So… Have you seen our new shopping cart????? Have you????

No, this isn’t a sales pitch to try and get you to buy something (there are other people here in charge of that). I am just super excited about this cart and I would really like everyone to check it out. I built it from the ground up with you in mind, so I really hope you like it.

“Why?”, you ask? Well… where do I begin….

I guess I’ll start from the beginning. On a bright morning in 1981, I was born and from that very day I knew that it would be my destiny to slay the hideous, evil shopping cart at worldstart.com.

Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration. I’ll tell the real story now.

Like I mentioned in my first blog post, I am the person at worldstart that makes the website do stuff. Over the last couple years, we have re-vamped pretty much everything including the whole WS tips site, the worldstart wallpaper and the worldstart message board. The only thing left to do was the software store.

I don’t know how many of you shop with us, but if you do, you have probably had some sort of issue with our old cart at some point in your life. The old cart had some issues that just could not be fixed. Let me rant about some of those right now.

1. The coupon code box was in the most ridiculous position known to man. Do you know where it was? It took me 10 minutes to find it the first time I used the cart.

2. The login process was a disaster. - I have spent literally hours on the phone with people trying to help them log in. The worst part was that you didn’t even have to log in to make a purchase, but you sure as heck couldn’t tell that by looking at the thing.

3. Paypal didn’t like us. – I’m sure there is someone reading this right now that knows exactly what I mean. You could try to pay with Paypal, but your order would be rejected and your shopping cart would be emptied.

Those are truly just a few of the issues that we had with the old cart.There are many more, but I’m not trying to write a novel here. What I’m really trying to do is tell you about how we fixed all of these issues!!!!

I started building our new, shiny cart about 2 months ago. I started with one blank page on my computer screen and just kept typing until I was done (I’m tired now, LOL). There is nothing from the old cart that was brought into this new cart. Everything is brand new.

First, the checkout process has been streamlined so there is no account confusion. When you begin checkout, you will simply be asked for your email address. NO MORE GUESS WORK. If you have an account, you will be asked for your password. If you don’t have an account, you will be taken to step one of the checkout where an account will be automatically created for you. We did this so you could always find your order history and every order made was organized in one place for you.

Second, usernames are no longer just names. Your username is your email address. Again, NO MORE GUESSWORK. If you know your email address, you know your username.

Third, store credits are managed on your account. For those of you who have taken us up on our very easy to use return policy, this will become very useful. For those of you that don’t know, Ill explain now. We have a 60 day, no questions asked return policy. If you buy something from us, you can return it within 60 days for any reason. When you return something, you have the option of receiving your refund back to your credit card or as a store credit.  In the past, we would issue store credit in the form of a gift certificate. These certificate numbers were hard to use and often lost. With the new cart, there is, you guessed it, NO MORE GUESS WORK. All store credits will be issued to your account. When you make your next purchase, you will simply check a box to indicate that you want to use the store credit on your order.

Finally, paying is simple. I have worked hard to make sure all of the errors are gone. Now, I know that it’s a big claim to say that all of the errors are gone, but I’m willing to say that 99.9% of you will never see an error from our cart.

There are lots of other things that we have done to make this cart better. I know that I am probably not even mentioning half of them. That’s why I say you should just check it out yourself.

I truly hope that you enjoy the new cart that we made for you. It has taken months of hard work and late nights.

With that being said, this cart will always be a work in progress. We have lots of new features that we are still working on. When we get them up and running, I will be the first to let you know, right here on the blog.

~Gary