I have been playing with the wwStore version of this, some ideas from a Business persons point of view. KISS

1. The ability to not include shipping, especially with email provider chosen.

a. If no shipping charge option chosen then the user should be able to put a message in as a ”placeholder”. I would put something like “shipping charges will be included in your final total on you order confirmation email”

2. If email provider chosen, the credit card information fields should still be available. It even would be good if the algorithm that confirms it as a valid cc number were run and that the date field was checked (but not required). A person has committed to purchase physiologically until, in their mind, monies have been given. A store needs to at least give the appearance of finalizing the sale.

3. Returning customers should not have to re-enter information in shipping or bill to, these should default to the last entry, and the customer should have the ability to edit, saves should be made based on an ifchange situation.

4. Since a person needs to be logged in the billing information should be brought forward from their user profile (if available), the more a customer has to do at the point of commitment the better chance for buyers remorse to kill the deal.  Also, it can promote negative feelings if the customer realizes the application should have access to the information it is requesting the “company” didn’t think it was worth the effort (meaning they weren’t worth the effort, last thing you want someone to think when you are asking for money).

5. Let the customer change the quantity, by data entry as well as by link.  If they are adding one more the link is a great idea. If they are adding 10 it is not.

 In General:

 The only font that should be larger on bolder on any page, then the font used to show the name of the product is if there is a SALE.  Then the SALE or promotion can be as large as the product name but, should not hide it.

 
Final thoughts:

Inventory , size choices (though good, can now be handled by multiple entries), product package groups, full blown shipping, tax, the ability to upload product information form a file,  the ability to upload tax information, connecting to live shipping rates based on multiple carriers, connecting to live tax providers, are neat but the first priority should be, from this point on , bugs, and ease of use to the shopper, something often overlooked.

Shipping based on weight alone is almost useless and can add to the “store owners” woes.  Profit made on shipping is taxable.

 With the growth of home based businesses the need for a simple easy to operate (store Admin) and easy to use (shopper) I think can be very valuable.   I hope the leader of this project, doesn’t try to add a bunch of bells and whistles before, delivering a simple, useful version.

JMHO