These questions are about php shopping cart softwares like magento, bigcommerce, opencart etc thats why i have .
I have ecommerce site but its custom made. It doesnt use any readymade ecommerce cms.
I want to create same feature on my website in php so posted these in php category
i would like to know
After how much time or hours does ecommerce website mark the cart as abondened ??
Do they have separate tables for abondened cart and shopping cart ??
The moment product is added to cart, does it goes to abondened cart and shopping cart tables both ??
if the person added the products to cart and completes order,
then also the items still remain in cart table, how do they mark these items as non-abondened items ??
In my experience, Ecommerce sites send emails to customers who have made purchases from their store, I don’t think they are picking out those who did not buy.
To have the email address, the user must have registered an account, so what they probably do is email everyone who has an account registered, not just those who abandon the cart.[quote=“vinpkl, post:1, topic:226160”]
3) The moment product is added to cart, does it goes to abondened cart and shopping cart tables both ??
[/quote]
I’ve not worked on Ecommerce, but I imagine that items are first added to an array in a session before any more permanent storage.
After a purchase that data may be stored in a database logging what the user bought. The same could be done for abandoned carts, if you thought that data was useful. Chances are the user found a suitable product elsewhere, cheaper, and no longer needs it.
Some time ago I made an abandoned cart for a client in a custom made online shop. He simply wanted to see what products people added to the cart and possibly speculate why they didn’t finalize the transaction. He didn’t go as far as wanting to send reminders to those people.
I imagine if I were a shop owner I would also like to see what is happening in the shopping carts of my potential clients - among other things this shows what people are interested in.
The way it works in my case:
The first product added to a cart immediately creates an abandoned cart even if the cart isn’t abandoned later on. The abandoned cart is updated whenever the user makes changes to the shopping cart. So the shop admin can see immediately what people have in their carts and when each cart was created. If the user completes the order then the abandoned cart is deleted.
The abandoned carts are in separate tables so they don’t interfere with the actual carts or orders.
A product added to the cart goes both to the shopping cart and to the abandoned cart. However, the regular shopping cart is kept in a php session so it doesn’t really have its dedicated tables in the db.
When a person completes the order both the shopping cart and abandoned cart are cleared and the items are transferred to the orders table.
I don’t know how other abandoned carts work but this client seems to be happy with this kind of mechanism.
I can see the idea of this but as a customer if I had to give my email address in order to put items in a cart, I’d exit stage left quicker than Snagglepuss.
I agree but having an abandoned cart feature does not mean an email address is necessary. It is only necessary for sending reminders.
My shopping habits are the same - if I can’t get to the last stage of creating my order and see all the costs including shipping and choosing payment methods without having to enter any of my personal data - I quit and go elsewhere.
Actually, a few days ago I was a potential customer who got such an email - I had an old account in an online shop so I logged in and put a few items to my cart. Next day I got an email encouraging me to complete the order - I neither felt positive or negative about it but I can understand how this can be effective on a large number of people: this makes completing the order very convenient because you don’t have to choose the products again, you may be just slightly hesitating and be on the brink of making the decision and the shopping cart is ready here for you and you just have to click! I imagine some people will certainly follow the bait because it is so easy - on a large scale it can bring a lot of additional income.
Finally, I decided to investigate more about current opinions about this shop and made the purchase elsewhere based on better warranty and potential replacement options.