ShopPlus Overview


The ShopPlus cart allows you to customize your store entirely, since it consists of cart functions and components that you use freely throughout your store. For example, you can use frames or no frames, single-product or multi-product pages, options within products, price changes associated with each options, unlimited product-based and global shipping charges, unlimited tax options and more...

Overall Cart
The ShopPlus cart assigns each customer a CARTID. This allows the program to track purchases efficiently and be fully compatible with AOL's online services. The ShopPlus does not use a product database, instead it makes product management easy by keeping each product's information within its own page, inside the HTML.
Best of all, your other necessary shopping pages, like pages to review the purchases, configure tax and shipping, make payment, and so on, can be fully customized. All orders are always submitted to a file stored in your secure server. In addition to storing, the ShopPlus can also integrate with the Cybercash system and email you when new orders arrive.

Products
Your product pages can contain 1 or many products. They can be designed and layed out on the page(s) in any way you want. You can have as many or as few "submit" buttons as you wish, with each performing different tasks if you wish and going to different pages.

Each product can be set to be ordered in one or multiple specific number, or you can let your customer type or pick the number desired. Products must carry a price and can also carry a description. Your products can be simple or you can have products and unlimited options within the product, with the ability for your options to alter the price of the product!

You can also set whether the product is a taxable item or not ( the tax rate is specified later and can be set to 0% for specific destinations if desired). For shipping charges of each individual product, you can specify a fixed shipping charge (independant of number of products ordered) and/or a shipping charge associated with each product ordered.

Finally, large quantity discounts can also be set for each product. You can specify an unlimited number of ranges, each with its own discount based on percentage (-10%) or amount (-$4.25).

Global Shipping
In addition to shipping charges associated with each product (explained above), you can also set an unlimited number of global charges, called CARTSHIPPING charges. These charges consist of 2 variables, a global shipping charge and a shipping multiplier. For example, let's assume you have purchased 3 shirts worth $90.00, each carrying a $2.00 per product shipping charge. Before global shipping is applied, your shipping already amounts to $6.00. Now, if the global shipping charge is $5.00 and the shipping multiplier is 1, then your total shipping costs equal to $11.00 ($5.00 + ($6.00 * 1)).
Remember that you can have an unlimited of CARTSHIPPING charges, each with its own global and multiplier variables. For example, you can have:


Global Tax
CARTTAX is the easiest one of them all. You can have an unlimited number of tax rates, based on percentage of the order subtotal. For example, let's again assume you have purchased $90.00 worth of merchandise (that's subtotal before tax and shipping). If the tax rate is 10%, then your total tax costs equal to $10.00 (10% * $100). Tax is only calculated for taxable products (defined with each product).


When building an online store, you must think about an entire ordering procedure or shopping flow that you have to give to your site. You must decide how products are ordered, where your customers are taken after items are added to their order and what they see or don't see as a consequence, how they can finalize their order, where and how to ask for them to choose shipping and tax, etc...

To allow for creativity and put the full control of your store in your hands, we have created "actions" and "variables". As a result, each link or "submit" button can accomplish a different task and go to a different page which displays different things.

Actions
Each submit button or link that you put in your store can have a different action or set of actions associated with it to accomplish different tasks (if desired). Actions can add purchases to orders, review items purchased, make changes to the order, clear the entire order, or submit orders to you (with or without Cybercash integration).

Files
Each submit button or link that you put in your store can have different actions but can also can also take you to different pages in any frame, and accomplish any task (if desired). File allows you to specify which html (or htm) page to go to.

Variables
On some pages, you might want to show your customer his or her order. Since we wanted to give full customization of your store and the way you show the order, we have created variables and a tag that you can use freely on any page. Each variable is subsituted by its value when the page is requested. Some variables are associated with each item ordered, others are associated with your store.


Orders
Since e-mailing incoming orders to the merchant (you) is not secure because email is not a secure protocol, all orders are stored in a file in a directory inside your secure directory (the ssl directory). Each day, a new file is created and all incoming orders from that day are immediately stored in that file according to an "orders template page" that you specify. You can access that directory through the secure server to view your orders at anytime. You can then choose to print the orders or save the viewed pages on your computer. Since you have access to the secure directory through FTP, you can delete these files using FTP when you wish. IT IS STRONGLY RECOMENDED NEVER TO DOWNLOAD THESE ORDER FILES THROUGH FTP SINCE FTP IS NOT A SECURE PROTOCOL.

The ShopPlus can also be configured to email you a notification that an order has been placed.