Off the Shelf Shopping Cart or Custom Code?

[dkenny]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone can help me with recommendations on coding / cart systems to solve my problem?

Here's the current situation. A client of mine sells online training through a supplier of theirs. At the moment, the process is:
Customer comes onto my clients website
Customer completes a form with their details and how many people they want to enrol on the online training
On submit this sends an email to my client
My client then opens another form from the third party online training supplier and inputs the data and this automatically sets up access for my clients customer.
My client then invoices the customer.
What we need to do is remove my clients intervention so, this needs to be the process:

Customer comes onto my clients website
Customer completes a form with their details and how many people they want to enrol on the online training
On submit they are then either directed to, or have the integrated option of paying onsite, through Paypal
On confirmation of payment, my client then receives a copy of the order and payment confirmation, as well as the customer and at the same time, selected fields from the initial form are sent automatically (using a string to mimic the manual form = <form method='post' action='newcustomer-auto-add.php'>) to the third party supplier - their system will then automatically create an account for my clients customer and email them their login details with a copy also going to my client.
Does this make sense? Is this possible?

Any help much appreciated. Any further questions, please let me know.

Many thanks

Regards

Dkenny

 

[denise.]

have you solved this yet?

From the way you describe, it looks like there are 3 parties involved: your customer (client), your customer's customer (shopper), and the 3rd party software (software).

Both client and software need to have the shopper's info submitted to them.

most pre-built shopping cart software (ubercart, zencart, shopify, etc - there are many) have an API, where you can customize it to your needs (for example, submitting info to two parties). This could amount to a lot of work though.

what I would suggest as a starting point is for you (or your client) to contact the 3rd party software co and see if the already have a working relationship with any of these shopping carts. often times these 3rd party companies will have plugins already made for certain shopping cart software - and if you can choose one that they have already developed a plug-in for you will already be one step ahead.

also, as an afterthought, your client's current method does not seem very secure/pci complient. so the shopper submits payment info to your client and then your client submits to the software co? so both your client and the software co have the shopper's payment info? - this should only go to one party. maybe client collects money and pays software, or client never sees payment info would be best.

Or (thinking outside the box here) - shopper could submit payment directly to software which fires off an email to shopper thanking them for their payment and telling that they are now ready to begin, prompting them to click a link which brings them to your client's form. make the shopper do all the work.

 

[mikelegacy]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone can help me with recommendations on coding / cart systems to solve my problem?

Here's the current situation. A client of mine sells online training through a supplier of theirs. At the moment, the process is:
Customer comes onto my clients website
Customer completes a form with their details and how many people they want to enrol on the online training
On submit this sends an email to my client
My client then opens another form from the third party online training supplier and inputs the data and this automatically sets up access for my clients customer.
My client then invoices the customer.
What we need to do is remove my clients intervention so, this needs to be the process:

Customer comes onto my clients website
Customer completes a form with their details and how many people they want to enrol on the online training
On submit they are then either directed to, or have the integrated option of paying onsite, through Paypal
On confirmation of payment, my client then receives a copy of the order and payment confirmation, as well as the customer and at the same time, selected fields from the initial form are sent automatically (using a string to mimic the manual form = <form method='post' action='newcustomer-auto-add.php'>) to the third party supplier - their system will then automatically create an account for my clients customer and email them their login details with a copy also going to my client.
Does this make sense? Is this possible?

Any help much appreciated. Any further questions, please let me know.

Many thanks

Regards

Dkenny

www.FoxyCart.com

FoxyCart is the best eCommerce solution in my eyes. It's not a huge CMS and it's made to integrate right into your CSS+HTML. It's really the next big thing.

It's 20/month but that's not bad considering buying the SSL certificates for a self-hosted eCommerce platform would be that much or more per month.

As for if it would work in your situation, definitely. You can set the receipt to go to the customer, and then set up an email account on your clients server that forwards the receipt to the third party supplier automatically as well.

 

[Cromulent]

It's 20/month but that's not bad considering buying the SSL certificates for a self-hosted eCommerce platform would be that much or more per month.

Depends what type of SSL certificate you get. You can get them for as little as $10 a year if you like. If you want the extended validation ones then yeah they are more expensive but they all offer the same level of security (assuming you get them up correctly to use 256 bit encryption).

 

[mikelegacy]

I guess it's just all in what he needs. I prefer FoxyCart because it's so easy to style and integrate with my existing CSS and HTML, but that's just me. It's a powerful engine, but some things can get tricky when using it instead of a self-hosted CMS.

I would need to know more about his situation that just what he explained. From the sounds of it though, FoxyCart would work just fine.

 

[Cromulent]

I would need to know more about his situation that just what he explained. From the sounds of it though, FoxyCart would work just fine.

Sure, I'm sure it works.

By the way I found it somewhat amusing that in your portfolio the link to functional websites was broken. Perhaps you should add your portfolio to the non-functional (unfunctional is not a word by the way) website category?

 

[brisbaneguy29]

Your system would require the 3rd party suppliers to have an API you can connect to, to write the data to their system, and have it set the accounts up automatically. Without this, your workflow will not work.