Help with Shopsites Checkout Process

[Jack Swartz]

During the checkout process, I would like our customers to be able to login (existing customer / create a new customer account) or to be able to check out as a guest.
I have created a screen that allows our customers to do that.
http://71.96.198.233/images/billing.jpg

My question is that if they have a current account and they login, (or create a new account for that matter) why does the cart go to the account information page instead of continuing the checkout process.
If it does have to go the the account information page, is it possible to have the following button added to it that continues the checkout process.

http://71.96.198.233/images/accountinfo.jpg

Is there a switch somewhere that I missed that sends you back to the billing information page to put your credit card information in? I would greatly appreciated any help in this matter.

Regards,

Jack

Currently using ShopSite® Pro 12 r1
Current theme Deskman

[Jim]

The login process must be done either from a store page or from the shopping cart screen (order.cgi). Both of those screens can send the user to the registration screens. The reason for this is there must be a shopping cart associated with the registered person. If they signin from a store page, without having previously added an item to the shopping cart, then they are directed (behind the scenes) through the shopping cart and then to the registration screens. If they have already created a shopping cart they are just directed to the registration screen. Once you get to the billing.cgi screen you are past the point where they can be redirected to the registration screens. So it doesn't make any sense to put the links to signin/register on the billing screen because they would just be taken to the registration screens and then back to the shopping cart and not back to the billing screen.

The billing.cgi input information, addresses, payment info etc. will be populated to the shoppers register account once they checkout the first time. After the first time they will be given a choice on the shopping cart screen to choose a ship to address and a payment method (if you allow that to be stored) from the ones used on previous orders or to choose a new ship to address and/or payment method.

[Jack Swartz]

Hi Jim,

First off thanks for the reply.
I am still confused. Let me answer each line below.

>The login process must be done either from a store page or from the shopping cart screen (order.cgi). Both of those screens can send the user to the registration screens.
That is fine. We want the user to login.

>The reason for this is there must be a shopping cart associated with the registered person. If they signin from a store page, without having previously added an item to the shopping cart, then they are directed (behind the scenes) through the shopping cart and then to the registration screens.
But once the user uses the registration screen using this URL:
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/registration.cgi?sbid=SSMSB1676504780390439167.1200&func=2&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&html_reg=html

Why does the cart have to go to this URL:
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/registration.cgi?sbid=SSMSB1676504780390439167.1200&func=3&html_reg=html&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691

We want to return to where we were:
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/billing.cgi?storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&fromid=order.cgi&redirect=yes&shopinfo=SSMSB1676504780390439167.1200

Otherwise it is confusing to the existing users. There is no need to edit user information and the"back to cart" link returns them to the wrong place.

How or what do I need to modify to achieve this behavior.

Thanks again for all your help.

Jack

[Jim]

There is no way to modify the behavior of the registration process. Once the shopper signs in (or a new user registers) they will be directed to the user account screen. That can't be changed. From that screen you can click the continue shopping button or back to cart button to get back to the shopping cart or store page you were on. There is no way to go to any other screen unless you put a hard coded link in your registration template.

Why does the cart have to go to this URL:
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/registration.cgi?sbid=SSMSB1676504780390439167.1200&func=3&html_reg=html&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691

Because the registration.cgi is the code for handling the registration process. If you don't go to that screen they can't register or sign in if they are already registered.

[Jack Swartz]

Hi Jim,

I think I might have gotten you a little confused.


>There is no way to modify the behavior of the registration process. Once the shopper signs in (or a new user registers) they will be directed to the user account screen. That can't be changed. From that screen you can click the continue shopping button or back to cart button to get back to the shopping cart or store page you were on. There is no way to go to any other screen unless you put a hard coded link in your registration template.

There is no continue shopping / checkout button. My original post showed what I wanted.

http://71.96.198.233/images/accountinfo.jpg

But this is what I currently have.

http://71.96.198.233/images/no.continue.shopping.jpg

The back to shopping cart takes the logged in user back to the wrong spot.

Any help in fixing this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Jack

[Jim]

It depends on the theme that is being used if there is a button or text to take the user back to the shopping cart. It the case of the template you are using it is a text link down on the lower left side that says "Back to Cart". You could probably edit the template and change it so the text is a button instead and you could position it in a different place.

The only way to get the shopper to the Checkout screen is to go back through the shopping cart screen. This is necessary because all calculations for tax and shipping are done on the shopping cart screen. If you have more than one payment method configured the shopper also needs to select the payment method on the shopping cart screen. This allows the Checkout screen to display the proper total for the order and the appropriate fields for their payment information..

[Jack Swartz]

Hi Jim,

I understand what you are saying, but the presentation is or can be independent of the shopping cart states.

Please confirm our model of the shopping cart. We are in the shopping cart any time we reference a cgi-bin module with the storeid and shopinfo/sbid supplied in the URL.
To access the user transaction in the database, a cgi-bin module needs both the storeid and the current cart transaction. The storeid is specified by supplying the argument
storeid in all cgi modules (billing.cgi, order.cgi, and registration.cgi). The current shopping cart transaction is denoted by supplying sbid in the URL for
registration.cgi and order.cgi but it appears as shopinfo in the billing.cgi module. Each cgi-bin module has a state which depends on storeid/sbid pair and the
referring URL which is fed in as the fromid argument to the module. The cgi modules also take redirect as an argument. What does that do? Is there any
documentation on the arguments to the shopping cart modules (billing.cgi,order.cgi, and registration.cgi) ?

What we would like to see is the billing.cgi module be able to take registration as a fromid. What would
it take to achieve this behavior? Currently, the cart has the following behavior which has a step from registration.cgi to order.cgi which completely confuses customers as you go backwards a step.

http://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi?rd=1&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&sbid=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331&redirect=yes
http://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/billing.cgi?storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&fromid=order.cgi&redirect=yes&shopinfo=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/registration.cgi?sbid=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331&func=2&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&html_reg=html
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/registration.cgi?sbid=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331&func=3&html_reg=html&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691
http://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi?storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&sbid=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331&fromid=g
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/billing.cgi?storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&fromid=order.cgi&redirect=yes&shopinfo=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/thankyou.cgi

Instead, we would like to see:

http://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi?rd=1&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&sbid=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331&redirect=yes
http://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/order.cgi
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/billing.cgi?storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&fromid=order.cgi&redirect=yes&shopinfo=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/registration.cgi?sbid=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331&func=2&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&html_reg=html
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/registration.cgi?sbid=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331&func=3&html_reg=html&storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/billing.cgi?storeid=*0e9ea5320d7d210691&fromid=registration.cgi&redirect=yes&shopinfo=SSMSB7826892651589039000.2331
https://www.bodydynamics.com/cgi-bin/sc/thankyou.cgi

This eliminates an unnecessary step as the cart has already begun the checkout process and should return to it. There isn't any new information to be added to the order.cgi at this point but
billing.cgi should be updated. Why go backwards?

While it is apparent that order.cgi is significantly bigger (order.cgi = 533552 bytes versus billing.cgi = 136524 bytes), both modules reference the same libraries and have
ability to update the database. While adding the fromid=registration.cgi to the billing.cgi module might require some coding, it would greatly enhance the user experience. Does this help explain our requirements?

Thank you so much for your time and patience.

[Jim]

I understand what you are trying to do but it just doesn't work that way.
The fromid values are added by the cgi code itself and there is no way that you can change it to have registration.cgi call to billing.cgi.

Doing something like this would require considerable rewriting of the code of each of the various shopping cart cgis, order, billing, thankyou and the registration.cgi. Since the cgis are compiled from C code there is no way a user can make any modification to the cgis themselves.

If you haven't done so already you could add an enhancement request in the Enhancement forum group. Those are looked at when planning future versions of ShopSite.