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andreamarucci
Experienced
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Posts: 308
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 11:13

Ecommerce

15 Jun 2018, 09:38

Hello Karl, I've a customer that could be interested in developing a photo ecommerce website where the users basically can browse all the images in low resolution and buy the high resolution version of one or more photo.

Do you think that Imagevue is, or will be, ready for such a task?
 
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mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Ecommerce

16 Jun 2018, 06:29

Hi Andrea, thanks for asking. As you may know, we are looking to implement a "lightbox" (choose images) and simple e-commerce solution into X3. E-commerce is multi-level (cart, checkout, payment and product service), and therefore my answer is multi-level also:

Cart & Checkout  :thumbsup:
We will be releasing a cart/checkout (lightbox) plugin, allowing visitors to pick/select images, and then "checkout". The checkout will allow the visitor to "place order", which means an email will go to owner with a list of the images.

The above is essentially a very basic, but flexible self-serve e-commerce solution.

Payments
Here is where it starts getting tricky. We could implement the cart with Paypal, so that the visitor would have to make a payment through Paypal on checkout. This requires that the owner has a Paypal account of course. X3 can instruct Paypal to let X3 know when a purchase is successful, but there is not really much X3 can do with this information. If it is a print product, the owner will have to deal with this manually anyway.

Product Service / Digital Download
Although we can implement a cart and even a payment system (as above), the entire follow-up process for an order will have to be done manually by the owner. At least for any tangible product (like print). As for "Digital Download", we could perhaps figure out some automated solution, although I don't yet have a full plan as to how this could work. Original size images would have to be stored in a password-protected folder(s), and then an email would go to visitor with a secret link that somehow linked to an auto-generated ZIP file with all the purchased images.

Therefore, for now, YES there will be a cart and checkout feature coming very soon. Payments also. As for providing the product to customer based on the order/purchase, this is more complicated. I would be very interested to consider some solution, but this would not be available immediately at first.

I estimate a basic lightbox/cart system in a release after the summer. X3.25.0 is only a few weeks away.
 
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andreamarucci
Experienced
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Posts: 308
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 11:13

Re: Ecommerce

16 Jun 2018, 08:54

Thanks Karl, I think the customer's timing is closer than after the summer but I'll stay tuned...

If you've something ready and eventually you'd need a beta tester, let me know.

About the payments may I suggest you to use Stripe instead of Paypal? It's simpler to implement and cheaper than paypal and doesn't require any account for the payer...
 
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mjau-mjau
X3 Wizard
Posts: 13993
Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Ecommerce

16 Jun 2018, 11:18

Stripe instead of Paypal, perhaps. This is a bit of the challenge, building an e-commerce system that links to a specific payment provider which is a BIG job. I'm not sure it's as easy to become a "merchant" of Stripe, as it is to become a member of Paypal, and Paypal also supports "guest" checkout (pay with card). But will definitely consider this closely, as I'm not a fan of Paypal in any way. Having to force users to use a specific payment processor for selling various types of goods (digital and non-digital) is already slightly out of scope for X3, but would be really cool.
 
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andreamarucci
Experienced
Topic Author
Posts: 308
Joined: 01 Mar 2011, 11:13

Re: Ecommerce

16 Jun 2018, 12:12

I've told you about stripe since i switched in my forum from PayPal to stripe and from Now on All my users are very satisfied by the System since the payment system work inside my forum or inside imagevue in your case and you are not redirected to another payment processor