Introduction to RealCart
How RealCart works
RealCart™ is a Java applet. An applet is a “small application” or “program” that runs inside a web page. The shopping cart applet is loaded into the browser just like an image or sound file and performs the tasks it has been programmed for right inside the browser. Our applet loads right up front and is the first thing you see when you open your new on-line storefront in your browser.
The key to easy buying is to have a shopping cart that doesn’t do a “disappearing act” the way most e-commerce shopping carts do today. Have you ever been in the cereal aisle at the grocery store looking at the Wheaties® and Cheerios® only to turn around and find a “View Cart” button on the floor where your shopping cart once stood? Have you ever put something in your shopping cart at the store and have it vaporize upon adding it to your cart? Have you ever had to “recalculate” or “modify” your shopping cart at the grocery store? Of course everyone has put something in their shopping cart at the store only to remove it later after deciding not to buy it. It’s easy to remove something out of an off-line cart. It’s just as easy to remove something from RealCart™. If you’re going to have a shopping cart on your site shouldn’t you have the one that everyone already knows how to use? Ours is that shopping cart.
Frames
The way this shopping cart stays visible is through the use of frames. A framed page is a page that has two or more panels to it that scroll independently of each other. You do not need to use frames on your existing site to use RealCart. RealCart does not interfere with or otherwise modify your existing site at all. The frames are only used on the shopping cart pages which will be added to your site upon publishing your on-line store.
Some frames, such as the frame the shopping cart itself is displayed in, do not scroll at all. If your web site does not use frames you may continue to not use frames for all of your existing pages. This shopping cart does not replace your current web site. It is an addition to your web. The shopping cart frame may be modified, moved or otherwise customized.
The cart itself can be placed on top or below, on the left (default) or on the right. Where you decide to place the shopping cart applet itself is completely up to you. The only thing that you may not do is remove the frameset altogether. The shopping cart will lose it’s contents when it is unloaded and therefore should remain loaded the entire time the web shopper shops.
We designed the shopping cart to stay visible as it’s number one feature. Without the shopping cart visible the entire time our product ceases to be our product. Remaining visible isn’t just a preference, we feel that it is imperative. For the customer, for you, for sales. There are no limits on the customization our product will allow other than this one requirement. Anything else you choose to do with the layout and design of your on-line store is totally up to you.
Leave the shopping cart visible and anything else goes. It’s your store. Customize it any way you want. The only thing we recommend is that you customize after you get your store up and running not before you’ve gotten all the operating bugs worked out.
Database
RealCart utilizes a Microsoft Access 97 database. The database holds the store and product information and merges this information with our templates each time the store is rebuilt with RealCart on your PC. The templates work similar to a mail merge in Microsoft Word or other word processor. More on that in Section 2.7.
Since all of the database activity happens on your local hard drive you need only upload the finished static html pages to any web server. The database does not go on your web hosting server. This design accomplishes two things.
- Faster download and browsing times for your web shoppers. Since the store isn’t dynamically generated as your shoppers browse your store there is no lag time in viewing your product pages. The static html pages download significantly faster than a dynamic site.
- Universal compatibility with virtually any web server. Just about any web server capable of serving html pages will run RealCart. Only a handful of the FREE web hosting plans like Tripod and FREE Yellow are unable to run our shopping cart due to filename restrictions.
Although it is possible to edit the database with Access 97 directly, we do not recommend this unless you know what you are doing. It is possible to open the database and merge records into it from other databases. RealCart Technical Support will assist users with entering products through the built-in product wizard but not if you are editing the database directly. Editing the database directly with Access 97 is something you do at your own risk. (Needless to say, backup your data often if you are manipulating your data with a program other than RealCart.)
Do not attempt to edit the database with a newer version of Access than Access 97 or you will corrupt the database and cause your store not to open in our program. (Revert to your backup.)
Customizing made easy
We knew you would want to customize your shopping cart. The original concept of customization was part of the reason why this shopping cart was created in the first place. Since our product was developed by a web designer the customization capabilities had to be there or creating this shopping cart would have been a total waste of time.
There really is nothing that cannot be colorized, digitized, reorganized or otherwise customized more than this product. Not at any price, not anywhere -- not gonna happen! Everything from the color of the shopping cart applet to the backgrounds to the text and styles in the templates can be defined any way you see fit.
RealCart™ comes with an arsenal of template themes. The themes available for the shopping cart allow any user to quickly change the look of his on-line store with a single mouse click. Keep in mind that customization of the templates are not supported by RealCart technical support so you do this at your own peril.
Take a look at the customization section of the manual for some tips to get you going. Remember, customize your shopping cart after you have gotten it to work correctly on your site. This way RealCart tech support can help you get it to work. After you get it to work then you can customize to your heart’s content.
Compatibility
Compatibility is another major goal of our program. The Internet’s world wide web is an ever evolving place. Portals like IcQ, HumanClick, MSN Messenger, Yahoo and others that come on the scene every day are rapidly making the Internet an easier place to get things done. Auction sites like eBay have redefined how people sell things on the web. Our shopping cart embraces these technologies and allows you to integrate them into your on-line store.
Personalized customer service is the number one thing web shoppers still want even when they are cybershopping. Nothing beats human interaction and therefore you will see live customer service enabled store fronts among the most successful e-commerce sites on the web. HumanClick.com offers a FREE web based chat solution (as well as premium plans) that allows your customer to “talk” to you real time when he or she is ready to make a buying decision. It makes your cyber store a lot more like the off-line store. A customer has a question. A clerk answers it just like in the off-line store.
We also knew that our merchants would want a shopping cart that “hooks up” with all of the top payment gateways like Authorize.net, WorldPay, Card Ready International and others. Ours does. A selection in the Checkout Wizard allows you to choose and configure these third party providers as easy as selecting “Bold” or “Italic” in a word processor. We accept suggestions to add new payment gateways that we are currently not integrated with our shopping cart if you will submit the information to us on our site at http://support.RealCart.com/gateway.
Trial Period
Our software is unique in that we allow you to use it FREE of charge for an entire month to make sure that it will fit your needs. This is called shareware. Shareware simply means that you can try out the software before you purchase it. This way you can use it risk free for thirty days to be sure it is the cart for you. If you decide you want to continue using the software after the 30 day trial period you will need to purchase a RealCart license. More on RealCart licenses can be found in Section 1.2
Some words of advice
In our years of developing the internet’s easiest to “buy with” shopping cart we have seen some merchants flourish while others never sell a thing. The difference between these merchants is that the successful merchants publish their store. This may sound a little over simplified as to why some merchants don’t sell anything but believe us when we say that it happens to more merchants than you may think. Don’t let it happen to you. To get started in e-commerce all you need is some diligence and a couple of days to familiarize yourself with this manual and our software. The HARDEST part of getting started in e-commerce is finding the right shopping cart. You’ve already completed this task successfully! If it took you just a little while to find us then consider yourself lucky. There are thousands of ‘so-called’ shopping carts on the internet. RealCart™ is the only one that actually IS a shopping cart, literally!
Some merchants spend weeks and look at dozens of shopping carts that are either too difficult to configure for the merchant to figure out or they are hosted on someone else’s server and when they’re down, you’re down. Using an e-commerce service like PayPal’s free shopping cart or any shopping cart that doesn’t load onto and run on your web server. The way to tell if a shopping cart is running on your web server is to keep your eyes on the address bar of the browser as you navigate to and through the shopping cart. If the address changes to another domain other than yours at any point of the shopping process then you are looking at a ‘hosted’ service meaning that the actual shopping cart pages themselves are not even on the same server as your existing web pages. Why is this bad? you may ask... Because now you are relying on TWO servers to be up in order to sell things from your site. Your existing web server must be up and online as well as your shopping cart server. If either of these web servers goes down then your entire store is down. What you need is a shopping cart that runs on your web server to reduce inevitable, potential down-time.
What to avoid
Hosted solutions also tend to cost you money on an on-going basis. RealCart™ is different. There are no on-going costs associated with the shopping cart software itself. You may have payment gateway and merchant account fees that continue ongoing but you will not have to pay anything more for RealCart™ version 2. Updates of version 2 are always FREE. There is nothing extra to pay for unless you want a CD or branding which we will discuss a little later on. Hosted shopping cart costs mount up into serious money over time. Avoid paying monthly fees for your on-line store’s shopping cart. It’s enough to have to pay on-going merchant account fees. There’s no need to add monthly shopping cart charges on top of that.
Don’t get so wrapped up in customization that you never actually publish your store. Many users who never sell a thing also never seem to get around to publishing their store. Make sure this doesn’t happen to you. RealCart™ is a lot like instant hot chocolate. If you will start with the information you’ll need to properly configure the store you can be on-line and selling in a matter of hours. Chapter two begins with a complete list of everything you will be expected to know when you set up RealCart™ for the first time. Use this manual, use our support site and always use the Ask RealCart button when you can’t find it on the site and need quick technical support answers.
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