can control all of it, and controlling all of it becomes a financial limitation. So financial overlaps technical sometimes.
The systems we have chosen are VERY functional. They do many things, and can do more than we have asked them to do. If you can work WITHIN the systems, and do things the way they natively do them, you can have a highly functional and stable system for relatively little money.
On the other hand, if you want to do things that are constantly requiring us to work outside the way the system normally does things, you will be increasing costs both short and long term. Some of these things cannot even be explained ahead of time - we just have to let you know as we go along that there is a limitation that is more difficult to get around than it appears.
We are working with computers. Computers do not think. They can do only what they are programmed to do. Software programs do what they do in the way that they do it. To make them do more is often problematic. And what seems a simple thing to you is often difficult to make a computer do.
Take a BOGO sale. Almost any cart can do a Buy One, Get One Free sale, where someone buys one, gets an identical item, or another specified item, free.
But if you want a BOGO sale where the buyer buys THIS, then gets to choose between THAT and THAT, you have just made the equation much more complicated. A few carts can do this, but not many.
If you have a shopping cart that will only do the first kind of sale, and you insist on the second kind, you have just given yourself a costly headache. It is better to compromise and stipulate an item instead. It makes you more money instead of costing you a huge amount for relatively little benefit.
This kind of thing happens a lot with online site systems. Usually there is a way to do it, but it may not be exactly the way you want. But as long as your budget is limited, you compromise. We help make sure the compromises are in places that will not interfere with earning capacity, and which won't give you unmanageable manual tasks.
It is very important that you NOT look at your competitor who spent $20,000 on their site, and say, "They have that, why can't I?" We don't mind when you say, "Is that possible?" Because some neat things are cheap. Some common and neat looking things are very expensive, and only well established or well funded companies have them. We are pretty creative. If there is a way to to it cheaply and easily, chances are we can do it. And we can often figure out a way to do some fairly complicated things in a simpler way. But we aren't magicians. Some things will be beyond your reach. We can help you compete with that $20,000 website (we know all sorts of ways to do that!). But we can't give you a $20,000 website for $1200.