Anyone who has ASP Shopping Cart

[Alana]

I have one and have been running my two for over a year on one and two years on the other, if there is anyone who wants to start a discussion on running ASP carts, let me know, I will share what I can and hopefully get a chance to learn more from others.

I am running a Candy Press ASP on both my websites.


Alana

[QUILT]

I would like to learn more, because I don't have the foggiest idea what you are talking about.

[Alana]

Well basically your running a PHP shopping cart with the Zen cart, and the coding is different between the two. I run on Windows and you run on Linux. 


I can't say a lot about the technical differences, maybe someone else could offer more information on that.

PHP carts do appear to be more commonly used.  I just prefer using ASP.

There are a few differences in how these two carts function, but basically, I choose ASP running carts because for some reason PHP carts still hang me up and don't load well for me. Even on a brand new laptop computer.

I am hand coding a lot and use CSS and text editors like Dreamweaver so my ASP carts are easy for me to work with. 

I hope someone else can chime in on the differences more.

Alana

[QUILT]

   I need therapy

[The Tavern Wench]

Alana,

I admit I know nothing about the ASP carts, but I have heard good things about them.  I don't *think* I've ever used one, but I could be mistaken and just didn't realize that was what it was.

I'm so glad you're here to help out and provide info on these carts.  Both of your stores seem to operate flawlessly and are very nice sites. 

[Alana]

I need therapy

Been there and I am slowly getting a little better when I hear all the stuff about PHP.

Here is a easy definition of ASP
http://www.webopedia.com/.../Active_Server_Pages.html

Then of course my site is dynamic not static and I have made some major accommodations for that with html pages like my front page. That is a my "landing page" didn't come with the cart and I created it so that when you land on www.alanascherishedtreasures.com it shows exactly that in the browser.

Another thing I added is called dynamic meta tags, so you can go to any page and see in the toolbar the meta tag I used for that page, this works for my products and custom pages as well.  I am finding more and more info I created dynamic meta tags for all over google. My custom pages, individual products, etc.

Some people will say dynamic sites aren't as search engine friendly as static, but because I love the ease of running this cart, I did do some major changes to make my pages show up better in search and it seems to be working.  My sales have really increased since I put in those advance meta tags.

I just think if you can get to know as much about how your cart functions, and as much as you can about it, there is a lot you can play around with and do.

I think Crabby gave me that hidden link idea I am now using on my landing page, which is really cool, as I have been working for a long time on the inside (under the hood) of the site more than on the outside.  I do like this cart, and it does run very smoothly. 

There is a demo site over at Candy Press that kind of shows you what I look at from the inside.

http://www.candypress.com/CPmain3/default.asp

I think I should run over to the ideas for a individual websites and add info on FTP accounts because I have a free one I use to upload all my pages called Filezilla and that just makes my work so much easier.  I have use of a control panel through my host, but I don't use it much. There is another subject to add to the workshop, hosting.

The kind of cart that I have is one that you buy the license for and you basically can take it anywhere you want to take it. In other words, for the first year I was using GoDaddy  on a shared host and was able to back up my database and take the entire site over to a dedicated host on a completely different hosting account in a matter of 2 hours.

I think you can do that with a Zen cart too, but you can't do that with Presto or City Max or any of those type pre-scripted stores.

I don't know I am all over the map here.

I just love using this cart because I have so much more freedom to make it do what I want it to do.

Crabby, I did not run "flawlessly" for the last two months I was with Godaddy, I had all the bandwidth I needed and then some, but for those last two months, I was just dragging and hanging up and wierd things were going on beyond my control.  Then when I moved to a dedicated everything has been running very well.  Only one time have I been down unexpectly and that was when the host was doing updates and we told them to do it at 11 and he thought we meant 11 in the afternoon.

It was a good experience for all 20 of us that host on this dedicated server.  We were all going nuts for about an hour.

Alana

Alana

[The Tavern Wench]

GoDaddy doesn't seem to 'play well' with any carts other than their own.  I know people who try to set up a Zen Cart there have a horrible time and have to make a lot of changes. 

Hosting can make or break you and it will definitely be addressed in our WorkShop.  I went thru several hosts before I found the one I have now.  He's stuck with me.    But if there is ever a problem all I have to do is send an email and he either emails me back usually in less than 30 minutes or he's on the phone calling me.   He only hosts ZenCarts now though.

I use FileZilla too!  I love that program.  I can't stand to have to work thru my Cpanel.  It's soooo slow!  We definitely need to add working with FTP to the Workshop too.

Deb

[Alana]

Well 20 people went together on getting a dedicated server that only host Candy Press carts so I know what you mean. I can call the guy who host me and get a the same kind of response you get.  He is fast either via email or on the phone quickly.   I feel good about hosting through him because we are all Candy Press and this guy knows our carts so well.  I love the quick responses and knowing that he understands my cart as well.


Yes FTP is wonderful.  The only issue I ever had with my FTP was me.  I set my site up to sort of match each other, and every once in a while I upload a pink landing page to Books and a green one to Cherished, I haven't done that in awhile but I have done it, by not paying attention to which account I was on.


So I got lucky with this dedicated server between all of us it is costing me 20 bucks a month for each site. I have 5000 listings between the two sites, so this is really nice. I heard Presto cost 29 with limited number of product and one store on a shared server.  So I am very happy with my hosting.

[Alana]

I have added some mods to both my carts.
I have googlebase mod
Admin mod that allows me to take orders from my website on a phone order and process them to the gateway for the customer.
Shipping mod that allows me to create shipping labels.
Manage Tracking mod that cuts down all the tracking that I get.  This was one issue with the Candy Press cart that could really slow you down, because it kept all tracking of anyone ever entering your site and that loaded the database and cause a lot of slow down.

I don't even pay a lot of attention to the tracking info in my cart anyway, I use stats from my host.

I have an SQL command built into the admin too.

My cart speaks different languages and provides currency for different countries.
I can use the USPS shipping option and be directed to my USPS account but never liked it when it came to multiple orders, so I don't use it.

I have to charge tax for Wisconsin buyers and am able to set that up to only charge them in checkout.

I have several options to use for payment and if I don't want to use the standard ones, I can create a custom one, like phone orders, M-Bags, etc..

I can customize my shipping prices

My cart just gives me so many options to work with which is what I need to maintain the kind of inventory I have.

[Alana]

My newest mod is called a image sizer and it is done by AJax, so now I only have to size one size for all my images instead of a small and large one, which also gives me more space.

Another thing for the workshop might be about image sizing and compression.  There are some sites out there that I just can't open because of image compression and size and that is frustrating.

Here is a sample of my new image sizer, what I like about this is that it doesn't take you to a pop up but keeps you on the same page.

http://www.alanascherishe...odView.asp?idProduct=2205

Click on larger image.

I can even add more images to a listing page by using html.

[The Tavern Wench]

Nice mod Alana!  We have one similar to that on Zen that does that 'lightbox' effect.  I haven't installed it yet, but have installed the one that resizes everything.  I think that is a must on any site!

I agree with you about images and compression.  That will slow a site down faster than anything and I don't know how those on dial-up visit a lot of sites.


Deb

[QUILT]

Truly this is an amazingly informative forum post, but I don't understand most of it.  Sure makes a person want to learn.  Thank you to everyone for sharing your knowledge.

[Alana]

Quilt: You have an absolutely beautiful website, and you have the image re sizer that I have on my site, already on your website, what it does is allow me to stay on the listing page, click on larger view and see the larger image of your product, and I am not sent to a pop up window and then have to click the back button to get back to where I am.

Your images are all loading very fast for me. I am not sure if you are sizing more than one to get those images for each listing or not. I am set up to size for only one size.  Before I got my image re sizer I was loading two different sizes of images in my site. I still have some of the old ones but with the number of items I have, I just did not choose to go back and take pictures of everything all over again, so I will still have some of the two size ones that my re sizer will show in the old size of 250 instead of 600. 

I would not worry about images for your site, because they are loading very fast. 

Custom pages you have are great, (your informative pages). Under your more information pages, I would add some 500 words or less information about your product, that can be searched in search engines.

You have under more information "Page 3", I would title that and write a informative page about a specific item you sell, let your buyers know something about your products.

For example:  One of my products I sell is vintage aprons, I have a informative page on vintage aprons:
http://www.alanascherishe...pts/openExtra.asp?extra=9

That page is being indexed in searches, my stats show me that page is pulled from people putting in anything from words like:
collecting vintage aprons, aprons, vintage, passion for aprons, styles of aprons, history of aprons, etc...so it is an addition to my products, and people are finding my aprons faster.

So I would take advantage of adding content on your more information pages. Your site already has the toolbar information on your listings that I had to do on my own.

Maybe Zen carts already provide that, but when I open your individual listings, my tool bar says for example:
Red hat lady purple beaded applique patch....that is great.  Some people's listing will say something like this in the toolbar.

I am looking at this listing http://www.kcskozykorner....odView.asp?idproduct=2002
The toolbar says new books, more books, action adventure, but it does not say anything about Linda Howard Game Of Chance anywhere, so if I was to put that title of the book and the author, this person's book and listing would probably not show up in search.

Now that person above is a friend of mine and he is using a Candy Press ASP cart, but he is not using any meta tags in his individual product listings.

What seems to be really nice about those Zen carts is that they seem to already have the info in them, and even though you do not know a lot about this, it seems the Zen cart does a lot of that for you, which is very nice. 

Those are just a few examples in getting the most from what your cart can do for you to better index your products and your site.

I am not sure how much you can modify a Zen cart, and how you fix coding errors, for me I use a text editor like Dreamweaver (which is not a free one) or First Page 2000 (do not download the new version, very very buggy) to fix errors in my code.

For example, what happens if you get emails from customers who say, hey something is wrong, I can't checkout, and you test it and find out something is messed up in your checkout. 

What I can do is pull that specific code into my editor and check it and fix the code and then re load it to my site. I know which page my checkout code is and I am able to pull that up in my text editor and find the errors.

Now you would think, once a cart is installed errors should not happen.  But they still do from time to time, not because the code has all of a sudden changed on you, but because something is happening that is coded weird and is costing me sales because people can't checkout when they hit the checkout button. In other words, you just find out that there was a error in the function of that code causing people to stall out in checkout when they clicked the First class mail option in checkout.

You probably would not have noticed that, until a customer told you, but then how many customers just abandoned cart and never told you?

So what I am saying is getting to know the function of your cart and how to find the errors and fix them is vital to your business.

One thing that frustrates a lot of people who open their own stand alone websites is that they do not realize they are "standing alone" and they have to know how that cart functions and how to fix the problem. 

So when someone tells me my checkout is not working, I know I need to pull my checkout asp, shipping page into my editor and copy and paste the code I have in there, take it to the Candy Press forum and show it to them and ask for help.  Otherwise, I would be over on their forum saying, hey guys people can't checkout what is wrong?

They are going to say to me, what is in your code in checkout?  Then if I have that to show them, they are going to say, you have First Class shipping blocked in your code. You need to add this(new code). Your code shows you only allow priority shipping.

This is one reason so many people get overwhelmed with having their own site, they see a problem, and do not know where to go or who to get help from. 

Let's say I have this checkout problem and I run to my web designer and say, hey what is wrong with my checkout?  She is going to say I have no idea. And she really is not going to know how to help me.

If I know enough that there is something not right in the code, I save tons of time, going to the right person for the help I need.

So basically, what I am saying is get to know how your cart functions and know where to go for help. 

I read something over at the Candy Press forum one time, where a guy was complaining about the cart not working right because he was not getting indexed in search.  Well being indexed in search has very little to do with the cart code, but knowing how to add meta tags and keywords, into the site and where, would have something to do with the cart, he just did not know where to add that information.

What I am finding more and more is that if your wanting to truly own your own business and run it your way, open your own website, your probably in for a lifetime of learning. We do get glitches on our carts from time to time, and we do need to know what and where to take care of it.

I love support forums that offer that kind of help.

Most of all I had to get out of my own Ebay mentality.  I could not just get a website up and just list and expect sales to come. I had to do what Ebay did for me, and that was to learn SEO's and so much more about my cart and how to get the most from it. 

I read on some Ebay boards, that people attempted to run their own websites, and they tossed it and went back to Ebay because they were not getting any sales.  I go look at the source code in their websites, and they do not have keywords, meta tags, description titles, and their categories say, category one.  I put their domain in google and it says privacy and refunds, category one.

So lets say they sell books, well if I put in the title and author of the book they have in their listing, I never find them, because I would have to put in refunds and policy and category one to find them. People are not going to search for their book by using those words.

I hope I am making sense. Quilt I did not check who designed your site, but it is very well done. You might want to add some more specific titles to your more information pages.

You don't want people to find quilt patches with with a title called page 3. Write content about your products or a specific product.

Content writing is what I am doing now, I do not have but two articles up right now and I am writing my you know what off about specific products that will soon be added to my pages and search indexed. This can really help.  Another thing on your front home page is to add hidden links. If you hover over the words on my home page, you will see the hidden links and I think Crabby helped me work with that.

There is also somewhere here a thread on helpful website tools, these tools will help you to test your keyword density, and other things that will help you in getting indexed. 

It is a lot of willingness on the website owners to continue to open doors to learn this stuff to improve their visibility and traffic.

This article and content writing I am doing is a new experience for me, and I have my struggles with learning new stuff, but just like any brick and mortar store out there, we have to constantly provide new ideas, marketing, and promoting and tell or show our customers what we have, and why they should buy from us.  In a brick and mortar store, a customer might walk in and ask the store owner, what is this product and tell me how does it work?  Well online we have to write about it tell the customer about it. Think like the customer who walks into our store, explain what patch kits are, how they are used, etc. etc..tell them you know what your selling. 

[Alana]

Here is a sample of a bad listing on an Ebay store listing.

Five vintage hats.

I do not know anything about hats, they are nice, some might need mended and cleaned. Bid with confidence. I found these on the side of the road by a dumpster and thought they would be valuable to someone.


As a buyer, what does that tell me?

If I am interesting in purchasing a vintage hat?

First off it tells me that the seller is selling to make a buck, doesn't care what it is and has no passion for his product.  Didn't take anytime at all to research it, didn't even give any real description or condition of the item. Why should I buy from this person? Plus he is telling me that he is selling someone's trash.

I want to buy from someone who knows their hats, can describe them and not tell me they picked them up on the side of the road and know nothing but want to make a buck off them.

If a potential buyer is selling vintage hats, I hope it is because they love vintage hats and have a passion for women's vintage clothing and accessories.

This seller also adds shipping charges will be determined after the end of the sale..

Well stupid me, emailed this buyer and asked shipping charges up front before bidding, and this seller told me I will not be packaging this listing until the auction ends, so I can not give you exact shipping charges until you bid and win the auction.

I got dinged hard when I was on Ebay for excessive shipping by one buyer who bought a set of 8 dishes and matching cups of Fire King glassware.  The package weighted 3.5 pounds, it was sent to California zip code, it was bubble wrapped individually. packed tight with newspaper and I paid 2 dollars extra that the buyer did not pay to get it shipped there. The buyer was happy with the product, pleased with the packaging but felt $8.00 priority mail was excessive. Shipping priority mail to them cost me 10.20.

Buyers do not understand this stuff, nor do they really care. If I had eliminated all the newspaper and bubble wrap and padding in that package, it would have weighed in less than 3.5, but then they would have had broken pieces.

So reading about shipping and packaging and how to make it appealing to the customer is just another whole ballgame when running our own sites.  When I am on a site like Ebay selling a similiar item that others are selling and they are offering $5 bucks to ship something like this, it does seem excessive for me to be charging 8 bucks.  When I am on my own website, I am not competing with others and I really need to find a way to not scare the crap out of my buyer with shipping charges.  That is just another thing about being on your own. 

So what I did for my shipping was to eliminate weights and add specific price ranges for shipping products. I just sold 8 magazines to a buyer who requested they be sent priority mail.  Well it weighted over 1 pound, I ate the extra fees, as for the price of 50 dollars worth of magazines, I charged 4.75 for priority.  That same day I sold two magazines that weighted under .13 ounces and the buyer requested First Class shipping.  The cost for me was 1.30.  The buyer paid 2.00.  That did offset my shipping some on the other first order of 8 magazines.  So knowing how to play with shipping is very important too. 

The reason I bring up shipping, is again, about knowing what your cart can do and how to manage things like that to increase sales.  Individual listings need to tell your buyer what they want to know. Not tell them, I am wanting to make a quick buck off someone's trash. Try to put in some passion in your listings. 

[QUILT]

Quilt: You have an absolutely beautiful website, and you have the image re sizer that I have on my site, already on your website, what it does is allow me to stay on the listing page, click on larger view and see the larger image of your product, and I am not sent to a pop up window and then have to click the back button to get back to where I am.

Your images are all loading very fast for me. I am not sure if you are sizing more than one to get those images for each listing or not. I am set up to size for only one size.  Before I got my image re sizer I was loading two different sizes of images in my site. I still have some of the old ones but with the number of items I have, I just did not choose to go back and take pictures of everything all over again, so I will still have some of the two size ones that my re sizer will show in the old size of 250 instead of 600. 

I would not worry about images for your site, because they are loading very fast. 

Custom pages you have are great, (your informative pages). Under your more information pages, I would add some 500 words or less information about your product, that can be searched in search engines.

You have under more information "Page 3", I would title that and write a informative page about a specific item you sell, let your buyers know something about your products.

For example:  One of my products I sell is vintage aprons, I have a informative page on vintage aprons:
http://www.alanascherishe...pts/openExtra.asp?extra=9

That page is being indexed in searches, my stats show me that page is pulled from people putting in anything from words like:
collecting vintage aprons, aprons, vintage, passion for aprons, styles of aprons, history of aprons, etc...so it is an addition to my products, and people are finding my aprons faster.

So I would take advantage of adding content on your more information pages. Your site already has the toolbar information on your listings that I had to do on my own.

Maybe Zen carts already provide that, but when I open your individual listings, my tool bar says for example:
Red hat lady purple beaded applique patch....that is great.  Some people's listing will say something like this in the toolbar.

I am looking at this listing http://www.kcskozykorner....odView.asp?idproduct=2002
The toolbar says new books, more books, action adventure, but it does not say anything about Linda Howard Game Of Chance anywhere, so if I was to put that title of the book and the author, this person's book and listing would probably not show up in search.

Now that person above is a friend of mine and he is using a Candy Press ASP cart, but he is not using any meta tags in his individual product listings.

What seems to be really nice about those Zen carts is that they seem to already have the info in them, and even though you do not know a lot about this, it seems the Zen cart does a lot of that for you, which is very nice. 

Those are just a few examples in getting the most from what your cart can do for you to better index your products and your site.

I am not sure how much you can modify a Zen cart, and how you fix coding errors, for me I use a text editor like Dreamweaver (which is not a free one) or First Page 2000 (do not download the new version, very very buggy) to fix errors in my code.

For example, what happens if you get emails from customers who say, hey something is wrong, I can't checkout, and you test it and find out something is messed up in your checkout. 

What I can do is pull that specific code into my editor and check it and fix the code and then re load it to my site. I know which page my checkout code is and I am able to pull that up in my text editor and find the errors.

Now you would think, once a cart is installed errors should not happen.  But they still do from time to time, not because the code has all of a sudden changed on you, but because something is happening that is coded weird and is costing me sales because people can't checkout when they hit the checkout button. In other words, you just find out that there was a error in the function of that code causing people to stall out in checkout when they clicked the First class mail option in checkout.

You probably would not have noticed that, until a customer told you, but then how many customers just abandoned cart and never told you?

So what I am saying is getting to know the function of your cart and how to find the errors and fix them is vital to your business.

One thing that frustrates a lot of people who open their own stand alone websites is that they do not realize they are "standing alone" and they have to know how that cart functions and how to fix the problem. 

So when someone tells me my checkout is not working, I know I need to pull my checkout asp, shipping page into my editor and copy and paste the code I have in there, take it to the Candy Press forum and show it to them and ask for help.  Otherwise, I would be over on their forum saying, hey guys people can't checkout what is wrong?

They are going to say to me, what is in your code in checkout?  Then if I have that to show them, they are going to say, you have First Class shipping blocked in your code. You need to add this(new code). Your code shows you only allow priority shipping.

This is one reason so many people get overwhelmed with having their own site, they see a problem, and do not know where to go or who to get help from. 

Let's say I have this checkout problem and I run to my web designer and say, hey what is wrong with my checkout?  She is going to say I have no idea. And she really is not going to know how to help me.

If I know enough that there is something not right in the code, I save tons of time, going to the right person for the help I need.

So basically, what I am saying is get to know how your cart functions and know where to go for help. 

I read something over at the Candy Press forum one time, where a guy was complaining about the cart not working right because he was not getting indexed in search.  Well being indexed in search has very little to do with the cart code, but knowing how to add meta tags and keywords, into the site and where, would have something to do with the cart, he just did not know where to add that information.

What I am finding more and more is that if your wanting to truly own your own business and run it your way, open your own website, your probably in for a lifetime of learning. We do get glitches on our carts from time to time, and we do need to know what and where to take care of it.

I love support forums that offer that kind of help.

Most of all I had to get out of my own Ebay mentality.  I could not just get a website up and just list and expect sales to come. I had to do what Ebay did for me, and that was to learn SEO's and so much more about my cart and how to get the most from it. 

I read on some Ebay boards, that people attempted to run their own websites, and they tossed it and went back to Ebay because they were not getting any sales.  I go look at the source code in their websites, and they do not have keywords, meta tags, description titles, and their categories say, category one.  I put their domain in google and it says privacy and refunds, category one.

So lets say they sell books, well if I put in the title and author of the book they have in their listing, I never find them, because I would have to put in refunds and policy and category one to find them. People are not going to search for their book by using those words.

I hope I am making sense. Quilt I did not check who designed your site, but it is very well done. You might want to add some more specific titles to your more information pages.

You don't want people to find quilt patches with with a title called page 3. Write content about your products or a specific product.

Content writing is what I am doing now, I do not have but two articles up right now and I am writing my you know what off about specific products that will soon be added to my pages and search indexed. This can really help.  Another thing on your front home page is to add hidden links. If you hover over the words on my home page, you will see the hidden links and I think Crabby helped me work with that.

There is also somewhere here a thread on helpful website tools, these tools will help you to test your keyword density, and other things that will help you in getting indexed. 

It is a lot of willingness on the website owners to continue to open doors to learn this stuff to improve their visibility and traffic.

This article and content writing I am doing is a new experience for me, and I have my struggles with learning new stuff, but just like any brick and mortar store out there, we have to constantly provide new ideas, marketing, and promoting and tell or show our customers what we have, and why they should buy from us.  In a brick and mortar store, a customer might walk in and ask the store owner, what is this product and tell me how does it work?  Well online we have to write about it tell the customer about it. Think like the customer who walks into our store, explain what patch kits are, how they are used, etc. etc..tell them you know what your selling. 

Thank You for all the helpful tips, hints and information.  I am in the process of getting my site in order and do what it takes to make me independent.  Believe me I have come along way.  I also have an excellent support staff that listens through my tears and there has been many.  Everyone should know that from start to finish I knew absolutely nothing at all about running my own site and please stop by my store apennyforluck.com and check out the designer on the bottom right hand corner.  I could not be happier and highly highly recommend this company to everyone.