Embeding product onto a 3rd party site

kuroi:

@systemagic

Sorry that I didn't stumble into this thread earlier. Apologies to those well-meaning Zen Carters who tried to help you earlier, but the correct answer to this question is YES, you can do exactly what you asked in your original post.

I'm doing exactly on a site where the client has another designer doing a flash front end with a buy now button that needs to jump the visitor into the shopping cart with the product sitting there ready for checkout.

I was chatting to an SEO consultant recently who told me that he favors Zen Cart because he can build search friendly microsites for a product or group of products and build in links to Zen Cart for all the complicated cart and account stuff.

So how is this done ...?

Well the product must exist in the Zen Cart database, If it has attributes you will want to make sure they're set up too. Then all you do is create a link on your external site to:
When your visitor clicks on this link they will jump into Zen Cart which will spot the buy now action and take the visitor the product_info page if there are attributes that need choosing, or straight to the shopping cart page otherwise.

The only other change that you might want to make is to disable the continue shopping button on your shopping cart page, though that may still be appropriate, depending upon your circumstances.

Heya...

I've a similar issue and this post got me almost to the solution. (Kinda works: links customer from item on exterior (non ZC) page to the product info within ZC, where he can add to cart.

?Is there a way to take it farther and actually add the item to the shopping cart in a single step?

Thanks!
dfs

dfs_durham:

?Is there a way to take it farther and actually add the item to the shopping cart in a single step?Yes, the link that you have to construct is back in the post that you quoted (#11).

Worth noting though, that every client for whom I have ever done this that has built a sustainable business (i.e. as opposed to quick market testing) has subsequently migrated their whole site into Zen Cart. So it's worth looking very carefully at whether this is the right way to go.

kuroi:

Yes, the link that you have to construct is back in the post that you quoted (#11).

Worth noting though, that every client for whom I have ever done this that has built a sustainable business (i.e. as opposed to quick market testing) has subsequently migrated their whole site into Zen Cart. So it's worth looking very carefully at whether this is the right way to go.

Have to admit, the farther I get into ZC (and closer to launching), the more attractive it is to simply eliminating the non-ZC pages and just expand the store. That'll be phase 2, I guess.

External add to cart - Attempt #1:
mydomain/index.php?main_page=index&action=buy_now&products_id=??? [Didn't work (as expected) - links to non-zc index.]

External add to cart - Attempt #2:
mydomain/store/index.php?main_page=index&action=buy_now&products_id=??? [Worked (kinda) - links to product info with add to cart button.]

I have a "choice" of download format - getting the download of virtual product was a battle in itself. Though there's only one option and it's already checked (Windows zip file format), I'm wondering if this is short-circuiting the add to cart attempt #2 above. ?Maybe ZC thinks it can't proceed directly to cart because of this?

Thanks.
dfs

OK. This approach won't work with products that have attributes, as no attribute info is passed to Zen Cart.

So what's happening here is that you're passing the product ID and a message to buy to Zen Cart. The cart functions see the buy now message and intercept the data. They check that it's a valid buy, but it's not. So they pass it on to the relevant product page so that the customer can verify the attributes.

It is possible to pass attribute information along with the buy message, but it needs to be done by submitting a form, about which I posted elsewhere in the forum a while back (sorry don't remember the details).

Hi

I am looking to include the product price, and specials, as well as product images on external pages. I have no need for the add to cart button, as I am just linking to the products because of the attribute issue addressed in this thread.

xtracool's method obviously worked for him, but I am unable to get the special price to show. The image isn't picked up, either.

Is anyone here able to help me with doing this please?

Thanks,
Tija