Review: Miva Merchant 1.22

Shopping cart programs usually line up in two groups: (1) those that are very easy to construct but pretty inflexible, and (2) those that are difficult to construct but offer maximum flexibility. Miva Merchant seems to offer both options, a relatively easy "out-of-the-box" set-up and complete customization available for veteran programmers.

Miva Merchant is life #2 for KoolCat, an older version of this program. Products are dynamically displayed on templates built from a mixture of HTML and Miva Script. Miva Script is a specialized database programming language that gives instructions to the Miva Engine running on the webserver which interprets its commands. If you want to take the time to learn, the source code is available to purchasers of the product so you can customize a great many features of this store.

However, most novice merchants will use the standard set-up. The program installs easily from a web interface. You are instructed to print out the 55-page manual available in PDF format. You'll need it, since construction of a store is not especially intuitive. Many programs you can learn by just poking around the menu structure, but Miva's browser interface menu is fairly complex. One of the chief weaknesses is a lack of context sensitive help screens. The ones included are sparse and don't allow you to explore questions very much. So you need to set up the program with the documentation printed out and open in front of you. Fortunately, the documentation is well-written and easy to follow.

Categories

It's best to begin building the store by designating categories. The program enables you to nest subcategories under categories down several levels, so conceivably you could build a very complex store with Miva Merchant. The categories automatically appear on the main screen at the left side so customers can easily find them. For each category you indicate a category code. This code is placed with each product to tell the program in which category the product is found. It is possible to place a product in more than one category.

Products

After developing several categories you began to add products. While the program allows you to type each product into an online screen, if you have your products listed in a spreadsheet or database, the easiest way is to load products into the system was through an upload facility that reads a tab-delimited files. Then you specify the identity of each field, and the product file loads your data into the program. The possible fields include: Product Code, Product Name, Thumbnail Image URL, Full-Sized Image URL, Price, Weight, Taxability, Description (which can include HTML mark-up), and a Category Code (corresponding to the codes you designated when setting up categories).

You may upload graphics either singly through the browser interface or in a batch using an FTP program. Miva Merchant is designed for one graphic per product, but since the description text can be in HTML, you can call other graphics from the description text. You can specify how many products in a category should be displayed per page, each with a thumbnail graphic if you like. When you click on the product name, the product, description, and full-sized picture are displayed.

Most shopping cart programs allow you to set attributes for a product, such as size or color. Miva stands out by allowing you to specify as many attributes for a product as you desire. Conceivably you could designate size, color, and fabric, and include a different price add-on for each attribute. The product would have a single SKU, but the extra amounts for the attributes are totaled separately in the shopping cart. Selection can be by radio buttons, a drop-down select list, or checkboxes. Or the customer may enter characters into a text entry field. Attributes can be specified as required.

The downside of the attributes feature is that I could find no way to upload products together with their attributes, or to quickly add pre-configured attributes to a product. Each attribute needs to be set up manually using the browser interface. Just hope that most of your products don't need attributes. While this is the strongest built-in attribute feature I have seen, it is limited to manual set-up.

Ordering System

An item is placed in the shopping basket by clicking on an order button, though the shopper is not automatically taken to the cart page. A standard frame at the top of the screen allows the shopper to go to

If this is all the available indication of how to check out, I'd be concerned that a shopper might forget this all-important checkout step. Storeowners need to develop other ways of pushing customers to the checkout stand.

The shopping cart page (and checkout page) displays SKU, Product Name, Quantity, Price Each, and Price Total. Unfortunately, if one uses long product names or SKUs as I did, the cart page becomes too wide to display on my 800x600 pixel screen without horizontal scrolling. The product names should be made to wrap down to the following line if they are too long.

The checkout page collects standard billing and shipping information from the shopper. It indicates which fields are required and optional by the use of bold or italics. Only one line is given for address, which might make it difficult for some international shoppers, but a full "Other State or Province" line probably provides enough space. However, the storeowner can edit the list of states to include those from a particular country or region. Unfortunately the side-by-side billing and shipping information columns on the checkout page force me to scroll horizontally to enter all the information. Even worse, the essential "Continue" button to complete the order is hidden to the right of the screen.

The program has a number of modules available to configure shipping. These include the UPS On-Line Shipping Calculation for up to 18 of UPS's different shipping services, Minimum or Weight Shipping, Flat Rate Shipping, and Base Plus Weight Shipping. Missing, however, are shipping methods based on price or on number of items, available in some shopping cart programs.

Payment can be made by credit card or check. If you don't choose to have real-time credit card authorization, you can select the Credit Card Payment with Simple Validation option. This checks the credit card number using the simple MOD10 formula. While it helps you catch entry errors, of course it does not screen out a determined thief.

Miva Merchant is one of the strongest programs in terms of the number of third-party real-time credit card authorization programs it allows: Anacom, Authorize.Net, CyberSource, Merchant Online, and CyberCash. Several of these offer fraud detection services as well.

The program includes sales-based sales tax for as many states as you designate. However, this module did not seem to be working properly when I tested the store. There is no module to connect to a third-party tax calculation program.

When a shopper completes her order, she receives an e-mail confirming the order. The program can be configured so the merchant receives a similar e-mail as well.

Orders are picked up using the password-protected and SSL secure administrative browser interface. They can be printed out singly, or batched together and downloaded as a flat file, delimited by a tab or other delimiter, and then (after reformatting) ported into your accounting or order fulfillment program. The program documentation says, "Using an FTP client, transfer the 'orders.dat' file onto your local computer." Unfortunately, this method bypasses a secure transfer of the order information, and the credit cards numbers are exposed to potential theft.

Special Features

Miva Merchant contains a number of features that you don't find on most other programs in its price class.

Product Links

If you have an existing website, Miva Merchant can be used as only an order-taking system. For each of the products in your store, Miva indicates the exact URL that can be linked to the product on your existing HTML pages. When a visitor clicks on your link, the product is, depending on what you enable: displayed on its Miva template page, placed in the shopping cart, or added to an order with the checkout screen displayed to complete the order.

Upsale System

When your shopper is ready to check out, you can present her with a special "limited time offer." The merchant selects a list of possible upsale products with special prices. Then the program determines which product to offer at checkout, depending upon the items in the shoppers basket already and the amount of the shopper's total order (e.g., more expensive items for shoppers with an already big total). The program won't offer an item the shopper has already selected, but will display an item related to other items the shopper has in her cart.

Multiple Storefronts

Miva enables a storeowner to set up multiple, independent storefronts that can be managed through the same web interface. While the $495 Miva Merchant product comes with a single domain, single store license, additional stores can be added for $99 each, or a total of 25 store licenses purchased at one time for $1,200. The only requirement is that all the storefronts must run under a single domain name.

Infinite Customization

Few programs allow the kind of customization that Miva enables with access to its Miva Script. An experienced programmer can make Miva jump through hoops, I am sure, but the cost is learning a proprietary database language that is interspersed with HTML code on a page. Some developers may be familiar with htmlscript, which was a precursor to Miva Script. Code-level development is not for the faint of heart. However, e-mail discussion lists support programmers and merchants with their specialized applications.

Miva says, "Access to industry standard databases is provided via ODBC and SQL for selected operating system platforms. All platforms have an integrated high performance, architecture neutral, multi-user database system based on the xBase standard."

Scalability

How many products can this store support? Kevin White of A+ Hobbies of Indiana (http://www.aplushobbies.com) has 100,000 items in his store. Kevin says, "The products appear rapidly when requested and the checkout works flawlessly." Gott's Sheet Music Express (http://www.gottsmusic.com/Merchant/merchant.mv?) just set up a store with nearly 400,000 items and 10,000 graphics. I searched on "California." It took the database search feature about 15 seconds to present me with 12 titles that included my search word. While the vast majority of small business stores won't have anywhere near that kind of product listing, Miva seems to have the power to run it. How well it handles a large number of hits per minute, I can't determine. A store this large would probably be run through a desktop database that is used to update the native online database (or another powerful ODBC compatible online database), since it would be clumsy to maintain a large number of products using only the browser interface.

Conclusion

One of the questions I always ask myself is whether the company will be around to support and improve the product a couple of years from now. Miva has developed a broad user base of 4,000 copies, primarily through their successful marketing via approximately 400 web hosting services. They also have integrated a number of third party modules that extend the capability of their product. I see them as a continuing player in this very crowded field.

On the other hand, I am concerned about the way the order page is arranged to be wider than the 800x600 screen, and Miva's failure to provide for a secure way to download batches of orders. Nor is the store is not easy enough for newbie merchants; it will take careful study of the manual for a merchant to figure out how to set up a store. Nor does Miva make it easy to add non-product pages to the system. You need to do this with a separate HTML editor and upload the files.

I see Miva Merchant as a strong program for its $495 price point. It will be most valuable for merchants who desire to build a large store with a complex system of categories and subcategories. Its ability to be customized make it attractive to merchants and developers who need to add to its already extensive features. Miva is likely to remain a tool for small business projects, but it allows remarkable capability, and should be seriously considered by small businesses that plan to build larger stores.