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osCommerce

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Facebook store as oscommerce shop


Michalke

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I would like to Say very nice So far. I got very confused with trying to go through the facebook Docs in order to take it to this level.....

 

I don't see a way to exit the facebook page and enter the site for check out with your oscommerce site. I think this should be fairly simple just creating a link on the product page linking it to the live product on your site. I am involved with another oscommerce contribution but as soon as I have time I will look at this.....

 

 

Great Job So far.......

 

Thanks Maxemus,

 

It was really confusing me too and still is. Facebook has rolled out the new layout for fan pages on 10th of february and I upgraded to the new one immediately. Then Canvas resize stopped working. In Mozilla any longer product descriptions are cut off while on IE it shows a scrollbar. And suddenly the app is not longer called "Produkte" but "Sortiment". Some time in the past I called it Produkte and then changed it. I worked 10 hours to find out why. It is obviously a bug which has been reported by many facebook developers. So Facebook will continue to confuse us.

 

I do not have a checkout installed because it is only used as a product catalogue. We have a busy physical agricultural warehouse and shop so this is only an add-on where I intentionally deleted the add-to-cart-button. I installed the contribution "Ask a question". That way we get in touch with customers, answer back with price and conditions and get like 1 order per day.

 

When you install it as described you will have your checkout. Psychologically it is not a good idea to direct your customers away from one site. Probably better to do everything on facebook.

 

Good luck.

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It kinda seems that you are utilizing second party app on facebook. If this is the case maybe we can get a hold of the app and customize this the way we want and not have to deal with the changes they implement. Can we email the developer of the app?

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Thanks Maxemus,

 

It was really confusing me too and still is. Facebook has rolled out the new layout for fan pages on 10th of february and I upgraded to the new one immediately. Then Canvas resize stopped working. In Mozilla any longer product descriptions are cut off while on IE it shows a scrollbar. And suddenly the app is not longer called "Produkte" but "Sortiment". Some time in the past I called it Produkte and then changed it. I worked 10 hours to find out why. It is obviously a bug which has been reported by many facebook developers. So Facebook will continue to confuse us.

 

I do not have a checkout installed because it is only used as a product catalogue. We have a busy physical agricultural warehouse and shop so this is only an add-on where I intentionally deleted the add-to-cart-button. I installed the contribution "Ask a question". That way we get in touch with customers, answer back with price and conditions and get like 1 order per day.

 

When you install it as described you will have your checkout. Psychologically it is not a good idea to direct your customers away from one site. Probably better to do everything on facebook.

 

Good luck.

 

I would normally agree with you on this subject. BUT facebook being what facebook is I would have to debate against doing transactions on facebook. I will start asking people what there opinion is on this subject and so far it is one vote and one vote + my vote against doing it on facebook.

 

If we get a hold of the code of the app we could build in the option in for transitions on facebook or jump to the site. What ever we want. could even include the facebook app in the oscommerce download we all could do a different thing if we want.

 

 

I have been thinking on this a lot and was going to develop this myself but life kinda directed me another way.

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It kinda seems that you are utilizing second party app on facebook. If this is the case maybe we can get a hold of the app and customize this the way we want and not have to deal with the changes they implement. Can we email the developer of the app?

 

Hi maxemus

 

There is no second party app. It is like described in the contribution. I am the developer of the app. Look at the according facebook documentation: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/canvas and make your own app. The basic idea is actually very simple.

 

I'm kinda glad that I do not have to deal with a payment module, though.

 

Good luck.

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Another note on having a link out of facebook to your site is SEO. Every link out of a site that goes to your site is a small boost to your SEO. So having all these products linking to your website will theoretically boost your SEO status in Google and the like. The very least I would like a link to my sites I manage for this reason alone and not even making sales on facebook itself.

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Another note on having a link out of facebook to your site is SEO. Every link out of a site that goes to your site is a small boost to your SEO. So having all these products linking to your website will theoretically boost your SEO status in Google and the like. The very least I would like a link to my sites I manage for this reason alone and not even making sales on facebook itself.

 

Hi Maxemus,

 

You are absolutely right. I am thinking about this too. One thing I noticed since I have my facebook business page installed with the OsC-app is that I get a massive amount of traffic on my site by Facebook. Browser: facebookexternalhit/1.1 ( http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php). So Facebook is checking out my site. This has most likely to do with the Like-Button installed on every product. I did that roughly the same time. Luckily enough, I have Header tags by jack_mcs installed on my real "shop", so I can give it the correct FB-own meta-properties. I am also lucky that I have square product images as Facebook only accepts those without cutting away parts of the image. Now that is nice. But the best thing is that I suddenly get found on bing which never happened before and never disturbed me before as Google has like 95% market share in Germany. So, the Facebook-Microsoft cooperation really pays off for me. That is of course probably because I have the like-button installed on every product page.

 

But I agree with you. SEO on Facebook sucks. And it would be a good idea to have a link to the real site which boosts SEO. On the other hand I do not really want to confuse potential customers by leading them away from Facebook. I have not figured that out yet what to do. The Facebook shop does not have any SEO-boosting contributions installed like Header tags or SEO Urls. So it will probably never be found on Google. Maybe I will do that and rather have my products found on to different sites. Lots of thinking remains still to be done. :sweating:

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Hi Maxemus,

 

You are absolutely right. I am thinking about this too. One thing I noticed since I have my facebook business page installed with the OsC-app is that I get a massive amount of traffic on my site by Facebook. Browser: facebookexternalhit/1.1 ( http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php). So Facebook is checking out my site. This has most likely to do with the Like-Button installed on every product. I did that roughly the same time. Luckily enough, I have Header tags by jack_mcs installed on my real "shop", so I can give it the correct FB-own meta-properties. I am also lucky that I have square product images as Facebook only accepts those without cutting away parts of the image. Now that is nice. But the best thing is that I suddenly get found on bing which never happened before and never disturbed me before as Google has like 95% market share in Germany. So, the Facebook-Microsoft cooperation really pays off for me. That is of course probably because I have the like-button installed on every product page.

 

But I agree with you. SEO on Facebook sucks. And it would be a good idea to have a link to the real site which boosts SEO. On the other hand I do not really want to confuse potential customers by leading them away from Facebook. I have not figured that out yet what to do. The Facebook shop does not have any SEO-boosting contributions installed like Header tags or SEO Urls. So it will probably never be found on Google. Maybe I will do that and rather have my products found on to different sites. Lots of thinking remains still to be done. :sweating:

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Hi Maxemus,

 

You are absolutely right. I am thinking about this too. One thing I noticed since I have my facebook business page installed with the OsC-app is that I get a massive amount of traffic on my site by Facebook. Browser: facebookexternalhit/1.1 ( http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php). So Facebook is checking out my site. This has most likely to do with the Like-Button installed on every product. I did that roughly the same time. Luckily enough, I have Header tags by jack_mcs installed on my real "shop", so I can give it the correct FB-own meta-properties. I am also lucky that I have square product images as Facebook only accepts those without cutting away parts of the image. Now that is nice. But the best thing is that I suddenly get found on bing which never happened before and never disturbed me before as Google has like 95% market share in Germany. So, the Facebook-Microsoft cooperation really pays off for me. That is of course probably because I have the like-button installed on every product page.

 

But I agree with you. SEO on Facebook sucks. And it would be a good idea to have a link to the real site which boosts SEO. On the other hand I do not really want to confuse potential customers by leading them away from Facebook. I have not figured that out yet what to do. The Facebook shop does not have any SEO-boosting contributions installed like Header tags or SEO Urls. So it will probably never be found on Google. Maybe I will do that and rather have my products found on to different sites. Lots of thinking remains still to be done. :sweating:

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I say too many things to worry about when doing business over facebook. I think easier to put in an explanation why they are going to the site. For security reasons.

 

At this time I will not Do business over facebook. At least Until it has been tested for security holes.

Edited by maxemus
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There is another thing to worry about. If doing transactions on facebook with a third party app. WHAT is in the app that we cant see. what code can be harmful to Us. the first thing I can think of is every person that buys through this third party app could be collecting the customers information. NOt a good Idea at all.

 

 

I say too many things to worry about when doing business over facebook. I think easier to put in an explanation why they are going to the site. For security reasons.

 

At this time I will not Do business over facebook. At least Until it has been tested for security holes.

 

Just because an app is on facebook to use don't mean it was developed by facebook (who knows what that app designer is really doing unless we see there code.)

 

Even if the app was created by facebook you might want to think about how old the creators of facebook are.

 

Displaying products is great But with out the link to your site its useless, and not a good idea to send customers info through any part of facebook. I feel I would loose more than I gained in customers.

 

Hi Maxemus

 

This no third party app. This is my app and the contribution contains instructions how you can set up your own app using the products already existing on your shop. If there is any harmful code in your app, it is coming from you. YOU MAY NOT AND SHOULD NOT USE MY APP! USE THIS CONTRIBUTION TO INSTALL YOUR OWN FACEBOOK APP!

 

The way I set up the app on our facebook page it displays products. I explained already to you that I have a contribution installed (Ask a question) which lets the customer get in touch with us. That is enough for us and we get lots of customers this way. I don't need a link to my actual site. But I agree, in your case it would be useless without a link to your site.

 

I am not really sure if Facebook grabs any information about the customer when he is filling out my contact form. After all, it is running in an iframe.

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I just wanted to let you know that there is a new contribution that just came out that fully integrates your oscommerce store with your facebook page, it includes shopping cart, viral advertisement through share and like plugins, a really nice job

 

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/7865

 

Sure then after your trial expires, you will be paying them for running your own store...lol.

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Sure then after your trial expires, you will be paying them for running your own store...lol.

 

 

and what else might be not so good. This is a thread for a contribute not an advertising place

Edited by maxemus
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I just wanted to let you know that there is a new contribution that just came out that fully integrates your oscommerce store with your facebook page, it includes shopping cart, viral advertisement through share and like plugins, a really nice job

 

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/7865

 

Interesting contribution. From the videos it looks like it is all OSCommerce. Why should anyone pay you if they can easily set up there existing OSc-shop in Facebook themselves in a day?

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The authors of this contribution and the contribution sold by jhem have not provided a working demo. Who knows if these contributions work or not? The 'demo' that has been provided by Michalke has no login, no shipping cart, no checkout pages, no customer account pages or a payment module.

Oscommerce site:

 

 

OSC to CSS, http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/7263 -Mail Manager, http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/8120

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  • 4 months later...

Sure then after your trial expires, you will be paying them for running your own store...lol.

 

 

this is free right?? it does not say anything about paying to use the app??

 

here are some working demos -

 

has anyone used this so far??

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  • 1 year later...

A little late contribution to this thread. Now Facebook offers a solution to the issue reg. SSL certificate. I believe that you can include a SSL protected osCommerce webshop in a Facebook iframed solution - as far as I have studied the Facebook developer documentation.

 

Since this thread started, are there more new experience running a webshop in Facebook?

Edited by perbuch
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