E-Commerce Widgets and Functionality
So you're ready to take the dive (or perhaps you already have) of selling goods on-line. Congratulation! You are about to join the ranks of internet stores. boomtime is fully compatible with many popular on-line stores, whether it is embedded on your page, linked or "virtually hosted" (like shop.yourwebsite.com). With any of these options you can be up and running quickly.
If you don't already have a shopping cart solution, might we suggest ECWid? Ecwid.com provides a very affordable and flexible e-commerce platform with no monthly fee for up to 100 items.
Linking
If you have an existing on-line store, the simplest way to add it to your site is to link to it like any other page. This is very simple, but it will be obvious to customers that they have left your page and are now shopping on a different website.
To add a link to your hosted website you will need to enter the website editor by clicking on the setup tab, and then clicking "website" in the left-hand bar. To add the link your navigation menu, find the icon that looks like a signpost with a green and blue street sign. Click that icon to edit your navigation. In the left-hand bar click "add link/page" and paste the URL for your store
Virtually Hosting
Virtual hosting means that while your store looks like it's hosted by us, it is actually an external application. In this scenario you might have shop.yourwebsite.com, which appears a sub-domain on your website, but who's content is hosted by a third party service. We will need to set up a DNS record to point your sub-domain at your shopping cart. Your shopping cart or e-commerce service should have this information available if they support this method of integration.
We will need you to provide us with the following information:
- The sub-domain you wish to have your store hosted at (i.e. -- shop.yoursite.com or buy.mysite.com)
- The IP address of the service hosting your store (i.e. -- 67.208.39.134)
Embedding
Embedding a shopping cart on your site is the best way to get e-commerce functionality. Your provider will give you embed code to add to your site. This code is something that we will need to embed for you, in order for the system to correctly execute the scripts involved. Here are a few things to keep in mind with embedding any functionality:
- How wide is the main content area?
- If there is a sidebar, does it have crucial content that cannot be hidden?
- How big do you want your product image?
We request that you submit your embed code to us in an email and tell us what page you would like the shopping cart to appear on, as well as provide the account details to log in to your shopping cart or e-commerce account(this is especially useful for ECWid.com's widgets).