I got the “beta” site up, and pestered some non-technical friends and family to try it out; I came across a fundamental problem: ebays fees are complicated, so there’s only a certain amount of simplifying you can do, general feedback was it was too much hassle… and they didn’t feel the benefit, i.e. they’d much rather just pay the fees…. isn’t funny how large companies can make a fortune by charging lots of people the odd pence here and there, and people would rather pay it than “waste” time finding a way not to pay it.

I’m quiet sad that this didn’t work, but I’m sure there’s another simpler avenue I can explore in the future, good luck to any one who decides to my old domain… well unless your one of those retailers that just buys expired domain names and then charges loads for someone genuine to use them… what I think of you couldn’t be pulished

Calcylator isn’t a big web 2.0 application, but there are area’s where it’ll fit quite nicely with some of the new delivery methods.

AJAX is a technology that differentiates traditional websites with 2.0 ones; the basic idea is that pages are delivered to the user with less page refreshes (thus less bandwidth, in turn quicker !). A good example of a 2.0 site vs a traditional one is maps.google.co.uk vs ebay.co.uk. With ebay you’ll notice every time you update something the page refreshes & the URL changes. If you look at maps.google you’ll notice the URL never changes, in fact if you hit “refresh” on the browser any changes you made to the page disappear.

This all in mind there are area’s of calcylator where the page is un-necessarily redrawn; The recently implemented new feature allows you to filter your mini-statement, the filters allow you to view only selling / sold or unsold items, now I could have implemented it traditionally or with ajax. The picture on this post highlights the new tool bar & you’ll notice it is massively quick !!!!! To be honest I’m gonna stop there (for now), implementing this ajax code has totally messed up the neatness of what I have written, but I think more ajax could fit in nicely (not too much tho’), but before I put any more in I’m going to make sure the underlying code is ready for it !!!!

You may notice that the home page on calcylator now boasts the ebay compatible logo, that’s because the SELL page on calcylator has changed. We now have the option for Quicker Entry when adding listings to the application; this quicker entry is a demonstration of where we’re going, type in your ebay listing/item id, and we’ll retrieve the item description and start price.

So why are we doing this ? Well as I’ve previously discussed the profit and loss idea isn’t working, the reason being that user’s feel they are working too hard… so I’m trying to improve that, now users type in 1 number instead of 3 different pieces of information. Admittedly we’re a distance away from a usable solution, but you gotta walk before you run eh ?

The site was launched in November, and at the time I thought it’d be ready for use by x-mas ebay sellers; after a couple of weeks hammering by my faithful testers I soon found the finish line was further away then I thought The application has 2 major hurdles to overcome:

1. Streamlining the user experience
2. Small target audience (related to fees)

Calcylator started like most applications, to solve a problem for one person, I then wanted to share it with the world. Where as the application fitted this one person, other people found they were working too hard – the same goes for the fees issue – the database fees don’t allow for foreign currency or power-sellers (since I’m neither).

Moving Forward
The project todo list stands, and is very important to me (as it contains user feedback), but now I have priorities.

1. Quicker User Interface:
   Technically there’s nothing wrong with the speed, but people feel they are typing too much. To solve this we’re going to aim for full ebay integration… the less you have to type the better !
2. Flexibility:
   I’m going to add fees flexibility for non “.co.uk” and “power sellers” users can select their fee scheme. This flexibility is going to extend to the user interface – I’m going to jump on the ajax bandwagon – This part of development may be a little slow, but should be very exciting for my faithful users.

As always suggestions and feedback are welcome, and fingers crossed I’ll be ready for next x-mas

I’ve had a few issues with fee calculations, take a look at this:

Closing Fee over �600: (From: eBay.co.uk Fees)

5.25% of the initial �29.99 (�1.57), plus 3.25% of the initial �30.00 – �599.99 (�18.53), plus 1.75% of the remaining closing value balance

Have you ever looked at how complicated ebay fees can get ? I’ve had a bug reported that closing fee’s weren’t being calculated correctly, basically I typo’d a > rather than >= and this was causing the function to fail under certain circumstances, the up-shot, closing fee’s not being added to some transactions.

99p listing fees were also effected by a similar bug – DOH !

Anyway onto some good news, I shall be focusing on two new features (todo page updated), 1 improving the work flow so things feel quicker, the server and page response is excellent, but users just feel they are spending too much time typing stuff in; so I’m going to add a Sell Similar function – like what ebay do. The second will be fee variations, so shops & non-UK users can get involved !

The help section has also been updated with an link to us page so you can now share your favorite calculator with the world !
These are the graphics I’ve done so far, if you’re a paint wizard, please let me know.

My calcylator project is written in php, it’s one of those “on-line tools” where users can create an account, log in, and can calculate personal profit & loss sheets for ebay.

Like most websites there are “log in” sections, now these pages need to be dealt with differently for search engines & users. Search engines will not be able to log in, but you may still want to deliver some content to them. Take my example, calcylator is running google adsense, and for adsense to work the googlebot (search engine) needs to be able to “see” some content, thinking this through, every time googlebot visited the log in or other protected pages all it would see is “access denied” error pages.

To target google with some “special” content, google kindly present themselves as google in their agent string. Now php even provide a simple tutorial on distinguishing user agent, so this is all I needed to do:

If I quickly run though what I’ve done. We have a function called find_googlebot , we run a test (look for the word google), if we get a match, then we return “true” and run the php google-content.

Here is a working example, if you visit http://www.calcylator.com/index.php?cmd=myhome you’ll see a login page (or your account if you log in) and google will see:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:25ez2GhuhDQJ:www.calcylator.com/index.php%3Fcmd%3Dmyhome+site:http://www.calcylator.com

Have fun, just remember, google cache doesn’t update that often, so if you present a mistake, you may be stuck with it for a while

I’ve learnt an important lesson it is impossible to fully bug hunt your own app, I know this seems obvious, but the scale of this truth isn’t apparent until someone else starts pulling apart what you have done.

Feedback so far:

• Many Pages: £ Signs were being formatted incorrectly – fixed
• Profit Report: Needs simple funds in & out calculation at bottom – added
• Edit sold page: Error – Cannot update postage type – removed
• Edit sold page: Massive Bug – fees increment without updating any information – fixed
• Sell Page: “please type description here” – reported as annoying – removed
• Help Info: Paypal fees used not shown anywhere – Added paypal helpfile

As a permanent record of feedback received, but not yet implemented please see the project todo list.

I’d like to introduce my new website: www.calcylator.com

Calcylator.com is personal project, targeted at ebay sellers. The site is free for people to sign up to, and provide them is a new & different profit & loss (P & L) calcylator, erm sorry, calculator

The wife & I use ebay as an on line car boot sale, one of the things we’ve noticed as sellers is how hard it is to keep track of how much you are spending on listing fees, paypal fees and P & P (postage and packaging) So in my wisdom I decided to write an application to calculate & track that information for me, and now I’m sharing it with the world !!!!

Calcylator is in it’s early stages, I’ve reached the point where we have used it at home for our own use, and now I would like users to embrace it, and help me improve it.

Most P & L calculators out there, are either OS specific download able applications, or subscription services; calcylator.com is w3c standards compliant (so will work in any web browser) and FREE ! Another difference is that most P & L calculators only offer fee calculations, they don’t take into account other expenses such as stock or packaging.

I’ve uploaded some screen shots into my gallery so people can instantly see what I’ve done, but since it’s free you might as well sign up

Over the next few weeks I hope to be implementing some new features, especially any that users contribute. The application defiantly is not stable so if anyone has any problems I’ve set up a calcylator.com contact page ; I’ve also set up a specific RSS feed for calcylator.com for users whom want to know what’s going on, but aren’t interested in my blog.

Please register, play, test and let me know how you get on !

I no longer own Calcylator the domain has moved into different hands