Slow Checkout and Google Analytics

[Don Knowlton]

Well, I've added Analytics and now there is this huge delay at checkout (today I tested it and it was a 20 sec lag from checkout -> invoice). Buyers are double purchasing, complaining it is failing, etc.

Is there a way that I can do one of those intermediate pages that say "one moment. we're creating your invoice"? So, the checkout button would go to a page that has a graphic and it has a script to actually post the sale? Is that the way it's done?

we are running: Miva 4.12, OpenUI 4.937, our own SSL cert w/ verisign, Driftwood hosting, Shopping.com pop-up survey at checkout, openui invoice...

Thanks for the input!

-- Don

[dotCOM_host]

I don't think I've seen anything like this done with a MIVA Merchant store, but who knows, maybe a developer would be interested in writing something like that. Or, if you know Javascript, you could replace the final "continue" button with another one, larger, and grayed out, with something like "Please wait while we process this transaction..." - just so people do not double-click it or abandon the cart altogether after waiting for 20 seconds.

The wait, incidentally, is directly related to how fast (or slow) Google and other 3rd party servers respond when you submit all the sales data to them on the invoice page. The more stuff you have there, and the slower the remote servers are to respond, the slower your own store and invoice page will load. Google Analytics has been known to not respond at all for hours at a time, often causing MIVA stores to be impossible to check out from as they were timing out on the INVC page and never saved the orders... As they say - you get what you pay for. When Urchin used to charge good money for the service, it was nice, fast and reliable. Now Google made it free, and it, well, can be a huge mess that you can no longer depend on 24/7. Same applies to other 3rd party connections you make on the INVC page, but usually to a lesser degree - most other companies do charge at least a small fee for their services, which deters the gazzilions of people who want everything simply because it's free. It sounds funny, but I bet that if Google charged just $1/month for Google Analytics, they'd see a 90% drop in their customer base for that product virtually overnight.... which then would mean their service would be a lot more reliable and a lot faster. :-)

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

You should also consider that version you are on is very slow too.

[Don Knowlton]

I'm sorry -- you mean v4.12 of Miva?

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Yes. 4.12 is uncompiled code, and runs on Empresa Engine v3.9705 or earlier.

In later versions of Merchant, v4.14 to v4.24, the code is now compiled and does not need to run through a pre-processor first.

Empresa version v4.x executes faster.

Empresa version 5.x was streamlined even further and is by far the fastest engine produced by MIVA so far.

Upgrading to v4.24 and Engine v5.06 will significantly improve your store's performance.

You may even consider MIVA Merchant v5 with the newer MySQL backend for optimum performance.

We have seen significant delays in older stores where there are a large number of old orders stored on the server. This is amplified in uncompiled versions of Merchant. This can indeed cause a timeout to occur before an order is recorded in the orders database, which could present itself with the symptoms you are reporting.