[FreeTrade] COD again!

[Bjarne Hansen]

Hi!   Jon, I think it is easy to be to fast with posting mails to a forum like this. I myself shuld have read more before I did. But I am wery keen getting it up and runing. So please pardon me for jumping to concludions.   I did have a good look at the VALIDATE_ORDER script. And I noticed that first the card is validated, and the no, and the expire date. I could also tell that is shuld be possible to bypass by setting $continue=false to true?   But what if someone who is paying by card forget the no or date of the card? Will it not mess tings up???   Please understand that I am new to PHP and programming. I would like the FreeTrade distrubution to have such a option as standard. I belive this is a important option. And, as I did suggest, cuting the chech-out screens into more screens - in my humble opinion :-)), shuld give a more userfrendly interface. These 2 points are major class important to me, being someone who plan to use Freetrade for customer stores.   Thanks Jon. I have taken good care of your tip, and I hope I can get back to you if needed. I now rest my case, cross my fingers and will dig into the scripts and CORE PHP PROGRAMMING.   Bjarne Hansen Oslo Norway   From: Jon Griffin To: FreeTrade Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 7:58 AM Subject: Re: [FreeTrade] Final word on COD - today I disagree about separating the CC and non-CC transactions. I am lazy and was under a time constraint (do it yesterday) to get a way to add checks. Hence, I made the quick and easy fix. Is it bullet proof? I haven't had any complaints. At 07:38 AM 03/02/2000 +0100, you wrote: Hi!   Thanks Jon for pointing the way to VALIDATE_ORDER.   I read that one, and the solution seems clear to me. There shuld be a seperate script for non creditcard orders! Like VALIDATE_CASH_ORDER,   When checking out, on the first screen, or on a seperate 2  or 1 the customer shuld be asked if he/she want to charge a card or pay COD, check, invoce or whatever,   I do that. Billing method is set to whatever is in your DB. When you add an item to billing it automatically shows up on the check-out forms. I got rid of all CC processing on one site that only takes check or Money Order. If the customer want to pay by creditcard, the path is ok and ready. If the customer want other option, a seperate script  shuld be used for validation of order. I don't really think a new script is needed though. Just an if or case statement. Of course you can always make your own procedure and call it from the if statement. Don't see what it gains you though except maybe a little more clarity. On the downside, how much of the data is the same? Address etc. is going to be the same no matter what, the only thing you get rid of is the CC validation. Much easier IMHO to just add a couple of lines to the existing file. -When talking about the check out, I think it would be good to have the option for diferent shipping adress on a seperate screen. Which shuld only be shown if seperate shipping adress is requiered. Doesn't this sort of happen already ? I personally HATE pop-ups and even more changing screens. You have a scroll bar, use it! Maybe it would be worth considering to cut check up like this?:   1.    Shoppinglist for confirmation                    Please confirm order 2 .   Adresse and payment metod                   Give us your mail-adress and choose payment option 3.    A infoscreen on option for shipping gifts   Would you like to have all produkts to same adresse or difrent(s)       and selecting these options 4,    Shipping adresse(s) if needed- the works  Give us adresse(s)        on shipping and giftshipping 5,    Creditcardno if so selected                       Please hand over creditcardno and type and date 6.    Confirm/invoice screen                             Your invoice, thank you. You can already do this very easily with a little (2 hours?) of coding. Just make a different screen file for all your steps and modify your order processing functions. I think it would make it easy for the customer to understand and easyer for the store to give good information on diffrent options. I am not sure about this. I find that most users hate filling out form-> change page, form-> change page, well you get the idea. Group everything you can on one page. The wishlist, giftwrap and gift shipping is so cool, but I think customers needs clear information on these to make the right selections. Smaller more focused screens makes it easy to put needed info.   I agree with this 100%. Wishlist is a strange feature for most customers. Help doesn't help because on the net no one reads help! Now if there was a way to link a shopping basket from a customer that wasn't logged in to the same customer when he inevitably remembers to log-in I would be real happy. Nothing pisses customers off more than going to your site, placing an order, deciding they want to register and bam; shopping cart empty, of course it is not really empty. When they go check out (if they don't leave) they find the old item back in their cart. One day I will have time to fix this. What do you think Leon. Is this on target, or am I way off?   Bjarne Hansen Oslo Norway       Thanks, Jon Griffin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Check out: <http://www.salsablanca.com> <http://www.jongriffin.com>