Improvement / Feature requests

Hi Fluent team,

I have explored the current test version hosted in your environment and would like to submit the following feature requests and improvements for consideration:

1. Product Edit Page Enhancements

• Searchable Product Categories and Types

  • Add a search bar or type-to-filter functionality for selecting product categories and product types.
  • This will significantly improve usability when managing numerous categories or types.

• Support for Brands

  • Introduce a third taxonomy type called Brands, similar to what WooCommerce offers.
  • Brands are heavily used in many client sites and would add valuable categorization functionality.

2. Roles and Permissions Improvements

• Custom Role Creation

  • Allow the creation of custom roles with:

    • A set of checkboxes to enable or disable specific permissions.

    • Clear differentiation between:

      • Add Role — Create a new role. (Currently misleading, I expected something else when I pressed it)
      • Assign Role — Assign an existing role to users.

• B2B Sales Features

  • Add support for B2B pricing strategies:

    • Enable special pricing or percentage-based bulk discounts.

    • Allow price variations per user role and decide what user role sees.

      • Example:

        • Standard Customer: €10 incl VAT.
        • B2B Customer: €8.26 excl VAT. whe logged in as b2b customer.

      • Bulk discounts, e.g., €5 off for every 5 units purchased or a percentage-based discount.

3. Service and Repair Shop Support

• Custom Order Status Management

  • Allow store owners to define and manage custom order statuses.

    • Example statuses: Received, In-Repair, Repaired, Underway, Ready for Pickup.

• Enhanced Order Workflow for Repair Shops

  • Example scenario:

    • Customers select repair services/products, add them to the cart, and proceed to checkout.

    • Offer two (my own custom payment options) payment options:

      • Pay with cash in store. (For example)
      • Pay online after repair. (For example)

    • If Pay online after repair is selected:

      • Order is created with a custom status (e.g., Waiting for Product or Product Received).
      • The initial status is set to not allow payment. (Order status is not payable)
      • Once the repair is complete, update the order status (e.g., Repaired = Payable).
      • Trigger an automatic email notification to the customer.
      • Customers can log into their account dashboard and pay for the repair before the item is shipped back.

  • Link custom statuses to custom email notifications for a seamless communication flow.

4. Product Variations Enhancements

• Flexible Variation Options

  • Allow variations to:

    • Use a label without requiring an image (no placeholder image necessary).
    • Offer color swatch selections without labels, providing a cleaner selection experience.

5. Checkout Experience Improvements

• Tipping Feature

  • Add a tipping option during checkout.
  • Particularly useful for businesses offering delivery services, enabling customers to tip delivery drivers. Food stores for example.

• Automatic Account Creation

  • Auto-create a customer account during checkout using the provided shipping information.

    • Generate a random password or leave the password unset initially.
    • Send an invitation email prompting the customer to set their password.

  • Benefits:

    • Reduces friction during checkout.
    • Increases customer retention.
    • Enables easier CRM funnel creation based on automated registrations.

6. Order Notes System Enhancements

• Improved Notes Management

  • Introduce a dual note system:

    • Internal Notes — For internal staff use.
    • Customer Notes — Notes visible to customers via email notifications.

  • Allow multiple notes per order instead of a single, large text box.

    • Each note should include:

      • A title.
      • Descriptive text.
      • Date and time stamp.

  • Notes marked for customer visibility should trigger an automatic notification email.

I did use a bit of AI to format my message, since Markdown didn't work how I expected it to work, and to clean up some of my non-native English.