Using The Shopping Cart

The shopping cart is our most dynamic and complete shopping cart. Trying to keep the system simple and still giving a highly configureable shopping platform is always diffucult. The cart is pretty basic but will require some learning to use all the features.

What you need to know before starting -

You can create up to 50 categories. Each item can have up to 4 product options each with up to 100 choices. So if you sell T-Shirts, you can list 100 colors, 100sizes, 100 styles and 100 extra options all for 1 single item.

If you have extensive options, you can create one set of default options that can be added to all the items. The number of blank option forms, the default settings all need to be configured before you add items.

The shipping options are extensive, offering standardized rates as well as the ability to create a shipping table for setting your own rates. Read the shipping options carefully. If you are shipping by weight, you will need to specify the correct weight of each item as you add it to the inventory.

The shopping cart allows for 2500 individual items.

Make sure you have good complete and wordy descriptions so customers can search for items. If you only upload pictures, the pages will not be included in the search engines, and they are not searchable within your website. You must have text on the pages if you want people to find them from the search engines.

You will also need to set up the payment options. You can choose any of 3 options. Use Paypal, use an existing merchant account realtime processing or collect the credit card info for billing at a remote terminal. We can provide realtime processing via the AuthorizeNet Gateway on an existing merchant merchant account if your bank offers it as a gateway (its the largest gateway and 95% of he banks offer it as one option).

Add Shopping Cart to Pages - To add the shopping cart to any page you just type the inclusion code into the page when editing. More information about adding programs is available here.

To build your shopping cart, look for the "Shopping Cart" at the top of any management page. This will take you to the main page with all the shopping cart options. From there you can build, modify and manage everything.

Once you are one the main Shopping Cart Page, you can manage all of the shopping cart features. Below is an index of help pages explaining what each feature does and how to configure it. You will see the same links on the shopping cart page, here they are linked to the help pages.

Adding / Modify Delete Items & Categories
Add Items
Add Category
Remove Category
Rename-Category
Remove Items
Modify Items

Payment Configuration & Checkout Page
Configure Payment Options
Set Sales Tax
Set Shipping Charges
Set Checkout Page
Make Custom Shipping Rate Table

Using Thumnails as Catalog or Store
Browse Page Settings

Setting Product Options
Set Default Product Options
Set Number of Forms for Adding Options

Importing Data Files
Import Data

Buy Now List - In some cases a merchant offers individual services, no sales tax no need to put a customer though a payment process. The Buy Now List, will list the product names, price and a buy now link directly to the payment page. Use inclusion code %%include-buynowlist%%.

Alternate Checkout Page - By default the shopping cart has links to the checkout. Some merchants like to make a special checkout page or one that links to the main menu. An alternate checkout page can be added with the inclusion code %%SHOP-CHECKOUT%%.

Random Feature - You can add an image bar with 3 or 4 images across the page that will pull random products from your shopping cart to display. This is a nice feature on a homepage so that the products have the maximum exposure. You can link the images to the products or just show the pics to make the page more dynamic. Use inclusion code %%include-randomsample%%. Read the full help page.

Slide Show - The slideshow uses images from the shopping cart allowing users to clcik next and last links to browse through photos of your products. This feature is mostly used when the cart is used as a photo gallery rather than an e-commerce shopping solution. Use inclusion code %%include-slideshow%%.

Affiliate Program - The affiliate program allows you to pay commissions on sales refered to your website from other websites or sales people. To add an affiliate signup page use inclusion code %%include-affiliate%%. For more details on the affiliate program read the full help page.

Gift Certificates - Allow customers to buy gift certificates online and redeem them right on the website or sell the gift certificates in a retail setting and let people order online using the certificate code.

Wholesale Pricing - Each of the carts supports wholesale pricing. Set a wholesale price for each item or set wholesale discounts. Read more here.