Selecting a gift box and only then populating with products - Is it possible?

[theredduc]

Hi

I had trouble thinking of a title for this post… hope you can help?

Is there a way of preventing a customer from accessing a particular product section, (or buying specific products) without first having added a unique product to their shopping cart?

I help run a gift website that sells pre-packed gifts in boxes containing usually around three gifts. We now want a new “build your own gift-box” section where users can pick an empty box (which we charge for) and then select the items to put into it, so they can make up their own gifts.


I need a way for making sure a user can’t order the products without having selected the box to put them in, otherwise we would have to call all customers that had done that and charge them for the box afterwards, which is not nice.

I guess I need a way of having the user select an empty box and only then can they buy items from the "individual gift" sections that allow them to buy gifts to ‘put’ into their box.

Is there a solution you can think of that would help. We are currently on V7 (but could upgrade if it helped) and it would be great if I could find a solution. I downloaded V9 but still couldn’t find an elegant way of performing this.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[NormanRouxel]

Something like all the products on one page with the box at the top. You also use the single add-to cart per page for this. Then a tiny tweak to the layout used for the box product so that it's quantity is fixed at 1 (and not the default 0 that such items usually use).

An additional tweak might be to add some JavaScript that checks the page before cart submission to make sure that a valid number of gifts has been chosen.

[theredduc]

Thanks for your reply Norman…

The problem is there are a number of gift types (ie. Sections – soaps, candles, chocs, etc ) that the user can choose from, stopping us from having it on just one page alone.

Your JavaScript idea is interesting… I wonder if there was a way of simply checking that the user had added the box to the cart, before they add products or maybe proceeding to checkout.

Regards

[NormanRouxel]

Would there be situations where gifts can be ordered without the box?

[theredduc]

Hi Norman

Yes currently there are pre-made gift box sections already in place on the website. Here, each item has just one product reference code and comes complete with the box and the things in it, so it's simple. (These are organised in different categories - eg, birthdays, weddings, maternity, etc).

This new section is a different proposition for our users, allowing them to pick their own individual items, so we don't want people ordering individual items without a gift box for them to be placed in...

I need to have users select an empty box (which costs about £2) and be able to then select individual gift items for that box, but these items are also in categories such as birthday, wedding, maternity. In this case each of these items has its own product reference.

Thanks again

[pinbrook]

how will you control the size of the gift box to ensure the gifts fit inside the box ordered?

if the charge for the gift box is always the same you could offer the box in the checkout in the sameway giftwrapping is often offered in checkout.

[theredduc]

Thanks Jo

Yes the charge for the box is always the same size, and its not optional if you select gifts from the "build your own gift box section". What I'm trying to avoid is people buying individual items, and forgetting to select the gift-box.

The problem is that my boss wants the user to know up front that in selecting this type of 'bespoke product' from this new section, you have to pay for the box. (We have a different section on the site where the gifts are pre-selected and boxed.)

[OriginalTouch]

Do the duplicate items for putting inside the box have different product references than those in the other sections where they can be ordered separately. Are there always about the same amount of items per box?

If so, then could you not just add a small charge to each of the items destined for the box to cover its cost, then the cost of the box is catered for and can be added FOC?

Even if this does not work, IMHO, as a business myself, it is often easy to get too bogged down in the details, when really you should try and simplify things. Your concept at the moment seems a bit complicated.

[RuralWeb]

Ive tired several methods of doing this for hampers and non of them really work TBH - not many were ever sold as people tend to want it all done for them. As jo says one of the problems is fitting stuff in the box if they select bigger items but if they are similar size then that would not apply.

The other problem is people putting more than three items in the box so you need to stop them adding at three by some method ie they are shown a warning or the add to cart buttons are disabled. Ive seen it done with flash for chocolates in various boxes but it was not cheap to do

[NormanRouxel]

If you were only selling this type of product there it might be worth attempting something.

But as you have other types of products you'll somehow have to allow for them to work as before and add the new functionality to only a sub-set of your products.

And you want to fill the box from items scattered all over the site.

And anyway when customers get to the cart they can fiddle with the quantities before checking out (and even delete the box).

Personally, I'd give up on automating this and incorporate the box price into the products that fit in it.