 We built a do-it-yourself
shopping cart that can be adapted to your site. Our Unix
servers can also support third party carts if you choose
to obtain one elsewhere.
This cart is available to
you for free as a do-it-yourself set-up.
There is a fee
for Fusion Source assistance including:
- Complete cart set-up
-
Assistance in the cart set-up and configuration
- Debugging the program due to user-end error
Cart Implementation -
Background
All shopping carts need to
record a customer's choice of items. Since a Web server
does not know from one page to the next who is accessing
the page, a method has to be found to figure out that the
items ordered on this page belong with some items ordered
on another page ten minutes ago. There are several methods
for doing this in wide use currently:
- Cookies and IP
Resolution
- Page Stamping
- Generating pages from
a database
- Java
Cookies
In the first method, you
the html creator do not have to worry about the problem.
When the user first enters a site, they are passed a
"cookie" (actually a little text message) by the
server. This message is then passed back to the server
every time you request a page. This way a shopping cart
program can read the "cookie" and identify that
the items being added to a cart belong to you. Some older
browsers don't support "cookies" since it wasn't
part of the http standard. For them, shopping carts
sometimes provide supplemental shopping cart
identification by using the IP address you are coming
from. Most recent browsers support cookies. You implement a
cookie cart by coding cgi variables on your pages. Our
simplest cart to setup, and most generic to configure,
uses this method.
Page Stamping
In page stamping, all
pages are run through a program that reads a stamp sent to
them (as a CGI variable) and place this value on the next
page they return. This is more complicated if you use
fixed pages, since they all have to be run through this
stamping program. You implement this type of cart by
coding cgi variables on your pages also.
Generating Pages
From a Database
In this type of cart you
just load all your data into a database and the html pages
are created by a program on the server side. In our
implementations you can control the "look and
feel" of the pages through templates. You do not have
to do anything special to implement a cart here, but if
you have static pages you may need to code some hidden
html in order not to loose connection with the cart.
Java
For Java capable
browsers,. it is possible to hold the order information on
the client side. We expect to see more client side carts
as time goes on.
Check Out - Secure
email/Real Time Credit Card/EDI
Once your customers have
ordered, there are a number of ways to get the orders and
pay for them.
Secure Email
In this method you get
your orders and payment information via a secure email
transmission. This is the simplest method and makes sense
when you have to do the fulfillment anyway.
Real Time Credit
Card
If you are selling access
to files (images, downloadable programs, documents, fonts,
etc.) it makes sense to allow people to access to the
information as soon as they've paid for it. We implement
real time credit card systems as a separate module from
the shopping cart (i.e. instead of email the information,
it is processed by this module, which calls the access
control module). You can also do real time credit card
processing for tangible goods as well - this makes sense
when volume is high. We have a program specifically
designed to allow real time access to files after credit
card payment. We also have a program that gives real time
password registration access after credit card payment.
Ask about these since we haven't had time to document them
yet.
EDI
EDI, in a loose
definition is the exchange of information in an agreed
upon format between two software packages. We have built
EDI interfaces (of the user specified variety). There is
also a more formal EDI based on actual standards. These
standards are in practice only in wide use in a small
number of situations (such as inter bank transactions).
Picking a Cart
When choosing a cart, you
need to first decide whether you are going to use static
pages or create the pages from a database. If you have
many items it makes more sense to use a database, but it
also makes sense to use a database for smaller catalogs if
you have the information in a database already, if your
products change frequently, or if you want to track
inventory.
Given the general
availability of cookies, we feel it is probably easier to
use a cookies based cart these days. You should also look
for a cart that, in addition to the html markup, requires
an "item file". Why? Because if an item's price
comes from the html, then the user can change the price
(remember the html can be altered on the user's machine -
they can save and edit it and then resubmit it).
Setting Up the Cart
Many carts can be set up
without the help of the system operators. Others will
require some modification of the program, and this may
require some program modifications which are charged
by Fusion Source per the fees noted above. Finally, EDI and
database carts often require extensive program adaptation
unless you have an application that can be fitted easily
into an existing format.
At Last, Bring on The
Carts
IB
Cart - this is the easiest cart
to set up and configure. It is available free to account
holders if you do the set-up and configuration
yourself.
Minivend
- a well received freely available cart. We do not
currently offer support in setting up or debugging this
cart, but we are quite impressed with its capabilities.
We have many other
options available to suit your needs. Please contact
us for further details.
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Virus Warnings | 
Programming
Shopping
Carts
