These orders will be processed manually,
but in the early stages of an e-commerce site, the time you lose processing orders will be less
than the time it would have taken to develop an automated system.
Phase II: Creating Your Own Shopping Cart
Using PayPal??™s shopping cart is OK and very easy, but it does mean you miss out on a lot of
advantages. For example, you can??™t control the look and feel of PayPal??™s shopping cart, whereas
if you use your own, you can make it an integral part of the site.
This is a significant advantage, but it??™s superficial compared to some of the others. For
example, with your own shopping cart, you can store complete orders in the database as part
of the order process and use that data to learn about the customers. With additional work, you
also can use the shopping basket and checkout process as a platform for selling more products.
How often have you been tempted by impulse purchases near the checkout of your local
store? Well, impulse shopping also works with e-commerce. Having your own shopping cart
and checkout gives you the option of offering low-cost special offers from the shopping cart at
checkout. You can even analyze the contents of the cart and make suggestions based on this.
Chapters 12 through 15 show you how to
??? Build your own shopping cart
??? Pass a complete order through to PayPal for credit card processing
??? Add AJAX features to your product catalog and shopping cart to enhance the user
experience
??? Create an order administration page
??? Implement a product recommendation system
Once again, at the end of Phase II, our site will be fully operational.
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