The Turtle skin can be used to sell your photos or products. To use this option you'll need to hold a Pro license or a Power storage account with jAlbum. Although the payment is routed through Paypal, your customers don't need to be signed up with paypal, they can simply use their credit cards. Follow the steps to create an album with shopping cart, and peek at what your customers see during the shopping process.
Step 1. Create an album
You need to start by creating the album you want to add a shopping cart to. Please have a look at the tutorial below if you need help with this.
---> Create your first album with the desktop application
Step 2. Setting up the shopping cart
First of all you need to make sure you are signed in within jAlbum. If you are not, click Sign in on the top left. If you signed in only after you've opened the album you might need to re-load the skin with Ctrl+R.
Go to Settings >> Turtle >> Selling photos>> Paypal and tick the checkbox Use paypal shopping cart.
Now you need to add your seller ID, the seller ID is the unique ID you got from the payment provider site when you signed up. On paypal the seller ID is your email address.
If you don't have a paypal account yet you can sign up here.
2.1 Where to put the shopping cart
You can choose to have the shopping cart in the slide page, on the index page or on both. Below you can see how it will look on the slide page and on the index page.
2.2 Add other settings for the shopping cart
- Specify the currency you want to receive payments in. You can use only one currency in a shopping cart!
- Add Overall handling if applies. This is the amount that will be added only once on top of each finished shopping cart. E.g. a flat package and posting fee.
- Add your default Shop options in the following syntax: Shop option name=Price, e.g. 10x15" Print=1.00. Don't use any currency sign here!
- If you want to add a shipping fee on top of each item you can use the following syntax: Shop option name=Price+Shipping, e.g. A1 poster=50+10 – this means the price for the poster is $50, and will be added $10 on top of each as shipping cost.
- You can add as many options as you wish – each in a new line –, and naturally you can mix those with and without a shipping fee.
2.3 Add discounts
- You can add a global discount rate to the shopping cart. The discount needs to be greater than 0 and less than 100. The discount will be added to all items and it will look like the example below.
- You can also add shop coupons. This is a discount code that the user can enter in the shopping cart, you can add a code, a discount and an expiration date. You add as many coupons you like, just make sure each coupon is added in a new line. The format is couponcode=price <expiry. It can look like this for example: DISCOUNT20=20% < 2015-01-01 When you have added shop coupons it will look like the example below. The user can add the coupon code in the yellow textfield.
Step 3. Setting up individual shopping options for the pictures
If your items have different prices or you want different options attached to them, no problem, you can specify individual shop options in Edit mode. Mark the image you want to add the individual shopping options to and click in the Edit-tab top right or just hover the image and press Edit.
Open the Image data in the collumn to the right. Here you can specify the shop option you want for this picture only. The syntax is the same as with the global options, see above. If you want to use the default option just leave this box empty. If you don't want the shopping cart added to a specific picture just add a minus sign here.
Step 4. Final touches
Before you release the album to the public you might want to tweak the album here or there. Here are some suggestions for albums made for selling.
- Set the shopping cart as visible by default: Settings >> Turtle >> Images >> Visibility and tick the checkbox Info panel visible by default and Selling photos.
- You can add Terms and Conditions in a pop up window through the Settings >> Turtle >> Advanced >> Album info window, or naturally you can a custom page too with right-click >> New page >> Empty page.
- You might also want to add social plugins to your shop on the Settings >> Turtle >> Social panel.
Now it's time to see what we've done. Hit Make Album and preview! You can now check if the shopping cart works, but do not proceed to checkout unless you have a sandbox account with Paypal.
Step 5. The shopping process
- Your visitor will see the shopping cart by default
- He / she can choose the shop option and specify the quantity. The total amount will be displayed next to it.
- The Add to cart button places the item in the shopping cart and a popup window will come up with the items already placed in the cart
- The View Cart button is there to check the shopping cart content without placing a new item in it
- This is how Paypal's shopping cart looks like. You can remove items, change quantities here, and when you are ready you can go to check out and pay either from a Paypal account or by a Credit card. See right.
- When the payment has completed you will receive a notification in email with the list of sold products each with folder and file name, the shop option chosen and the quantity
Now it's your turn to fulfil the order
Failing to do so will result in a "dispute" opened by the customer, and if there's no agreement within 3 weeks, Paypal will get back the money from the seller, and devalue its "reputation", which easily lead to a locked seller account, with locked money too.
Conlusion
Opening a shop with the help of Turtle skin is that easy. Fits for web-shops selling just a few items and those who don't need advanced commercial features like database-driven stock handling.
See an example album here.