iTools Shopping Cart Questions

Hello, All -

I'm in the process of setting up a vanilla CMSB installation for the purpose of integrating the iTools shopping cart system. The idea is that I will build the system exactly as I would for a normal CMSB site - but with an added "Products" section. Ross assures me that the team will then move in and configure the cart as per my own requirements - which sounds perfect.

The Products section will feature all of the usual fields, such as the product Title, SKU, Price, Description and so on. The only thing I'm not sure about is the postage/shipping options. I wondered how this had been handled on other set-ups?

I know a lot of other ecommerce systems use things like "weight based" calculations and tables linked to courier services etc. These are all completely useless to me. I'd rather assign a postage "price per item" at the time of product creation. Better still, assign some kind of postage "band" - where each band equals a postage cost.

Are all these things possible - and more?!

:0)

Perch

Hi Perch,

All of these are possible! There is a shipping function in our cart system that we set up to calculate the shipping however the customer wants. So you can set up your products section using any of the methods you've suggested. 

The only thing to consider is that if you want a really complicated shipping system it could increase the cost of integrating the cart system, although the shipping systems your suggesting wouldn't increase the cost of the cart system significantly.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Greg

Greg Thomas







PHP Programmer - interactivetools.com

Thanks for your input, Chaps. It all sounds good.

What about "stock control"?

Is there any way to prevent customers buying items which are out of stock?

:0/

Perch

Hi Perch,

Yup, it's got stock control as well. You can either have an in stock checkbox, so that admins can mark an item as in or out of stock. Or you can have a dynamic stock system, were you enter the number of items in stock, and each time a customer purchases one, the level of stock is reduced by one. We can also customize the stock functionality to work however you want. 

Another recent addition to our cart is a discount system that allows customers to get a percentage or cash discount on there order if they enter a discount code at checkout, the discount codes can be created by site administrators.

Cheers!

Greg

Greg Thomas







PHP Programmer - interactivetools.com

Wow. Better and better!

What about product options? I assume the systcanal lows door tsyrup: such as items of different sizes and colours, with or without additional charges?

Perch

Hi Perch, 

It can do that as well. The system stores what options are selected, and these are displayed on the cart/checkout/success messages. It's also possible to make options affect the price. This functionality is built in to the cart by default, so adding it in wouldn't have to much of an affect on the price. 

Thanks!

Greg

Greg Thomas







PHP Programmer - interactivetools.com