'Must Have' Addons

[heatherbell]

If you have a list of what you consider to be "must have" addons, I would be interested in reading it.
I was hoping for lists of those addons available (excepting Supporters Addons) that you currently use and consider 'must haves' for your current store operation so eventually there's enough data to see what addons are used most by most stores. So for the purpose of this question, not Supporters Addons, not core addons, not unavailable addons.
Every store-owner has their own individual requirements so I'm looking more for what you consider every/most store-owners should have.
Thank you in advance for taking the time to reply.

[Kofod95]

• Guest checkout - I think few shops would have no use for that

• image thumbnailer - I think this would be helpful for a lot of shopowners, for whom GIMP is like looking at code

• Attributtes and Specials on product-edit - Raiwa has the Ajax attributes-addon, Zipurman and I offer specials on product-edit. For stores with many products, the dropdown-selection is tough to use, so for those, these two are must haves. For stores with few products it's less of an issue. However, to me it seems most logical to have all product-stuff at the product

Mentioned by others (making them more important, as at least two people lists them) :

• WYSIWIG Editor - most shopowners don't read and write html

• sales report - the option to view monthly and yearly total revenue as well as total amount of orders

The more debateable ones:

• Filters - modern shops use filters rather than subcategories. There is the manufacturer-filter in core, but filtering for attributes, price, weight (product-data in general, though gtin and similar might not be that useful) and especially the specifications of the supporters code would be useful for most shops with +100 standard products this one was written before I read the original post well enough to see that the suggestion should exist as a non-supporters addon - however, Raiwa has Shop By Price, which offers some of it

• modular product-listing - this is mostly just a feature that would really make the process of changing layout easy - most shops could use it, but few more than once, and the template-system offers something close already this one was written before I read the original post well enough to see that the suggestion should exist as a non-supporters addon

Will edit and add more as I manage to think more, and make sure they are not already there.
Really excited to see what other people think!

//Daniel

[mhsuffolk]

Product Sort Order
There was an excellent addon for 2.3 which enabled an additional column in admin categories with a user entered sort order value for each product. Later Phoenix breaks it completely though I still have the database entries and maintain it by manually adding sort order value to new products in php myadmin. I pre sort the store side with a order by sort order in the SQL call.

[heatherbell]

Many thanks for replies.
I was hoping for lists of those addons available (excepting Supporters Addons) that you currently use and consider 'must haves' for your current store operation so eventually there's enough data to see what addons are used most by most stores. So for the purpose of this question, not Supporters Addons, not core addons, not unavailable addons.
E.g. Although we use many addons, some are non-essential, some are Supporters Addons or are in core, some are self-coded, so for us, those we consider 'must haves' from those that are available are:

• Discount Codes
• Related Products (or some sort of cross sell)
• Attribute Manager
• WYSIWIG Editor (for categories and products descriptions)
• Zipur Reporting

[artfulweb]

Many thanks for replies.
I was hoping for lists of those addons available (excepting Supporters Addons) that you currently use and consider 'must haves' for your current store operation so eventually there's enough data to see what addons are used most by most stores. So for the purpose of this question, not Supporters Addons, not core addons, not unavailable addons.
E.g. Although we use many addons, some are non-essential, some are Supporters Addons or are in core, some are self-coded, so for us, those we consider 'must haves' from those that are available are:

• Discount Codes
• Related Products (or some sort of cross sell)
• Attribute Manager
• WYSIWIG Editor (for categories and products descriptions)
• Zipur Reporting

So following your reasoning I would add :
- Header Tags SEO
- Ultimate SEO URLs
- Options as Images
- All Products SEO
- New Products of the Month
- Specials By Category
- Quick Updates
- Unsold Carts
- Sloppy Words Cleaner

Hope this helps

[14Steve14]

My list may be a bit different as its mainly admin side requirements and they are in no particular order, and I hope its the sort of thing you were hoping for.

Advanced specials - a way to quickly add and remove many specials. there is an addon somewhere that does work.
Recover carts - I have lots of success with these emails.
Detailed monthly sales - This shows monthly, daily sales reporting. There are older addons available.
Customers who purchased - this shows a list of customers that purchased a certain product allowing you to follow up should there be things like recalls from the manufacturers, or if you want to send further information to customers about the product.
Product cost - this may already be a supporters code but as shop owners we should all know the cost of the items we sell.
Automatic product notifications - This is handy for when customers tick the notifications box during checkout as it automatically send them stock update notifications, which does lead to more sales.
Royal mail postal modules - John coded me all the Royal Mail modules which makes delivery options so much easier for UK based stores, and I altered one to be for a basic courier module.
Postal methods - Gary coded something which exports the data required for royal mail click and drop postage so its easy to enter the data RM need.

Like I say, mainly back end to make running the store easier. Gary did code me something basic to export customers data lists for newsletters which is always being used.

Thats about it really.

One thing I will say is that if people think of a simple module that they need it may not be as expensive to code as some may think, and they should contact a developer instead of waiting for someone else to release it.

[radhavallabh]

If you have a list of what you consider to be "must have" addons, I would be interested in reading it.
Specifically, I'm interested in those 'must have addons' which are NOT currently available as Supporters Codes or in core.
Every store-owner has their own individual requirements so I'm looking more for what you consider every/most store-owners should have.
Thank you in advance for taking the time to reply.

Hi;
How about Ajax Loading of the store catalog side... I see that mostly other stores use ajax loading instead of a complete refresh load on click it seems faster and looks neat too...
Regds./
radhavallabh

[heatherbell]

@radhavallabh
I was hoping for lists of those addons available (excepting Supporters Addons) that you currently use and consider 'must haves' for your current store operation so eventually there's enough data to see what addons are used most by most stores. So for the purpose of this question, not Supporters Addons, not core addons, not unavailable addons.

[Nigel]

My must haves :-

Maintenance mode.
Customer groups / prices per group. (Raiwa has wholesale addon that goes partway to this)
Guest view without prices. (Part of customer groups).
Admin able to edit customer orders.
Favourites. (Burt addition, not sure if it works with latest version)

Maintenance mode, customer groups and order edit are default on most other cart software out there.

[Omar_one]

Our site still not update it to Phoenix (Frozen with hooks)
I would say that we have many add-ons.. ( bold the most important and must to have)
- QTPRO
- free shipping by products
( I know much shop owner use the weight for that)
- Mailchimp Module (28dayscode)
- Discount Codes
- Related Products
- Header Tags SEO
- Ultimate SEO URLs
- HTML Emails
- Unsold Carts
- Wishlist
- Held orders
- edit / create orders
- POS (Not working anymore)
- autobackup
- Ship2Pay
etc .....
and on our test Phoenix
a lot of supporter's add-ons
- Zipur Product Manager
- Zipur Reporting
- QTPRO
- Ultimate SEO Urls
- admin groups

what I would like to see
- free shipping by products
-

• Filters - modern shops use filters rather than subcategories. There is the manufacturer-filter in core, but filtering for attributes, price, weight (product-data in general, though gtin and similar might not be that useful) and especially the specifications of the supporters code would be useful for most shops with +100 standard products

- HTML Emails

there is more add-ons installed and more would like to have, but for now this what on my mind