[web] Order page (not shopping cart)?

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5 comments, last by Sander 18 years, 4 months ago
There are lots of good, free shopping carts around (ZenCart is one of my favorites). But a whole shopping cart system is way overkill for what we need. Here at work, we sell only one product through our web site, and only one at a time. Right now, the situation is awful. They have an HTML page for people's credit card info and stuff, but this is the process for placing an order: *Fill out the web form *Print out the web form *Sign the web form *Fax the web form to us *Wait until we manually call our merchant account provider with the order info What a mess. So the question is, are there any good pre-fabbed single order pages out there? Making one myself would be trivial, but I'm a little concerned and a lot uneducated in that realm. We still want to call in the orders manually (they are fairly infrequent) to save on gateway expenses, but having customers print, sign, and fax a web form is ridiculous. Thanks, ~BenDilts( void );
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Simplest solution sounds like you could make a form for the customer to fill out which is then mailed through the server to your orders department.

Then you call them up to confirm, or something. I'm guessing the confirmation is the important part since you want them to fax you? So call them instead.
--There is only one basic human right and that is the right to do as you damn well please, and with that right comes the only human duty; the duty to take the consequences.-- P.J. O'Rourke
It seems to me that emailing sensitive data to our sales department would kind of defeat the purpose of using SSL to get their credit card info, etc., right? Isn't email pretty easy to tap into? Especially since our email would have to be sent to another domain than our web server is on.
Quote:Original post by BeanDog
It seems to me that emailing sensitive data to our sales department would kind of defeat the purpose of using SSL to get their credit card info, etc., right? Isn't email pretty easy to tap into? Especially since our email would have to be sent to another domain than our web server is on.

Sorry, didn't think as far as credit cards. :) However if the servers are in house it could work out anyways.

Well, if you only need it for a few orders/month I'd probably code up something that is saved to a database and then have a simple admin (not reachable from outside) to check incoming orders - a mail could be sent to one of your adresses so you know an order has been made. Basically all your work would be at making sure you defeat any SQL injection attempts, that's not too hard and lots of info is forthcoming with a simple Google search.

Like you said, installing a full feature ordering system is probably overkill and too much work to pay off at this point in time. However, if you feel demand will rise sharply in the future I'd probably start taking some of the ordering systems available for test drives.
--There is only one basic human right and that is the right to do as you damn well please, and with that right comes the only human duty; the duty to take the consequences.-- P.J. O'Rourke
There are actually serveral 3rd party systems out there that can do all of that for you. Try googling POS (Point of Sale) software and see if you can find anything that suits your needs. In terms of taking credit card payments yourself, I'd be very very cautious of storing (in any way, shape or form) any information related to your customers credit line. Doing so comes at a huge liability. Anyways, if none of the above information helps, and you still feel like you need some answers... I've actually got a buddy who sets up accounts like these as a side job. I can get you his email address if you think it would help.
What's wrong with using PayPal or something like that? Check out their developer area to see what you can use them for.
Yes, PayPal can do it. Depending on your account type, you can have an order page where all people with a credit card can order products, even when they do not have a PayPal account. The advantages:

1) No need to run your own SSL and order system
2) PayPal is well known. People proabbely trust it more than a home grown credit card form

Disadvantages:

1) Not part of your site so clearly a 3rd party

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Sander Marechal<small>[Lone Wolves][Hearts for GNOME][E-mail][Forum FAQ]</small>

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