online shopping carts - I need a framework or something

[The Stigenator]

Hey everybody, I have a question on shopping carts and building your own or using a framework. Most online shopping carts that are available for use are designed or built to sell products with fixed items and fixed or variable pricing.

I need one that can sell a service for which we provide a product for. In one use case, we require people to send them their files for processing and pay for it, after which we send them the post processed file via email or shopping cart download. The other case is they build a query for our data (product), which they pay for as a service. Since each customer's query is different, that product sent out is different. They will get their purchase via email or the shopping cart.

In both use case scenarios, the current shopping carts do not allow customization that allows for me to do what I need to. I am hoping there is some sort of framework available or build with modules or something. In both cases they have to be registered users of the websites to access the carts.

 

[Ken g6]

Sounds complicated. Are you sure the complication isn't causing you to lose customers? Maybe you should just sell a subscription?

If that's not an option, what are the sites built on now?

 

[The Stigenator]

Right now we are doing legacy client work, no online.... its killing us.
Currently we get orders via email and phone and we process them. But these are fortune 500 clients. We have a broker that handles all the marketing stuff.

We produce a product that is sold as a service to our F500 clients. So they send us their criteria, we process and then mail them. They pay us through the broker who takes a %age for themselves.

However as we are growing, we need to have a front end website to do ecommerce.

So technically the two vertical streams.
1. Our data product that we currently produce inhouse, and sell via our broker.
2. A service where clients send their data for us to process and send back to them.

the 2nd thing is easier to deploy, since its just a website (its branded outside of the current company) with an shopping cart, they register, send their file. The cart would have to run a script to see how many records are there in that file, and charge them appropriately. Some of our competition currently just takes the file and the card info and processes it and charges it at a later time. It would work in that format but I still need a cart.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

I'm in the same boat. Selling services with a lot of different options sucks. Something like a Dell / Alienware / computer customizer system gets closer to what I need.

Unfortunately, I'm rolling it myself.

 

[Leros]

If every purchase is unique, instead of a shopping cart, can you use a form for the "purchase" and then send the client an invoice?

 

[The Stigenator]

If every purchase is unique, instead of a shopping cart, can you use a form for the "purchase" and then send the client an invoice?

Yeah that is what I figured.. I found www.jotform.com has free forums.. may work. It has a payment gateway and ability to send to dropbox and stuff. It may work the way I want. I have to test a bit.

I further realized, I COULD use a regular shopping cart. I have to still modify a cart, but for the second product, I can have the services as 'fixed' products.. and they add that to the cart, and then add the file to the order. The cart would submit the file and the order, its processed, and then manually charged via paypal via an invoice and they get their file.

Its not perfect but its better than none. I have to test it in an environment.

I think there should be a shopping cart for service providers.. because products and services are NOT interchangeable everytime...

FuzzyBunny.. message me.

 

[uclabachelor]

Hey everybody, I have a question on shopping carts and building your own or using a framework. Most online shopping carts that are available for use are designed or built to sell products with fixed items and fixed or variable pricing.

I need one that can sell a service for which we provide a product for. In one use case, we require people to send them their files for processing and pay for it, after which we send them the post processed file via email or shopping cart download. The other case is they build a query for our data (product), which they pay for as a service. Since each customer's query is different, that product sent out is different. They will get their purchase via email or the shopping cart.

In both use case scenarios, the current shopping carts do not allow customization that allows for me to do what I need to. I am hoping there is some sort of framework available or build with modules or something. In both cases they have to be registered users of the websites to access the carts.

Something like what you've described requires a custom cart from the ground up or module to an existing cart.

Either way, that's $$$$. I would be charging clients anywhere from $30k - $100k turnkey, depending on requirements and details, that would be fully spec'd out to their requirements.

Going the module way would be a little cheaper but with less flexibility in upgrades and customization.

 

[KentState]

In the services industry I worked in, we had custom systems built to do this. We sold court reporting services and the processing of the digital and physical documents. Those ended up being electronically stored, physically warehoused and turned in online, video and printed documents.

Places like Snapfish, Experian, Action and such do things like you talk about.