I'm Utterly Amazed

 ...and truly grateful, to all the people who left such encouraging comments on the blog yesterday - and to those who have already bought things from my 31:13 shop. 

Yesterday was an awful day weather wise. I was going into town on the bus - and the bus was late, and I was caught in a cloudburst and I was rather wet. I paddled up to the library, and sat down in the warm to check my phone. Then I discovered one good friend had tried to order but it hadn't gone through. I messaged back saying I would sort it once I was home and dry.

This shop business is quite a steep learning curve - I have found out now all about abandoned carts

Fortunately the ones in my shop are virtual, not large metal trolleys discarded in the countryside. But nevertheless they cause issues. I shall explain...

If somebody starts shopping and put things in their 'cart', gets to the end, checks out, and pays up,all is well. 

But if somewhere along the line the process is interrupted, things already selected go automatically into an abandoned cart.

It may be that the buyer stopped and went off to make a cup of coffee then got distracted

Or perhaps they changed their mind and tried to edit an item and clicked the wrong thing

Or an error at the payment stage caused the transaction to fail

Whatever caused it, the items chosen remain in the cart and are removed from the store inventory [I guess that is in case the buyer comes back and wants them after all]

But if you don't realise what you've done you may come back and find that the item you want is not available anymore. 

That was the issue with this morning's buyer. We got it sorted in the end - and then it happened again in the afternoon to someone else. I've managed to set up an automated response now - if someone abandons their cart they will get an email 2 hours later saying "Oi! Do you want these owls or not?" [Or something more polite] 

It's all been very exciting today, and I shall have to settle down and make more of the items which are selling well.  Thank you again dear friends for your encouragements.

And yes, in answer to somebody else's question, I do hope to make some more of the little white oiseaux des fetes 

like those I stitched two years ago. But not for a week or two - life is going to be very busy for the next two weeks [I haven't done my cross stitch piece to send to Kirsten yet!]