bgreaterthan

Thanks for the info everyone! Very helpful.

Hey Brett or Rodney,

In paypal, how did you offer choices for sizes or colors without adding a separate "Add to Cart" button. I've successfully added the buttons but I'm having trouble figuring that part out.

Thanks again! Kelly

 

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Rodney

On the PayPal shopping cart page, instead of clicking the Create Button Now button, you click the Add More Options button and you'll see a page where you get to choose your own options.

My suggestion would be to NOT use the PayPal shopping cart though. You should use a dedicated cart that will allow you more flexibility and a better shopping experience for your customers.

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Rodney Blackwell - T-Shirt Links Directory - T-Shirt Countdown

 

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RescueShirts

To make my test paypal shopping cart required some additional techniques I found here:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/we.../sc-techniques

You must be logged in to paypal to view this page.

Basically... the additional code was to be able to charge additional amounts for shirts larger than XL... which I did without problems.

I didn't use ALL of the techniques listed on these pages... however, they are not too difficult.


I really don't want to get into the paypal shopping cart versus other shopping cart debate.

This is my first t-shirt website... but I have sucessfully sold many other items online using paypal without problems after $1000's upon $1000's worth of transactions.


On the other hand... I am pretty proficient at web design... and I do a lot with templates.

For instance... Yesturday... it took me about an hour to add the modified paypal shopping cart code to about 88 pages of my site (that version is not online).

Once I got the code right for one product... I just pasted the code onto the other pages, then changed the item description... piece of cake.

Also... since my products are on their own pages... and not included in a shopping cart program... my site is very search engine friendly.

Heck... I am already in the top 3 to 8 for many of my keywords/phrases! Not bad for a site that isn't selling anything yet... (and yes... people are finding me... I track all traffic and referring sites/search engine pages.)


If you are not that website savvy... a self-contained shopping cart program that let's you add products easily may be the way to go.

Since I have been doing this web stuff since 1998... my ways are really easy for me... but don't always translate to other people's websites.

As always... your mileage may vary!

Brett

 

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Rodney

Quote: Also... since my products are on their own pages... and not included in a shopping cart program... my site is very search engine friendly.

Having your products in a shopping program doesn't stop them from being search engine friendly. A new page is created for all of your products just like if you did it manually.

Quote: If you are not that website savvy... a self-contained shopping cart program that let's you add products easily may be the way to go. Since I have been doing this web stuff since 1998... my ways are really easy for me... but don't always translate to other people's websites.

I think even if you are web savvy, having a shopping cart is a smart move.

It lets you manage products much more easily, it doesn't give you the popup windows that paypal does, it gives shopper a standard shopping process that they are used to, it can help you manage customers and orders. Also, it will help you manage payment options as you grow. Some customers won't want to pay with paypal (for whatever reasons), so when you can add more payment options, you can reach more customers.

I've been selling t-shirts online since 1996 and it's definitely something I would recommend for anybody that is wanting to sell t-shirts.

I think a paypal shopping cart is good if you are just starting out and you only have 1-2 products to manage.

But once you start processing your own transactions through your own merchant account and you get several t-shirt designs to sell, you will really appreciate how much time a shopping cart program will save you.

It makes it very easy to add a product, and add attributes like +$2 for XXL or different shipping options or coupon codes for marketing purposes or additional checkout fields.

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Rodney Blackwell - T-Shirt Links Directory - T-Shirt Countdown

 

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kyoru

Hello, just skimming through the site. I'm not sure if you are aware of this but there is a way to use Paypal at the end of your transaction and manual load the Paypal shopping cart. Search up "IPN" and "PDN". Basically your website stores the info about the purchases, say the customer wants design a and design b. the customer then decides to check out, your website then sends the information about the purchases to paypal (for example you can send variables for each item, including description, size, cost, weight, etc). paypal will display everything in its cart and the customer finishes a transaction there and then will be returned to your site. paypal will then send a transaction report to your website and you can do whatever from there (update inventory etc.)

this is not something you should look into if you are not web savy because it requires one to know a combination of perl/php and mysql, and it took me numerous hours for it to work properly. i would post my site but i beleive it is against rules.

in any case, yes your programmer needs access to your paypal account.

 

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