Three Rivers Internet EasyCartSystem - Shopping Cart software utilizing Lasso and Macintosh Servers

Version 1.0

A shopping cart system is a way in which you can sell products or services through your website via the Internet allowing your customers to order multiple items in a single session, while browsing your online catalog. The EasyCartSystem Shopping Cart System created and owned by Three Rivers Internet is one of the easiest to use and administer shopping cart systems on the market today. The EasyCartSystem was designed to be a fast and easy to use system for your clients shopping on the Internet. EasyCartSystem will be evolving and improving with each new version and because we created it we know it inside out, own the source code, and can implement fixes and improvements quickly.

Store Administration for the Store Owner

Logging In

The store owner administration section of the EasyCartSystem is very user friendly. Below is the administration login screen. To log into the administration section of your store, enter your assigned username and password and click on the "login" button.

What can I do?

Once logged in as store owner you have three choices as shown in the picture below:

"General Settings" which allows you to modify the general settings for your store.

"Products List" which allows you to add, modify and delete products from your store catalog.

"Logout" which logs you out of the administration section.

Note: 30 minutes of inactivity while logged into the administration section will cause the system to automatically log you out.

General Settings

If you are performing the initial setup for your store you will want to start in the General Settings area so you can set the general settings for your store. Also you will want to make changes to the information listed here if your contact information changes. The general settings cover everything included in the picture below:

Here is a description of the fields in the General Settings section:

Business Name: The name of your business. This value will be displayed on all pages of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

Address: The mailing address of your business. This value will be displayed on the checkout page of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

Address 2: The second line of your mailing address. This value will be displayed on the checkout page of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

City: The city where your business is located. This value will be displayed on the checkout page of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

State: The state where your business is located. This value will be displayed on the checkout page of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

Zip Code: The zip code of your business. This value will be displayed on the checkout page of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

Phone: The telephone number of your business, this should be your sales line. This value will be displayed on the checkout page of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

Facsimile: The facsimile (fax) number of your business. This value will be displayed on the checkout page of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

Email: The email address of your business sales department/person. This value will be displayed on the checkout page of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order.

Website URL: The Website address of your businesses main website. This value will be displayed on all pages of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order. (Must include trailing slash)

Store URL: The store website address of this store. This value will be displayed on all pages of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order. (Must include trailing slash)

SSL URL: The Website address of your stores SSL (Secure Socket Layer) website. This value will be displayed on all pages of your store and on the email invoice sent to the customer upon placing an order. (Must include trailing slash)

SMTP Host: The outgoing email server address.

Items displayed per page: This number controls the number of items displayed on a single page of your catalog.

Page Background Color: This is a pull down list of colors that you may choose from for the Background color of your stores pages.

Page Text Color: This is a pull down list of colors that you may choose from for the Text color of your stores pages.

Page Link Color: This is a pull down list of colors that you may choose from for the Link color of your stores pages.

Accent Background Color: This is a pull down list of colors that you may choose from for the Accent Background color of your stores pages. An example of this is shown in this picture as the light blue section:

Page Background Image URL: The full URL of the location of your Page Background Image. (Optional)

META Tags Keywords: Meta tags provide a useful way to control your keywords/keyphrases in some search engines.

META Tags Description: Meta tags provide a useful way to control your summary in some search engines.

Credit Cards accepted: This is a comma delimited list of the credit cards you accept as setup with your credit card processing agency. (Example: Mastercard,Visa,Discover,American Express)

Shipping Methods: This is a comma delimited list of your shipping methods. This field and the Shipping Script field work together to automatically compute the shipping cost for your customers (Example: USPS Standard,USPS Priority)

Shipping Script: The shipping script will automatically compute the shipping cost for each order based on various parameters.
Example:

[If:(Variable:'shipMethod', encodenone)=='USPS Standard'] [Variable_Set:'shipping'=(Math_Mult:(Variable:'OrderWeight'), 2.00)] [Else] [Variable_Set:'shipping'=(Math_Mult:(Variable:'OrderWeight'), 4.00)] [/If]

This example shipping script will take the total order weight in pounds and multiply it times $2.00 if the Shipping Method chosen by the customer was USPS Standard. If the customer chose a Shipping Method of USPS Priority the shipping script will take the total order weight in pounds and multiply it times $4.00.

The shipping script can use other parameters like total order cost or total number of items in an order instead of weight to compute the shipping cost. The shipping script uses standard Lasso dynamic markup language (LDML).

Here are the Variables available for use in your shipping script:

subtotal - The total cost of items before shipping.
orderweight - The total weight of the order based on weights for each item and quantities.
itemcount - The total number of items in the order.

Note: You should ALWAYS place a series of test orders to check your shipping script to make sure it functions properly for each shipping method.

Products List

In the Products List administration section you can add, modify or delete products from your store catalog. When you log into this section for the first time you will only see a form that looks like the following. This form allows you to add products to your store catalog. When you add a new product to your store catalog the system will automatically place the new item in your products list in alphabetical order based on the value in the Product Name field. Each product can only have one price so if you have two prices for the same product, like for different sizes, you will need to enter each as a separate product. We suggest including the size as part of the product name for these types of products.

Here is a description of the fields in the Products List section:

Product Number: This value must be unique for each item in your store and can be any combination of letters and numbers, but should not contain any spaces or non-alphanumeric characters.

Product Name: This should be the name of each product.

Product Description - Short: This should be a brief description of each product. It will be displayed in the product lists in your store.

Product Description - Long: This should be a detailed description of each product. It will be displayed on the product detail page.

Product Price: The unit price of each product as a decimal value like "10.00". (No dollar sign).

Product Category: This should be one or two words maximum, that describe the type of product. Make sure to enter each category for each product of the same category spelled the same or you are actually creating a new category.

Product Picture Name: You can add pictures for any item you wish to by putting the name of the graphics file in this field and then upload the picture files to the server using FTP. You should place a thumbnail (small) picture in the "PicsSmall" folder inside your store folder and place a full sized, detail picture in the "PicsBig" folder inside your store folder. EasyCartSystem will look in each of those folders for the picture files with the name you specify in this field so name the small and large pictures for a single item the same but place them in the proper folders on the server. We recommend somewhere between 75x75 and 125x125 pixels for your thumbnail pictures and somewhere between 250x250 and 450x450 pixels for your large/detail pictures.

Product Weight: Product weight is optional but you may want to include this when adding products for use with a shipping script that can automatically calculate the shipping cost for each order based on total order weight. Weight can be entered as a decimal value for partial pounds but should be entered in pounds with numerals only.

How the Store Functions

When someone loads the first page of your store they will be presented with a page that looks similar to the one below. The number of items shown on this page is based on what you entered in the General Store Setting admin section. Let's go over the various sections of this page (most of which are on most other pages of your store).
At the top and bottom is a navigation menu that allows the customer to go to one of four places:

Website Home, which may be your store homepage if your website consists solely of an EasyCartSystem online store.

Store Home, this page.

View Cart, allows them to view the contents of their shopping cart.

Checkout, allows them to go to the first page of the checkout process to complete their order of your products.

In the Side Bar your store has the following:

Quick Search, where your customers can enter any value and the system will search the product id number, product name, short and long descriptions, and prices.

Categories, which are the categories as you entered them in the Products List Administration section. Each Category is only listed once. When clicked on the resulting page will display the items in that category.

Email Store Owner, is a link to the email address you entered in the General Setting Administration section.

In the Products List Section will be displayed the first set of items alphabetically by Product Name as you entered them in the Products List Administration section. The number shown will depend on what you entered in the "Items displayed per page" field in the General Setting Administration section. If you have more items entered in your store than this number there will be a link to more items at the bottom of this section. If you entered a Product Picture Name and uploaded the picture files, for a product displayed, then the thumbnail will be displayed beside the product info. Information shown for each product is Product Name, Product ID, Short Description, Unit Price and a button that takes the customer to the detail page for that item.

Here is an example detail page. Detail pages show the full sized graphic for that item and also have the Long Description. This is where customers add items to their shopping cart.

Here is an example Category page. The category page is what is shown when a customer clicks on a link in the Category list. Only products in that category are shown.

Here is an example of the Shopping Cart page with an item in the cart.

Here is an example of the Shopping Cart page with No items in the cart.

Here is an example of the Checkout page. This page is used to collect the customer's addresses and other contact information. The shipping method choices are the ones you entered in the General Settings Administration section for your store. All this information will be included in an email sent to you when the order is completed.

Here is an example of the Credit card information collection page. This page is used to collect the customer's credit card information for billing. It is served from the SSL part of your store site for securely collecting the information. This page also displays back to the customer their full order information including the contact information they entered and their order details and costs. Here is where your shipping script computes the shipping cost. The Card type choices are the ones you entered in the General Settings Administration section for your store.

Here is an example of the Thank You page that is displayed after an order is completed. When a customer reaches this page their order is complete and the system will send two email messages, one to the store email address as you entered it in the General Settings Administration section for your store, and one to the customer at the email address they entered. Both emails will contain the appropriate order information for each recipient.

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