There’s no quicky way to set up your Zen Cart store so that each product has your affiliate link to a vendor’s site, but I found a suggestion on the Zen Cart forum and developed it a little.

I’ve set up one of my stores to be an affiliate site for the products. Here are the steps to take:

1. Set your site to be in Showcase mode with or w/o prices (Admin/Configuration/My Store/Store Status)
2. For each product you set up, put in your affiliate link for the product url.
3. By default, the product url shows very inconspicuously on the product page as ‘click here for more product information’ but you can change includes/templates/YOURTEMPLATE/templates/tpl_product_info_display.php so that it shows a big Ordering Information button instead. I also created a separate button that says Product Details for the category page.
   • Create a Product Details button, name it button_product_details.gif and put it in the includes/templates/YOURTEMPLATE/buttons/english.
   • Also create a button_ordering_info.gif button.
   • Then in includes/languages/english/button_names.php add:

     define(‘BUTTON_IMAGE_PRODUCT_DETAILS’, ‘button_product_details.gif’);
     define(‘BUTTON_PRODUCT_DETAILS_ALT’, ‘Product Details’);
     define(‘BUTTON_IMAGE_ORDERING_INFO’, ‘button_ordering_info.gif’);
     define(‘BUTTON_ORDERING_INFO_ALT’, ‘Ordering Info’);
     

   • In includes/templates/YOURTEMPLATE/templates/tpl_product_info_display.php, find div id=”cartadd” and in that division, replace this:

           echo $display_qty;
           echo $display_button;

     with this:

     <?php echo '<a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_REDIRECT, 'action=url&goto=' . urlencode($products_url), 'NONSSL', true, false) . '" target="_blank">' . zen_image_button(BUTTON_IMAGE_ORDERING_INFO , BUTTON_ORDERING_INFO_ALT) . '</a>'; ?>

     This will put a nice Ordering Info button on your product page. Note that the above will link to a new window. If you want to stay within the same browser window, omit target="_blank".
   • In that same file, find id=”productInfoLink” class=”productGeneral centeredContent” in the p tag and replace this:

     <?php echo sprintf(TEXT_MORE_INFORMATION, zen_href_link(FILENAME_REDIRECT, 'action=url&goto=' . urlencode($products_url), 'NONSSL', true, false)); ?>

     with this:

       <?php echo '<a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_REDIRECT, 'action=url&goto=' . urlencode($products_url), 'NONSSL', true, false) . '" target="_blank">' . zen_image_button(BUTTON_IMAGE_ORDERING_INFO , BUTTON_ORDERING_INFO_ALT) . '</a>'; ?>

     Again, omit target="_blank" if you want the same browser window.
4. Showcase mode means everywhere a Buy It Now button ordinarily shows, it will show a Contact Us link. But that’s not what I want. So change the Contact Us link on the category pages to the nice Product Details button you created in a previous step by changing includes/modules/YOURTEMPLATE/product_listing.php. Just find this text:

    $lc_text .= '<br />' . zen_get_buy_now_button($listing->fields['products_id'], $the_button, $products_link) . 'def<br />' . zen_get_products_quantity_min_units_display($listing->fields['products_id']);

   and replace it with this text:

   $lc_text .= '<br /><a href="' . zen_href_link(zen_get_info_page($listing->fields['products_id']), ($_GET['cPath'] > 0 ? 'cPath=' . $_GET['cPath'] . '&' : '') . 'products_id=' . $listing->fields['products_id']) . '">' . zen_image_button(BUTTON_IMAGE_PRODUCT_DETAILS , BUTTON_PRODUCT_DETAILS_ALT) . '</a><br />' . zen_get_products_quantity_min_units_display($listing->fields['products_id']);

5. I wanted to do a similar thing on the All Products page but this time I wanted to remove the Contact Us link entirely and make the default ‘…more info’ more prominent than my template has by default.
   • Remove the contact us link in admin by configuration/all listing — set Display Product Buy Now Button to 0.
   • Make the ‘more info’ more noticeable (this part is optional depending on your template) by editing includes/templates/YOUR TEMPLATE/templates/tpl_modules_products_all_listing.php. You can either replace it with the Product Details button by replacing this (it appears in a few places):

     >' .  MORE_INFO_TEXT

     with this:

     ><br clear="all">' . zen_image_button(BUTTON_IMAGE_PRODUCT_DETAILS , BUTTON_PRODUCT_DETAILS_ALT)

     OR you can just make the ‘more info’ more noticeable by tweaking the css.
     
     
     • In includes/templates/YOURTEMPLATE/css/stylesheets.css add this:
       a.moreinfo {color: blue; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;}
       a.moreinfo:hover {color: purple; font-weight: bold;}
       
       Note: make sure you add it after the normal anchor styles or else it won’t take effect.
     • In includes/templates/YOUR TEMPLATE/templates/tpl_modules_products_all_listing.php look for every chunk of text that has MORE_INFO_TEXT and find the beginning of the anchor tag. It will look like

       <a href=

       Just add class=”moreinfo” right before href, but make sure you leave a space before and after. So the beginning of your anchor tag should now look like the following:

       <a class="moreinfo" href=

   • If you’re also using a Featured Products or New Products section, you can make the same changes.
   • I removed the New Products, Specials, and Reviews from my site map by editing includes/templates/YOURTEMPLATE/templates/tpl_site_map_default.php and commenting out the appropriate line.

That’s about it. Here are some screen shots to give you an idea of the finished product.

Posted by susb8383 under My Zen Cart Store | 4 Comments »

The other day I got an order for an exercise wheel to be shipped via Parcel Post. Since it was after counter hours at the post office, I got the box all packaged and addressed, and then I used their self-help station to buy the postage.

I answered the questions on the screen one-by-one. When it came time to input the size of the box, the screen instructed me to measure the box by using their rules that were mounted at the station. You just put your box in the corner and you can see the width, height, and length settings on the metal rulers that are mounted on the sides and bottm of the station.

When I read the numbers off the rulers and entered them in, I noticed it wanted to charge me 20.78. Now I knew from the shipping calculator in ZenCart that it should have only been 7.88. This program was trying to charge me extra for having a "large box."

Now I had researched the size requirements very carefully before I bought the box and I knew it was not a large box.

Upon further investigation, I found that the height ruler built into the station was wrong. The measurements started from the counter of the station. BUT in the middle of the station contains a raised metal scale. It is about 1/2" high. So this means that if your package is resting on the scale (which it will 99% of the time unless you have a tiny box) it will be measured on the ruler as 1/2" too high.

Usually this won’t make a difference. But in my case the extra 1/2" was enough to change my box from a normal box to a large box.

So the moral is, if you are using one of these self-help stations at your post office and the height comes to a 1/2" measurement on the ruler, round down and you should be fine.

Posted by susb8383 under My Zen Cart Store | No Comments »

In a previous post (New Store on ZenCart) I mentioned that I had 33 people visit my site but not a single one of them bought anything.

I also noticed something else. A lot of people showed up in my ZenCart admin console as customers, but not as orders. So this means that they put one of my exercise wheels in their shopping cart, clicked Check Out, filled in the customer information, but then bailed when they got to the next page which is shipping methods.

Why did they bail? No idea. BUT I did have their email addresses. So I decided to ask them.

I sent each one who didn’t order a very low-key email which went like this:

Surprisingly most of the people answered me back, and the information I found out was extremely helpful.

90% of the answers I got told me that my shipping charges were too high. As I investigated other sites that sell the same item, I found that the problem was I was offering UPS and FedEx, but not USPS Priority Mail or Parcel Post.

This was intentional on my part because the Post Office has strict rules about box sizes. Since this was a new store for me, I didn’t want to buy a bunch of boxes in case my items didn’t sell. So everytime I got an order, I went across the street to Ace Hardware and bought one of their shipping boxes that was 12 x 12 x 18.

It used to be that USPS considered this a normal box, but pretty recently (2007) they said that anything bigger than 12 x 12 x 12 is considered a large box and extra charges apply.

But my potential customers were telling me they want the price of USPS.

So I went online and bought 25 shipping boxes that fit within the USPS definition of a normal box. Then I could offer Parcel Post and Priority Mail without getting hit with the large-box rate.

I learned some valuable information by asking my potential clients. Now I never could have done this if I had all of my checkout fields on one page because if they didn’t place the order, I wouldn’t have had any of their contact information.

It may be that once I get a very small bail-out percentage, I’ll switch over to a one-page checkout.

And yes, offering UPSP shipping did start getting me orders! Yippee!

Posted by susb8383 under My Zen Cart Store | No Comments »