Using "Add to Basket" Links on Your Website

[CMarier]

Quote:

Is there an easy way to make "Add to Cart" buttons on my website? I want to have a button on my non-store website that will add a product to the customer's cart and take them to the checkout page.

Yes, this is easily done. The store automatically creates a series of links for each product, which you can use on any website. This set of links, which we call "QuickLinks™", can be used on any website. Each QuickLink has a different behavior. They can be used to do various things, such as add products to your customer's basket, start the checkout process, etc.

Quote:

Where can I find the QuickLinks for the products in my store?

The QuickLinks for each product are available on the Search Products page in your store's administration area. The Search Products page is located in the Products section of your store's administration area. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1: The Search Products page is located in the Products section of your store's administration area.

On the Search Products page, you will find a list of your products. There are several icons available for each product in the list. Click the "links" icon to open a popup window that contains the links available for that product. (See Figure 2.) The popup window will list all the QuickLinks available for the selected product.

Figure 2: Clicking the QuickLink icon will open a popup window listing all of the QuickLinks links available for that product.

Quote:

What QuickLinks are available, and what does each one do?

Several different QuickLinks are available. Following is a list of each link, and what it does.

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1. Quick Basket
Use this link to automatically add the product to the customer's basket, and send them to your store's My Basket page. The link can be used on any website. Wherever it is used, it will invisibly add the product to the customer's basket, and then load your store's My Basket page.

The Quick Basket link is formatted like this:
http://www.MyStore.com/quick_basket.php?id1=X&qty1=Y

In the example above, replace "X" with the product's System ID number, and "Y" with the quantity of the product to be added to the customer's basket.

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2. Quick Checkout
Use this link to automatically add the product to the customer's basket, and send them to your store's Checkout page. The link below can be used on any website. Wherever it is used, it will invisibly add the product to the customer's basket, and then load the appropriate first step of your store's checkout process.

The Quick Checkout link is formatted like this:
http://www.MyStore.com/quick_checkout.php?id1=X&qty1=Y

In the example above, replace "X" with the product's System ID number, and "Y" with the quantity of the product to be added to the customer's basket.

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3. Quick Return
Use this link to invisibly add the product to the customer's basket, and instantly return them to the webpage containing the link. (To the customer, it will seem like they never left the page.) The link below can be used on any website.

Important: If the Quick Return link is used on a website under a different domain name (for example: www.not-my-store-website.com), it requires the customer to have cookies to be enabled. Otherwise, the product may not be added to the customer's basket.

The Quick Return link is formatted like this:
http://www.MyStore.com/quick_return.php?id1=X&qty1=Y

In the example above, replace "X" with the product's System ID number, and "Y" with the quantity of the product to be added to the customer's basket.

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4. Quick Location
Use this link to invisibly add the product to the customer's basket, and then send them to any webpage you specify. Change "www.mylocation.com" to whatever webpage you like. Do not include "http://" in the location. The link below can be used on any website. Wherever it is used, it will add the product to the customer's basket and then load the URL specified by the "loc" variable.

Important: If the Quick Location link is used on a website under a different domain name (example: www.not-my-store-website.com), it requires the customer to have cookies to be enabled. Otherwise, the product may not be added to the customer's basket.

The Quick Location link is formatted like this:
http://www.MyStore.com/quick_location.php?id1=X&qty1=Y&loc=www.mylocation.com/page.html

In the example above, replace "X" with the product's System ID number, "Y" with the quantity of the product to be added to the customer's basket, and "www.mylocation.com/page.html" with the web address the customer will be taken to when they click the link.

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Quote:

Can I add more than one product to the customer's basket at a time?

Yes. To add multiple products to the customer's basket with a single link, simply add more "id" and "qty" variables to the link.

For example, the link below will add seven units of product 100, eight units of product 101, and then automatically load my store's Checkout area:
http://www.MyStore.com/quick_checkout.php?id1=100&qty1=7&id2=101&qty2=8

You can add as many products to the link as you like.

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CMarier
Modular Merchant - Shopping Cart Software
Specializing in digital delivery, subscription products, and add-on also available.

[wtn88]

Hi Guys,

I am currently using the quick checkout link to take my customers
from my website, to modular merchant checkout page.

However, i am encountering this problem:

When they click the quick checkout http://www.modularmerchant.com/clients/wtn88/quick_checkout.php?id1=1&qty1=1

They get to a page called Step 1 of 3 Checkout
Where they have to login (returning customers), Create an account and Guest checkout.

This is what i need to do:

Completely bypass this page and take them to checkout page where they put their credit card details and etc

Your help will be very much appreciated!
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Cheers!
Pedro D

[Mail Bag]

Hello,
There's a few different ways this could be done. Here's some suggestions:

Suggestion 1. If step 1 of the checkout process is never used, you could effectively remove that page from the checkout process by copying the contents of the "checkout step 2" template into step 1's template. Then, copy step 3's content into step 2, and so on. This would remove page that's currently set as Step 1 from the checkout area entirely.

Suggestion 2. If you'd rather not go moving templates around, or just don't want to lose the contents of the "checkout step 1" template, but still skip over it, then you could add this QuickCode Tag to the very beginning of the template for checkout step 1: {REDIRECT-NEXT-CHECKOUT-PAGE}. This QuickCode Tag will cause the store to skip that page of the checkout process, and continue to the next one.

Optionally, it can also be encapsulated between {IF-CUSTOMER-LOGGED-IN-BEGIN} and {IF-CUSTOMER-LOGGED-IN-END} tags, which would redirect to the next page of the checkout process only if the user is a return customer that is currently logged in. The complete example of this code would look like: {IF-CUSTOMER-LOGGED-IN-BEGIN}{REDIRECT-NEXT-CHECKOUT-PAGE}{IF-CUSTOMER-LOGGED-IN-END}

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There is another approach which is not recommended, but I wanted to mention here because I've seen it used by some clients. Step 1 of the checkout process could be skipped by replacing the quick checkout link using with a quick location: http://www.modularmerchant.com/clients/ACCOUNT_NAME/quick_location.php?id1=1&qty1=1&loc=www.modularmerchant.com/clients/ACCOUNT_NAME/checkout2.php

Why is it not recommended that users link directly to a specific step of the checkout process? Because the store software performs specific tasks on each checkout step, and bypassing one or more of pages in the checkout area can potentially cause problems.

Instead, if linking to the checkout area, it's always recommended that the directory "/checkout/" be linked to, instead of a specific page. For example: http://www.modularmerchant.com/clients/ACCOUNT_NAME/checkout/. It's recommended that skipping checkout pages be handled within the templates, as in suggestions 1 and 2 above.
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Modular Merchant Mail Bag
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Modular Merchant shopping cart software, website hosting, and custom programming.