Forum Moderators: buckworks
I did.
On the other hand, when I wrote my whole order processing system, I did not make it complex enough. It handled a number of simple cases but should have been more complex. Then again, a handful of shopping carts I looked at didn't do everything I needed either. But when I wrote my own, I missed some things I wished I had thought about in advance.
So you need to sit down carefully beforehand and plot out everything in advance (including coupons, discounts, what checkout information you'll need, etc.)
I imagine I have to pass the info from the shopping cart, plus credit card info to some kind of script that will then authenticate and handle funds transfer, but how?
-Corey
Link my checkout process to the CC clearing house. Very easy. Most of them have good documentation. The clearing house does not care about the shopping cart contents. They only want the total amount of the purchase, including shipping, tax, etc.
The clearing house verifies the card and returns authorization code. My cart then puts the shopping cart contents into a database and sends an email to the site owner to notify of the purchase.
Yes, you need a security certificate for your server.
Just wondering what percentage of e-merchants here have coded their own shopping cart.
I would think about zero percent of successful small merchants have. About the same number of people who build their own hard drives or wind transformers for power supplies.
How do you justify the time it would take when there are so many other things to do to be a successful online merchant? Other than as a hobby or learning exercise, I can't see the point unless you are selling an incredibly esoteric product.
We run a very high volume online business and I consider the $50-$100 a month we pay for the cart to be an incredible bargain.
in my case, i had reasons for doing it. i didn't find a shopping cart that handled all the things i needed it to handle and since it only took a couple of intensive days to code, it seemed like less of an investment than investing time learning a suboptimal shopping cart system and then dealing with the frustrations of that.
I really should get into the habit of checking other programs out...
this means everything should be doubly redundant. think about all possible errors and how to capture them.
it's nothing more than sitting down and planning it correctly, but be warned that if you are doing it for the first time, you need to test, test, and test some more.
good luck
p.s. make it as modular as you can, so that you can re-use bits for other shops. e.g. the payment processing object is seperate from the shipping object, which is seperate from the edit cart functions, etc. my first shop tried to do everything in one class and was completely non reusable ;-)
I tend to be a control freak, so writing my own was the only way really, and I'm very glad I did.
By the time that company closed up shop and I went looking for another cart, I had spent years developing our mailorder products around the capabilities of the site. I couldn't find anything which met every capability and would have ended up making some severe changes to existing products and our way of doing business if my friend hadn't suggested she and I write our own. It wasn't all that difficult after I got used to the idea (I hadn't done actual programming since high school unless you count HTML).
Diamondgrl's mention of having to plot everything out beforehand is not true of my own experience. Writing the basic cart and order system was a major rush job for us because we had to get it up and running before the previous host went out of business. However, I now find myself less restricted than ever. It's much easier to add this or that capability as I feel like writing it and do it the way I want. I used to have to wait around for new features and often not get what I envisioned.
Now that I think of it, it seems that vital characteristics of many businesses, such as promotions and even product offerings, may be dictated by the capabilities of it's software rather than vice versa.
BUY OR BUILDare you getting in the business of renting widgets or the software business? bricks and mortar stores don't write point of sale systems, neither should an internet business.
Coding them should be easy in theory, but in practice it is not: One error can mean losing sales and lots of time can pass before you notice....especially if some users can order and others can't.
I have taken everything I have have learned in the last 6 years and poured it into it.
We have set up imports of quark documents, connected to order processing systems, downloaded data from exiting store platforms, done custom tracking.
Each time we do something it is in our store chest.
Sometimes I am the biggest cost, I am picky.
On track to turning a real profits within the next 16 months.
It is a long term investment for me, not a quick buck scheme.
Our shopping cart is a modified versions of Salena Sols Web store. After 6 years, it has been modified so much, it looks nothing like the original.
Having your own shopping cart software, gives you total flexibility, however if I had to do it over again in 2004, I would go with a commericial cart that met our needs. Also their are plenty to choose from these days in all price ranges.
A one user solution or a platform.
Borrowed code works well for the first but not for the second.
Myself I am working on plaform end.
My intention is to sell the platform and the clients as a business in x-amount of years.
Each new client raises the value of business $3000.00 to $5000.00 depending on the average amount of custom modifications each client does yearly.
I can't sell existing modifed coded as business without complications, but a custom platform, with existing clients I can.
Even with open-source or proprietary shopping cart you'll have to spend some time & effort customizing it to your needs anyhow. At least you're not starting from scratch.
