I currently have a site (designer built) at www.coquettebath.com.

I'm not thrilled with it. I am, however, pretty dang thrilled with the site I've begun building using the Visual Site Designer.

I just got to 'page 4' of the new site layout and went 'duh', I don't see any buttons. So went over to the main site and just am not happy. Do you HAVE to use one of those prebuilt shopping cart templates? If so, well meh. I want to just put a button on my individual product page that says 'buy me' or something and have it load into a cart.

It is not like I've done a thousand hours of design so far, but I really don't want to abandon the theme and feel I've begun.

Can anyone give me some advice?

I do have more questions, but this is the driving force, right now. I will (probably) use this software for a content management website that I'm also building. But....I thought I'd play around and I really REALLY like what I've done.

(by the way, not a techie)

A link to what you have done so far would help, in meantime

If you are using SCC or SCC pro in conjunction with the matching designer program, once you have made your basic design in VSD you can divide it into 3 sections HEADER, BODY, FOOTER

These sections can be put into CC shopping cart DESIGNER or designer pro and will perfectly match your vsd website

Heres my one i did that way

http://www.weddingdaygift.co.uk/

Viv

I wish I could provide a link! But everything, so far, is still saved on my computer. I just downloaded the software a couple of days ago. I began working on a content management site I have envisioned, and when I hit a 'stop' with that (subject of another posting, I'm sure soon)...I wondered if I could do something cool with my site...and here we are.

Basically, I have a main page that will lead to a subpage, etc.

For example, like on my main site (www.coquettebath.com). I have a soap section>swirly curly soap>Lavender swirly curly soap. It is on this last page (where I have a photo of the product and a very detaiiled description) where the 'buy' button is located.

I don't offer choices, per product (I could, but I'm not at this time). So just a simple 'buy now' button is what I need. I guess this product works with PayPal?

Again, not a technie, but I am fairly good at graphics and design. So this site (that I'm making) is amazing me. I want to use it!

Thanks for any help you can offer!

(and if there is a way to put this online let me know!)

It sounds to me like you'd be better off with SCC or SCC Pro. Those are the shop creators that CC offers, easy to use and easy to add a few additional pages (such as the main page, contact info, policies, etc...) You can download the trial versions of those programs and try them out to see which would fit your need best. Pro has quite a few more features, including inventory tracking

I did not like those templates. I already have something setup that I adore. Are you saying that I either cannot use the templates that I have, or that I can modify the shopping cart to look like the existing pages?

I don't want to do this again, unless I really have too.

I don't require inventory tracking. Even though I do make over 350 products, not everything is in stock at the very same time (some scents are seasonal) and it isn't very hard to do a scan and see what is running low. Or maybe, I'm just good at it!

I really just want, if possible, to add a 'buy now' button to my existing template. Is that possible?

Hiya Cari,

The Buy Now button is not part of anything to do with CoffeeCup software, that is an entirely PayPal thing and you'd have to go there to get the setups for that button. If that's all you want then just go there and set up the button(s) and add the code to your site and you're done. That will be a lot of work mind you if you have 350 products, and the upkeep of the buttons (on and off and removing etc.) will be a lot harder than the Shopping Cart Creator programs are. If you don't require a lot of frills then you can get away with the Basic version, but...

It will still take a lot of work to redo the themes to get it to match up if that's your plan. You can't just throw any old theme in as all the themes need to be for SCC programs specifically. This means no, your already created site theme will not work with this software unless you purchased the theme from CoffeeCup and it happens to be one of the themes that has a SCC matching theme which there are quite a few of.

If it's PayPal buttons you want though, you'll have to go there to do that setup. Good luck on it no matter which way you decide to go.

Cari...I'll start right off by saying that my experience with VSD is limited as I always use the CC HTML Editor. I was certainly able to carry across the look and feel of my web site into the store (which I created with the SCC Designer Pro) by doing several things:
1.Find out which is the main image being used as the background in your regular web page
2.idem for the main header
3.Make sure you identify all the hex colour codes for the colours you use throughout your regular web page.

It is then just a case of replicating each of these things in your store. The store in my signature (www.venicescrapbooking.com) actually started out as a regular web site. Doing as I have explained, I was able to replicate exactly the look and feel of the site to the store. That you then only have one product and no extras is of no importance, but at least using the Cart applications allow scope for growth at a future date when you wish to add further products or choices.

As Jo Ann so rightly points out... the Paypal "buy now" buttons work just fine but it is a long and tedious job going back and forth between site and paypal to get the new codes each time. The Cart applications cut out all that hassle for you.

Try this for an idea,, http://www.000webhost.com/

Free (yes it is free, and i use it, and it is fine for a small website) (tradnarrowboatshells in my signature is on there)

Upload your trial site as it stands to it (no one will find it unless you send them there)

And then we can all have a look.

One of us might even be able to do a shopping cart version from it quickly just to see if it works the way i described earlier.

janys we were on same wavelength at same time (I only use VSD & SCC pro though)
Viv

okay, thanks. I can't at the moment, but later today/tonight I'll upload to the free host and see if y'all can assist me.

Yes, I do have about 350 different products. Right now, on the current site, I do have 'drop downs' so there aren't 350 different products listed (but choices). I'd really love to do that here, too. But also want to keep stuff as simple as possible.

If anyone can suggest HOW to get this done, I'd appreciate it. I've thoroughly enjoyed using the VSD program so far and spent a lot of time this morning chatting with other folks on Etsy (who wanted a site) where to get good software. As mentioned, I'm so NOT a designer/technie. I just want something that looks good that I can manage.

Once I have this done, I'll post a new reply for you. Thanks!

Hiya Cari,

Good news for you! Since you are not caring about inventory control, you can very very easily set your products up with choices for additional selections in each product making you not need to include 350 original products in your store.

To do this just add Optional Fields to your product (right hand side settings). When you add an optional field give it a name, then list each of the different choices for that products (different colors, sizes, etc.) and put a price there that will be "added" to the original price of the product. In other words, make your main product price the lowest value and add extra pricing in the Optional Fields for the difference in the cost of the extra options like this:

Original product is size Small: $10.00

Optional Fields Name: Extra Sizes
Medium ..... 1.00
Large.......... 2.00
X-Large...... 4.00

and so on. You can add as many fields as you want to each product, and you can add up to 5 Options to each product. That should give you lots of room to expand each product.

Also be sure you realize that in order to really fine tune your shop theme, you will want the Pro version of the Shopping Cart Designer. Although the basic is ok, there are a ton more settings and features in the Pro version that give you much more ability to try to match as close as possible to your current site setup. I will say that it probably won't match perfectly, but you will be able to get pretty close to most site matching.

Hope that helps and gl on the trial version.