Tutorials for Shopping Cart Software to build online stores for ecommerce
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In order to fully understand the tutorials, you must have a cart admin window opened to practice. If you do not yet have access to an admin interface, please request a username/password for the demo admin area.
How does this e-commerce software work...
A catalog page combines various elements - including the product details - sourced from different files and database tables. Unlike a hard coded HTML page, a PHP-generated catalog page is therefore dynamic. A small overhead in composing a page for display is generally un-noticable with today's high performance computers as well as fast internet transfers.
Though the shopping cart system uses PHP, the user does not require any PHP knowledge to create the online stores. All controls, administration and reporting interfaces are web-based and can be accessed with a username and password from anywhere.
This PHP Shopping cart software can be resided on your server
The entire online ecommerce system can be installed on your server
(some minimum server requirements that are mostly standard on all Linux servers apply).
Residing the shopcart system on your server offers certain advantages such as...
- There is only a one-off license fee
- The looks and feel of the system can be fine tuned by directly editing the templates
Just one inconvenience of hosting the system yourself is that updates will have to be obtained and installed by yourself. If hosting the cart on our server, we apply such updates and upgrades of the software to your cart system as they become available. Furthermore, if willing to use a URL containing our domain name (e.g. http://www.webgenieshoppingcart.com/yourcompany/shop.html) you can use our secure server layer certificate free of charge
Configuration of shopping cart for ecommerce
When configured via the easy-to-use administration interfaces (see examples) the shopping cart settings will be stored in the database and as pre-compiled HTML pages on the server. Our shopping cart management interface provides over 200 templates to choose from and unlimited color and font options, making it possible to fine tune your cart pages. If you are a web designer, it is even easier to design your own templates and upload.
Product managment in this online store software
Unlike hard coded online catalogs, the database-driven catalogs and products are easier to maintain and update. All that you have to do is change the details via the admin interfaces or by bulk uploading product details as a CSV file. WebGenie Shopping Cart Professional has various settings for the handling of uploaded product lists.Products can have optional extras that affect the total price. These can be specified as either "global attributes" - which apply to all specified categories and products - or "product attributes" - that apply to only certain products. When the customer selects one or more attributes, the total price shown against the product will change as specified. This change can be up or down.
Search engine friendly pages by this e-commerce software
You can also generate hard-coded HTML files out of the database-driven catalogs. This is generally done to make them search engine friendly. Our shopping cart software system lets you do this part quite easily.
Payment Gateways for this storefront software
Our shopping cart software incorporates over 40 major payment gateways (see below) for quick online transaction. If you have an account with any of these, then the shopping cart admin interface lets you add a payment gateway by entering the account details alone. No complex configuration of templates and linking are required (No complex configuration or template editing is required (see example integration). If your favorite payment gateway is not in the list, then just let us know and we will consider adding it.
The following payment gateways are currently supported:
Templates-driven catalogs and cart pages for online store
The look and feel of the online store are entirely templates-driven. There are over 200 variations to choose from and you can further customize them. Therefore, there are virtually infinite combinations possible for the catalogs, product pages and checkout. With some HTML editing knowledge, you can directly edit the templates or add new ones to extend it even further.
Marketing support for your products in this storefront software
Facility to setup automatic data feeds to Google, Altura and Shopzilla are already built-in. These high traffic sites help to give your products more exposure to potential customers.
Sale prices to encourage more sales via this shopcart software
Showing a sale price - alongwith the saving - is effective to increase the chances of a sale. The product setup section of the shopping cart administration lets you specify a sales price (see example) and can optionally mark the item as 'Hot Deal'. Can also give out promotional codes, automatic volume discount, etc.
Companion products, reviews and discounts to increase sales by this e-store software
It is a proven sales method to include product recommendation and other users' comments on the online catalogs and product descriptions. Our shopping cart software allows you to enable these by inserting the product IDs and discount codes. The user reviews are moderated and will not appear until you have reviewed and approved them.
One-page checkout for the payment desk in this ecommerce program
A lengthy checkout process is one of the reasons for the abandonment of carts. Our shopping cart software system lets you specify a one-page checkout. Of couse, the traditional checkout process is available as default. The user is given an opportunity to register as a buyer and automatically pre-fill the details, or go through an express checkout process without registering.
Speed of web pages is optimal in this e-commerce program
An often overlooked - and difficult to fix - problem is the speed of web page loading, including the catalogs, products and cart pages. A slow loading page often causes a potential buyer to abandon your site and go elsewhere. The PHP shopping cart system we provide is optimised for quick loading of the pages at all stages of the ordering process. (Note: Since our PHP shopcart system allows you to modify the templates, this optimization may be inadvertently broken. We shall be happy to check and advise you in such situations)
Recurring billing to subscription purchases
A very useful feature in the cart is recurring billing. This PHP shopping cart system will automatically bill the customer at set intervals until cancelled in writing. This feature is particularly useful in periodic debit situations such as subscriptions. This storefront software lets you configure recurring billing.
Reminders to order a product via this PHP shopcart system
Another useful feature is the periodic reminder scheduler. It sends the customer an email to remind when an item (e.g. medicines) is to be ordered.
Fast and precise technical support for online store setup (see customer comments)
At WebGenie, we have been helping small and medium businesses to setup their online stores for over 12 years. Our experience with helping these clients will work in your favor, if ever required to call our technical support.
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