Can I modify my existing website http://www.blacklightshop.com and create a shopping cart system to it.
I already use PayPal and Authorize.net but Authorize.net does not have a continue shopping button available for my site. They say I need a shopping cart program and I'm hoping SCC would be as great as most of CoffeeCup software I have used. Your replies will be appreciated.

Thanks

I have just done exactly that - though it looks as if you have created your page with Microsoft Word and I cannot guarantee how easy it will be to integrate the shop with that. But you can of course download the trial version of the shopping cart to see how everything goes before committing yourself to purchase.

The important thing to keep in mind if you decide to use the cart program is that you want to develop your website around the cart, not the cart around the website. However, you will want to design your cart around your website.

Basically start the cart with all of your products, etc. That will be your core application. Then, you use the designer (i suggest the pro version) and design your cart to match the design of your site. All of your current html pages simply need to be linked to your cart in order to integrate.

What I had to do in the end was make a few adjustments to my site - the width more than anything - to make the integration seem smoother between the store and the original site.

Yes as Eric said all you need is a link in your menu on each of your existing website pages that goes to your shopping cart.

The cart itself has an option to link back to your main website.


My suggestion would be to choose a shop theme you like and then get either the Shopping Cart Default Theme pack for either VSD or the HTML Editor and then you can quickly transfer the content of your existing site to a new theme that matches your cart.

If you want a unique theme you could get the Shopping Cart Designer (Pro has more features) and change a theme and then make similar changes in the same theme either in VSD or the HTML Editor.

You don't have many pages so changing it all now would be relatively easy and much easier to get a professional look.

Hi
See my solution http://www.art-i-batik.com
I know could be improved but I had integrated the shopping into my website. Th shoping came after exhisting the site.
Regards

Jimmy, you have done a wonderful job integrating the shop into the existing web site. It looks great.

Great job Jimmy! Looks great.

The HTML Editor and shopping cart creator work well together.

Thanks guys!!!

Personally my main aim is to design the website first, paying close attention to SEO to guarantee that you are going to pop up on searches. Whilst designing the site add a button in the navigation titled "shop" or "store" for example, pointing to the location you will eventually be uploading you store too, for example http://www.yourstore.com/store/index.php. My next job is to design and upload the store. I always choose one of the themes that i like the layout of in SCC designer and then edit the colours and logo's to match your website. Once this is done simply uploading the store to the location that you named whilst creating you buttons will make sure that everything is done and ready and the user will easily be able to navigate around your integrated website and store without hitting any error pages. I am not a big fan of using the SCC's extra page builder to actually build the rest of the website as many other do, id rather keep the website completely seperate from the shop using html editor or a simply wysiwyg editor such as dreamweaver as it is far easier to optimize your website for search engines and also looks a lot better once completed. Also once the site is completed its great to be able to forget about it and not worry about making any problems to the site whilst updating the store. My stores are usualy updating on a daily basis so i dont like it being tied in with the main website when its finished and does not need editing at all. An example of this method can be seen by clicking the link in my sig