7 replies to this topic

[Mr Man]

I've been looking at setting up a few "microsites" (not doorway pages!) selling single products each using targetted PPC and pretty much ignoring SEO.

So we're talking only 2-3 pages, a order button then a page to take some credit card details and linking this onto paypal. However i'd like to do some additional things such as cross selling when customers order and the ability to buy more than one at a time, so im guessing a HTML only/pay pal solution is out of the question.

The problem with most shopping carts i've looked at is that they are geared for multiple catagories/products/puchases aswell as having a standard shopping cart look and feel, something i dont want. Does anyone know of any carts which cater for single product sites, or any full blown shopping carts which can be heavily stripped down and integrates well into an existing site design?

Should also note it has to be a php/mysql solution and cheap. Closest i've got is Quick Cart, alas it doesn't seem easy or even possible to make heavy modifications to the page design. osCommerce was another possiblity which im still looking inot but im sure someone might already know a good solution?

Thanks

[lyn]

Mr. Man, I'm going to suggest that, possibly, Smarty might suit your purposes here. But that's really more of a question on my part -- I'm just taking at look at Smarty myself for a similar purpose.

L.

[torka]

Seems to me pretty much any shopping cart that uses templates for page layout should be adaptable to an existing site design. Is the issue that you want a single cart to have multiple looks to coordinate with several different microsites, or is it okay if the shopping cart has the same look across all sites?

I haven't worked with it myself (yet) but I've heard good stuff about Zencart (based on OSCommerce), and free. Last time I looked at it, it required customers to log in before purchasing, which I didn't care for, so I decided against it for the project I was working on at the time. I know making log in optional was on their "to do list," and I haven't been back recently to look, though, so it may no longer be an issue.

I've evaluated PDG Software's cart and found it to be quite good in terms of customizable look, cross selling features and search friendliness, but it may be more than what you had in mind.

Mal's E-commerce is a low-cost, stripped down hosted shopping cart that has worked well for me on one project, but it may not have the cross-selling features you're looking for.

HTH!

--Torka

[Mr Man]

Lyn thanks for your suggestion. However on looking up Smarty it looks like this is a utility for developers, I can't really see myself heavily modifing the code (although I can code) in something such as osCommerce to be able to use Smarty. Is this what your intending to do? Or have i got the wrong end of the stick?

Torka thank you aswell. I've taken a look at zencart and it does seem alot more customizable than osCommerce, however like you I don't like the fact you have to register, log in/go back to order page/whatever..with a microsite im thinking less pages a user has to mess around with = higher conversion rate.

Is the issue that you want a single cart to have multiple looks to coordinate with several different microsites, or is it okay if the shopping cart has the same look across all sites?

Well it might be handy to have just a single cart on a domain which gets called from different domains and has different templates...however I doubt I'd be so lucky to find anything like that. I'll take alook at the other carts you've mentioned.

What I was more looking for is a cart which can be heavily modified so basically not to look like a cart anymore as 90% of the functionality I wouldn't use. So i want to edit more than just the "logo" and footer. An example of what im talking about is here www.crestwhitestrips.co.uk/

So what im basically want in my microsite is a landing page with a bit of sale info with a few order buttons. A order page to take the persons details with quantities desired with also just a quick related product to try and cross sale. Then onto pay pal for the user to complete the transaction. I'm not completly sure but do any shopping carts not require you to goto the pay pal site to complete the transaction? As that would be even better.

So basically all I want is the part of a shopping cart which recalculates selling price depending on the quantities/shipping selected.

[Randy]

A full blown cart for single item sites always seems like overkill to me. But I guess it depends upon how many bells and whistles you need.

Setting up something that handles the payment side of things is pretty easy. The Related Products thing should be pretty easy to set up too. You could even do it as a simple php include.

It may end up being a lot less hassle in the end to write a little one-off php/mysql application that does exactly what you need instead of trying to make what you want fit within the contraints of typical shopping carts. There are lots of tutorials out there about creating php shoping carts that may be of help.

[Mr Man]

woa Randy beat me to it, I just added this bit onto my above post:

So basically all I want is the part of a shopping cart which recalculates selling price depending on the quantities/shipping selected.

I think you maybe right and the more I've thought about it the more im tending to think I do need to build myself a custom solution. Like you say a full blown shopping cart is probably overkill...i'd be using a sledge hammer to crack a nut.

On thinking about it I could probably get most of what I want with html/javascript, although a server based solution may be more flexiable long term. I've looked at paypal and from the looks of it to accept website payments I need to complete the credit card details on their site anyway, so all I need is a way to recalculate price on the same page according to quantities ordered and shipping costs.

[atlantaec]

Mr. Man,

If you want to keep the user on your own site rather than forwarding them to PayPal, take a look at PayPal's "Website Payments Pro" service. It works the same as more traditional gateway services (e.g. AuthorizeNet, VeriSign, etc.) and allows you to keep the user on your own site throughout the transaction. You will, however, obviously need to invest in an SSL certificate since the user will be providing sensitive data on your site. This scenario would be much better for the concept of one site with a cart that each microsite links to.

If you want to take a look at the PDG products Torka mentioned, the software does allow you to utilize alternate templates for specific categories and/or products, so you can control the look and feel of each microsite's product listing. The HTML templates utilized by the software provide you total control over the look and feel (far greater than simple header/footer alternatives). The checkout process would be the one step that you would have to use a "generic" set of templates (collecting address info and then payment info), regardless of which microsite they entered from. You can still customize these templates, but the same set will be used for all transactions.

[Mr Man]

atlantaec, thanks for the heads up on the website payments pro service. Sadly im in the UK and paypal doesn't offer that service to its UK customers and from what I've read hasn't got any plans to offer it.

I've taken alook some of the the PDG products and the shopping cart look s pretty good in terms of changing the design as the sample sites on their site shows. Its a shame you have to use a generic page for the checkout process however...it would mean in my case I'd have the microsite design, the shopping cart checkout design AND then the paypal site design LOL not really the seemless checkout system i was thinking for my customers.

I suppose I could have a shopping cart per site..

At the moment I've knocked up a quick solution using nop cart, which is javascript based. It seems to be working pretty well thus far.