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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
 Posted - November 05 2009 : 02:07:48
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Hi, I hope someone can help me.
When I look at my stats, one of my commonest pages visited is the Tell a Friend page but I have no idea what pages people like and are referring so I cannot capitalise on this to improve the site.
1. Is it possible to generate a "mail to merchant" showing me what is sent, who sent it and to whom?
2. At the moment, sometimes the friend replies using his "reply to email" button and of course that comes to me, not the referring friend. If I knew the above details I could forward it on too of course.
As an example, this is my typical Tell a Friend page
http://www.myfavouritepubwalks.co.uk/shopping/shoptellafriend.asp?id=193
Thanks for any help.
Go4Gold |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - November 05 2009 : 05:22:09
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It would be possible to do that with some tweaking, but I personally think that it's better to replace the standard tell-a-friend page/link with a direct mailto command and have the customer open up an email and physically send it themselves using their own address book; it's usually better for the customer because they can type whatever they want into the email, choose quickly from their address-book (eg send to multiple people etc), and have a record of it for themselves.
The other up-side to doing a direct mailto is that people won't be able to use your email server to send out spam, and you also don't get potential spoofing problems.
An example of a direct mailto link (you'd create some kind of template-field for this, and change shoptellafriend.asp to also do the same thing for historic/seo reasons) would be like:
<a href="mailto:?subject=My%20Web%20Site%20-%20My%20Product%20blah&body=I saw this, and thought you'd be interested.%0A%0AMy%20Web%20Site%20-%20My%20Product%20Blah-%0Ahttp://www.mysite.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=1">tell a friend</a>
(you'd have the template-field/page which generates that link replace the product name/id dynamically with an encoded copy of what the relevant product name is that they're viewing)
It'd also avoid privacy issues, ie the site wouldn't be able to record who they're sending the email to.
With my customer hat on, if I see something that I think someone I know would like, I try the tell-a-friend link (not necessarily for vpasp carts, but any shop/site), and if it gets me to fill-in a form then I cancel/don't-bother, but if it opens an email with the relevant subject and link then I send it off to people in my address book.
The thing is, when you fill in such a form, you don't know what the site-owner's going to do with the info or what the final email will be, because you know that the site can translate/record it all however they want, whereas with a direct open-email mailto command you have complete control over what you send, who it gets sent to, and you know the site can't record the personal info/text.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
Edited by - devshb on November 05 2009 05:40:25 |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
Posted - November 05 2009 : 06:19:46
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Brilliant, Simon, many thanks for taking the time to spell all that out for me! Lots of good points in there which I can use. I guess there is no way of registering which pages people refer friends to is there? Not to record the friends details but just to see which paes people think are worth referring friends to ...
Thanks again for your advice.
Go4Gold |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - November 05 2009 : 06:44:32
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It would be possible to record which tell-a-friend links they click on, even if you use a direct mailto command, as you can setup a bit of javascript/ajax to post the product info in the background before it kicks off the mailto command, so it's possible to do but a bit more complex.
Might be a candidate for a little addon to do all of that kind of stuff, but I'd want to see what's in vpasp v7 first as they might already have catered for it.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
Posted - November 05 2009 : 07:09:51
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Ok thanks Simon. Certainly sounds too complicated for me so I'll wait and see too.
Thanks again.
Go4Gold |
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savvymedias
VP-CART New User
191 Posts |
Posted - November 06 2009 : 00:49:04
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I have a different suggestion altogether that I like even more. Try using the free service from http://addthis.com/ -- it tracks stats for you when you register and allows for sharing, printing, etc. I removed the printing icon from this one, as I am going to do my own thing (even though they can print from the "Share" link).
Just add the script and remove the option for tell a friend in the cart set up area in the admin.
http://www.maxamlabs.com/shopexd.asp?id=59&bc=no
Hope that helps and is a quick and easy solution for you. |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
Posted - November 06 2009 : 01:35:00
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Thanks Savvymedias, I'll check it out. Also looks better than the Onlywire bookmark and share button I have used to date.
Cheers.
Go4Gold |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
Posted - November 11 2009 : 15:18:29
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Hi Simon,
I've followed your advice to use a direct mailto command for tell-a-friend and have changed this in tmp_product.htm. This changes it in the extended description page but not the category views or the search results. Can you tell me where I find the code to change for those page views too please?
Thanks for your help.
Go4Gold |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - November 12 2009 : 07:31:52
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that'd be tweaked in the tmp_productformat.htm template
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
Posted - November 13 2009 : 01:37:22
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Thanks Simon. Sorry I am probably being dense but my tmp_productformat.htm file does not give any clues as to where the Tell a Friend link is and just has the code below. I am using version 6.09 if that makes a difference.
<!-- START OF NORMAL PRODUCT DISPLAY -->
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="4">
<tr>
<td>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2">
<tr>
<td width="20%" valign=top align="center">
[formatimage sub]
</td>
<td width="50%" valign=top align="left"> <span class=hdrproduct><strong>
[translate cname]
</strong></span><br>
[translate cdescription]
<br>
[FormatProductOptions sub] </td>
<td width="30%" align=right valign=top>
<strong>~langproductprice^:</strong> <span class='price'>
<font size="2"><font color="#FF0000"><b>[FORMATCUSTOMERPRICE cprice] </font></font></b>
</span><br>
$ <strong>~langproductretailprice^: </strong><strike>[formatcurrency retailprice]</strike><br>
<br>
[formatquantity sub]
[formatbutton sub]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="30%" align=left valign=top>
[FORMATOVERALLRATING sub]
</td>
<td width="70%" align=left valign=top>
[formathyperlinks sub]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<hr color=#cccccc noShade size=1>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- END OF NORMAL PRODUCT DISPLAY -->
Thanks for your help as always.
Regards,
Go4Gold |
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savvymedias
VP-CART New User
191 Posts |
Posted - November 13 2009 : 02:36:09
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It isn't there. There are helpnotes on adding it in, but wherever you want is fine...
I would do after [formatimage sub] -- the images for the item or
[formatbutton sub] -- the add to cart buttons |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
Posted - November 13 2009 : 13:17:03
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Dont worry after all, thanks, tracked it down to shopproductformat.asp with help from VP-ASP Support.
Appreciate everyone's help :-)
Go4Gold |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
Posted - March 04 2010 : 02:11:40
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Hi,
I decided to go with Savvymedia's suggestion and use the Share button from http://addthis.com/ which I think is great! Only difficulty is getting it to work in shopproductformat.asp for the Search and Categories pages as it picks up the results page rather than the underlying product pages.
You can see an example here where addthis does not pick up the product page:
http://www.myfavouritepubwalks.co.uk/shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=72&cat=Glamorgan+Pub+Walks
(For now I have left the Tell a Friend link in too while I try to resolve this.)
When I previously changed the Tell a Friend link in category and search results pages from the standard form to mailto:, I was told to follow the following steps which worked (you can see this as I have left the Tell a Friend link in too for now):
1. Open shopproductformat.asp.
2. Locate the following code: (around line 701)
strurl="shoptellafriend.asp?id=" & lngcatalogid
3. Change it into the following code: (all in one line)
strurl="mailto:Enter your friends email addresses?subject=See this pub walk from THE "& objrs("cname") & "&body=Hi, just found this free pub walk and thought you might be interested: THE "& objrs("cname") & " http://www.myfavouritepubwalks.co.uk/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=" & lngcatalogid
Many thanks for any advice.
quote:
Originally posted by savvymedias
I have a different suggestion altogether that I like even more. Try using the free service from http://addthis.com/ -- it tracks stats for you when you register and allows for sharing, printing, etc. I removed the printing icon from this one, as I am going to do my own thing (even though they can print from the "Share" link).
Just add the script and remove the option for tell a friend in the cart set up area in the admin.
http://www.maxamlabs.com/shopexd.asp?id=59&bc=no
Hope that helps and is a quick and easy solution for you.
Go4Gold |
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go4gold
VP-CART New User
151 Posts |
Posted - March 04 2010 : 03:20:34
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As a follow up (just realised I did not quite finish the question!), based on the previous advice I tried adapting the code by adding the "& lngcatalogid" to make it pick up the product but this was not picked up by addthis.
Thanks.
Go4Gold |
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