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Before doing an in-depth
study of these examples, you should visit our step
by step guide for a primer on how virtualCART
works. That page is also a setup guide, but is great for just "light
reading".
Our "classic" implementation
is heavily commented with information about each example. It is
useful for understanding concepts or just finding a method that
matches your product organization.
Our frames implementation
example is also a fully functional template site available as a
zip file to download and examine at your leisure. Feel free to use
the demo site as a framework for constructing your pages. These
pages have a minimum of visible cart related comment to allow you
to get a better feel for how a possible frames site should look.
Many of the examples are very similar to the classic page.
download the example here: frdemo.zip
Express Order single
page sales. All done securely, and you have full control over the
content and the order format. Got a hot product or a single product
to sell? Or maybe your friends are helping you sell something on
their site? Put up this single page where people can do it all from
one page.
If you want, add a hidden
variable showing the site where the order form resides and give
your friend a commision. This works as an honor system affiliates
program. We also provide support for Commission Junction, Shareasale, Linkshare and other affiliate programs.
See the cart configuration
form for more details.
Our "carpet shop" demo
illustrates how to sell cloth, carpet, or something similar which
needs a shopping cart intelligent enough to understand different
widths, lengths, and quality grades of an item. virtualCART
tracks all these, dynamically adjusting the price to meet the product.
virtualCART
can sell virtually anything, in any combination.
Multi-Item Submissions:
The best web catalogs today
avoid the "order form" syndrome afflicting earlier sites. You've seen
those sites; look at items all over the site, write down what you
want to buy, and enter it all in an order form with payment information.
Yuck! Not very conducive to buying. virtualCART
allows ad-hoc addition of items from any page on your site, right
when the shopper sees them; no pencil required!
There does exist the
need though to be able to put more than one line item into the shopping
cart at one time. When a customer will often buy several related
items together, we call such items "logical groupings", and they
are coded on your site as "multi-item submissions". The html code
differs a bit for these, and we suggest that you tackle standard
single items first. When you're ready, visit our very simplistic
bread store. The page also provides verbage outlining usage for
this method.
Direct Catalog Input:
This feature was often requested, and so here it is. It allows full
support for you to allow internet ordering direct from your printed
catalog. The customer just types in your item number, price, a brief
description, and they just drop it in their basket.
Membership discounts
or special offer discounts: If you wish to offer discounts
to existing customers or members, or have a special "coupon" page
perhaps, we have a new method for supporting that. You can either
give a percent discount or or a flat dollar amount. To use this feature,
use either =discount= (percent off), or =discountflat= (flat dollar
amount off) in the part number field of the item variable. The flat
dollar amount will not reduce the item subtotal below zero.
Information Gathering:
This may be the most powerful new feature. If you wish to gather information
from your customer, there has never been an easy way to do so until
now. If you use the special part number =info=, you can gather any
information and have it passed to the final order without it needing
to be an actual product.
Force Customer Selections
Before Checkout: Here's one you've all been waiting for! You offer
a default shipping method, and also some other methods, or maybe need
for people to select a sales tax item before checkout, and we remind
them with messages, but they just don't do it, and place the order
anyway. Frustrated? Now you can force them to make those selections.
The best part is that it's pretty easy to do it.
Quantity Change Disable:
If you add several items to the cart as a group, or package deal using
multi-item submission, you don't want shoppers to be able to remove
an item from the group. Until now, a customer could wreak havoc with
your system by using the increase/decrease/remove line item function
in the cart display. To fix that, we've added a new tag which can
go into the partnumber field of the items in a group. Just include
=NA= anywhere in the partnumber field. Simple fix for a difficult
problem.
Image Maps and HTML
Links: Many of you have asked if it is possible to use image maps
and links to perform the various cart functions. Of course it's possible,
here's how.
Selling in Groups:
This example allows you to give price breaks on similar items that
customers can select from a group.
Selling in Lot Sizes:
Here is an example of how to sell in lot sizes without the customer
being able to mess up the quantity with the increase/decrease button:
Here is an example of how
to change multiple fields in the form tag for adding items to the
shopping cart, using only a select menu.
Changing Shipping:
Our
"shipping" demo illustrates how to set or modify the shipping cost
from within your html. (Useful when the UPS/FedEx/USPS calculator or Sliding
Scale doesn't fit your sales model)
ADVANCED FEATURES
It
is strongly recommended that you have successfully grasped the basic
concepts of virtualCART
before implementing the following advanced features:
Soft
Delivery - If you wish to sell an image, an on-line report,
a midi file, or anything that can be accessed via URL, virtualCART
now provides support for direct delivery of this URL to your customer
24hrs. a day without them having to wait. Here is a sample page, along
with instructions and the set-up form for "soft delivery".
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