Nov 2010
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lorilin
Nov '10

Hi,



I am about at the end of my tether trying to find a simple shopping cart solution that will let me offer more shipping options than Paypal. I can't use Paypal Pro because I have a non-US account, so I'm limited the "standard payments" by Paypal.



I've already wasted LOADS of time trying various carts, only to discover that they don't do what I want or are just too complicated and buggy to deal with.



From what I can tell, the E-junkie cart looks like a promising alternative, but I just can't face spending DAYS configuring and testing only to discover some reason it won't work for me. Seriously. I will CRY if that happens again. So here what I need, and I hope someone from the support side can chime in and let me know if I can do this with E-junkie pro.



All I sell is T-shirts, CDs, and DVDs. They can be ordered separately or combined.



My store is in the Netherlands, but I ship all over the world. I want to offer fair shipping prices to customers all over the world, so I need 3 basic categories of shipping (based on either total weight or order total - whatever is easier to set up). Below are the categories and shipping prices I'd like to use:



* Netherlands - (A) Small package - 3 Euros (B) Large package - 7 Euros



* Europe and EU - (A) Small package 4 Euros (B) Registered package - 8 Euros (C) Large registered package - 10 Euros



* Worldwide - (A) Small package 6 Euros (B)Registered package - 11 Euros (C) Large registered package 22 Euros



Also need simple inventory management that prohibits out-of-stock items from being sold.

If VAT can be automatically added to EU orders based on rules I set up, that's awesome too.



I would like to implement the cart by adding Paypal shopping cart buttons on my own hosted website.



Can E-junkie do this? If so, I will be a totally happy camper!



Thanks in advance for any help or advice,

Lori

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    Nov '10

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    Nov '10
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E-junkie_GuruWebmaster & Support Guru
Nov '10

Apologies for this delayed reply; it took me a while to realize what you were getting at with your shipping description. I'll address that after I answer your other inquiries first.



You can prevent overselling out of stock items by using our Inventory Control feature:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.inventory.htm



You may want to combine that with our Variants feature for products like T-shirts that have options such as size, color, etc., so you could assign each specific Variant its own inventory stock quantity under a single product:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.variants.htm



Once you set up your products in E-junkie Seller Admin, we provide you with ready-made HTML codes for your E-junkie cart buttons, so you would simply copy the codes from us and paste them into the HTML source of your own Web site pages, wherever you want our buttons to appear among your own layout, text and images. This page explains our requirements to integrate PayPal with your E-junkie cart:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/selling-with-paypal.htm



(Note: do NOT use the "PayPal Cart" button codes available in Admin; these no longer work properly due to changes at PayPal's end which we have been unable to work around, so they will be removed from the next version of Admin. The standard E-junkie shopping cart button codes will offer buyers a PayPal checkout button in the E-junkie cart).



If the shipping categories you described are based on the order weight or item subtotal (pre-tax/-shipping order total), you could set up Shipping Rules like this:



Go to Seller Admin > Cart Shipping Settings and set up the following:

Shipping Origin: Netherlands (enter any 5-digit number for zipcode, as that is a required field but only applies to US origins);

Shipping Destinations: if you will only ship to certain countries, select them in the list, or otherwise select nothing for Worldwide shipping;

Leave all other settings blank or 0.00;

Click Next to save settings and proceed to the Shipping Rules screen.



In the Existing Shipping Rules menu, select and Delete any Rules you may have saved there. Add new Shipping Rules as explained below -- any settings not explicitly instructed here should be left blank or 0.



Set up your first Shipping Rule for Domestic shipping:

Shipping Rate Calculator: Flat

Shipping Amount: 3.00

Country: Netherlands;

Max. Weight OR Max. Item Total: (use one or the other to set the largest order this Rule will apply to)

Click Submit to save the Rule.



Next Shipping Rule for Domestic shipping:

Shipping Rate Calculator: Flat

Shipping Amount: 7.00

Country: Netherlands;

Min. Weight OR Min. Item Total: (use one or the other to set the smallest order this Rule will apply to)

Click Submit to save the Rule.



Those examples should give you the basic idea how to create Rules; for the middle rates you mentioned, you would set both a Min. and Max. threshold. You would need to set up Rules for each European country, then you can cover the "rest of the world" by setting up Rules that apply to All Countries (which really means "all countries in your Shipping Destinations list that don't have specific Rules of their own").



Once you've set up all your Rules, click Back to Admin.



Then, whenever you add or edit a product's settings:

On the first screen, if Shipping/Buyer's Address is not checked there, tick that box;

Click Next until you reach the Shipping Options screen;

  • Weight: enter a weight if you'd set up weight-based Rules, otherwise leave blank;
  • Package type & Capacity won't matter here.

Click Next until you can Submit to save settings;

Repeat this for all your tangible goods;

When adding new shippable products, remember to enable Shipping/Buyer's Address.

lorilin
Nov '10

Oh oh oh, THANK YOU for your detailed reply! It made my day to read this :-)



It sounds like your cart can do what I need. As soon as some time frees up I try to set things up as you specify above and give it a test run. Fingers crossed! I've been searching for a good solution for my shop for AGES -- will be SO FREAKING HAPPY to get something in place that works. Seriously.



No worries about the response time -- I can understand how busy you folks must be!

lorilin
Nov '10

OK, I'm working on this now and the stumbling block is having to set up separate rules for each individual European country. I need 3 rules per country, and there are dozens of countries. that fall under the European shipping rates option.



Looks like no matter what I'm going to need to spend a LOT of time entering data manually. But even with that, it seems like E-junkie is the simplest solution I've found so far.



Another alternative would be having two separate accounts so I could set up the destination countries in the main shipping options page. I don't mind paying extra for that ... is that possible? I could have one account for NL and Europe, and another for the Worldwide shipping. That might actually be the simplest, as I don't mind directing the customers to separate store web pages for their shopping.



Is that the simplest solution to avoid having to spend hours and hours entering shipping rates?

E-junkie_GuruWebmaster & Support Guru
Nov '10

That would indeed be a possible solution; only you can determine which approach would be easier or preferable: adding all the exception rules for EU countries in your existing account vs. starting another subscription for a second account to duplicate all your products.



BTW, since any given PayPal account can only be associated with a single E-junkie seller account for checkout purposes, you'd need to add a secondary email to your PayPal account to use as the PayPal Email for your second E-junkie account. You can still pay both accounts' subscriptions from the same PayPal account, however.