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Purchase without account


suegal42

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Posted

Hello,

I am trying to make it so the customer can purchase and checkout without an account. Which files need to be changed for this?

Thanks

Sue G

Posted

I have found some contributions for this but I am not sure where to place them in the file, at the beginning or where, also am I replacing or deleting any existing code?

Posted

Just out of curiosity, why do you not want to store their demographic information in your database?

 

And before you answer, if you are trying to make the checkout process easier on the customer, then this might be going about it the wrong way, because none of the 'puchase wihtout an account' contributions will make the checkout process much different. They just delete the information from your database at the end of the checkout process.

 

Actually, they will remove one page of hte checkout process. The 'Create Account Success' page. But I remove that page from the checkout process anyways, without installing the PWA contribution. Other than that, the checkout process is nearly identical to the standard checkout process.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted
Just out of curiosity, why do you not want to store their demographic information in your database?

 

And before you answer, if you are trying to make the checkout process easier on the customer, then this might be going about it the wrong way, because none of the 'puchase wihtout an account' contributions will make the checkout process much different. They just delete the information from your database at the end of the checkout process.

 

Actually, they will remove one page of hte checkout process. The 'Create Account Success' page. But I remove that page from the checkout process anyways, without installing the PWA contribution. Other than that, the checkout process is nearly identical to the standard checkout process.

 

 

let me explain u , a lot of people do not want 2 register .. for example i am running sexshop, and people do not want 2 leave any unnesesery information...

 

also when i buy something on the internet i usualy find the sites and usuualy return 2 them only if they do not have registration...

Posted

You're missing my point.

 

Define 'Registration'. On the existing 'Create an Account' page, nearly all of the information it asks for is for the shipping address. That information is needed in order to give a dynamic shipping quote on the next step of the checkout process.

 

My point is that even if you install the 'Purchase without Account' module, the customer will still have to provide all of the exact same information, and at the exact same point in the checkout process. In fact, on my of my osC carts, all I did was rename 'Create an Account' to 'Your Shipping Address', remove the 'Create Account Success' page, and bingo, you're about done. If you really want to get fancy, remove the 'newsletter subscription' button and the 'provide a password'.

 

If your install the 'Purchase wihtout Account' module, all it really does is DELETE the information from the database after the customer has completed the purchase. Even with the 'Purchase wihtout Account' module installed, the custoemr still has to provide nearly all of the same information, and at the same point of the checkout. Test if for yourself. You'll see. THe checkout process does not change much at all. It can't, because the cart NEEDs the shipping address before it can give a shipping quote.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

Posted

Yes, the "Purchase Without Account" contribution is a complete waste of time and effort. It duplicates the whole of the Create Account process, creates the account at the end of it and then deletes it.

 

I've done work on major league 'sex shop' sites and none of them use the "Purchase Without Account" contribution - because they realise, as all successful online retailers do, that your Mailing List is one of your most important sales driving tools. No account = no mailing list entry.

 

It's far better that you set all of the available optional 'Create Account' details to false in your osCommerce admin panel --> Configuration --> Customer Details - thus reducing the amount of information they have to fill in, and then make sure that you provide a full SSL Certificate, tell people about it and how secure your website is, and have a strong Privacy statement to reassure people.

 

If you further want to build up your mailing list then remove the osCommerce Newsletter functions and use a mailing list management system which people can sign up to without having to create an account on your website and which allows you to send out good looking html emails.

 

Vger

Posted

i have 10.000 active email adress of people living in my town.. i do not need 2 make more complicate there is 3 SEXSHOP in Serbia, 2 are without ACCOUNT and one is with account .. the one with account have smaller prices for the same items... ask me who take more money .. nobody want 2 see his daughter or son open my sexshop offer EMAIL ...

Posted
i have 10.000 active email adress of people living in my town.. i do not need 2 make more complicate there is 3 SEXSHOP in Serbia, 2 are without ACCOUNT and one is with account .. the one with account have smaller prices for the same items... ask me who take more money .. nobody want 2 see his daughter or son open my sexshop offer EMAIL ...

 

I don'/t understand your point. Anyone that purchases anything on the internet should full expect the merchant to ask for a valid email address. In fact, these days, it's prudent for the merchant to verify that the email address is valid before allowing the customer to purchase. This is becuase most likely, email is the only form of communication you'.l have with the customer. If you have to ask the customer a question, how will you reach them. Especially from a sex shop, I would expect they they would prefer a email rather than a phone call, lol.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

Posted

Registration vs PWA: Registration works on one site does not necessarily works on another, and vice versa. Subjectively, yes, the difference between the two seems to be only the password - registration requires a password while PWA doesn't. But it is what the customer, not the site owner/developer, *thinks* counts. There are situations where a customer believes s/he only comes to your site to do one-off purchase, so why bother to register? Some simply do not like the idea of having to register.

If you have evidence that your site's sales may have suffered from the requirement of registration, then you should have PWA on your site.

After all, PWA doesn't necessarily disable the create-an-account function. It is a matter of choices. Why giving your customers more choices a bad thing?

Here the word PWA means in general the function of purchase-without-registration, and doesn't refer to a particular contrib that happens to call PWA.

By the way, like it or not, osc v3 alpha6 is going to build PWA along with CCGV into osc, according to the road map.

 

Ken

commercial support - unProtected channel, not to be confused with the forum with same name - open to everyone who need some professional help: either PM/email me, or go to my website (URL can be found in my profile).

over 20 years of computer programming experience.

Posted
But it is what the customer, not the site owner/developer, *thinks* counts. There are situations where a customer believes s/he only comes to your site to do one-off purchase, so why bother to register? Some simply do not like the idea of having to register.

 

That's exactly why masking the 'create account', and making it look like a 'shipping address collection' page I described earlier in the thread is a good idea.

 

If you have evidence that your site's sales may have suffered from the requirement of registration, then you should have PWA on your site.

 

I couldn't disagree more. While I dislike the stock osC checkout process (see Long Checkouts Suck), the PWA only makes the checkout process more confusing to the customer. The easiest way to handle this sort of thing is what most *modern* (i.e. developed in the last 5 years while osC has been stagnant) do. That is, ask for the sipping information, and have a checkbox the customer can mark if the customer wants the store to 'remember them' (i.e. create an account). Then on the next page, ask for a password.

 

 

Why giving your customers more choices a bad thing?

Because with the PWA module, the merchant is losing demographic information, upon which business intelligence decisions could be make. When is the last time you've ever heard of a business that deleted data from their database about a customer as soon as the customer completed a purchase. That's about the stupidest idea I've ever heard of.

 

By the way, like it or not, osc v3 alpha6 is going to build PWA along with CCGV into osc, according to the road map.

Don't hold your breath.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

Posted
...Because with the PWA module, the merchant is losing demographic information, upon which business intelligence decisions could be make. When is the last time you've ever heard of a business that deleted data from their database about a customer as soon as the customer completed a purchase. That's about the stupidest idea I've ever heard of...

That is possibly the stupidest/most ignorant argument under this topic.

1. demographic information vs Sales - even the stupidest site owner would know which should come first if a choice must be made between the two;

2. 'deleted data from their database' - that may happen to someone's stupidest implementation of pwa, or misunderstanding of purchase without registration. The customers data is still somewhere in the database otherwise you can not make a delivery.

It's your call. You make your choice.

 

Ken

commercial support - unProtected channel, not to be confused with the forum with same name - open to everyone who need some professional help: either PM/email me, or go to my website (URL can be found in my profile).

over 20 years of computer programming experience.

Posted

I feel almost obligated to point out that that you continue to miss the point. Somehow you are under the false assumption that unless you install the PWA module, you will lose sales. This is simply not ture. There are other, better alternatives.

 

I agree that the stock osC checkout is extremely outdated (after all, it was written 5 years ago) and cumbersome. All I'm saying is that the PWA module isn't the answer. In my experience (about 100 osC stores) the PWA doens't help, and the consequences of this module make it a no-brainer.

 

1. demographic information vs Sales - Why on earth would you ever want to have to make that choice? It's difficult enough in this world to be successfull in ecommerce without first tying one arm around your back. You'l need ALL resources available in order to succeed.

 

2. The module DOES delete demographic information from the custoemrs table. The shipping address is preserved in the orders tables, but it's obvious you've never written a query against them if you think the average store owner will ever be able to get any analytical information from them.

 

I suggest taking a closer look at the module before suggesting it to anyone. As I've said, there ARE better alternatives.

 

That is possibly the stupidest/most ignorant argument under this topic.

1. demographic information vs Sales - even the stupidest site owner would know which should come first if a choice must be made between the two;

2. 'deleted data from their database' - that may happen to someone's stupidest implementation of pwa, or misunderstanding of purchase without registration. The customers data is still somewhere in the database otherwise you can not make a delivery.

It's your call. You make your choice.

 

Ken

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

Posted
The customers data is still somewhere in the database otherwise you can not make a delivery.

 

1. Upon a successful return to Checkout Success the Order Confirmation emails are sent out to the shopper and to the website owner - after which all of the account data IS deleted from the database.

 

nobody want 2 see his daughter or son open my sexshop offer EMAIL ...

 

2. Thats why people use convenience email addresses (hotmail etc.), where they go to another website to Login and get/send their mail from.

 

By the way, like it or not, osc v3 alpha6 is going to build PWA along with CCGV into osc, according to the road map

 

3. That WAS meant to be funny ...right? Take a look at the "official osCommerce Pay Pal IPN", especially where it says it will be supported by the osCommerce Team. Tell that to my business partner who is the person who has continued the development of this module. There has been no team input for years.

 

4. CCGV? There are two versions - CCGV and CCGV(trad). CCGV(trad) works reasonably well but CCGV continually runs into trouble with implementation - and that's with MS2. I haven't a clue as to who would implement it as a default part of MS3. Please remember there are only two people working on the development of MS3 and, contrary to common belief, there are only 24 hrs in each day.

 

Vger

Posted
...Upon a successful return to Checkout Success the Order Confirmation emails are sent out to the shopper and to the website owner - after which all of the account data IS deleted from the database.

...

No. That's not necessarily true. The data (name, billing/delivery addresses etc) in the orders table is NOT deleted by any of the pwa implementation as far as I am aware of.

RE: CCGV & PWA & osc v3 - My understanding is that they are talking about their own implementation, and not those found in v2.2 that may share the same name. By the way, I personally am not particularly interested in osc 3 having these features/functions built in. I mentioned it is purely for information only.

 

Ken

commercial support - unProtected channel, not to be confused with the forum with same name - open to everyone who need some professional help: either PM/email me, or go to my website (URL can be found in my profile).

over 20 years of computer programming experience.

  • 3 months later...
Posted
That's exactly why masking the 'create account', and making it look like a 'shipping address collection' page I described earlier in the thread is a good idea.

I couldn't disagree more. While I dislike the stock osC checkout process (see Long Checkouts Suck), the PWA only makes the checkout process more confusing to the customer. The easiest way to handle this sort of thing is what most *modern* (i.e. developed in the last 5 years while osC has been stagnant) do. That is, ask for the sipping information, and have a checkbox the customer can mark if the customer wants the store to 'remember them' (i.e. create an account). Then on the next page, ask for a password.

Because with the PWA module, the merchant is losing demographic information, upon which business intelligence decisions could be make. When is the last time you've ever heard of a business that deleted data from their database about a customer as soon as the customer completed a purchase. That's about the stupidest idea I've ever heard of.

Don't hold your breath.

 

Hi,

 

I have an oportunity to rebuilding my store from the bottom up. I created my first site about 18 months ago , many contributions I thought would be useful were originslly put in including PWA. On the rebuild I am being much more strict on what contributons are going to be used - I want the new code to be as clean / standard, and I am not keen on putting PWA back. I read your Blog on Long Checkouts suck and like the approch you take to sites you build. Ihop to use this on my rebuild. Is there a contribution released for the removal of the password field, and for the password to be generated and mailed out? This approach would suit me better than PWA. 35% of the orders I took were put through PWA

 

Thanks

 

Andrew

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