New Wholesale Website Features
Here’s information about new features in the wholesale ordering process on OmegaNet/CAMEO EZ© websites. Click on a link below to go directly to the topic.
1. “Persistent” Carts:
This means that if your customer starts a shopping cart and loses their connection or even turns off their computer. They can return to your site and “View Cart” and their products will still be in their carts.
2. Rewrite of the Checkout Process:
We did a major redesign of the Checkout Form and underlying scripting, which let us allow custom features without having multiple custom Checkout forms. This is accomplished with the use of custom templates that are “included” in the Checkout Form. Many of these templates can reside in the Page Builder (How to) so you can edit them anytime you want without disturbing the Checkout form code. This way you can have a customized form but won’t miss any upgrades.
The first customization is possible at the top of the form. If you want to show a message at the top of the form you can create a page in the Page Builder called “checkout_top.tpl
“In it you can put any message you want, including a picture or a link to other pages using the Page Builder tools.
Custom wording for Shipping, which will display between the “Shipping Address” heading and the Shipping Address blanks, should be called “checkout_shipping.tpl
” if you have special instructions concerning shipping.
Another custom template, “checkout_billing.tpl “, can appear between the billing method dropdown and the credit card information blanks. There you can put any special instructions concerning payment.
Still another custom template displays after the Comments box. It is “checkout_special.tpl“. It is paired with “checkout_agree.tpl“, which gives you a checkbox that must be checked or Checkout is not possible. Some OmegaNet clients are using these two templates together to require people to read a statement of terms or special instructions and check the box that they have read them before checking out. “checkout_agree.tpl” is not in the Page Builder but can be activated by in the Admin Console, “Feature Options” >> “Require Acceptance of Terms and Conditions on Checkout”.
This is an option in the Admin Console >> Account Setup >> Feature Options >> “Use Representative Names on Checkout”. When this option is checked, a dropdown will appear next to the “Representative’s Name” blank. The dropdown will display the Sales Reps that have been entered in your “Territories” data and the customer can select their Sales Rep if they know who it is. (there is no template associated with this customization)
Coupon Code Blank
Last, coding for a coupon code blank has been included. This allows you to give out a coupon code to all your clients so that if they place an order and put the code in the blank in the Checkout form they can get either a dollar amount or a percentage off their order. The template is “checkout_coupon.tpl ” and it must reside in the /member_site/ folder and be edited with a text editor like Notepad. There are several parameters which must be set:
- The coupon count is the number of active coupon codes you are using. You may have multiple special offers which can be different percentages or dollar amounts off the total amount of the order. In the example below, “1” is the number of active coupons in the first block of text. After the line “Set coupon values below” are two blocks, so the coupon count is “2”.
- The coupon code (can be any format of letters and/or numbers)
- A coupon description, such as “Spring Madness Sale”.
- Coupon start date (formatted YYYY-MM-DD)
- Coupon end date
- Coupon value (a number, such as “10” for 10% off)
- Discount type (“P” for percentage off or “A” for amount off)
- The top part of the file is an example (the lines commented out with ” // “. Remove the two slashes to make the line active). Below is what the file looks like before editing.
// $_SESSION[‘coupon_count[1]’] = ‘1’; // number of active coupons
//
// $_SESSION[‘coupon_code[1]’] = ‘C11ZLM99’; // enter coupon code here
// $_SESSION[‘coupon_desc[1]’] = ‘Sample Coupon Certificate’; // enter description here (appears in emails and orders in admin console)
// $_SESSION[‘coupon_start[1]’] = ‘2008-02-01’; // enter coupon start date here YYYY-MM-DD format
// $_SESSION[‘coupon_end[1]’] = ‘2008-03-30’; // enter coupon expiration date here YYYY-MM-DD format
// $_SESSION[‘coupon_val[1]’] = 10; // enter coupon value here
// $_SESSION[‘coupon_type[1]’] = ‘P’; // enter coupon discount type here P=Percent off, A=Amount off
//
// Set coupon values below
//
// You may have multiple coupon/promotion codes at one time just add additional sections as needed
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_count’] = ‘2’; // number of active coupons
//
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_code[1]’] = ”; // enter coupon code here
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_desc[1]’] = ”; // enter description here (appears in emails and orders in admin console)
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_start[1]’] = ”; // enter coupon start date here YYYY-MM-DD format
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_end[1]’] = ”; // enter coupon expiration date here YYYY-MM-DD format
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_val[1]’] = 0; // enter coupon value here
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_type[1]’] = ”; // enter coupon discount type here P=Percent off, A=Amount off
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_code[2]’] = ”; // enter coupon code here
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_desc[2]’] = ”; // enter description here (appears in emails and orders in admin console)
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_start[2]’] = ”; // enter coupon start date here YYYY-MM-DD format
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_end[2]’] = ”; // enter coupon expiration date here YYYY-MM-DD format
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_val[2]’] = 0; // enter coupon value here
//$_SESSION[‘coupon_type[2]’] = ”; // enter coupon discount type here P=Percent off, A=Amount off
{/php}
Below the example is two groupings so you can set two different specials. To activate the coupon fill in the information between the two single quotes ( ” ) and then remove the comment marks ( // ) at the beginning of the lines. So an active coupon for 10% off might look like this:
$_SESSION['coupon_count'] = '1'; // number of active coupons
//
$_SESSION['coupon_code[1]'] = '10PerOff'; // enter coupon code here
$_SESSION['coupon_desc[1]'] = '10 Percent Off During November'; // enter description here (appears in emails and orders in admin console)
$_SESSION['coupon_start[1]'] = '2012-11-01'; // enter coupon start date here YYYY-MM-DD format
$_SESSION['coupon_end[1]'] = '2012-11-30'; // enter coupon expiration date here YYYY-MM-DD format
$_SESSION['coupon_val[1]'] = 10; // enter coupon value here
$_SESSION['coupon_type[1]'] = 'P'; // enter coupon discount type here P=Percent off, A=Amount off
The coupon blank will display below the “Schedule Delivery” section. When the special expires, the blank will no longer appear on the form.
Information Trapping
What is not as obvious is that we have also rewritten the Checkout form code for better security and trapping to retain information if someone makes a mistake. So, it’s taken a while, but we have a much improved form that will be flexible but upgradable and will work better for the customer as well.