Hi....I am new to this forum and have not been able to find an answer to Shopping Cart Creator. I can integrate my present website http://blacklightshop.com using this software without making any major changes. I have recently installed a PayPal cart and would like to use this if possible as I have seen some nice shops here.

Thanks

Bill

Hiya Bill, welcome to the forum. You can somewhat integrate your current site with the Shopping Cart Creator, but it will take a bit of coding and creativity to do so. Paypal is already part of the Shopping Cart setup, so if you were to decide to use the Shopping Cart Creator, you wouldn't need the Paypal setups you have currently setup as it would be already setup in the cart itself. You would still need the Paypal account of course with the ability to take Credit Cards etc., just not needing the codes from Paypal itself for your site or cart.

In order to integrate you'd need to redo your site to match your Shopping Cart, or create a New Theme with Shopping Cart Designer tool to match your current site. (I would recommend the Pro version for this as you'll need as much versatility as possible to try matching things up). You can use your external (outside the Shopping Cart Creator system) pages and have your menu pointing to places in your Shop, and you can create a Home page Button on the Shopping Cart Creator Menu that will link to your external Home page so you can integrate the two systems to a good extent.

You are unable at this time, and not sure if this will be anything in the future yet either, to create any outside menus on your Shop pages so you'd be wanting to make sure to try to match up your menu on your external pages to the menu you setup in the Shopping Cart Creator system.

To do all this you'd need to purchase both the Shopping Cart Creator to populate and create your shop with, and the Shopping Cart Designer, to create a theme for your shop to match your site. If you decide to match your own site to a theme inside the Shopping Cart Creator, basically choosing one of the stock Themes included with the Creator) or purchase a theme from the Coffeecup store where you'll find quite a few more themes at very reasonable prices, you would not need to purchase the Shopping Cart Designer then as most of your work would be using HTML for your external pages rather than the internals in the cart setup.

I hope that helps you to know what you would need to expect, and what can be done, and I for one can definitely say both pieces of Shopping Cart software are well worth the investment. Good luck on your decision

Design is all down to personal taste and what you think suits the identity of your site.

I personally think that the purple is a bit too dark. If you match to the lavender in your central background, you have a continous flow, that will look more natural.

Hi Bill. One advantage you'll have with cart creator over your current set up, is the ability to set up basic shipping options and where applicable set up taxes. Lots of folks want those details before they go to PayPal.

Actually, I think the darker color looks better. Preferably, I would crop the pictures to fit exactly so there was no background to show...but depending on the images source, that decision might have been made for you.

I did notice the "Categories" button is doing a strange "squishy" thing when some other buttons are pushed and occasionally the buttons do not load on rollover. Using latest version of FF.

Melanie

I'll do a swatch with the lighter purple to see what I can do with it. The background behind the products is actually a semi-transparent graphic so the reason it's lighter purple is because it's over the dark purple. But I'll check it out and see how it looks also thanks.

hmm I'll have to test those buttons and categories stuff, I just did some updates today that could have messed some of that up and haven't had a chance to test it all thoroughly yet, just getting used to all the settings which man oh man so many lol, but I love playing with it to see what it all does and get so surprised when I find settings already in it for things I was hoping would be added later lol.

I wish they didn't need any background either Melanie, that would be the ideal thing too, but unfortunately I'm using some premade graphics (with permission of course) and they are all different sizes and shapes so I'm stuck with needing something behind them.

Does the gold border on them look ok though? I played around with it till I got a thickness that didn't hopefully seem too thick, yet you could see it too so it would add a little separation from the background of the page itself. Hopefully that seems ok too?

Thanks for feedback guys, most welcome and appreciated

The border blends in with the site's theme, so yes, I think it works...and it separates them from the rest of the page.

Melanie

Thanks for the informative reply. I know it is a little important and I forgot to mention that I offer free shipping only. So that is not important.

Hi Will_K see my reply to Wolverana for a comment on your response.

Thanks

Just hope you have Paypal set up so if someone outside of the States orders, you are not tied to offering free shipping?