cookies and accounts

T

Trevor

Is forcing account logon to control a shopping cart seen as
anti-social by customers?

I know amazon use cookies, and use dbs only for actual ordering.

I have several etailing sites with no carts, and ordering via phone.

I am looking at adding online ordering. To allow online ordering, I
need a merchant account which is tied to one URL. This means that my
cart and database control has to be on a general accounts site.

Cookies can normally only be read by the writing URL, so I don't see
cookies as useful. The remaining option would be a account logon to
build a cart.

eg

Site1 buys item1 ==> Cart after logon at Accounts Site ==> Return to
Site1
Site1 buys item2 ==> Cart Accounts Site ==> Return to Site1
etc
Site1 Checkout ==> Order Accounts Site ==> Bank SECURE SITE
Accounts Site ==> Despatch

Trevor
 
S

Sean Jorden

(e-mail address removed) (Trevor) wrote in
Is forcing account logon to control a shopping cart seen as
anti-social by customers?

I know amazon use cookies, and use dbs only for actual ordering.

I have several etailing sites with no carts, and ordering via phone.

I am looking at adding online ordering. To allow online ordering, I
need a merchant account which is tied to one URL. This means that my
cart and database control has to be on a general accounts site.

Cookies can normally only be read by the writing URL, so I don't see
cookies as useful. The remaining option would be a account logon to
build a cart.

eg

Site1 buys item1 ==> Cart after logon at Accounts Site ==> Return to
Site1
Site1 buys item2 ==> Cart Accounts Site ==> Return to Site1
etc
Site1 Checkout ==> Order Accounts Site ==> Bank SECURE SITE
Accounts Site ==> Despatch

Trevor

Simple rule: removing barriers between the customer and
their purchase will increase sales. I would say having to
login before
shopping is a major hassle.

The 3rd party online merchant systems that I have worked
with operate by
you sending them some kind of unique key that is used in a
secure
callback mechanism to tell your system an order was
processed.

Through ASP/PHP/whatever sessions you could track what the
user is
adding to their cart in a database (identified by a unique
order ID) at
your etailing site. When checkout time comes, present them
with a URL to
click on that has your unique order ID, $$, etc. that
takes them to the
merchant site where they fill out credit card info and so
on. After
payment is approved, the merchant site will contact your
site via HTTPS
with a confirmation. You update the order as paid, ship
product to
customer.

Also, lots of sites even let you build online stores
entirely within
their system (ie paypal).


Sean
 
T

Toby A Inkster

Trevor said:
Cookies can normally only be read by the writing URL, so I don't see
cookies as useful.

Well that's just not true. If you set a cookie with path="/" then it can
be read by any script in the entire domain.
 
R

rf

Trevor said:
Is forcing account logon to control a shopping cart seen as
anti-social by customers?

Whatever you do don't make me log on just to have a look around. I won't.

Cheers
Richard.
 
T

Trevor

Toby A Inkster said:
Well that's just not true. If you set a cookie with path="/" then it can
be read by any script in the entire domain.

Can the failure to write cookies be detected (eg due to a firewall)?

eg

if purchase-request-detected
if write-cookie-possible
write cookie
return user to shopping screen
else
show Logon Screen
add purchase after logon
return user to shopping screen
end if
end if


Banks normally assign one URL the merchant status, so actual ordering
is made through one URL regardless of the number of shopping sites.
You can in theory open merchant accounts for all URLs, but this would
be very costly.
 
T

Trevor

Sean Jorden said:
(e-mail address removed) (Trevor) wrote in


Simple rule: removing barriers between the customer and
their purchase will increase sales. I would say having to
login before
shopping is a major hassle.

The phone system has worked quite well, and several people have
brought much more after talking to me. For example, they phoned to
order one small item, and then discovered I can provide more than on
the site, and they buy more.

But also several people especially ordering at work, said they want a
full online system to order.

Another aspect is that statistics show that 70% of carts are never
taken to completion. I know I often put a lot of items in my amazon
cart, never to actually buy them. If I spoke to someone I would have
probably brought them.

Yet another aspect is online fraud. Whilst very small over the phone,
is more common when all is online (about 2-5%). Criminals do not like
to heard or seen. They like to be invisible. Identity theft is common
in this regard.
 
A

Augustus

Trevor said:
Toby A Inkster <[email protected]> wrote in message

Can the failure to write cookies be detected (eg due to a firewall)?

Write a cookie and read it right away...

ie:
write cookie "hello" with value "hi"
read cookie "hello" if value = "hi" then cookies enabled
if value <> "hi" (or null or blank) then cookies not enabled
 
O

Owen Jacobson

Augustus said:
Write a cookie and read it right away...

ie:
write cookie "hello" with value "hi"
read cookie "hello" if value = "hi" then cookies enabled
if value <> "hi" (or null or blank) then cookies not enabled

It should be noted that you can't read a cookie on the same request as
you attempt to set it, because the cookies are sent with the request
headers. The usual sequence is to set the cookie, redirect with a
Location: header to (the same, another) script, and check for the
cookie from there.
 
T

Trevor

Augustus said:
Write a cookie and read it right away...

ie:
write cookie "hello" with value "hi"
read cookie "hello" if value = "hi" then cookies enabled
if value <> "hi" (or null or blank) then cookies not enabled

Thanks, that is clever.
 

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