New Client Work: Shopping Cart Requirement

I have mentioned a client who I helped get her clinical practice on the internet. She has some great ideas on how to market her business and she is working hard. Recently, we had a discussion about a book that she is writing. She wants to sell the book online (through her site), so we had to come up with a way to make this happen.

Now, Dr Lily's site is based on WordPress with a custom theme (written by me). I could write a shopping cart system from scratch, but that would be time consuming and costly. Instead, I found a great WordPress plugin (link to website).

Now the work that I need to do is value-adding to the site. Instead of spending most of my time in server-side code building an integration tool, I integrate the shopping cart plugin into the existing site and build up the products. Apply styling so the cart "snaps" into the theme and looks natural. Once the work is finished, the browser just clicks the Buy Now link and the shopping cart handles it all. All the PayPal account information is stored in the plugin settings. Landing pages, email messages, costs and product titles are all configurable.

NB The plugin is PayPal only, so that could be a down-side to some people. However, PayPal is one of the most widely used payment systems I know of, so it fulfilled all Use Cases for my project.

I hope this helps some of you. Til next time ...