Shopping Cart

Step 1 - Settings > The Advanced section >

Shopping Cart

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This window contains the tools and options for creating and organizing an e-commerce shopping cart, where you can sell products on your website online. If you have the Pro edition, you can also sell digital products, such as e-books, graphic resources and software.

The first thing to do when creating an e-commerce shopping cart is to define the product catalog, organizing the products into appropriate categories and sub-categories. You will need to enter some basic information for each product, such as its name, description and price. You can, however, add further details, for example photographs, variations of color, size and model, etc. When you have created your product catalog, you can specify shipping and payment methods and compose the order form, including e-mails that are sent by the shopping cart object to the website Administrator and the customers who place an order.

When you create an e-mail shopping cart, the "e-commerce shopping cart" special page is automatically added to the Map: you can select it and define its main characteristics in the Page Properties window.  

In the Pro edition of WebSite X5, access to the e-commerce shopping cart can be restricted to registered users who have a login and a password. To do this, select the special shopping cart page on the map and use the command to set the page as locked (see Step 3 - Map).

See How to create a Members'' Area and define access to it for further information on setting up a Members' Area and defining access to it by creating user groups.

The options for defining the various elements in the e-commerce shopping cart, and how they work, are organized in the following sections:

Product List
Order Management
Customer Details
Sending order
Options

When the shopping cart is complete, you have to add the information and necessary links in the website so that customers can display the information on the products and make their purchases. You can do this in two ways:

1.Include the "Buy now" button in the product presentation pages as you create them, using the Add to Cart link (see Link).
2.Create the product presentation pages with the Product Catalog Object to use cards that already include the "Buy now" button.

Once the project has been published online, your online shop is ready to accept orders from customers. In the Pro edition you can manage your orders in the relative section of WebSite X5's online Control Panel.

The control panel can be found at the http//www.mysite.com/admin URL, where http//www.mysite.com is the URL of the website to which the online shop is linked, and is open to all the users who have been added to the Administrator group in the Access Management section of Step 1 - Settings.

In addition to the online control panel, orders can also be managed with WebSite X5 Manager, our free app for iOS and Android. Details on installing the app can be found in the WebSite X5 Manager window and in the WebSite X5 Manager section of the online Control Panel.

For more information on order management, see How to manage orders and product availability in stock

When you test the website offline, a message warns you that the order will not be sent and you will be redirected automatically to the order confirmation page. The e-commerce shopping cart will be fully functional when the website has been published on the server.

The server on which the website is published must support the PHP language and the Mail command must be enable, for your e-commerce shopping cart to work correctly. You can retrieve this information on server diagnostics from the WebSite Test section of the online Control Panel.

If you encounter problems in sending e-mails, it is probable that the server you are using does not have a standard configuration. Try changing the settings for the script and the e-mail send method, using the options in Website Settings | Data Management. For further information, contact your web space provider.

 


Best practices:

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How to create an e-commerce shopping cart

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How to import/export products in the shopping cart

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How to write notification e-mails

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How to manage orders and product availability in stock


Further information:

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The online Control Panel and the WebSite X5 Manager app