Already have pages with products, can I just link to a cart page?

[naturaculina]

We've been using paypal for payment but it does not let us generate coupons for discounts on the total order. So here I am trying different shopping carts and oscommerce is my first attempt.

 

What if I don't need to have all my products on the catalog page that oscommerce has already set up? What if they already are described/imaged and are spread across 5 or 6 pages of our site? Can I create an "add to cart" button/entry for a product and insert that code to my already-existing page? I hope so....

[♥toyicebear]

oscommerce is a complete site, so you have to add the products into oscommerce too. you can just install oscommerce in a sub-folder, something like /shop/ and then just link from your existing site.

[naturaculina]

toyicebear, thank you. It sounds like paypal.... I just grab the <form> code for the button that paypal generates and plug it into my page. Am I correct? I don't want users to every see the oscommerce page that contains all the products, just the checkout page.

[Guest]

@@naturaculina

 

You can use a PayPal button (get the code from PayPal) and plug it into your HTML site. If you only have a couple of products, this will work. Or, if you have MANY products, you will need to use an ecommerce solution like osCommerce.

 

 

 

 

Chris

[naturaculina]

@@DunWeb,

 

We are using paypal now but paypal doesn't have a way to take coupons. My client wants to post of Facebook or elsewhere "use code ABC123 and get 20% off". So I'm wanting oscommerce to basically do what paypal does and just go right to the checkout page.... but allow us to use coupons.

[Guest]

@@naturaculina

 

Then you will have to use osCommerce and abandon your current site.

 

 

Chris

[MrPhil]

toyicebear, thank you. It sounds like paypal.... I just grab the <form> code for the button that paypal generates and plug it into my page. Am I correct? I don't want users to every see the oscommerce page that contains all the products, just the checkout page.

No, it doesn't work that way. What he was saying is that osC is a complete shopping application, but you can install it as just part of the site (in its own directory). Like almost any other shopping cart, it does not play well with others. You can not link an existing product page to the cart's checkout -- it wants to control everything in-between. What you're going to have to do (if you use osC) is enter your set of products into osC.

 

If you want to have your current product pages still used, that's somewhat possible. They could link to the appropriate osC store pages, where the customer could then click "Add to cart" and then sign on and check out. Note that the customer cannot come back out to your current product pages, because they will lose their "session" and their shopping cart contents. This may be adequate if they're likely to buy only one item at a time, but if they want to look at other products, they will have to go through osC's store display, not back to your pages. It's up to you, but customers would probably find it confusing to be able to enter the store through your current site product pages, but then "be stuck" in the store until they've checked out, rather than being able to jump back and forth between your site and the store.