Hi,

I am still deciding on purchasing Shopping Cart Creator or Pro as not sure if they support the following:

1) Logging in of Clients for tracking recurrent shoppers records.

2) Option to add a Wish List for logged-in clients which they can retain untill they turn the wish-list into the actual Shopping Cart.

The option 2) is extremely important for me.

Thanks!
Paul

Hiya cassarpaul,

I'm sorry, at this time neither of your asked for options are available in either of the cart softwares. I'm doubtful we'll see either of those features either as they both tie into collecting information from the customer and the software is specifically made not to do that.

Having said that, it could be possible to integrate the cart software and use other programming capabilities with it to give it this sort of setup, but it would take some major php and databases to do so and you'd have to know what areas of the cart to do that with.

In the end though, I don't think we'll see those types of features that require any type of login system as the cart is setup to not collect any information (personal information) from the shoppers, that job is left strictly to the payment processors and I don't think there are any plans in the making to change that at all.

Hi Jo Ann,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Alternatively is there a means of passing an Order via Email. The issue is that my customers are schools and mostly repeat customers (ie. sales are COD or Invoice rather than through PayPal).

Adding an Option to either send order by PayPal or simply submit by Email should probably serve our purpose. We do understand that the latter will require a Form requesting contact/delivery details, unless of course, we can link orders to an external Customer Database. We are aware that this will need customer verification before delivery...but that's something we currently do anyway since orders are sent via email but in a crude way rather than through a Catalogue/Shop selection which SCC can provide.

Thanks once again for your support on this matter.

Kind Regards
Paul

Hiya cassarpaul,

I'm not sure about the Basic version, but I do know that the Pro version of the cart has a Catalog capability. What this means is you can setup your shop as a catalog rather than as an actual shop and people can then email you their orders instead of going through the shop. The Catalog setting basically is just that. Shows all the products and information and pricing, just has no built in payment processing so they wouldn't order directly from the cart software setup.

Then you can take the CoffeeCup Form Builder (or your favorite form builder) and create an order form via that program and integrate that into your shop on a page you can create specifically for Ordering. You can even name it Place Order Here or whatever you want. Create your form (which has the capability of accepting payments via a few different payment gateways such as PayPal, Google Checkout and a few others), or to just do COD or whatever you want by giving those options in the form.

This way you can still take orders with your form without worrying about anyone having to log in etc. The form software can send a copy of your person's order to them with all the information that they enter into the form so they will always have a copy too. Then just issue them another email when you have it setup to give them their order numbers etc.

Hope that helps.

Hi Jo Ann,

The Catalogue option sounds OK but for one question, if you may... will clients need to copy&paste/fill-in the details of each item they wish to order (swap screens/windows) or will they have an integrated 'Order Now' button in the Catalogue whereby the data parsed will populate the Form (ie. similar to what PayPal receive from SCC before processing the payment) and then client just continues to fill-in the form with their contact/delivery details?

Thanks!
Paul

There is no built in order system when you set it up as a Catalog, that's why I suggest to use the Form Builder to create a form that your customers can order from. This way they can look around your site and decide what they want (hopefully they are bright enough to write down the ID Numbers of the items they are interested in, or descriptions or whatever you put in your form). Then they just use your created form to order.

If you get really creative you can make the form a very easy to use tool and create dropdown lists for each of your product categories for your customers to choose which items they want. Lots of ways you can set this up. Personally I would suggest creating the normal shop and making one of the pages for COD Ordering so that those that don't want to order directly from the site can order via email, phone or fill out your form. This would give you the advantage of selling online to those that want to just purchase it, and taking orders from those that don't.

In the end though, to answer your question, the Catalog does not contain any way to order online. You would need to create the form for them to do so and input that on a page of the cart.

Hi Jo Ann,

Thanks for your reply and now it is clearer.

I agree with your idea to have two options - COD/Invoice or PayPal.

Before I commit, can you finally confirm if your developers would be able to provide the string that is usually sent to PayPal but instead to a txt file which I can use to extract the order contents. I just might be able to extract the contents and turn them into a veritable list format which can then be attached to an email form of sorts.

Sorry for being stubborn but I believe that I am not asking for the impossible from your team considering your great products. Please appreciate that my clients usually require long-ish lists of items and it would be great to facilitate their selection and turn it into an email order.

Basically all I am asking for is the very same contents that your software is sending to PayPal. Like that I can offer to place orders to either PayPal or via Email - both processes will send the very same order details but to different destinations (ie. PayPal or to a TXT file).

Hope that you can see my point.

All the Best
Paul

Well the problem would be that you'd need to contact the payment processor to work out any type of information setup as they are the ones that collect it and the software doesn't allow you to intervene that I'm aware of at all. I'm very sure it won't send it to anything other than the payment processor as that's the whole idea behind not having to have it licensed for all those extra things if you want it collecting things on your end. There are special security procedures required to do that and the software will not ever be setup for that type of security. Mostly it's meant to be able to keep it simple and easy for people to start up a shop and get it online while making it very nice looking too (combo of the Shopping Cart Creator Pro and the Shopping Cart Designer Pro make it all happen quite nicely).

PayPal does send you an order email with all the pertinent information in it for you to process your orders with and it's pretty nicely done as long as you keep your title information of your products setup for recognition. Other than that you'd be looking at some major code needed to do what you want to do and it's most likely either not possible, or not suggested due to the security issues involved.

As another option what Jo has said about a Form is real viable. That would get you a request for a service or product.

Know that Paypal has a payment by email setup, so in those cases where you wish to let a customer use their credit cards or Paypal account you can send a payment request.

I do not want to steal her thunder but in In recapping, go over what Jo has suggested. Set up a Catalog system and link to a form where a client can make choices that will be emailed to you.

If you do use a form created with the Web Form Builder it allows records to be saved. So without knowledge of php the data can be downloaded inserted into a spreadsheet or Access and give you a method of collecting clients ordering status, likes etc.

Dear Jo Ann and Prism,

I really, really appreciate all your suggestions and efforts to solve my problem.

Unfortunately I still believe tha SCC can be tweaked slightly (3 hour job max) to send the same codes BEFORE the are being sent to PayPal... but to a File instead. There are absolutely no security issues at this 'data-collection' stage. The data is still being captured by and remains within SCC (actually stored in the clients PC) up untill the client Checks out and lead to the PayPal log-in screen.

I do not know why I am trying to explain how your software works but my experience in web development has thought me a thing or two in how the web works and this is why I am now begging you for some intervention from an SCC developer's point of view on this matter.

Who knows, it may well be an add-on option you would like to include in a future version. It would certainly open up to those potential customers who, like me, would like to have a 'Wish-List' and the 'COD' orders in addition to PayPal order processing.

Please convince me otherwise. Your ball...

Best Regards
Paul