Let me be straight-forward about this, so please forgive me if I sound harsh: Building a complete shopping cart experience in Imagevue is one thing. Connecting it to a multitude of payment processors is another. Handling the callback from the payment processor for confirmation of an order is a 3rd thing. Then taking into consideration that all users want a dozen variable options like type, size, resolution, print, paper, t-shirts and you-name-it. All this has to be built into the Imagevue cart(based upon the print provider who we dont know?), and then forwarded to the the payment processor, and then back to the gallery owner. Now, you are asking if we can even put in a free choice of print providers, that you can just "plugin" to the entire process. This is a somewhat impossible task ... Even the biggest companies like flickr and gallery.mac have their choice of providers, with galleries hosted on their own servers, and with 100s of developers working on them. To put it bluntly, this is out of our capacity ...mamo wrote:i really would like such a feature of an e-commerce system. though i am not a technical experienced user i donn ´t know how difficult it would be to offer the possibility to implement the fotoservice of your own choice. lets say i rather would like to use a different fotoservice then i just would have to add the "details" in the adminarea and it would work with every service (or lets say a couple of different ones).
but i guess every service is different so it would be difficult to implement such an "open" standard?
Just for the record - Do you know of any other downloadable galleries that provide such e-commerce options? That you can just plugin to any purchase interface and any print-service interface? Do you know ANY gallery service(even hosted) with e-commerce that provides a choice of adding your own print provider?
Unfortunately, we have to operate within certain limitations here.
Sorry if this comes across as technical jargon to many, but I think people are unrealistic about what to expect from a shopping cart in Imagevue. In fact, what you are asking, is for us to make our own version of Fotomoto, but make it better and more flexible by connecting to any odd printing service ...
I understand very well that owners wish to be able to just select their own printing service, but I just can't see how this can be done ... At best, it would be a very incomplete checkout experience for the visitor. At best, it would be something like this:
1. Visitor clicks "purchase" in imagevue interface
2. Visitor has a limited amount of options to select what they are purchasing
3. On checkout, visitor is just forwarded to payment processor. They will be promted to just "Pay Now" with no more details about what they are paying for, and when they will get it. Not very assuring perhaps?
4. Gallery owner gets an email with details on the order, and has to proceed with "shipment" ... Everything from here on is manual communication between buyer and seller.
5A. Now if you do have a print-service provider, you will forward your order to them, and then you will need to make sure they follow up and send the correct package to buyer.
5B. Maybe you dont have a service, and want to print and pack yourself? Sure, but a little tedious perhaps.
Fotomoto does the entire process above, while keeping the buyer on the same interface, handling support, and automating the entire process.
Thanks for feedback! It is very enlightening for us ...