Blue Sky Vineyards' Online Store

So as some of you know, I coded up gCart for everyone to use here. I am looking to use it in a production environment and was hoping some of you could try it out while it is in the sandbox and let me know if you see any bugs or have any feedback.

http://www.blueskyvineyard.com/store

Thanks in advance!

The cart is great, all the features worked like a charm. I added, decreased and deleted items, added from various categories. Proceeded to check out and the order data was all there. I could not get past the payment checkout so I don’t know how it finishes up (my country is not even on the list). Good job.

Works nicely, but imo much too slow (might be just my ISP at the moment, I don’t know). Every action (add to cart, remove from cart, change qty) takes at least 3 seconds till you see a response. Maybe you got some bottlenecks in there? The whole point of AJAX is to achieve a faster interface, not slow it down.

I agree with the ajax point. I only use Ajax in one area and that is when clicking "Clear Cart." It sends the get request behind the scenes and then changes the html of the cart using javascript so that it appears instantaneous. Each of those methods you mentioned are new page loads, and if you are at the top of the page, it looks like really slow AJAX, although it is just a normal get request. I will try to utilize the same method for the add/decrease and remove item functions so that it also appears instantaneous. Is anyone else noticing slow response times? I think the response times are no slower than on a normal system where you are redirected to a checkout page upon adding the item.

For instance, adding an item on Amazon took 1.11s according to Firebug. My implementation took 329ms. Updating the quantity on Amazon took 984ms and mine took 512ms. The problem with my method is as I mentioned before, you are staying on the same page, so it looks like it is taking a long time to just change the qty amount, when in fact it is taking all that time to load the entire page again. I will try to give some visual feedback that it is loading. Any suggestions would be welcome for a better way to accomplish this.

Thank you for the feedback, keep it coming please.

I went ahead and clicked on each category of your wines (by the way, great names and they look fantastic, pitty that you do not ship all the way here in Mexico) and bought one or two wines of each category. Only one appeared at a time on the top-right cart and when I went to the google checkout, only the last one was present on the cart.... :-(

The speed is pretty good and noticed that you added the green effect on the cart to acknowledge the addition of the item to the cart.
Great job!

Carlos

That’s interesting about the items not showing up when you go to checkout through Google. I am unable to replicate it. Can you replicate it?

Alright, I ajaxified the increment, decrement, and remove. This drastically speeds things up for the user. Thanks for lighting a fire under my butt, ganeshXL. I am learning all sorts of new techniques. I basically have it do a get request to blank page to increase response time and the plugin updates everything in the session while javascript updates the page instantly. Just have to get the total and discount to update appropriately.

Jesse R. the ajax is great. Very good idea (the reloading was a bit old fashioned), leave it to ganeshXL to light the fire. I tried to replicate the bug mentioned previously but was unable to, all the orders made it into the cart and then to checkout as expected.

I cant wait to have a cart application so that I can test this out.

When I add the Chambourcin, and then the Chambourcin Reserve, and then delete the Chambourcin Reserve again, both wines disappear from the cart. First the correct one, and then the other disappears as well.

But I see that it’s still in the basket, it’s just not displayed. If I add another item, it reappears.

Thanks Steffan. I am able to replicate that. I am wet behind the ears as far as javascript goes. The remove item link is being a bit zealous at the moment in clearing up the display