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 Posted 11/12/2007 10:05:09 PM |
| | Hi all,
What methods are people using to manage the Shopping Cart before the Customer actually Checks Out ?
The user can still be anonymous and not register prior to checking out.
1.Use Session
2. Persist to Table with a Key (???)
3. Use Asp.Net Session Persistence in the Web. Config (I haven't used this )
1. My current code is saving the Cart Items in a Dataset with a Header Info Table and a Cart Items Table.
The cart is saved in Session("dsCart")
The cart is cleaned up (removed) when the Order is completed.
Issues: Since this dependent on Session ( my current default Timeout is 20 minutes )
the cart will disappear.
2. If the cart is saved to a Database Table then this could be avoided but now I need to somehow Identify the
Saved Cart by some SessionID / Guid associated with the "anonymous" customer at this point.
3. Anyone doing this for a Shopping Cart ?
Peace, LA Guy
Paul Chu |
| | Posted 11/13/2007 2:07:29 PM |
| | | It's been my experience that sites like Amazon do just this. If you never log in your cart is still available when you check back a few days later. I would suspect they place a cookie on the user's computer that links them with their session in a database. When you log it I would think it just simply remaps the user's database session with their actual login account. For a shopping cart system I would definintely recommend this. You want to make it as easy as possible for users to buy. If they have to reload their cart a few days later they may be encouraged to look else where since they have to do the work all over again anyway. Matt
Matt Penner  |
| | Posted 11/13/2007 7:01:57 PM |
| | Hi Matt,
Thanks, I guess the most straight forward way is to save a new Cookie with the Key of the saved Cart.
But if they block Cookies, that is toast.
Are there any other alternatives.
Peace, LA Guy
Paul Chu |
| | Posted 11/14/2007 12:41:27 PM |
| | | Hi Paul, Matt's recommendation is valid. The user has to enable cookies or they don't get the full benefit. It's just way too much work to try and develop for every condition. James
James Johnson
President, Inland Empire .NET User's Group
www.iedotnetug.org |
| | Posted 11/15/2007 2:47:13 PM |
| | | The problem is you are trying to "remember" a user's choices when they return at a later date. To do this you must track the user somehow. I only see two ways to do this (there may be others): - Have them log in (you already said you didn't want to require this)
- Identify them based on some non-interactive way
The industry strandard to accomplish #2 in a reliable manner is to use Cookies. The only other methods I can think of would be to store info returned by the browser, such as IP address and such, however, this certainly isn't user specific. One company may have several hundreds of users all using IE7 and behind one IP address. I wouldn't want someone else's cart to show up when I log in. What a mess! So, if the user isn't willing to accept cookies, or deletes their cookies, then they miss out. I believe this is also an now an understood industry fact of life. Plus, I don't know the statistics, but even if only 50% of your users allow cookies, then that's 50% more users who retain their shopping carts than you had before. Matt
Matt Penner |
| | Posted 1/9/2008 5:19:37 PM |
| | some type of session id you presist to a temporary table and clear the data when they get stale.
asp.net allows you to store information in the querystring as well.
- mike |
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