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A Shopper’s Perspective.
Below we have detailed a typical scenario that happens on the internet everyday, by following this example you will have a basic idea of what is happening behind the scenes when a customer visits your site.
Harry visits the Mega Widgets online store. He browses through the huge selection of Widgets looking for the Super Deluxe Widget.
After finding the product he clicks the “add to cart” button and the page detailing Harry’s purchase is displayed. At this point, if he so wishes, he can edit the quantity. Harry notices that he is presented with a few “suggested products”; he looks down the short list of related items and picks the Widget Configuration Tool.
Harry now decides that he is happy with his order and decides to checkout. He selects the “checkout” button which in turn displays a page that requires Harry to fill out his billing and shipping information. He quickly fills out the “Billing Fields” and then because his shipping and billing address are the same he just selects the check box entitled “Same as Billing”, this fills out all the shipping address details for him. Harry selects his payment type as “Credit Card“ and places a short note of “delivery after 2pm if possible please“, this completes the shipping and billing and he selects the continue button.
The next page asks for credit card details, he selects Visa, enters the name on the credit card and inputs his credit card account number. This page also contains details of Harry’s order and his billing and shipping addresses, Harry checks that all of the information is correct and then clicks the “Submit Order” button.
The “Thank You for Ordering” page is displayed and a confirmation email is sent to Harry with details of his order. By placing the order Harry has also been added to the Widget shop database this means that he will receive the monthly Widget Newsletter which contains new products and special offers and the next time Harry returns to the Widget store to place an order, all He needs to do is enter his email address in the “if you have shopped here before” box and all of his billing and shipping information will be entered automatically from the members’ database.
When Harry clicked the “Buy” button on the Widget store website, various HTML values were sent to MercuryCart. The first value sent was the path to the Widget store’s cart which makes up the HTML form action properties
<form action="http://widget.MercuryCart.com/widget/files/index.html" method="post">
Other values that were sent were the product code and also instructions telling the cart what to do will all this information:
<input type="HIDDEN" name="code" value="9214">
<input type="HIDDEN" name="action" value="add">
Upon receiving all this information the MercuryCart carries out the following tasks:
1. Checks to see if there is an existing shopping cart for the user based on cookie identification from the Customer's browser. Since it found none a new cart file was created.
2. MercuryCart then accepted the product code and used that code to lookup the product information from the pricing database inside the Widget site’s product database. The information for this product was added to the shopping cart. Since no quantity was passed to MercuryCart, the system presumed a quantity of 1 and applied that to the shopping cart file.
3. MercuryCart used the configuration information to build the look of the shopping cart page to match the background, colours, fonts, and even the style of buttons to that of the Widget site.
4. If before proceeding to the checkout page, the customer filled in their email address in the “If you have shopped here before” field the MercuryCart would look to see if the customer existed in the Members’ database, if it did then all of the address details would be automatically filled in for them.
5. After the successful execution of an order the customer’s details can be automatically added to the Members database. This allows returning customers to check out quicker and also the building of emailing lists so that exsisting customers can be made aware of any special offers or promotions that you may be running.
6. When the required fields in the shipping and billing page have been populated and the payment method has been selected MercuryCart checks the submitted information. If all is in order, the Shipping Method page will be presented. MercuryCart determines what shipping options to display based upon the products purchased and the address details of the customer.
7. If Credit Card online is selected as the option for payment; MercuryCart will present the customer with a list of your accepted credit cards. After the details are entered, the cart performs a check to ensure that the number is a validly formatted card number, if so the transaction is complete.
Of course the above is a very simplified view of the operation.
Jane the owner of the Widget store receives an email informing her that a new order has been placed. She logs on to her Administration area within MercuryCart and Selects Order Manager > View Orders.
She views the new order and prints a copy for her records. She then marks the order as complete within the cart, and prepared the order for shipping.
In all the process from start to finish has been easy for both shopper and merchant, this means the likelihood of Harry returning to make more purchases in the future is high, while Jane can spend her time running her business without worrying about her shopping cart.