Adding a shop to an existing site

[CompleteTrainer]

Some folks I know want to add a shop to their existing site

www.people-development-team.com (http://www.people-development-team.com)

They want to be able to sell places on open programmes (public programmes) within their existing site so people can book places on line.

I have suggested Zen Cart but I don't know how it would fit in with the tecchie side of their site.

Their site developers want to charge at least a pound of flesh!

Anyone got some useful suggestions I can provide them with please?

Thanks,
CT

[shopintegrator]

Hello CompleteTrainer,

The Shop Integrator ecommerce service will allow you to easily add ecommerce to your existing website (as well as new sites). This is how I see it working using the Shop Integrator service.

Each course date would be created as a standalone product. The Shop Integrator quantity control element of the course 'product' means that the site owner sets the maximum number of available places on each course as one of the product details. As people pay for places on the course, the Shop Integrator service will automatically reduce the quantity of that course product until it is sold out and shows as such, stopping others buying places on to a sold out course.

As the ecommerce button graphics are customisable with your own images it means it easy to replace the built in ‘Add to Basket’ buttons with a buttons that say, for example, ‘Book Place On Course’ and ‘No Places Available’ (when the course is sold out) so that the solution becomes more event booking focused.

Shop Integrator also supports the storage and automated delivery of electronic content (any files) to customers once payment has been completed for a product. So, your client may wish to use this to attach files to each course product so that the customer automatically receives any pre-course materials for download ahead of the course.

Even on our lowest standard subscription charge at £39.99 for 1 year would allow your customer to have 50 course dates (i.e. products) available for customers to book on to at any one time. You/they may take an instant access 30 day no obligation free trial if they would like to give it a try and quickly prototype a solution with our service to see if this will work for them. I will be able to assist them/their web developer in quickly putting a small prototype together. If they like it great, you may have just saved your friends a bundle on their web developers building a custom solution.

Does this sound like something that would be of interest?

Regards
Shop Integrator
(http://www.shopintegrator.com/)

[shopintegrator]

Hi CompleteTrainer,

I had overlooked one of our features which would actually lead to a better design for selling places on to the public programmes using the Shop Integrator service.

It is possible to attach a list of options to a product, which is very easy to do. This means that you would only need to create one event product per open programme, then attach all the scheduled dates the programme will be given on as a list dates associated with that public programme. The shopper will be able to pick the date of the programme they wish to attend as they buy a place. Your friends may easily add new dates to each public programme as they become available, without modifying their website, using their online Shop Integrator admin console.

As the quantity control feature (may be turned off if you want to allow overselling of places) is at as per option level, which means that each date the programme is scheduled for may have the number of places available on that programme independently managed by Shop Integrator. So a shopper will be able to pick a date and see there are no places available for them to book to avoid a programme becoming oversubscribed for the event organisers, allowing the shopper to pick another date where there are places available.

[CompleteTrainer]

Can't I just trial it with something like a PayPal button (if I can work out how to get it right) or Google checkout?

They don't want to sign up to something that, after trial, they may decide against.

Thanks
CT

[shopintegrator]

Hi CT,

They don't want to sign up to something that, after trial, they may decide against.

The fully functional trial is completely free, no obligation, with no need to enter any payment details to take the trial. So if they decide against it after the trial, the trial expires automatically without them having to cancel it, the ecommerce plug-ins will no longer show on their website after their trial expires.

It could be up and working today on their site if they wanted it.


Can't I just trial it with something like a PayPal button (if I can work out how to get it right) or Google checkout?

This is your basic option to do the job. The reason you choose Shop Integrator to solve your problem is because it will be faster to implement (Pay Pal gateway connectivity already taken care of for collecting debit/credit card or Pay Pal payments) straight in to their account and will give a more professional looking solution with great value add features.

For instance, when using the basic PayPal or GoogleCheckout option, if they change their prices (maybe when VAT reverts to 17.5%, or they want to run a special offer, or just due to annual inflation price rises) with PayPal or GoogleCheckout, they will have to have someone edit all of their web pages for them. With Shop Integrator, they use an online admin console so it is easy to change their prices online without knowing about how a web page is made or having to pay their web designer to make these changes. As 'time is money' this will save them time and make it easier for them to maintain.

It also means that prices are centrally managed, so if it appears on several pages, they change the price once in their Shop Integrator account and it updates across all the pages on their site (or other websites) where their prices are displayed.

There will be other great features they might take advanatge of, like creating discount codes which they issue to people who booked on previous course as an incentive to book future courses.

Controlling the number of places left available on a course, all built in.

Showing the available course dates as an option of the course so they could add new dates available using the online admin console, again without editiing their web pages or paying someone to do this for them, as I see that the date is something which is just text on their site at the moment.

The ability to attach files to their programmes so as people buy places on a programme they have any course documentation or literature automatically made available to them electronically with no manual intervention from the site owners.

Looking at the number of courses they offer, they should only need to pay a low cost 1 year subscription fee of only £39.99 to be able to use Shop Integrator for all their available course if they did want to take it up after the free trial.

Hopefully, this is enough so you want to look at the free trial?

Thanks
Shop Integrator