please help a rookie make some money

A little background: I have built a web site in flash and i sell home improvements on it. I am using pay pal right now for my shopping cart and i am not happy with the options or lack there of.

So I have downloaded Zen Cart 1.3.8 and would like to incorporate it into the site i have built already. I DO NOT wont to rebuilt my site in a second shopping cart page. I wont to be able to click on the buttons that i already have built and have that add the product to my cart then be able to return to product page and continue shopping.

Now with the quick shopping cart that is offered with my hosting i have to built a second site with all my products in it and that is were my customers will do the actual shopping from. Now this seems VERY redundant to me. To have too build a second site that has the same products on them.

So can i use Zen Cart so that my customers are able to just click on the buttons I have built now and have that populate my cart without having to rebuild my site in Zen Cart? Or if this is not an option is it possible to import the site i have already built as a template in to Zen Cart there buy not having rebuilt and design the site all over again.

Any help or suggestions will be very much appreciated Please and Thank You.

If you would like to look at what I have now please visit me at
free-bay-windows.com

After a bit more looking around i think what i am looking to do is create a direct check out page linked directly to the buttons i already have built there buy skipping the whole second site process that i spoke of in the earlier post.

Is this an option?

Thank You

Zen Cart, like most database-driven e-commerce software, is intended to become your site. It will not easily function as a backend only.

You can use your existing design as a guide to modifying the Zen Cart template to match your existing site. There are tools you can use to make this easier, starting with Firefox and its Web Developer and Firebug extensions.

Your site, while beautiful and customized, would be relatively simple to translate into Zen Cart, starting with turning off most of the sideboxes and other stock features, and putting your main content from each page into a Define Page. The cart function pagess would need to be designed anew, as you don't have any on your site now.

So I am unsure what side boxes and other features are. And i see that i am able to import templates from dream template.com would i not be able to do the same with my site. It started out as a dreamtemplate.com originally i just did all work to make it mine. mine was made in flash 8 but i can update it in flash cs3+ if i need to.

As Glenn said, Zencart isn't intended to work as an add-on cart script for an existing HTML website. Among other things, you'll have issues with cart sessions when moving back and forth between Zencart and non-Zencart pages.

The only proper Zencart solution for you is to re-create your site using only Zencart. I don't see any Zencart-specific templates on the site you mentioned, so some customization would be required if you use one of theirs.

I have found a few hosted pay sites that would allow me to create a direct check out page with there soft ware. I can do the whole rebuild my site thing or just create the code to link to a direct cart page. This is what i would like to do.