Shopping cart flow

[thehost5968]

Hi

 

I think the hole flow of the shopping cart needs looking at.

 

99.99% of e-commerce shopping cart what ever the goods are and should be:

 

step 1, Categories page showing a short description of all products in that Category plus list of all sub-Categories,

1.1, then from the Categories page you should then go to a products page,

 

step 2, Products page showing full description of the product, all price options, all other options,

2.1, then from the products page you should then go to a Configuration page if the Product has no Configuration options then skip to step 4,

 

step 3, Configuration page showing domain name, SSL and other Configuration options for that product or all products,

3.1, then from the Configuration page you should then go to the shopping cart page,

 

step 4, Shopping cart page showing what is in the clients cart,

4.1, then from the Shopping cart page you should then go to the checkout page,

 

step 5 checkout page then to the configuration page,

 

So currently we have:

 

Step 1, (Categories page) cart.php?gid= this is right,

 

Step 2, (Products page) cart.php?a=confproduct&i= but is not directly accessible to the client but is it not at this stage when the client makes the biggest choice of there items and should not have to empty there cart of all the Items they do not need,

 

step 3, (Configuration page) is curently cart.php?a=add&pid= where domain names, SSL etc.. should be Configured as by this stage they now they whant the item or not,

 

Step's 4 and 5 as is.

 

this way all the url's are more direct and more common to the end user the client and not us,

 

To implement this:

All that would need to be done is just remove the redirect that currently takes you from the "cart.php?a=add&pid=" (Product Configuration) page to the "cart.php?a=confproduct&i=" (Configure product) page and the add to cart code.

 

How

 

Place the redirection and add to cart code instead from the "cart.php?a=confproduct&i=" (Configure product) page to the "cart.php?a=add&pid=" (Product Configuration) page.

 

Why:

This way we can use more of the built in cart pages i.e. less custom page (also less question about this in the forum) more time spent on the client's and sale's, also better flow and chose for the client.

then we can then have a select to compare over the compare all are 3 to 9 plans and 3 to 6 SSL ect..

 

then mod_rewrite would be a piece of cake to do and no url's need change just 2 or 3 block's of code if any as it is still in the cart.php but not a hole rewrite of the cart.

 

Well what do you all think?

Edited September 8, 2009 by thehost5968

[rudberg]

I think you're perfectly right, this would be a better layout, as well as switching on/off "product delete" and "Shop for more" buttons through checkboxes already from the admin-backend.

 

Even though I can implement some of the things myself, I don't know how to do the .htaccess rewrites in order to also get Search Engine Friendly product description pages, which would be very handy, too.

 

Do you have any example

code?

that takes us step-by-step this route?

[thehost5968]

I have the Categories page (cart.php?gid=*) done and did / can do the product detail (with product name used) also but the problem is a lot of my product need a domain name so it take the client to the cart.php?a=confproduct&i= page first with the SEO url then it switches the url (from within the encoded cart.php file)and I can not change that and we can not (to my knowledge) do a .htaccess rewrites on the type of url that is used. I am working on a new front end that will be outside of WHMCS that will over come that but it will take time to finish.

Edited October 8, 2009 by thehost5968

[thehost5968]

here is the .htaccess rewight i use:

 

#catalog

RewriteRule ^catalog/products/([0-9]+)/[a-z0-9_-]+\.html$ ./cart.php?a=add&pid=$1 [L,NC]

RewriteRule ^catalog/([0-9]+)/([^/]*)$ ./cart.php?gid=$1 [L,NC]

RewriteRule ^catalog$ ./cart.php [L,NC]

 

then all you then need to do is update all and every url link to use the names you whant? I could do a step by step but I have a big work load on and it my take a bit of time but I will try.

But you should be able to work it out or look at my site.

[HerrZ]

To implement this:

All that would need to be done is just remove the redirect that currently takes you from the "cart.php?a=add&pid=" (Product Configuration) page to the "cart.php?a=confproduct&i=" (Configure product) page and the add to cart code.

 

How

 

Place the redirection and add to cart code instead from the "cart.php?a=confproduct&i=" (Configure product) page to the "cart.php?a=add&pid=" (Product Configuration) page.

I say, this doesnt work at all.

 

What about skipping the confdomains step (Link: cart.php?a=confdomains)?

[thehost5968]

What dose not work?

 

You would only use that if you where buying a domain name and the flow of that is just fin the way it is.

 

Why ship it the client would of been told all the info they need before it gets to the cart.

 

And that is what this is about the client not having to put loads of hosting plans in there cart just to see the full options (add-ons and configure option's) for each plan.

Edited October 12, 2009 by thehost5968

[thehost5968]

OK i missed that one but it still would be show after the full options (add-ons and configure option's) for each plan? would it not?

[HerrZ]

maybe its fine. but i dont want to let the customer choose domainfeatures. the dns options should be standard , no choice. so the infostep is needless and slows down the orderflow.

[thehost5968]

I think you have to offer this when you sell domain name but if you do not need some of the thing then just go in to the ten plate and do some recoding.

as I need them as I offer .co.uk domains and there are option that are needed also on other domain to so it will not be changed by me.