Posts filed under 'AJAX'
The Zen Cart & OSCommerce AJAX POS System is getting close to having a release ready. For more information on the OSCommerce POS or the Zen Cart POS - click here.
It works as an add-on module that hooks your OSC or Zen Database and still allows you to control attributes and information from inside OSC and Zen cart respectively. The fact that it is AJAX means you can do speedy real time lookups of customer information and orders. We have several brick and mortor stores who do millions in sales using the BETA of our system.
September 17th, 2008
We’ve recently completed a new modification to a West-Coast Satellite Radio retailer - JJIElectronics.com that is working really well for them. We’ve added the ability to define the specials and featured products on a per-category basis.
Example #1 -XM Satellite Radios
For the admin, it really is as easy as assigning special or featured products with a few selection boxes and both the design styling and information shows up within the design template. Your clients do not have to mess with the description box or define_mainpage - it is that easy.
Zen Cart Feature - Displaying Zen-Cart Sub-categories in the Main Menu.
We’ve also built a dynamic menu system that displays all the the categories & sub-categories on the same menu - this is great for providing customers the ability to see all of the types of products you offer rather than force them to search. You can see the Zen Cart Dynamic Menu examples here. This helps your main page get spidered for all top-level keywords (which for an ecommerce site should start with your categories of products that you sell at the very least.
Zen Cart Feature - Multiple Shopping Feeds and “Referral Network” Integration.
Feedburner, Yahoo Shopping, Google Base / Froogle and Bizrate. We set up this Zen Cart build so it would detect the inbound referral and pop the correct survey box based on whether they came from BizRate, Shopping.com, etc. Most of these services give you their code to integrate and it really does nothing except pop the survey after you have successfully checked out. If you are a business as large as this client - and make use of several networks - then you either have to dynamically detect the referral and trigger the appropriate code - or you are stuck with popping all of the various surveys and letting the user fill out whichever one is relevant. Since JJIElectronics.com cares about their user’s experiences - they went with the auto-detect.
Additional Zen-Cart Modules
In addition to the stock build, we also added:
- Custom Shipping Tables & Rules
- Google Checkout & PayPal Express (that conforms to the above - just try that… we dare you.)
- An AJAX Sidebar Manager - to allow the various advertising, banners, buttons and tables they display throughout their site (ala DeepDiscountDVD.com & TigerDirect)
- A Zen-Cart to QuickBooks Exporter
- An advanced order manager that allowed batching of functions and printing.
- An advanced reporting module that allowed for reports to be generated on keywords and stock control.
- A total Zen Cart SEO overhaul.
- and Special Holiday Headers for a nice friendly touch!
All in all - a very effective website and relationship. For more information on our custom Zen Cart Developers & Zen Cart Development Services - just visit our website. Whether you need a Seattle Zen Cart Developer
or just want to outsource your problems to us - we are ready to help you. [We do not outsource ourselves, the buck stop here.]
March 14th, 2008
- Also know as - OSC POS, OSCommerce POS, POS Plugin for OSC
- POS System for OSCommerce
- Point of sale for OSCommerce
Figure 1 - posshot1.png - Creating POS Orders in OSCommerce.
This screenshot demonstrates the standard three-part sales order view. The very top bar indicates where in the system you currently are. You are logged in as a sales-rep - “Dan” and you are processing a new sale. Next will come the individual line items.
Basic product lines in this OSC Point of Sale (POS) example, including kilt types and belt types, are specified in the first dropdown. Each has a two-letter code. Once these codes are learned, you can enter them without having to click the drop-down.
There are two types of order as specified in “Product”. A stock item is usually scanned, which populates the entire line with the relevant data. But it can still be manipulated manually. Grabbing the drop downs in a Stock Order will indicate what options are available, based on what you have already chosen. Choosing added-cost options will cause the drop down to change color and an extra cost amount to appear in the Attributes pane.
Figure 2 - posshot2.png - Using SKUs in OSCommerce & access your OSC Database via the Point of Sale System.
The SKU field is what the scanner will populate. Each combination of options has a unique SKU, so scanning a tag will cause all of the dropdowns to automatically update. When manually configuring an order, the SKU field is not normally touched. Clicking “Clear” will clear the entire line.
Putting more than a few line items in this view will give the Items pane a scrollbar, but in the top right corner of the pane, you’ll see an Expand button. This will expand the Items pane to the entire visible browser window, moving the Customer and Payment elements below the fold. The scrollbar will transfer to the browser window itself, as is depicted in the next screenshot.
Figure 3 – posshot3.png - Accessing customer data (OSC) via the POS.
When the Customer field is visible, it can be used to enter a new customer as depicted in Figure 1, to search for customers as depicted in Figure 2, or to display or edit existing customers as depicted below.
Figure 4 – posshot4.png - POS & Payment information. Using a POS in OSC to fullfill payment and transaction.
This also showcases some of the Payment field functionality. Since this functionality is usually tied to your preferred Gateway / Payment processor, we will not go into detail on it. It serves to indicate at a glance what the payment method and details are.
This POS System for OScommerce & ZenCart is VERY robust and is not one of those things that just comes off the shelf. It is a custom install service we’re happy to offer. For more information - call us at 877-239-3063 or 425-482-7941 if you are in the Seattle-area.
Email us questions about our OSC POS!
October 10th, 2006
InviteDesigner.com is a “do-it-yourself” invitation (weddings, etc) website that allows you to build and customize entire sets of wedding & wedding related “stuff”. We say “stuff” simple because there is so much collateral related to weddings we are still realing from all the work. Colors like “Champagnique!” and “Crystophague” - who knew. Those were not in my box of crayolas.
You can check the site out here: http://www.invitedesigner.com
& their blog here: http://www.invitedesigner.com/blog - which talks about the business of weddings, creative ideas and, yes, probably the merits of using “Champagnique” colored something or other.
October 10th, 2006
