Now that the summer weather has tapered off and I don't have to spend every day doing yard work, I have more time for programming. The first fall project is to add some discount systems to the Vidown store. I think the first wave is pretty much up and running, but I want to test it a little before I roll it out to all the vendors in case something doesn't work right and it gives everything away for free

The first new feature adds a small discount for each additional video selected after the first one, and the discounts are added together. It can be set from 1 to 7 percent for each clip. It works like this:

If you buy one $10 clip, you pay $10. If you buy two $10 clips, you get a 10% discount (5% plus 5%), so you end up paying $18.00. If you buy TEN $10 clips the accrued discount is 50% so you pay $50 instead of $100. FYI, this system maxes out at 50%. Accrued discounts only apply to a single store at a time.

A second system can work separately or in conjunction with the accrual method and adds a flat discount to the whole purchase. It can go from 5% to 70% but I doubt if any vendor is going to go that high unless they are going out of business or something. The max discount for both systems combined is 70%.

I'll probably settle for more modest figures next week, but for the weekend, every store in my sig has the 5% per clip discount. On Wamorama.com, I also added an additional flat 10%. Enjoy!

Also, FYI this is a completely optional system for Vidown vendors and a lot of people simply don't believe in sales on digital goods. (not really a big fan myself and probably won't do it often after this testing period) This was developed for the ones who do like to offer discounts and run the occasional "blowout sale". Don't be surprised if a lot of vendors don't participate right away, or at all.

OOPS, forgot the "secret" part. Since this is still experimental, the discounts are not listed in the catalog anywhere. They are applied during checkout.

Turned out there were a handful of bugs in the code, but after some feedback from customers, I was able to stamp them all out. It's also no longer "secret" because I added notices about the available discounts at the top of the catalog and in the shopping cart. If you don't see any mention, there are no discounts on that particular catalog yet.

So far, it's active just my own sites, but now that the systems appear to be working correctly, I'll probably let the other producers in the system play with it in a day or two.

Found a new one.

Though the discount at checkout maxes out at 50% as you stated, the shopping cart honeys its tongue with false promises of greater savings.

Yep, forgot the limit code in the cart. It's fixed now.

No More Lies

The weekend is over and so is the testing phase. Everything seems to be working as planned now, so I rolled back all my sites to 3% cumulative, then sent out an announcement to all the rest of the Vidown store operators, who may or may not choose to implement these systems.

Thanks to all who helped with the debugging process.