I’ve been adding products to a client’s store all morning using CRE Loaded and it prompted me to start a new thread on what it’s like to use. Of course, if you already use CRE Loaded then you’ve probably found a workaround for any issues and if it’s the only cart you use regularly then this review/rant is of little value as you’ll likely have a smooth working relationship with it.
The perspective of this reviewer is one of stepping out of another cart and into this one, before going off to edit a different one entirely, so the issues I encounter are probably different from any experience you might have.
If you’re thinking about getting CRE Loaded though, it might help you understand what it’s like to use…
Version tested: Pro 6.4.1
The bad:
It’s a pain in the bum. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to put it. We’ve got deadlines here and CRE Loaded proves time and again that it was designed for use by snails and sloths who live in a world unaffected by the restrictions of time.
Particularly annoying is the fact that you have to remember to create 2 different images for every thumbnail and detailed image, with unique names for each, or you’ll end up with some very surprising results on the front-end – and not the good surprise that makes your day either.
You also have to copy the product name and description into another field for each, for the web page on the front-end to have a title and a meta description, which is frankly stupid – why can’t you just autopopulate these fields with the product title and a truncated description and then allow them to be overwritten with custom-text if I want to change them myself later?!.
Also of particular note: If your product has more than 5 variations (sub-products such as Yellow, Red, Blue that require their own thumbnail and SKU as opposed to generally global options like S,M,L,XL), you have to go back and edit the item after you’ve created it to input the rest (in batches of 5) and if your product has say 20 or 30 different colourways/unique sub-products, you’re looking at sitting there for a full 10 minutes before one damned product is completed.
Not only that, but you have to put the price for each sub-product in ‘ex-VAT’ so if you’re working off a pricelist that has only a ‘selling price’, ie the client wants this price to appear on the front-end because it already includes VAT so that’s what they give you, you have to spend even more time calulating the price and checking to make sure it’s worked.
I mostly hate you sometimes, CRE Loaded.
The good:
If you’ve got a number of very similar products that have the same price and description, but differing images and slightly different titles, CRE Loaded is really quick at copying and editing your items so you can change the image and title (or whatever else you might need to) and publishing a new product in the same or a different category as either a total duplicate, or a clone which when sold updates the stock of the original item (this is useful if you’ve got a central stock of an item that is sold with various custom bits added to it as other products in the store).
If you need to add similar options to your products then CRE Loaded is great – all you need to do is create one blanket set in the central database and apply it to each product you create, so you save a bit of time there.
I’m loving that.
The verdict:
It takes too long to add stuff into the store.
The silly image upload means you have to remember to give the thumbnail and the detailed image a different name – you inevitably won’t at some point and you’ll end up with massive detailed images where thumbnails should be and your store will look ridiculous.
It’s a scroll-fest (up and down and back up we go, down again, up again, wahey we’re nearly there). Absolute nightmare. You enter the product name, then description, then images, by which time you have to scroll back up to copy the title and then back down to paste it into the ‘page title’ box, then up again to copy the description, then down again to paste it into the ‘meta description, then up to copy the ex-VAT price and down to paste it into the sub-products boxes.
Heaven forbid you suddenly realise you’ve missed a key bit of information out, or the price is wrong – you can’t do a quick update across the lot, you’ve got to troll off to another part of the admin to find the multi-products-edit’ tool and it all becomes a farce.
The only redeeming feature is the product-copying facility, which of course is only useful in certain cases – but this does make life more liveable.
Rating: 2/5