Shopping Cart FAQ

What does a Shopping Cart do?

The Precision Web Shopping Cart is an online web store application that makes it easy to display your catalog if items for sale on your web site in a search engine friendly way. You can easily have online storefronts of up to 25,000 items. To view a simple demo click here. To test the administration demo click here.   

How do I get started?

1. First you will have to get an Precision Web Hosting account which gives you access to our  Shopping Cart.

2. We’ll send you the passwords and other information you’ll need to access your shopping cart and publish your site to our servers.

3. Add the items you want to sell to the Shopping Cart from the shop/owner control panel. As you add them to your inventory, they immediately appear in your shop (normally at your-actual-domain.com/shop).

4. Using our easy site builder at www.ezbuilder.biz or using any web site design software, create the your home page and any other pages that will make up your site; from those pages you will then link to the shopping cart categories or shopping cart items to allow shoppers to purchase from your site. Using the shop’s template import feature, the shopping cart pages can look just like the pages on the rest of your site. For more information on this, see the section below on integrating our free shopping cart with your site.

5. Credit Card Processing: For offline processing you can use any credit card merchant account provider. You would view the orders securely from the shop administration, and then enter them into your credit card terminal.
For real time credit card processing information, click here.

How do set up my shopping cart?

1. Go to the shop owner’s panel and log in. The actual URL is in your Web Site Settings email.

2. Once you are logged in the main pages that you will need to look at are the General Settings, Sales Tax, Checkout Type, Shipping, Add Categories, and Inventory pages.  Each of those sections includes inline help information.

How do I add items to my shopping cart?

From the shopping cart control panel click the Inventory menu selection. Then from the Inventory page click the first button which is named “Add Item”. That will take you to the first screen of required item information; once you have filled out the initial information click the Continue button to proceed. Now you will be able to add custom fill in fields, unlimited drop-downs, and multiple images to the item. 

How do I integrate the Shopping Cart with my site?

Integrating the shop with your site is basically a matter of filling out your information from the shopping cart admin page which would be at: www.your-actual-domain.com/shop/owner/

Just click on each of the buttons and fill in the information required; one of the buttons is the inventory button where you’ll need to add each of your items to the shop inventory of items for sale.

Once you have the shop set up, all you need to do is link to the shop from the pages on your site. You can link to either:
1. The shop main entrance at http://www.your-actual-domain.com/shop/

2. A shop category

3. An individual item within the shop

4. Or, you can use the HTML displayed by the shop to put the item forms on regular HTML pages that you would create using web design software.

How do I link from a page on my site to your shopping cart?

You can link into the shopping cart a few different ways:

1. Link to the whole cart by linking to the main shop url.
a.) Use the shopping cart’s online admin interface to configure the cart with the categories and item data that you want.
b.) Make a link from your static pages to the shopping cart main entrance.
For example, “Click here to go to our online catalog” with the hyperlink something like http://your-actual-domain.com/shop/

Click here to watch a video on using a “Shopping Cart” link

2. Or, link to a shop category. For ease of use, the exact link HTML is shown by simply clicking on the “Show” button within the inventory section of the shop owner module.

Click here to watch a video on using Category links

For example, the following link takes you to the demo shop denim category: http://shopdemo2.precisionweb.net/category/Denim-9
Click Here For Denim

Ezbuilder Shop Category
Click here to watch a video on inserting Category links via the Ezbuilder

3. Or, link to a shop item. For ease of use, the exact link HTML is shown by simply clicking on the “Show” button within the inventory section of the shop owner module.

To see what the link would be to a specific item you would:
b. Click the “Setup Inventory” button.
c. Click the “Edit” button next to the item that you want to link to.
d. Near the top of the inventory_edit.php page there is a “Linking To This Item” section, click the drop down menu and change the selection from “Linking to this Category” to “Linking to this Item”,
e. Click the Show button at the right. That will display the link to the item.
f. Copy that url.

For example, the following link takes displays the Jacket item. Note that the link has the item name in the link itself; This is more search engine friendly than links which include query strings like ?something=1234)
http://shopdemo2.precisionweb.net/item/Printed-Cotton-Shirt-for-Men-16

Click Here For Cotton Shirt

4. Or, insert the “Add To Cart” HTML directly into your regular HTML pages. The exact form HTML is shown by simply clicking on the “Show” button within the inventory section of the shop owner module.

The steps are:

1. Set up an item from the shop/owner Inventory Setup area.
2. Once it is set up, look near the top of that Inventory Setup/Edit Item page; there is a drop down list and a Show button.
3. Select “HTML to Display this item” from the drop down list.
4. Click the Show button.
5. Copy that HTML and insert it into the page you are creating.

For example, the form below adds the item to the cart of items you are buying:

Belt for Men

This belt is appropriate use with both formal attire and jeans. Plenty of holes in it for those long days on the trail without food.
Belt for Men
Price: $230.00

Belt buckle:

Normal belt buckle
Large Western Style Buckle (+$35.00)
Sterling Silver Buckle (+$92.00)
Color:

Jet Black
Burnt Umber Brown
Peat Moss Green
Width:

Extra Wide (+$10.00)
Narrow (+$5.00)
Regular
Enter your initials here for monogram:

Quantity: 

How do I make sure my site is PCI compliant?

The Payment Card Industry mandates IT security compliance for most merchants that process credit cards.
Click Here to Sign up with Trust Guard

How can I let my customers know I'm PCI compliant?

You have Less than 8 seconds to show that your website is TRUSTWORTHY and SAFE. Trust Guard’s seals INSTANTLY provide a VISUAL way to establish TRUST and CREDIBILITY, turning more of your visitors into customers, increasing your conversion rate and sales!
Click Here to Gain Trust with Trust Guard

How do I set up my Affiliate Tracking in the Shopping Cart?

You may have an Affiliate account through a company like Commission Junction you wish to automatically notify when a customer places an order on your account.  You will need to log into your Shop Owner’s Panel and go into the General Settings.  In the Shop Aesthetics section of the General Settings page is a text box with the title Confirmation Page HTML for Affiliate Tracking.  You will need to enter the tracking URL provided by Affiliate provider in the field and replace their example Constants with the following:

Shop Constants:
##subtotal##
##shipping##
##tax##
##total##
##orderid##

For instance, Your affiliate provider will likely give you something like the following HTML tag for the shop:

<img src=”https://www.qksrv.net/u?AMOUNT=TOTAL&CID=7771212&OID=ORDERID&TYPE=5432&CURRENCY=USD&METHOD=IMG” height=”1″ width=”1″>

You will need to change the generic variables they provided with the Shop Constants we provided, so the above URL would be changed to:

<img src=”https://www.qksrv.net/u?AMOUNT=##total##&CID=856975&OID=##orderid##&TYPE=4827&CURRENCY=USD&METHOD=IMG” height=”1″ width=”1″>

Does the Precision Cart allow for sales tax?

Yes. Your shop can be configured to automatically add sales tax to orders placed from any specific state, county, or city.. Individual states can have different sales tax percentages. You would set this up from the shop/owner “Sales Tax / Locations” page.

How do I import a template into my shopping cart?

1. Create a page that has the appearance you desire.  Place the  text [displayshopitemshere] at the part of the page where you want the shop items to appear. upload / Publish this page to your site.

2. From the shopping cart control panel go to “Manage” –> “General Settings & Aesthetics”. Scroll down to the “Custom HTML Options” near the bottom of that page. In that section click the  link named  “Click here to import / edit shop template (used on item pages and cart page)”

3. Once you are on that page you can specify  the URL of the page you want to import as a template. As it imports the shopping cart will try to correct any relative links, and image URLs; but you may need to edit the page using the built in editor to fine tune the appearance.

4. Make sure the [displayshopitemshere]  is at the location on the page where you’d like the shop items to appear.

5. For more help, click the help link on that page itself.

6. Click the “Update / Save Template” button at the lower right to save your changes. Then look at the  /shop URL on your site to check it.

Click here to watch a video about the sophisticated template capability.

How do I import data into my shopping cart?

The easiest way to do create an importable file is to:

1. Create a few shop items in the shopping cart itself.
2. Export these items from the shop Export page. That will save a file named export.txt
3. Start up Microsoft Excel, Google Docs , OpenOffice  [or any other popular database or spreadsheet software].
4. Open up the export.txt tab delimited CSV type file which you saved in step 2 above.
5. Edit that file to add your items. Save it. Then Exit that software.
6. From the shop control panel click the “Import/Export”  –> “Import Item Data” menu selection.
7. From the import page, select the  .txt file you have created and import it.

How do I create a drop down list for an item?

1. Log into your shop control panel at   /shop/owner/
2. Click the Inventory menu option and then click the ‘edit’ button to the right of the item you wish to edit.
3. In the “shop inventory editor” scroll down to the ‘Create Drop Down’ section of the page. Under the Create Drop Down Lists description section enter the name you wish the drop down to
be known by and click ‘add’. E.g. Color (This name will be displayed to the left of the actual list of drop down choices.)
4. Now, scroll down to the ‘Options for the drop down lists’ section. In the description field enter the first choice you want to have in the drop down list then fill in the fields to the right of the description, including the “level” field, you will need to choose the name of the drop down you created in step 3. Click on the ‘Add’ button to the right. Add all the options you want for this dropdown.
5. If you have more than 1 drop down, repeat steps 3 and 4.

Click here to watch a Video

How do I Import customer data into QuickBooks?

The Shopping Cart allows you to download your customers’ order information and import it directly into QuickBooks!

Information to know before you get started.

• The import feature utilizes 4 custom fields in your QuickBooks Customer Job List.

• The 4 customer fields are Domain Name, Credit Card Number, Credit Card Expiration Date, and Name on Credit Card.

• To set these up, simply go to your Customer: Job List

• Double Click on a customer name

• Click on the ‘Additional Info’ tab

• On the bottom right, click on the ‘Define Fields’ button

• In the new window that pops up, enter the Four labels as company, Credit Card, Exp. Date, name and select the ‘Customer:Job’ box beside those 4 Labels. Please see our image at http://www.precisionwebhosting.com/qkbkdefinefield.png.

• ALSO, you must create your Items in QuickBooks prior to importing. You can do this by going to the ‘List’ menu, clicking on ‘Item List’. This will bring up a complete list of items.

• To create a new item, click on the ‘Item’ button at the bottom of the screen and click ‘new’ on the menu.

• Enter the appropriate information for your item, the only field you must enter that coincides with the Shopping Cart is the Item Name/ Number. The Item Name/ Number must be the same thing you enter into the item SKU field in the shopping cart.

• Once you have set up your items, when you import the correct accounts will be debited and credited.

To save your customers’ information

• Log into your shop owner’s panel (located at <http://www.your-actual-domain.com/shop/owner>)

• Click on the ‘Orders’ button in the top menu.

• In the new window that opens, click on the ‘Export Orders’ button at the top right of the screen.

• Underneath Customize Export, under “Set Options” choose Order ID Range, then under “Start” put the beginning order # and under “End” put the ending order # for the range of orders you would like to export. First time import just try one order.

• For Export Options, Choose Export to Quickbooks As Invoice (New Format)

• Click ‘Save to File” button for all 3 files and save the files to a known location and name it custrec for example.

To import a file into QuickBooks

•Open QuickBooksOpen QuickBooks

• Click on the ‘File’ drop down menu

• Select ‘Utilities’ from the list and choose ‘Import’ (IIF files)

• The import window will allow you to browse your hard drive for the appropriate document, custrec.txt in the example (IF YOU DON’T SEE YOUR TEXT FILE: make sure you have the Files of type: set to ‘All files’).

Where do I learn about Payment Information

Click here to access the Shopping cart Payment Information 

Don't see your question listed?

Click here to See the help information listed in the Shopping Cart Knowledgebase