EasyCart Support
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Table of Contents

Section I: Placing An Order

Creating the Shopping Cart
When a shopper enters the site, a cookie is created containing the cart id. The value for the cart id is defined using a random number generator that uses the current time (in seconds since January 1st , 1970) as input. This helps to ensure that the cart id is truly random and unique. This cookie persists only while the user session is open -- that is, until the browser application quits or until the order process is completed, at which time the cookie is automatically deleted by EasyCart.

Adding an Item to the Shopping Cart
Each item on your web site will have an order button. When the user clicks on this button, it invokes EasyCart and sends it an Item ID and Quantity. The quantity is typically defaulted to "1" as shown in the following example:

http://www.yoursite.com/easycart/carts/addtocart.php?itemid=P123&quantity=1

The Item ID refers to an item in your products database (see below) and is used to store the pricing information and product descriptions that will appear in the shopping cart.

Viewing the Cart Contents
To view the contents of the shopping cart, a user may click on the "View Cart" icon, wherever it is placed on your site. If the cart contains no items then the following text will be displayed:

Your Shopping Cart is Empty.

If there are items in the cart then those items will be listed along with their descriptions, prices and quantities. The user is also presented with instructions on changing quantities, deleting items, checking out and continuing to shop.

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Checking Out
The user may check out by clicking on the "Check-Out" icon placed anywhere on your site. This icon is also present in the "View Cart" screen.

Personal Information
Upon checking out, the user will be presented with the shopping cart contents for verification and will be prompted to complete a form with their name, billing address, shipping address, email address and telephone number. Except for the shipping address, all information is required. The shipping address is only required when the user wishes to ship the products to a location other than the billing address.

Validation for most fields is limited to confirming that the field is populated. However, 'email', 'telephone' and 'zip code' include additional validation to ensure that they are presented in the right format and with the correct number of digits:

• For email, the validation looks for a value in the form: name@domain.com.
• Telephone numbers must be ten digits and in the form: 800-555-1212.
• Zip codes may be either 5 or 9 digits long.
  

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Finally, the list of states must be customized. for example, you may wish to include U.S. owned territories or Canadian provinces in your list. To customize your list, please contact technical support.

Payment Information
After entering contact information described in the previous section, the user clicks "Continue" and is asked to enter payment information:

• credit card type
• credit card number
• expiration month
• expiration year

Accepted credit cards include:

• Visa
• Mastercard
• American Express
• Discover/Novus
• Diner's Club
• Carte Blanche
• JCB
• Australian BankCard

Prior to implementing EasyCart, the list of accepted cards would be modified to conform to your business.

All payment information is required and is validated on form submission to ensure that fields are not empty. Additionally, the credit card number is checked against the credit card type to ensure that it includes the correct number of digits and that the range of numbers are valid for that card type. The credit card is not validated, however, to ensure that it is a valid card, only that the number is in the right format. Validating the credit card number will occur off line using your existing in store method.

Submitting an Order
Once payment information has been entered, the user will click the button labeled "Submit Order". Prior to this point the order may be cancelled at any time by returning to the home page or by quitting the browser application. Submitting the payment information will result in the following actions:

• The shopping cart status is changed to "closed" indicating that the order is ready for off-line credit card processing
• An email notification is sent to the merchant indicating that an order is ready for further processing
• The shopper is presented with an order confirmation page suitable for printing. This page contains the cart contents, totals, an order ID number (the cart id), and instructions for contacting the merchant
  

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