WHOLESALE- DISTRIBUTORS OF PET INDUSTRY LIVESTOCK

7/14/2023

The last of the “Minor” revisions are complete!  By popular demand, you can now submit product notes that are attached to the product itself; For example, if you’re ordering hamsters and you want female only, you can make that designation directly in the cart or item page, rather than having to fit all special instructions in the “Delivery Notes” Section in checkout.  That’s probably the only major revision a typical user is likely to notice; Rendering has been improved on the emailed order slip as well but I doubt anyone would notice the difference had I not pointed it out.

I still have a few more changes to make myself (including removing the “Lorem Ipsum” text that still appears in a few areas of the site lol) but next week, the site will be mirrored into a staging area or “Sandbox,” and future changes will be big ones!  Since the staging site will ultimately be copied and overwrite the original site, any minor changes become impractical because I’d have to perform them on both sites.  The reason this is being done is that the forthcoming changes will require coding that could result in website crashes or other irregularities; Performing the changes in this way will prevent interruptions to service.  So what you’ll see in the future is tranches of changes that are fairly notable when they occur.  In no particular order, we’re looking to provide the following services (on our short list):

1. Blue Sheet Specials to appear in the lists & cart;

2. A series of specialty lists, e.g. Specials, (new & improved) New & Noteworthy, Nano Fish, Top Sellers, & the like;

3. Rendering options for the user within the lists; Eg List Only, Large Icons, and clearer designations/hover options for viewing pricing matrices;

4. The ability to “Reorder” items directly from previous orders (Similar to Uline, if any of you use them); and

5. New Submission forms for special order/item requests, price comparison requests, and credit requests.

This has been a heck of a ride, starting out what was really not all that long ago with a request to a programmer for a “Very simple ordering portal,” and I am thrilled with the outcome so far.  It’s a tremendous amount of work but feedback has been resoundingly positive and improvement requests have been completed seamlessly by our designer.  I don’t expect you guys to be as excited about it as I am but hopefully you’re enjoying the functionality and experience, and as always please let us know how to make it better!

6/23/2023

At this time – Blue sheet specials will still not be reflected in your cart – That’s next, along with a new and improved new & noteworthy section!  However, today, I added a button to the top of the page just below the header area where you can view and, if desired, download the brochure; This button will appear for all logged in users.  This way, you can at least view the specials all in one place, without having to go back and forth between the email and the website.  This will also be updated more quickly than the e-blast going out, as generating the current brochure and updating the website is only the first of many steps required to generate and send the E-blast.  Basically this just means you can check the website much earlier in the day Friday (or in some cases even Thursday afternoon) and obtain current specials & availability hours before the eblast is sent.  We’ll be improving and synergizing (is that a word?  Spell check says it is) this process in the very near future.

Most Recent Updates (aside from the foregoing!):

   – Prices are now shown as a range, from lowest-discounted price to single-lot price, for items that have quantity discounts (which is most of them), in full-item as well as category view.  This was a huge sticking point for us and a huge programming/design hurdle!  Shout out to our programmer, Sumit, for accomplishing this when previous designers have told us it’s “Not possible!”  

   – Shopping Cart view, checkout view, and emailed order (Both the copy you get and the copy we get) have received rendering updates; Price per item is now shown in these views, and they are now sorted by Category/SKU, which makes for a cleaner look and easier/more organized referencing in these views as well as the document it sends to you.    

Many product images have been uploaded but many, many more remain!  We’ll be working diligently on our end to get these done, as well as improve functionality.  In the meantime, enjoy the ride and thanks for taking us for a test drive!  Please feel free to provide any feedback!