Buying from customers

[ChillOut]

Hi

www.chilloutgames.co.uk

We're looking to add a section to the site to allow customers to sell us their games. They need to be able to scroll down a list of say 1000 Playstation games and add to a cart.

We currently link to an external database and out of stock games are not displayed on the site (but need to be on the list).

Payment could be by cheque or credit to their account.

Any ideas would be welcomed?

[Kiran]

Hi Paul

I am not sure if this can be done using Actinic. But I'll check with my development team if this can be done and will get back to you as soon as possible.

Cheers

[ChillOut]

Hi again

Sorry to be pushy but I need to get this done somehow. Have you had a chance to throw it around with the developers or could you suggest a thirdparty approach?

Thanks

Paul

[Kiran]

Hi Paul

I have conferred about this with development and they too have told me that its not possible with Actinic. Hope someone else out there has a work around or a solution.

I am putting this on our wish list on your behalf.

Cheers

[Classix]

What exactly do u need doing? as i my be able to help u out with some coding for it...

[ChillOut]

Hi

Thanks for the reply. I guess we would need another cart as well as the Actinic one. I'll send you an email

Thanks

Paul

[ChillOut]

Hi

We need a buying section on our site www.chilloutgames.co.uk where the customer could enter part of a game title in a search box which searches a recordset containing a full list of all Ps1/ Ps2 games. The results would be displayed with our buying price and the customer would choose a result to add to cart. The recordset would need to be updateable by ftp.

They would then checkout. They would get a tracking no and we would get a confirmation email. We would send them a cheque when games received.

Wishlist: 1. Ideally checkout by opening an Actinic Account 2. Force agree to t&cs on checkout. 3. Choice of payment by credit to account instead of cheque. 4. Linked in to Actinic cart instead of separate recordset

I would prefer MySQL if there was a choice as I have SQL experience and my hosting co supports it.

A couple of competitors operate similar buying sections:

http://www.thatzdvd.com/sell.asp

http://www1.cex.co.uk/product_list.a...tform=2%3apsx&

Cheers

Paul

[Marci]

More or less every CMS that has a Downloads section has the ability to remote upload files. You just need someone with some PHP ability to add a few custom fields such as the title... Crediting them could be as simple as having a zero value product on your current online store, which they then add to their cart to provide you with their creditcard details so that you can manually credit their creditcard...

Mebbe a bit of playin about with the DigitalDownloads support within Actinic passing onto (rather than a download) the upload form for the Downloads section of a CMS... which is obviously hidden from public view... or similar?

Either way, it's something easily doable in PHP / MySQL if you know someone with enough knowledge. Sounds like summat to pay someone else to develop for you rather than trying to develop in house to save on costs, as having something publicly updateable by FTP could pose a massive security risk on your server depending on OS and how it's been setup etc... so you need it to be written properly first time round rather than bodged for a bit and perfected later (if ya get what I mean?! )

Try speaking to Mr James Tingle of VirtuaNews.co.uk - I know he writes custom PHP solutions for people, and the work he's done for me has always been cleanly coded, easily modified in terms of skins etc, and most importantly, secure from the usual SQLInjections n' suchlike that are becoming more n more common with PHP CMS / Cart solutions.

[Classix]

So you basically want an SQL database full of game names and prices to be displayed in a big dropdown/listbox using php. I dont see the need for your "tracking id" uses could simple select a game and enter some details, name , address and such then submit the forms and recieve an email explain where to send their games. And upon arival u can send the cheque.

And about ur email, reply to my latest on, i could create this db app for you

[ChillOut]

Hi AJ

Dropdown:
Enter part of the game name in a text box not a dropdown but have a dropdown below for category Ps1;Ps2 etc. The search would be on the title with wildcards and category and display all the relevant results e.g.

Die Hard (text box)
Ps1 (dropdown)

would return

Die Hard Trilogy PS1 £0.75 Sell Me
Die Hard Trilogy 2 PS1 £1.50 Sell Me

Database:
The database would be MySQL? (I'm only used to using SQL on Windows but the site is on UNIX). It would need to be as secure as Actinic. I would ftp overwrite the data regularly with new prices/ titles.

Tracking no~:
By tracking no~, I mean our purchase order/ reference no~ that they can write on the package so we get an easy way to identify the package when it arrives.

Address/cheque:
Worst case would be for a customer to enter their address on the fly and we send a cheque. Ideally, they log in and we can credit their account against future orders and save a bit of lolly

[Jan]

You could do this in Actinic, try this :

In your external data create a query that includes all of your games twice, once with the full price and then again with the secondhand purchase price. Put the full price items in one sub tree of the catalog and the second items in a second subtree of the catalog. Then people can choose to either purchase items or sell items, add a payment by cheque option to the payment options (changing the text to whatever is most suitable) and the users will be able to select that which means that no payment will be made and you will then be able to pay them by cheque.

The drawback is that you will not be able to buy new games and sell old ones in the same transaction - if you need to do this then you would need to enter negative prices on catalog, you can't do this through the interface but you can do this using a SQL query (I don't know what would happen if you tried to link to a negative value using external linking), when you upload the prices are shown correctly in product details but not in the cart, totals are shown correctly though, when you download the order, negative prices are reset to 0 but you can easily fix them up again with another SQL query, so it is a bit messy but you can do it.

Regards,

[ChillOut]

Hi Jan

That sounds interesting thanks plus we wouldn't allow offset buying and selling as the games would have to be checking in first.

It may be difficult to put into operation though - there would be 1000s of games in each subtree even if Actinic split subtrees into pages with x records per page it would be a trawl selling Alien Trilogy and Xena Warrior Princess.

It could be workable if the second subtree e.g. the full list of titles was searchable separately and a sell me button on the results - rather than clicking on one of the results taking you to the subtree as currently happens?

[Jan]

You could create a searchable property for games to indicate whether they were for sale or to buy - you can't link this from the external database but you could fairly easily generate a hierarchical import file to set these up based on product reference (presuming that you used a suffix or prefix to show that a game was old or new). You could then use the search page to find secondhand games.

Another nice thing might be to add a sell this for xxx like they do on Amazon against that games that you sell as new, you could do this with a customvar with the price etc and a link to the secondhand game's section and location.

Regards,

[ChillOut]

Hi Jan

99% of our games are preowned and I'm not worried about the new/preowned issue at the moment - not sure how we got on to that one.
I like the idea of using a clone of the search page as a page for customers to sell us their games - can this be done without affecting the main search? Could the section dropdown just show the PS1;PS2 etc from the full list sections/subtrees? Could the results page have a sell me button rather than a link to the product section?

Cheers

[ChillOut]

If anyone wants to quote for the non-Actinic work listed before please drop me an email as the Actinic solution doesn't sound do-able