A clean, simple and affordable ecommerce solution
We are super pleased to announce a brand new feature we have been working on this year. Now available on all website packages as standard: a shopping cart!
You can see it in action in the screenshots for Ethicurean Life, one of our happy multi-page clients (when courses are active).
We always wanted to be able to offer ecommerce to our website clients and have spent a long time considering the best approach and how to make this option simple, clean and affordable - without the complicated setup and additional costs that other platforms tend to add via transaction fees, etc.
Stripe Checkout
Having worked in depth with Stripe and Stripe Checkout over the years, we decided that this would be the best solution to handle the checkout and payment processing side of online shopping. However, the key thing Stripe is missing is shopping cart functionality and inventory/stock management, only allowing checkout of one item at a time, as standard.
The Splendid Web shopping cart solution
We decided that this was a solution we could build within our system, and then integrate directly with Stripe Checkout. This allows you to setup and manage products, prices and inventory directly within your website (via our content management system).
Shoppers can then use the website to browse products and add them to a persistent shopping cart across the whole website before being directed to Stripe Checkout for the final checkout and purchase. All card payments, receipts, invoicing and checkout details are safely stored and handled by Stripe.
Shipping rates can be created within your website and is passed through to the checkout, and currently we support tax via Stripe's automated tax service.
Outputting a product in our website packages
Product data consists of a product element (eg: T-Shirt) with optional product variants (eg: Large, Medium, Small), plus price and inventory for each variant.
Products within our website package system are an independent data source and can be referenced from anywhere on the website simply by outputting an "add to cart" button. The button shows the available variant options and prices which can be selected along with quantity.
This means product pages can be created using all of the standard page content modules we have available and are not limited to specific areas - super flexible! Products can even be listed on our single page website package and the product detail page can be handled by our dynamic popup module if needed!
Inventory management
Once a customer has made a purchase, we receive data back from Stripe relating to the products purchased and their quantity, which in turn allows us to reduce inventory automatically for each product/variant. Once sold out, the product button will be disabled with a sold out message. Inventory can then be updated manually via the CMS for each product variant when stock levels change.
Rob & Keir have integrated a dependable cart directly into our web build. We’ve found it to be a well functioning and streamlined cart solution. We had issues with Stripe not correctly managing our inventory and overselling out of stock items. No More! Thanks for sorting our issues Splendid Web🙏🏻 Ethicurean Life
Order data and customer receipts
All purchase order is stored in our clients Stripe account (you will need to signup to Stripe if you wish to use this feature). Receipts are automatically emailed to customers by Stripe and any disputes or refunds can all be handled directly in your Stripe account. Transaction data can be exported for reporting and all the normal Stripe benefits apply for all purchases.
What does it cost!?
We are offering our cart included in all our website packages. There are no additional transaction fees or costs added by us at all!
As with all online transactions, there is a fee for the payment processing applied by Stripe. You can read about all the Stripe fees - which remain one of the most cost effective payment processors with their competitively low fees.
We urge anyone looking at ecommerce solutions to study the payment fees carefully before committing as most online platforms actually use Stripe behind the scenes to handle their payment processing and hide it behind confusing marketing and additional transaction fees or price markups.
Want your own ecommerce website setup in no time?
If this sounds like something that would be useful to you, give us a shout! We can create a new site based on an old outdated website or develop something new from scratch. You can send us your content however you like, word, pdf, email and we will have your site ready to go!
We can setup all your products and even help with configuring your Stripe account so that all checkout and payments run smoothly.