a few questions.

[mike1223334444]

I'm starting a new small business and I have a few questions about the squirrelcart.

1) I already have a great layout for my site and I don't want to be forced into using a template, or modified template of the squirrel cart. Is it easy to integrate into my site?

2) Let's say I did purchase the squirrel cart.. What else do I actually NEED before I can actually process a credit card order. In otherwords please explain a gateway and how to hook the cart up to function with it.

3) About the payment methods, ok I saw how paypal works. looks good. Waht about when they pay with a regular card, wheres the money go and how long till it gets to me.

That's it. Thanks.

PS:

4) If I bought it right now, how do I get it? Do I download it? or does it come on the cd in the mail or something. Thanks

Sorry one more PSS:

5) OK right now I don't have a payment gateway, but is it possible for me to go ahead and get the squirrel cart and have it work, but not be able to process cards.. I just want to complete my site this month, then go live next month.

[mike1223334444]

anyone? please. I'm 99% convinced this is the cart for me, just need someone to comfirm.

[gtroll]

I'm not squirrelcart staff but maybe able to answer your questions...
I'm starting a new small business and I have a few questions about the squirrelcart.

1) I already have a great layout for my site and I don't want to be forced into using a template, or modified template of the squirrel cart. Is it easy to integrate into my site?
With a little knowledge of php squirrelcart can be integrated into any site


2) Let's say I did purchase the squirrel cart.. What else do I actually NEED before I can actually process a credit card order. In otherwords please explain a gateway and how to hook the cart up to function with it.


3) About the payment methods, ok I saw how paypal works. looks good. Waht about when they pay with a regular card, wheres the money go and how long till it gets to me.

That's it. Thanks.

A payment gateway is how credit card are processed you'll need a merchant account or to sign up with one of the processors to accept credit cards


4) If I bought it right now, how do I get it? Do I download it? or does it come on the cd in the mail or something. Thanks

After purchase you'll be emailed with a password and a URL where you can download it, it's not immediate but pretty quick...

Sorry one more PSS:

5) OK right now I don't have a payment gateway, but is it possible for me to go ahead and get the squirrel cart and have it work, but not be able to process cards.. I just want to complete my site this month, then go live next month.
Yes
http://www.ldev.com/forums/showthread.php?t=768&highlight=gateway
http://www.ldev.com/forums/showthread.php?t=258

[squire]

Hi Mike,

I'm not affiliated with Squirrelcart except for the fact that we use it on one of our sites (with more to come it in the near future), but I'll take a shot at your questions from the User perspective...

1.) I've found Squirrelcart to be absolutely the easiest of any of the 20 or so shopping cart scripts I've tested in this regard. It allowed us to keep our design elements consistent throughout the site and wasn't hard at all to set up. By far the easiest to work with when it comes to the design side of things. Pretty flexible too if you have unusual needs.

2.) You need: a) Squirrelcart; b) A Product or Service to sell; c) Some way to process the billing side of things for your sales.

3.) Paypal users have the ability to to use their credit cards instead of their checking account to make payment, but I don't think that's what you're asking. The downside, in my personal opinion, to offering Paypal as the only option is that your customers will have to first set up an account with Paypal before they can buy anything from you. Most people will not already have a Paypal account, so you will undoubtedly lose some sales if that's the only option you give them. People want ease of use. And having to go through that extra step is just enough to send them off to look at your competition if you give them no other option.

My personal suggestion, if you're going to offer Paypal, is to have it as one of 2 or 3 options instead of the only choice. In other words, offer Paypal for those folks who want to use it, but also offer something like 2Checkout (easy to set up and inexpensive to start for you). Or Paypal and any of the other Gateways Squirrelcart supports.

There are lots of discussions about the different Payment Gateways in the Support area of these forums (I think you have to have purchased Squirrelcart to get to that area though.) Everybody's situation is different, so you have to choose what's best for you. We started with 2Checkout when we were small, mainly because it's easy to set up and cheap to start. Once we got a little bigger we got our own online Merchant Account we use via Authorize.net that all of our sites go through. More costly on the front end, but we get to keep a larger chunk of the profits in the end and have a lot more control. Especially when you get to the point that your daily billings rise up into the hundreds or thousands of dollars per day. We do still integrate Paypal as an option on some of our sites for those who would rather use it. But honestly not many do unless they're already eBay'ers or something like that.

4.) Download it. I assume this is still the same, that's how it was when we purchased Squirrelcart awhile back anyway.

5.) I don't see any problem with doing this. Squirrelcart does give the admin the option of Emailing the credit card number to the store owner (for those who have an offline merchant account and want to use it to process the billing.) I would think you could certainly use that to set up and test pretty much everything prior to going Live. You will of course want to run through a test sale or two when you sort out which gateway/method you're going to use, but that normally will only take a couple of minutes before you go Live.

Hopefully if I missed something Jamie or Rich will stop by to correct me. But that's my take on your questions.

Squire

[mike1223334444]

Thank you guys! both of you.. That's all I needed to know really, now I feel more confident in purchasing this. Sounds like just what I need. Thanks.

Mike

PS: one more question.. a simple one i promise. Does squirrel cart have the "You currently have 1 item in your shopping cart" thing that goes on every page? Not sure exactly what it's called but you probably get the idea.

[Jamie]

Hi,

Thanks to all for answering Mike's questions!

Does squirrel cart have the "You currently have 1 item in your shopping cart" thing that goes on every page? Not sure exactly what it's called but you probably get the idea.

Yes, it does. There is no specific industry name for this that I am aware of, but we have it in what we call the "Cart Options" section, which appears in the left navigation. This section also has a "checkout" button in it. With a little customization, you can move that section around if you wish.

Thanks!
Jamie