Test My Cart

[devenh]

In the following thread I discussed how I'd like to streamline the purchase process:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=274757

I would now like to invide feedback on the implementation of my cart. Here is a link to a test gallery:

http://www.hickingbotham.com/gallery/list.php?exhibition=208

Several notes:

Feel free to test through SATURDAY, MARCH 24. I hope to go live on Sunday, March 25 if everything goes well.

I have tested with a PC using IE, Opera, and Firefox. Feedback from Mac users would be appreciated.

Only the photos in this gallery are hooked up to the test cart.

Cookies are required.

Any orders you "place" through March 24 will of course be ignored. After March 24, then you'll be getting some great prints!!

Known problems:

The 'Continue Shopping' button doesn't always take you back to a gallery page.

The 'View Cart' button only appears on the photo page. This button will appear on more pages when it is released.

The pricing on the form is higher than stated elsewhere on my site. This is because I will be raising prices when I introduce this feature.

Thanks for any comments.

Deven

[devenh]

I've turned the cart "on" so please don't submit any test orders!

Fixed the problem with the Continue Shopping button. Now it always takes you back the the previously viewed photo.

If cookies are not enabled, the user is alerted.

The "Add to Cart" and "View Cart" buttons are located too low on the page, but placing them higher created conflicts with other page elements, so they'll remain where they are for the time being.

Deven

[deblur]

hi Deven,
is your eecommerce still switched on? I just took a look at the link above, but can't see any of the order/add to cart buttons...

I was looking for a working implementation to see if it is worth trying to get sales up and running this way!

[devenh]

I turned the cart off for the gallery I provided a link to, but it is working for this gallery if you want to take a look:

http://www.hickingbotham.com/gallery/list.php?exhibition=238

Deven

[deblur]

ok thanks, looks like a nice setup for the orders you got there...

We're trying to get a gallery site set up for a big event (in 2 weeks time!), with print orders - not sure if we'll use EE for the 'public' part, but possibly for a performers' gallery. Just a couple of questions about your setup, if you don't mind!

1. did you write all the extra code for the shopping cart etc.? Does it integrate with paypal?

2. how do you handle the printing of different aspect ratios, e.g. 11x17 and 11x14 from the same image - do you have to manually crop them? We were thinking of only allowing certain crops based on info in the EXIF data, if we can get it to work...

3. you've had over a million photo views - that's pretty heavy duty - what kind of web hosting are you using, and what sort of bandwidth does it use? We're expecting several thousand visitors to the site each day after the event and need to choose the hosting appropriately!

thanks!

[devenh]

1. did you write all the extra code for the shopping cart etc.? Does it integrate with paypal?

Yes, I wrote the code. No, it does not integrate with PayPal although this would be pretty easy to do.

2. how do you handle the printing of different aspect ratios, e.g. 11x17 and 11x14 from the same image - do you have to manually crop them? We were thinking of only allowing certain crops based on info in the EXIF data, if we can get it to work...

I handle the printing myself so I can usually deal with any apect ratio problems. On rare occasions there is an issue and I contact the customer and I refer them to this page on my site:

http://www.biglens.com/cropping.htm

BTW, this is one reason I don't use PayPal (or any other automatic payment system) because I like to check the order completely before billing. However, it is very rare that the billing amount changes, so at some point in the future I may actually start using PayPal.

3. you've had over a million photo views - that's pretty heavy duty - what kind of web hosting are you using, and what sort of bandwidth does it use? We're expecting several thousand visitors to the site each day after the event and need to choose the hosting appropriately!

I use bluewho.com. They used to be extremely good, but the company was sold a while ago and now I would rate them as good. My account gives me 30gb of bandwidth a month. The most I've used in a day is 1.1gb, so the 30gb limit has never been a problem.

Deven