Beginning PHP6, Apache, MySQL Web Development- P20 pps

The information is placed in a form of hidden fields, so when the customers click the Process Order button, they are really posting the data to the final step... In this age of web site

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

echo ($odd == true) ? ‘ < tr class=”odd_row” > ’ : ‘ < tr class=”even_row” >

< > Shipping: $ < ?php echo number_format($cost_subtotal, 2); ? > < /p >

< > Tax: $ < ?php echo number_format($cost_tax, 2); ? > < /p >

< > < strong > Total Cost: $ < ?php echo number_format($cost_total, 2); ? >

li > Enter Billing and Shipping Information < /li >

li > Verify Accuracy of Order Information and Send Order < /li >

li > < strong > Order Confirmation and Receipt < strong > < /li >

< /ol >

< h3 > A copy of this order has been emailed to you for your records < /h3 >

< ?php

echo $html_body;

// send email

$headers = array();

$headers[] = ‘MIME-Version: 1.0’;

$headers[] = ‘Content-type: text/html; charset=”iso-8859-1”’;

$headers[] = ‘Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit’;

$headers[] = ‘From: < store@example.com >

$headers[] = ‘Bcc: < store@example.com >

mail($email, “Order Confirmation”, $html_head $html_body, join(“\r\n”, $headers));

?

4 Now to test it out Enter the site and place a few items in your shopping cart Then choose to check out You should see something that looks like Figure 15 - 4

Figure 15-4

Figure 15-5

5 Enter your billing information, and click the button to proceed to the next step of the checkout

process Your screen should resemble Figure 15 - 5

6 Finally, click the Process Order button Your screen should resemble Figure 15 - 6

How It Works

As you can see, checkout is a three - step process First, you allow the customer to enter his or her billing and shipping information Then, you present the information back to the customer, along with the contents of the shopping cart, for review The final step performs some database manipulation and sends an e - mail to both the customer and to you, as confirmation for the order

Taking a closer look at ecomm_checkout.php , you see it is your basic web form which collects the billing and shipping information and then posts the data to ecomm_checkout2.php This is the first step in the checkout process While you could display the form fields for both the billing and shipping areas side by side, the shipping fields aren ’ t necessary unless the addresses are different A little bit of

Figure 15-6

JavaScript can be tied to the check - box button; if the customer wishes to use a shipping address that is

different from the billing address, the shipping area can be displayed Otherwise, it remains hidden

// update shipping table’s visibility

t.style.display = (c.checked) ? ‘none’ : ‘’;

}

ecomm_checkout2.php accepts the incoming posted data, presents it back for review, and inserts it

into a form full of hidden fields To make sure all the data is passed along to the next step, you check

to see if $_POST[ ‘ same_info ’ ] is set This means the shipping information (if any) that was sent

should be disregarded and set the same as the billing information

The information is placed in a form of hidden fields, so when the customers click the Process Order

button, they are really posting the data to the final step

< form method=”post” action=”ecomm_checkout3.php” >

div >

< input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”Process Order”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”first_name”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘first_name’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”last_name”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘last_name’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”address_1”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘address_1’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”address_2”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘address_2’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”city”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘city’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”state”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘state’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”zip_code”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘zip_code’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”phone”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘phone’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”email”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘email’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_first_name”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_first_name’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_last_name”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_last_name’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_address_1”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_address_1’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_address_2”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_address_2’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_city”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_city’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_state”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_state’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_zip_code”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_zip_code’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_phone”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_phone’]);? > ”/ >

< input type=”hidden” name=”shipping_email”

value=” < ?php echo htmlspecialchars($_POST[‘shipping_email’]);? > ”/ >

/div >

< /form >

The ecomm_checkout3.php script contains the most complex logic of the three checkout scripts, but you will find it is understandable if you patiently work your way through it The first major task is to assign the incoming data and some other important information (such as the current timestamp and the user ’ s session ID) to the variables that will be used throughout the script

$now = date(‘Y-m-d H:i:s’);

$shipping_state = $_POST[‘shipping_state’];

$shipping_zip_code = $_POST[‘shipping_zip_code’];

$shipping_phone = $_POST[‘shipping_phone’];

$shipping_email = $_POST[‘shipping_email’];

Then you need to retrieve the customer ’ s ID from the ecomm_customers database In the case of an existing

customer, the ID can be retrieved with a SELECT statement If the customer is new, then he or she will not

have an ID already stored in the database, so the information needs to be added and a new ID generated

first_name = “’ mysql_real_escape_string($first_name, $db) ‘” AND

last_name = “’ mysql_real_escape_string($last_name, $db) ‘” AND

address_1 = “’ mysql_real_escape_string($address_1, $db) ‘” AND

address_2 = “’ mysql_real_escape_string($address_2, $db) ‘” AND

city = “’ mysql_real_escape_string($city, $db) ‘” AND

state = “’ mysql_real_escape_string($state, $db) ‘” AND

zip_code = “’ mysql_real_escape_string($zip_code, $db) ‘” AND

phone = “’ mysql_real_escape_string($phone, $db) ‘” AND

$query = ‘INSERT INTO ecomm_customers

(customer_id, first_name, last_name, address_1, address_2, city,

state, zip_code, phone, email)

With the customer ’ s valid ID now known, you begin the process of actually storing the order in the

database First, you insert the shipping information into the ecomm_orders table This creates the record and

generates the order ’ s ID, which you need to transfer the shopping cart ’ s contents into the ecomm_order_

details table You come back later to insert the cost values after you transfer the order details

$query = ‘INSERT into ecomm_orders (order_id, order_date, customer_id, cost_subtotal, cost_total, shipping_first_name, shipping_last_name, shipping_address_1, shipping_address_2, shipping_city, shipping_state, shipping_zip_code, shipping_phone, shipping_email)

VALUES (NULL, “’ $now ‘”, ‘ $customer_id ‘, 0.00,

0.00, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_first_name, $db) ‘”, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_last_name, $db) ‘”, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_address_1, $db) ‘”, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_address_2, $db) ‘”, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_city, $db) ‘”, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_state, $db) ‘”, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_zip_code, $db) ‘”, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_phone, $db) ‘”, “’ mysql_real_escape_string($shipping_email, $db) ‘”)’;

‘ $order_id ‘, qty, product_codeFROM

ecomm_temp_cartWHERE

session = “’ $session ‘”’;

mysql_query($query, $db) or (mysql_error($db));

Instead of returning the information retrieved with the SELECT statement to PHP, the script passes the values directly into an INSERT statement and adds them to the table You can add a clause after the SELECT portion of the statement to instruct MySQL how to handle cases where a duplicate value might

be inserted into a column that requires all unique values (a primary key, for example), though that clause

is not necessary for your purposes here The syntax for an INSERT SELECT statement is:

INSERT [IGNORE] INTO tbl_name [(col_name, )]

SELECT

[ ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE col_name=expr, ]

After the products have been transferred from the ecomm_temp_cart table to the ecomm_order_

details table, they are removed from ecomm_temp_cart

$query = ‘DELETE FROM ecomm_temp_cart WHERE session = “’ $session ‘”’;

mysql_query($query, $db) or (mysql_error($db));

The product information is now stored permanently in the details table and associated with the

appropriate order You now need to determine the cost of the purchase and then go back to update the

record in ecomm_orders with that information MySQL ’ s SUM() function adds the values of a column

together and is used to determine the purchase subtotal

For the sake of simplicity, we just use 25% of the subtotal as the cost of shipping, and 10% as the tax rate

Your values would be different, depending on your delivery arrangements and the municipality in

which you live

$cost_shipping = round($cost_subtotal * 0.25, 2);

$cost_tax = round($cost_subtotal * 0.1, 2);

$cost_total = $cost_subtotal + $cost_shipping + $cost_tax;

The order record in the ecomm_orders table is then updated with the order ’ s costs

$query = ‘UPDATE ecomm_orders

$headers[] = ‘Content-type: text/html; charset=”iso-8859-1”’;

$headers[] = ‘Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit’;

$headers[] = ‘From: < store@example.com >

$headers[] = ‘Bcc: < store@example.com >

mail($email, “Order Confirmation”, $html_head $html_body,

join(“\r\n”, $headers));

E - Commerce, Any Way You Slice It

As we mentioned before, you can integrate e - commerce into your site the right way, or you can do it the wrong way To prevent yourself from looking like a complete idiot and virtually ensuring the failure of your venture into e - commerce, we highly recommend doing things the right way! Good word of mouth travels slowly, but we all know how quickly bad word of mouth spreads Also, with so many millions of web sites out there competing for consumers ’ attention, you undoubtedly want to elevate yours above the rest

Here are a few things to remember about some of the more challenging characteristics of your potential customers:

Your customers are impatient They don ’ t want to have to wait for your pages to load or for

answers to their questions They are busy people, just like you, and if they don ’ t find what they need right away, they will leave your site and go somewhere else

Your customers are distrustful Who wants their personal information strewn about all over the

web? You certainly don ’ t, and your customers don ’ t either They don ’ t want their credit card number to be used by every geek in your office, and they don ’ t want to give you tons of money and never see the product they purchased They don ’ t want to order from you one week and have you go bankrupt the next

Your customers want a lot for a little In this age of web site competition, when people can

compare prices on virtually any product with just a few mouse clicks, customers are striving to get the best deal they can But they also appreciate the value - added services of a high - quality web site

Your customers are generally lazy They don ’ t want to have to put any effort into finding the

right product on your site or figuring out what you ’ re trying to say or what your policies are

They don ’ t want to work at trying to get the checkout process to work, and they don ’ t want to have to filter through pages and pages of text to glean information Make things clear and easy

to find

Your customers aren ’ t very forgiving You basically have one chance to make a good first

impression on your customers Nothing can eliminate a sale (and future sales for that matter) faster than a bad experience Whether it is something minor such as spelling mistakes and broken images on your site or something major such as selling faulty merchandise, your customers are likely to remember something bad a lot longer than something good They will also be more likely to share a bad experience than a good one

Your customers may not be as technically savvy as you are Yes, there are actually people out

there who still use dial - up with 56K There are people out there who still use 14 - inch monitors, and there are people out there who have never made an online purchase in their lives

Remember these people, and don ’ t leave them behind totally when designing your site If you

do, you are alienating a huge percentage of the population

Don ’ t worry: Satisfying e - commerce customers is not hard, but a little effort can really go a long way

We ’ ve included some general guidelines to follow After reading them, you may think, “ Well, duh, no kidding, ” but you ’ d be surprised at how many big, well - known companies don ’ t follow them

Information Is Everything

Your customers have to get as much information as possible about your product, because they can ’ t

actually see, feel, touch, or smell what you have to offer Your site is your window to your customers,

and they have to depend on what you ’ re telling them to make their purchasing decision Whatever

blanks you leave in your product description, policies, company history, or checkout process will have to

be filled in by the customer ’ s imagination While that may be good in certain circumstances, you do not

want your customers to make incorrect assumptions that leave them dissatisfied after the fact, or for

their uncertainty to prevent the sale altogether

Besides textual information, graphics are a very important part of the sale There is a fine balance

between adding too many graphics to your site, which causes your potential patrons to wait longer than

they need to, and providing enough high - quality pictures so they can actually see what they ’ re getting

Importance of Trust

Let ’ s talk for a minute about trust over the web We all know that most of the proclaimed 14 - year - old

females in those online chat rooms are really 40 - year - old guys sitting in their living rooms Things are

not always as they seem in the online world, and because of that, as an e - commerce retailer, you are at a

disadvantage over those with a physical storefront and salespeople And then there ’ s the old saying

“ caveat emptor ” ( “ buyer beware ” ), which goes along with any purchase/sales transaction Trust must be

established, and it certainly is an uphill battle If you ’ re an established business already and you have

spent years building product or brand - name recognition, don ’ t think that switching to e - commerce will

be so easy Yes, if your business has an established reputation, you may have an easier time than some

unknown entity, like “ Joe ’ s House of Beauty, ” but people still want to know what they ’ re getting and to

be assured that they ’ re not going to get ripped off

Privacy Policy

Users want to know that their personal information will not be sold and they won ’ t end up on 47 spam

e - mail lists They also want to make sure they won ’ t be on an annoying telemarketing phone list or

receive junk snail mail The only way they can be assured that this won ’ t happen is if you provide a clear

and concise privacy policy in an easy - to - find place on your site

Return Policy

Returns are a sometimes overlooked part of a company ’ s e - commerce venture There have to be

processes in place for accepting returns and shipping out replacement merchandise or issuing credits in

exchange Your users need to know what your return policy is, what your requirements are for accepting

returns, and how returns will be handled once they reach your warehouse (or basement)

If you are a relatively or completely unknown entity, you may want to consider providing a 100 percent

money back guarantee or something similar, to try to build trust with your potential customers You may

get burned once or twice on this, and it may require more work from you, but overall it can be a very

beneficial asset to you, especially if your customers are riding the fence on a potential purchase It also

motivates you to provide the best product or service you can, because you obviously don ’ t want to lose

100 percent of a sale!

Whatever you decide, you should think long and hard about how you want to handle returned merchandise and then make sure your customers understand your decisions, in order to avoid potentially messy misunderstandings later on

Warm Bodies

In this age of technology, sometimes it ’ s nice just to talk to an actual living, breathing person who can answer your questions or help you find what you are looking for If you can manage this in your e - commerce environment, it is another great feature that will undoubtedly pay for itself in those “ on the fence ” purchasing decisions You can provide personal customer service in a few ways:

Give your customers a phone number (preferably a toll - free number) where they can contact your customer service staff (or just you, if you ’ re a one - person show)

Offer online customer service chat for your customers, where you can address customer questions or concerns without having to pay someone to wait for the phone to ring

Provide a customer service e - mail address for questions and problems Although this isn ’ t the optimal solution, because many people don ’ t want to wait for answers to their questions, at least this gives customers an outlet to vent their frustrations and then move on to something else

It also gives you a chance to prepare a proper reply and respond accordingly

Secure Credit Card Processing

Nothing will make your customers feel better than knowing their credit card information is safe and won ’ t get stolen along the way Make sure you are using a secure encryption method to transfer sensitive information, such as SSL certificates, a commonly used standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser This technology will make sure your customers understand how safe their transaction and personal information is It ’ s a good idea not to get too technical; just explain the security process in layman ’ s terms

If it ’ s possible, it ’ s a good idea to have a third party such as VeriSign verify that your site is secure, and prominently display its seal somewhere on your site

Professional Look

You want to make sure your e - commerce site doesn ’ t look amateurish and that it appears as professional

as possible A professional appearance is oftentimes equated with credibility in the minds of your customers, and it helps to build that elusive trusting relationship

Here are some ways to improve the look of your site:

Spend some time viewing other e - commerce sites What do you personally like about them?

What don ’ t you like? By emulating the big guys, you can look big, too

Invest in a few web site design books, or do some online research Numerous articles and books have been written on the topic, and you may as well not reinvent the wheel

If you use a template of some sort, please, please, please do yourself a favor and make sure you

remove all generic instances We ’ ve seen sites with a title bar that reads “ Insert Description

Here ” This is not a good look … trust us

Spell check your document Spell checkers are available in nearly all text editors, so spelling

mistakes are pretty much unacceptable and can really undermine your professional look

Easy Navigation

You want to make sure your customers are able to move around your site and find what they need

Remember the rule from earlier in this section: They do not want to work too hard Make it easy, or they

will lose interest and go somewhere else

Common Links

Make sure you have clear links to every area of your site, and put the common links near the top where

they can be seen easily Common links include a customer ’ s shopping cart, customer service, and user

login

Search Function

You should give your customers a way to easily find what they ’ re looking for An accurate and quick

search engine is essential to accomplish this There are many ways to add this feature to your site, either

through coding it by hand in PHP or hooking up with third - party software Another way to improve

your search engine is to make sure you include misspellings and not - so - common terms, to give your

customers the best results possible

Typical Design

It ’ s been long enough now that most people are accustomed to seeing navigation links either at the top

or to the left side of a page By keeping with this general scheme, you can ensure that your customers

will know where to look to find what they need

Competitive Pricing

If you are selling items that are available from other sources, it ’ s important to remember that your store

can easily be compared with numerous other stores selling the same thing If your prices are way out of

line, your customers will get a good chuckle and then promptly click back to their Google search Do

your research, and make sure you are in line with similar products being sold on the web Not all

customers base their decision solely on price, but they definitely don ’ t want to be taken for a ride, unless

you have a Lamborghini Diablo, and that ’ s a different story

Appropriate Merchandise

Only a handful of stores on the web can get away with carrying a wide range of unrelated products,

and — no offense — chances are you aren ’ t one of them Be sure you are carrying items that are related to

your overall site and to each other, or you will confuse your customers and detract from your look and focus

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Timely Delivery

In this world of “ overnight this ” and “ immediately download that, ” it is no longer acceptable to ask for six to eight weeks to deliver your merchandise to your customers The only exception is if you are creating something custom made, or if your customers are preordering something that hasn ’ t been officially released yet The typical lead time for standard products to ship to a customer is roughly two to three business days If you can do better than that, your customers will be happy, and if not, you need to make sure your customers realize it will take longer, and give them an explanation

It is also important to provide numerous shipping options to your customers and let them decide how quickly they need your products and how much they are willing to spend to get them faster

Communication

Because you are isolated from your customers, communication is essential to building strong relationships Your customers want to know that you received their order, when the order is ready to ship, and when it ships They appreciate getting a tracking number so they can see where their package is every step of the way Some companies even track each outgoing package and let their customers know when they think the package has been delivered, in case there are any misunderstandings All of this can

be communicated via e - mail Your customers will definitely appreciate being kept in the loop and knowing that their order has not been lost somewhere along the order fulfillment and delivery chain

Customer Feedback

The online world presents an interesting dilemma for e - commerce retailers, in that you must operate your store in a bubble You can ’ t tell what your customers are thinking or how they react to your site

You only know you ’ re relatively successful if you have sales, and relatively unsuccessful if you don ’ t

Figuring out which of our rules you ’ re breaking can be a tricky endeavor That ’ s when your customer feedback can make or break you

You always want to give your customers an outlet to express their concerns or problems, and it can give you a warm fuzzy feeling to get some positive feedback once in a while To encourage your customers to provide you with feedback, you should do two things:

Give them an incentive to complete a survey or provide some sort of feedback Free shipping, a discount on their next order, or a special gift of some sort are a few good possibilities

Make it easy for your customers to complete a survey, but make sure it provides you with valuable feedback Don ’ t just ask for their comments; ask them to rate certain areas of your site Also, don ’ t give customers 100 questions; keep it to a maximum of 20 After that, people lose interest, and the special gift isn ’ t worth it

By sticking to the preceding guidelines and advice, you will increase the quality and quantity of your customer feedback and increase your ability to tap into one of your most valuable resources

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