Correct. The output is fine and dandy, but getting to the output is not an easy task...really understanding different ordering and shipping processes for different products and services is essential, and building those systems into this "shopping cart" plug-in will not be easy at all...making it flexible with good database design up-front is the key...

Regards,

Eliot Lee

RE: Affiliate Program / Promotion Tracking

The final version will include an affiliate program with pay per click and/or pay per sale (flat rate or % of sale).

We are also working on promotion tracking which might be more like what you are talking about, where we can create a special link to the store for say, a listing in Goto.com, and view (in a calander format) clicks and sales per day.

AlexJ

You guys at Gossamers ROCK!

thanks. Looking forward to seeing it when it is finished. :)

They do rock... without question.

To give everyone proper credit please understand that Alex from Gossamer Threads and AlexJ are two different people.

AlexJ
The Netmall Group

oh.

well... I guess you rock as well. I think the gossamer folks are also making a shopping cart plug in. So I assumed that somehow you were related to the gossamer folks makikng the plug in.

Wow. more choices now. cool. :)

Hi AlexJ,

The shopping cart idea is excellent. I wish i could program like that.

Anyway just some options to consider.

1, Choice of currency symbol i.e. £ $
2, Maybe add many worldwide currencies and have the option to display products in various currencies.
3. Option to be able to have additional pricing information based on variables for each item. i.e. a small shirt cost £10.00 a medium shirt cost £12.00 etc.
4. Option to have additional variables for each item: colour, size, weight etc.
5. Option of 2 images. detailed pages would be good for this! small image and brief/full description or small image linking to detailed page with larger image/s and full description.
6. Option to import individual text files for each item. for example i have a client who has an online clothing store and explains each item differently ie. actual size, your chest size, length. it would be great to be able to use this simple feature.
7. connection to as many payment merchants as possible. I've listed the big ones below:

Anacom

Authorize.Net, E-Commerce Exchange and QuickCommerce

Bank of America eStores

Cambist

Cardservice International and Clear Commerce

CubeCard

eft.com

eProcessingNetwork (Controlled Devices)

eWAY

gochargeit.com

GORealtime E-Commerce Transaction Processing

InternetSecure

iTransact

PaymentProcessor.net

PayPal

PSiGate

SECPay

SecurePay.com

signio.com

Verisign

WorldPay

8. i think Im probably booring you now so i will go, just thouht I would give you some more ideas to ponder over.

9. thought of another, Gift Voucher purchase and usage.
10. Wish List! visitors can add items to a wish list to be purchased later or by a friend/partner etc.

PS. any idea on price?



Regards

MDJ1
http://www.isee-multimedia.co.uk

any news?

MDJ1 -

Some good ideas. As usual we love the comments and ideas - please keep them up.

1 - We will definately have a currency symbol variable.
2 - Interesting idea - automatic conversion to other currencies. Is there a site where we could have the software automatically download the conversion rates each day?
3 - This gets a little complicated. The program has been designed from the ground up to use a live inventory. This does NOT have to be used. But when using a live inventory, you cannot have one item SKU, and allow for different sizes or colors, or your inventory data becomes invalid. Current plans are to have a create new item option where, you create a base item, and then it uses a grid or table of information that you provide to create all of the different SKU/color/size/price combinations into other items. I'm not sure if I've described this clearly or not... ?
4 - Color, Size, Dimensions and weight are all current item variables.
5 - Currently has variables for 3 images (small, medium, and large), and two levels of detailed pages.
6 - Could you explain this a little better for me?
7 - The payment gateway setup has been made modular. We will be including modules for the most popular gateways as you suggested, and others will be written on request.

It is important to understand that use of all of these features and functions will be optional. In other words, a store built with our system could get extremely complex, or it could be used as a simple shopping cart.

Our programming demo site is viewable at: http://dev.netmall.net. This site is where alot of our programming is done, so it may at times be broken. Currently, you can almost complete an order online. Browser through the different categories to see how flexible the software is..

Looks great!

Is it possible to code it so paypal can process the credit card transactions? (as an additional credit card processing option)

It will save us (the little guys in business) some monthly fees.

Looks like you liked CommerceSQL. : )

Thanks, Ken

Ken,

Thanks! I'm glad someone finally replied. I was starting to think maybe everyone hated it.

The demo store templates as they now sit will only be one of several default templates that come with the program. We've been having a hard time figuring out who the original designer of that template is - it is currently being used or distributed with 3 different shopping cart type systems.

The final version will accept Paypal too. And I really didn't get into this - but there are alot of features that you wouldn't know existed or couldn't understand the depth of from just viewing the user side of the demo. As soon as we get a few more steps along with the project we will open up a live admin demo for everyone to play with.

Again we are looking for as many feedback - comments - suggestions on this as possible. Any features anyone would like to see included, please speak up...

Thanks,

AlexJ

You probably already have this in the program but a review a product like amazon would be cool, and refer other products once a customer selects one.

This might be cool to click on the item jpeg and it opens in a larger screen with a larger picture. I have seen in the latest shopping carts, I think its a java program, where you can click on the picture and rotate the picture.
Its pretty trick.
like this http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store/productdetail.aspx?storeid=inxpot&prodno=493974

and
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store/productdetail.aspx?storeid=inxpot&prodno=493970&zoom=yes

This may be a bit much. But here is another idea.
Also, can it create other stores similar to cafepress. Where a vendor can sign up to create his store off of my original store and he/she could sell their products and I would get a commission or monthly fee for the service. I guess they would have to be able to use their own credit card service.

We plan on having product reviews and ratings... however these features will not be present in the initial release.

As far as recommending products - initially you will be able to select products to recommend (upsell) for each product. Down the road, we want to have both 'recommended' products (by the store owner) or 'Others who have purchased this product also enjoyed....' created from statistics.

Cafepress is using a javascript to preload the 2 or 3 different views of an item, then little bits of java to change which one is being displayed. Not too difficult to do stuff like that. When I click on their 'zoom in on picture', it reloads the same page, adding a zoomed in picture of the logo at the bottom of the page.

So basically, in a nutshell, our system could do those product pages as it sits now. All you would need to do is a little template work.

I do have a pretty cool demo of something we have been working on for a customer, letting you zoom in on a product image:

http://www.tieguys.com/mag-demo2.html

An affiliate program, paying out on a % of sales or per click will be the first thing added to the system after the initial release. Down the road I could see where an entire co-branded store affiliate program similar to cafepress could be possible. Nothing definate on that one though.

AlexJ

That drag-over magnifier is really cute!

I was looking for something similar for a site that's on the back burner at the moment, but a way to enlarge portions of the item, and to fit sized masks. So that the magnifier would clip the image to round, or oval, of a fixed ratio compared to the size of the image.

Did you write that magnifier code, or is it a package from else where?


PUGDOG® Enterprises, Inc.
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Yea...very cute...but not interoperatable between web browsers. It does not work in Netscape 4.6 or 4.73, you might want to consider using a set of "browser check" codes and then use DOM codes (for Netscape 6.0 and above, and LAYER based codes for Netscape 3.0 - 4.73) to print the javascript codes that will work in IE, and then put a message for Netscape browsers that the zooming codes do not work.

I have seen a similar feature that uses both java applets and java server side codes (via JSP).

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Hi,
I don´t know how far you are with the development of your shopping cart. I am working on a shopping cart for our company myself but I am not a skilled programmer more a cut and paste/trial and error developer. Anyway I think it might be interesting to consider some of the following options we are working on.
1. you can store all products of different users in one shopping cart table. so the users can view their history and the status of their order e.g. ordered,shipped and so on.
2. Based on the total turnover there are different prices we have Regular, Bronze, Silver and Gold Customers
3. The shipping is Based on the Payment conditions and the weight of the products. Gold Customers don´t have to pay for the shipping.
4. It would be a very easy task to make a price agent. When you update your prices you can run a script which compares the prices in a price agent table in the Links/Products table and if the price is lower there is an automatic mail to the customer.
5. You can sell your shop to other people who use their own design/templates and get a copy of the order. You can handle the shipping and delivery papers. The 'partner' pays the golden customer price and gets the difference between gold and regular customers price. We will offer this option with a cookie based shop and no turnover based price.
Maybe some points are interesting for you

Cheers
Niko

http://www.master-productions.com

another thought that i could use in the program.
at check out a field for special instructions from the buyer. A simply text box where customers can write any noted, instructions or whatever.

Also an option for a pull down table of sizes for clothing on the store.

AlexJ,

how's it going? I have sort of been waiting to see what you've come up with. Any news?

We are still rolling along nicely. As with many of the other plugins, I had to go back and do some updates when ver. 2.04 came out.

The demo URL I previously gave out is now defunct (it was a 2.03 install).

We are very close to putting up a full demo of the store. It is almost 100% working. The admin side is still a bit off.

Thats it for this update... now back to work...

AlexJ

any news on pricing and ETA?

very excited about this.

How's the project going?
any demo in sight?

Ken

hows it going?

i wonder if an delivery address book is included in the plugin package?
Is there any change these day for this plugin? as i notice there is long times
there is no updated infos for this plugin. also no demo for long times.