We’re having the good fortune right now to have four of our existing clients that we’re going to upgrade their sites to include store fronts. All have small inventories and two are virtual products only. We’re looking at three different shopping carts including DNN Store. We’ve done some mock ups using the DNN Store and the initial feedback is mostly positive, but I’ve got a deal breaker for a couple of the sites that I need your feedback on and then I have several technical questions for you. BTW, we’ve upgraded the sites to DNN CE 7.0.4 and are testing Store 3.1.7.

Back ground: The deal breaker for the two sites has to do with the checkout sequence. When you click “View my basket” they do not want the buyer to have to register at that point or fill out a form at that point and here is the reason. They want the cart to appear with the various line items for the items purchased and then items or additional fields to calculate shipping, taxes and to enter any coupons. Obviously, they have to enter the zip code (postal code) to have the shipping and taxes calculated. A good example of this is newegg.com. The point is the buyer can see what their total bill is going to be including whether their coupons are going to be accepted. If you’re selling a product that can be purchased at many web sites, there is a significant segment of the buying public that will not purchase from you if they have to complete all the billing info before they know the total price. That’s because they’ve been burned too many times with what looked like a good deal, but excessive shipping and handling costs and invalid coupon codes make it too expensive. So they have to cancel the order because it’s no longer a good deal and they wasted their time completing the form and wonder what actually happens to all their info they entered.

Questions:

1.      As far as I can tell, short of having to modify the source code there is no way to change the checkout sequence. Is this correct or did I miss something?

2.      Assuming custom code is required, would this be a fairly significant change or pretty easily accomplished? BTW we don't like modifying the code if we can avoid it.

3.      You had mentioned in a previous post that you could make this an option. Are you still considering that change?

Thank you for your time. I’ll submit our other questions in another request.

Cheers,
Larry