Tips and Tricks WP eCommerce

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WP Simple Shopping Cart – How to Sell Digital Downloads

WP Simple Shopping Cart allows you to easily sell digital downloads from your WordPress site.

Table of Contents

Video Summary

Example Shortcode

Here is an example shortcode that shows how you can specify a download link for a digital product with the standard add to cart button:

[wp_cart_button name="My Download" price="5.00" file_url="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/my-ebook1.pdf"]

Below is an example shortcode that shows how you can specify a download link for digital item with the product box display shortcode:

[wp_cart_display_product name="My Download Product" price="5.00" file_url="http://example.com/uploads/ebook1.pdf" thumbnail="http://www.example.com/product-image.jpg" description="This is a short description of the product"]

Flagging an Item as Digital Only

To mark an item as digital-only, add the digital="1" parameter to the shortcode. Digital-only items do not require a shipping address during checkout. Here’s an example of how to use the digital parameter in the shortcode:

[wp_cart_button name="My Download" price="5.00" digital="1" file_url="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/my-ebook1.pdf"]

Digital File Delivery to Your Customer

Once the payment is complete, your customer will receive a notification email containing the download link(s) for the items they purchased.

Below is a screenshot of the email your customer will receive:

screenshot showing how download link is sent via email by wp shopping cart plugin

PayPal IPN Feature Settings

You will need to make sure that you have enabled PayPal IPN feature in your paypal account. Log into your PayPal account and enable the IPN feature if you don’t have it enabled already. Check the how to setup PayPal IPN video tuorial.

WP eStore – Save and Retrieve Cart Feature

You can enable the save and retrieve cart feature from the eStore settings menu by checking the “Enable Save and Retrieve Cart Feature” option.

When this feature is enabled, your customers will be able to add items to the shopping cart then save it. This will allow them to retrieve a previously saved cart and complete the checkout.

Add the following shortcode on a post, page or sidebar which will show a save and retrieve shopping cart section to allow your customers to save the current shopping cart or retrieve a previously saved cart.

[wp_eStore_save_retrieve_cart]

This is how it works in general:

  1. A customer visits your site
  2. Adds item(s) to the shopping cart
  3. Hits the save cart button which gives a unique “ID” to the customer
  4. This “ID” can be used later to retrieve an already saved cart and complete the checkout

 

How to Show a Product Display Box

You can use the “wp_cart_display_product” shortcode to create a product display box on the fly when using the Simple WP Shopping cart plugin. This can be very handy to display your products on a post, page or sidebar easily.

Table of Contents

Video Summary

Shortcode Example for a Product Box

Here is an exmaple shortcode that shows you how to use a product display box.

[wp_cart_display_product name="My Awesome Product" price="25.00" thumbnail="http://www.example.com/images/product-image.jpg" description="This is a short description of the product"]

Replace the values with your product specific data to show a product display box for your product(s).

The above shortcode will product a product display box similar to the following screenshot:

product display box example

Using a Product Box with Product Variation

Here is an example shortcode usage with product variation:

[wp_cart_display_product name="My Awesome Product" price="25.00" thumbnail="http://www.example.com/images/product-image.jpg" description="This is a short description of the product" var1="Size|Small|Medium|Large" var2="Color|Red|Blue|Green|Black"]

The above shortcode will display a product for sale like the following:

product box with variation

Using Shipping With the Product Box

Here is an example of how to add the shipping parameter with the product box shortcode:

[wp_cart_display_product name="My Awesome Product" price="25.00" thumbnail="http://www.example.com/images/product-image.jpg" description="This is a short description of the product" var1="Size|Small|Medium|Large" var2="Color|Red|Blue|Green|Black" shipping="5"]

Specifying an Alt Tag for the Thumbnail Image

You can use the thumb_alt parameter in the shortcode to specify an alt tag for the thumbnail image to be used in the product box. Below is an example:

[wp_cart_display_product name="My Awesome Product" price="29.00" thumbnail="http://www.example.com/images/product-image.jpg" description="This is a short description of the product" thumb_alt="Test alt tag for the thumbnail image"]

Creating a Grid Display With Product Boxes

Check this tutorial to learn how you can stack the product boxes side by side.

Using Blocks Instead of Shortcode

You can also use blocks instead of shortcodes to insert a product box. Follow these guidelines if you wish to utilize the blocks provided by the simple shopping cart plugin.

WP eStore Compact Cart Display Templates

WP eStore comes with a few compact shopping cart display templates. You can use these to show a compact version of the shopping cart on your sidebar.

You can add the following item to the cart and see how the compact shopping cart display looks like

Fancy Display Test 3
Fancy Display Test 3
This is another test product to show how the fancy display looks like. This product has multiple images which are shown below the main thumbnail image. You can insert plain HTML in this description area too.
Price: $37.00
Price: $29.95

1) Compact Cart Display Option 1

This compact cart will display here when there are items in the cart.

2) Compact Cart Display Option 2

Cart is empty (0)

3) Compact Cart Display Option 3

Cart is empty $0.00

4) Compact Cart Display Option 4

Cart is empty $0.00

5) Compact Cart Display Option 5

0 Items

How to Use a Compact Shopping Cart on Your Site?

You can use any of the above mentioned compact cart on your site by using a shortcode. Please refer to our shortcodes list documentation for details.

Remember that the compact shopping cart also requires that you use the full cart somewhere on your site. You can create a specific checkout page where you show the full cart and then use the compact cart in the sidebar or header area.

This page explains how you can create a specific cart checkout page for your site. When the users click on the “view cart” link inside the compact cart, it will take them to this cart checkout page.

Full Shopping Cart Display Templates

In addition to the above compact cart templates, the WP eStore plugin comes with a few full cart shortcodes also.

View the shopping cart display options page to learn more about it.

How to Allow Customers to Specify a Price For a Product (Name Your Price)

WP eStore plugin allows you to create products whereby your customers can specify how much they want to pay for the product (pay what you want).

This feature can be helpful for accepting donation amount or selling a product for charity work.

How to Use “Offer Your Price” Feature

  1. Create a product as you normally do in eStore
  2. Specify the minimum amount your customers can pay in the “Price” field of the product. Payment Gateways do not allow $0 product checkout so you need to specify a minimum price value of the product.
  3. Check the “Allow Customers to Specify a Price” checkbox from the “Additional Product Details” section and that should do it.

Allow customers to specify a price

 

Now, when you put an “Add to Cart” button for this product on a page, it will have a price field next to the button so the customers can specify how much they want to pay for the item.

name-your-price-feature-example

Using it with a Product Display Template

If you are using a fancy product display template to show the product then it will look like the following:

Customer Specifies a Price Demo
Customer Specifies a Price Demo
This is a test description. This description is here to show how the description of this product looks like.
Price: $2.00
Your Price: $ 

Note:

  • The minimum price that you can set for a product can be as low as 0.01 but please keep in mind that the payment gateway (for example PayPal) may not like it as they are not getting any commission from these transactions.
  • If you want to offer a product for free then use the squeeze page form option to do so.

WordPress Simple Shopping Cart Video Tutorial

This page contains video tutorials for the Free WordPress Simple Shopping Cart plugin.

WP Shopping Cart Quick Usage Guide

Video 1 (Usage Overview)

Video 2 (Selling Digital Media Files)

Video 3 (Shipping Setup)

Video 4 (Displaying a Product Box)

Video 5 (Creating a Specific Checkout Page)

Video 6 (Showing or Hiding Shopping Cart)

Video 7 (Using Discount Coupons)

Video 8 (Using Product Variations)

Simple Cart Checkout Demonstration

Stripe Checkout Demonstration

Simple WP Shopping Cart FAQ

1.) Can this plugin be used to accept PayPal payment for a service or a product?

Yes.

2.) How do I get the buyer’s address for shipping purpose?

The orders menu of the plugin will contain the address for the order if the customer purchased physical product(s)

PayPal will also send you (the seller) a ‘Payment Notification’ email after the buyer pays for the product which will contain the buyer’s address.

3.) Can the shopping cart be added to a separate checkout page?

Yes. You can add the shopping cart anywhere on your site.

4.) Does this plugin have multiple currency (example: You can specify the currency you wish to accept) support?

Yes, as long as the currency is a supported by PayPal and/or Stripe.

5.) Is the ‘Add to Cart’ button (image or text) customizable?

Yes.

6.) Does this plugin use a return URL to redirect customers to a specified page (example: Thank You Page) after PayPal and/or Stripe has processed the payment?

Yes, you can specify a “Return URL” in the settings menu of the plugin.

7.) Can I set up variations with different prices using the Simple Shopping Cart?

You can only do variations that do not change the price of an item. The following article will explain more about using variations with the Simple Shopping Cart. If you want to use variations that have different prices you can try our WP eStore plugin for this. The following article will explain more about this.

8.) How can I change the “Check Out With PayPal” image?

Simply replace the image located in the “image directory” of the plugin (via FTP).

9.) How do I change the language of the PayPal landing page?

The language is determined by a PayPal based on the customer’s location. Note that the language you see in your computer/browser doesn’t determine what your customers will see.

10.) Can I use a compact shopping cart with this plugin?

Yes, view the compact cart documentation to learn how to use it.

WP Shopping Cart Troubleshooting

Can’t Remove an Item from the Shopping Cart

Make sure you haven’t included special characters like apostrophe (‘) in your product name.

The Price Shows up as $0.00 in the Shopping Cart

Make sure you have entered the Price to two decimal places and didn’t put any symbols or characters. eg. 10.00 or 6.70 or 1999.95 etc (Do not put currency symbol in the price field)

NextGen Gallery doesn’t show the “Add to Cart” buttons correctly

  • Make sure the wp eStore template file is in the “view” directory of NextGen Gallery.
  • You using something similar to the following to display the gallery:

left_bracket2nggallery id=1 template=wp-eStore]

Variation Control Not Working

Please make sure your theme’s “footer.php” file has a call to the wp_footer() function of WordPress or it won’t add the javascripts in the footer. Many themes are not designed according to WordPress standard and causes problems. Simply add the following line in your “footer.php” file to solve this:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>

Add to Cart Button Not Showing in IE

This usually happens when the theme has some CSS issue. If you do the theme testing explained on this page then it will reveal the issue:

The Workaround

If you don’t want to change your theme then open the “wp_shopping_cart.php” file and do the following.

1) Search for the following piece of code string:

<object>

When you find it just delete this string. There will be a few occurrences so do the same for all of them.

2) Search for the following piece of code string:

</object>

When you find it just delete this string. There will be a few occurrences so do the same for all of them.

Save and upload this file and it should fix that issue.

WP Shopping Cart and WP Super Cache Workaround

If you are using the WP Super Cache plugin on your WordPress blog together with a WordPress Shopping Cart plugin (example: Simple WordPress Shopping Cart) then there is a good chance that you are experiencing some funny behavior with your cart plugin (example: the shopping cart doesn’t show the products after item addition).

The Problem

The reason behind it is that the WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin. It generates HTML files that are served directly by Apache without processing PHP scripts. So when a visitor on your blog adds a product to the shopping cart and is wondering why it’s not being displayed in the basket is probably because he/she is still loading the static HTML (cached) file of that page.

The Workaround

Go to your WP Super Cache plugin’s Advanced Settings menu and check the following option then save it:

  • Cache Delivery Method -> Simple
  • Disable caching for visitors who have a cookie set in their browser

The following screenshot shows the settings:

Older Version of WP Super Cache

If you’re using an older version of the WP Super Cache plugin, the following screenshot shows the relevant configuration.

wp super cache workaround

Feel free to leave a comment if you are having any issues with this workaround.

Visit the WP Shopping Cart plugin page.

WordPress Shopping Cart – Additional Resources

WP Shopping Cart CSS

The following CSS classes have been included in the plugin. You will just have to update the CSS in the style sheet file (wp_shopping_cart_style.css) of the wordpress paypal shopping cart plugin if you want to customize the look and feel of the shopping cart.

  • shopping_cart
  • wp_cart_button.
  • wp_cart_checkout_button

Where is the Settings Menu for the Shopping Cart?

The settings menu for the Shopping cart is located under the Simple Cart Admin menu. Please see the following screenshot:

simple-shopping-cart-settings-menu-sc-1

How to Make the Shopping Cart Show the “Empty Cart” Message on a Post or Page

Use the following cart shortcode which will show the cart even if there are no items in it. When the cart is empty, it will show an empty cart message.

[always_show_wp_shopping_cart]

How to Resize the Add to Cart Buttons

Add the following to the CSS file of this pluign (wp_shopping_cart_style.css)

.wp_cart_button{
height: 20px;
width: 76px;
}

You will have to adjust the size to your needs.

How to Show the Add To Cart Buttons in the Sidebar (Method 1)

We have recently added new shortcodes that uses the WordPress shortcodes API. You can use these shortcodes to place a purchase button for a product on the sidebar widget of your WordPress site:

Here is how to do it:

Step 1) Go to the widgets menu of your WP Admin

Step 2) Add a standard text widget to the sidebar of your site

Step 3) Use one of the shortcodes to create a purchase button for your product that you want to sell:

[wp_cart_button name=”Test Product One” price=”29.95″]

[wp_cart_button name=”Test Product Two” price=”19.95″ shipping=”4.99″]

How to Show the Add To Cart Buttons in the Sidebar (Method 2)

Step 1) Download and activate the Executable PHP code plugin if you don’t have it already (any other PHP executable plugin will work too):

This plugin lets you call php functions from the widgets (it’s similar to the Text widget but it allows you execute PHP code too).

Step 2) Go to the widgets menu and add a ‘PHP Code’ widget to the sidebar (where you want to display the ‘Add to Cart’ buttons or shopping cart). Now you can enter HTML and PHP code here to display whatever you want to show. For example, entering the following line will display an add to cart button:

<?php
$product_name = "Product Name";
$product_price = "10.00";
echo print_wp_cart_button_for_product($product_name, $product_price);
?>

How to Collect Special Instructions from the Customer

If you need to collect special instructions from the customer for some customized work on the item you are selling then you can use the Collect Customer  Input Addon.

Setting up PayPal IPN Notification Feature

Read the PayPal IPN setup documentation.

Get the Total Number of Items in the Shopping Cart

If you are creating a mod/tweak for the simple shopping cart and you want to know the total number of items in the cart then check this post.

Return to the WP Shopping Cart plugin page.