With SCC Pro, is the customer I sell the shopping cart website to able to change their own inventory, prices, etc...? If so, how?
This may be a silly question but I have never created a shopping cart site but have a couple customers very interested..but I am not very interested in maintaining their inventory and changing prices every day on stuff.

Your customers would also need to purchase a copy of the software to make those changes. All changes to the shop need to be made through the software.

It would make life a lot easier if we were able to maintain products online and not have to do offline maintenance and upload continuously..

CoffeeCup products are truly intended for end users, to make their life easier, not designers.

That would truly defeat the purpose of creating "software" for the shopping cart. I personally prefer to have it on my computer where I can work on it anytime I want, even if my internet is down. Having some kind of online system would end up costing us a fee to use it rather than to buy the software like we do now. Too much hassle in my opinion and there are already a ton of them out there like that as it is for online maintenance.

Has any thought been given to making it possible for web designers to purchase copies of Shopping Cart Creator Pro which they can sell on to customers as licensed copies? You can design a theme for the customer, install Creator and off they go... they'll still come back for support.

I give my clients two options, and whatever option they decide ultimately effects the price. They can either chose to have me continue to maintain the store for them, or they can maintain it themselves. If they want to do the content management, then I stipulate that they have to purchase the cart software from Coffee Cup.

Have not had any problems doing business that way.

The problem with this, Woody, is two fold... First, price - Does CC discount the software so that we are able to make a little $ on the transaction as well? And if so, how does CC know that we are not gouging the end customer by marking up their copy beyond what it could have been bought for straight off of CC's website (and yes I know, "well if they're too dumb/lazy to look and see that they could have gotten it cheaper by buying direct, they deserve to pay $$$). Secondly, support - Would CC be expected to support the end-user, with their unending questions, because the site was set up for them initially, but that person isn't being helpful? Add in, that CC (may have) discounted this software out their door, are they still expected to give the lifetime support and upgrades?

I'd have to say that CC's business model seems to be working fine the way it is. All users have the ability to recommend CC's software, Ambassadors get to "track" the number of conversions. As the Bic bearing poster said, give the end user the option, pay you to "maintain" the site for them (seems to be good, fairly easy, repeatable income) or have them purchase the software directly (don't do it for them as, the way I understand the "Eula", it is not typically transferrable, though I'm sure that either Scott or J can chime in with a correction if needed.). You could still make some extra $ if they want to maintain the site themselves, buy charging them for "instructional" time. I don't know why (and this isn't picking on any one of us) tech's seem to feel uneasy about charging for the knowledge we hold in our 7lb sponge. I know, I'm guilty of it as well, but most any other profession I have ever used/talked to/compared notes with/etc... never seem to feel bad that they charge an arm and a leg just to show up. Computer techs, however, seem to generally underbid their true value, I wonder why that is... Hmmm.

Another question on this topic............

If i use designer and creator to build an ecommerce site for my client and upload it to their hosting from my computer can the client (having purchased their own copy of the software) then edit that same site from their version of the software on their computer....... i.e. can they download the site from the server to their pc or would i need to copy the files from mine onto theirs???

Hope this makes sense!

Hiya Louise,

You would need to provide them with all of the files that are associated with the site which they would then open in their program.

You would need to provide them with the folder that the program created that ends in _files and also the .scc file that the program created.

Hope that helps