Registration, Shopping Cart, Checkout, Status

Introduction

In this section of the User Manual we will discuss the Shopping Cart functionality, Checkout processing, and the role that Customer Registration plays in the shopping experience.

The opentaps Shopping Cart and Checkout processing are full function implementations, and like the Web Store in general, these functions are fully integrated into the whole opentaps business management system. This means that everything that happens in the Web Store produces a near real-time record in the business management system where status reports can be reviewed on demand.

opentaps provides each active Customer a Shopping Cart, and does preserve the Shopping Cart between Registered-Customer sessions if there is no Checkout. This is called persistence, which means that the Customer must clear out the contents when appropriate. Otherwise the contents are retained and processed in the next Checkout event.

Customer Registration is discussed in the following section, where we point out some of the numerous functions that make use of Registration. We also point out the distinction between the term "Registration" and the term "Account", which are different things in opentaps.

As you will discover, reading through this chapter, many of the Marketing functions of the Web Store are visible and at work in the Shopping Cart screen and the Checkout process. We will point out these interactions in this section and they are discussed in more detail in the section Marketing_Functionality_in_the_Online_Web-Site_Store.