Brian,

 I have put a request for this as well. It would be nice to have a customer rating, comments, as well as the ability to email the product page to a friend, etc. I don't know if you are subscribed to Internet Retailer Mag, www.internetretailer.com , however, they had an article on this very subject in this month's issue. They consider "social merchandising" as they call it, to be a very valuable selling tool. I know it sells products, when I shop I read these reviews all the time, and base my decisions on what I read. I use CNET.com a lot, particularly when purchasing cameras, computer accessories, phones, tvs, etc. CNET has had this for quite sometime. If you are not familiar with CNET, you may want to visit the site and peruse over the content, you will see the feature in action. Since CNET has been around for quite sometime, there is an ample history of comments for each product.

BTW, Internet Retailer is a free subscription but it is full of excellent information for internet retailers. Let me know if you get any replies to this thread. I have great interest in getting this going. Another great thing about this, is SEO. Since people are always making comments, etc. The page contents change frequently, allowing for a more detailed and frequent visits from Googlebot, and other search engine spiders. That is a little known secret, they don't even mention that in the article, but just knowing that will light a fire on getting these features.

 Best Regards,

Louis

TackleToyStore.com

Thanks for the lead on Internet Retailer Mag.  I appreciate it. 

I requested an ETA on the release of v5.  No response yet. 

Ed,

 Thanks for your quick response. Will the rating / social merchandising system work as a snap in, or will it be toggled on and off from the general product information? My concern is implementation on existing websites. It would be great if it was something we could turn on and off such as the "featured" product option.

 I would also suggest the following for version 5.0. As far as the custom variants go, it would be very beneficial and eliminate the repetition, if custom variants could be created and then assigned to the product or products. Example, I have about 50 fishing lures that are available in 38 different color combinations, all of these combinations are the same. The way the system is setup now I have to enter all those combinations for each of the 50 lures, I guess you see where the issue is. If the list of 38 options could be created once, and then be assigned to each product, that would be ideal and would save countless hours. Due to the nature of my business, I haven't had time to embarque on setting each of the 50 lures with a drop down menu, instead I opted to display all the different colors, along with a field where the customer can "type in" their color choice. Not sure is that is going to work as good as a drop down, it may even work better, regardless I think 5.0 should facilitate this process.

 Brian, I am glad you liked Internet Retailer. I look forward to all the valuable input from all of the forum members! 

another fairly decent mag guys is Practical Ecommerce. I think it's free, and geared more toward the small business crowd. Sometimes the info is a little too basic after years of doing this, but a refresher on the basics never hurt anyone. I just subscribed to a new one that is even better I think, can't remember the name. Web Revenue or something.

Internet retailer has some great info but it seems like it is more and more about the billion dollar websites - Beneficial to read about no doubt, but hard to compare to a smaller business like I would imagine most of us run - then again, maybe you guys are the billion dollard crowd.

BMC Tackle,
I think you can enter all of those color options once and clone the item 50 times changing the specifics for each lure. The variants are cloned as well - we use this feature daily - works well. I would think a pull down would be better - less work for the customer and the simpler the better, but you know your customer better than I do.

Is there a release date yet for 5.0   we're anxious to have the client reviews on our site!

Thanks,

Bruce     www.jewelryfactory.com

Bruce,

I am invovled in over a dozen Americomemrce websites, and not only do I think you did a great job with the implementation, I just played with your ring builder (to test it out) and had it pass the item to the cart. Real nice implementation of a configurator passing vlaues to the cart.. did you guys do this in house? Thanks!