The Shopping Cart’s functionality changes depending on whether or not Vendasta Payments has been set up.
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For Partners using Vendasta Payments, customers can enter their payment information to purchase and automatically enable the products in their cart. Users will also receive a receipt for their payment via email.
- For Partners who are not using Vendasta Payments (or when the cart contains one or more products that can’t be purchased through the Shopping Cart, users can submit an order for the products in their cart. Once the order has been reviewed and the products have been activated, users will be able to access the products they ordered via Business App.
Your customers will have a different experience depending if they initiate a purchase directly from your public store or from the Business App store.
Why is using the shopping cart important?
The Shopping Cart appears in your Business App Store and your Public Store and allows both prospective customers and Business App users to purchase multiple products and services from your Store simultaneously.
Using the Shopping Cart in the Public Store
Customers viewing your Public Store on your website can add products to their cart at any time, but they will need to create an account or sign in to an existing account before purchasing or submitting an order for the contents of their cart.
After signing in, your customers will be able to access the same features of the Shopping Cart as detailed below.
Using the Shopping Cart in the Business App Store
To add products to their cart, Business App users can browse available products under the Store tab and click Add to Cart on any product.
Business App users can view their Shopping Cart and its contents by clicking the Cart icon in the top navigation bar on any page in Business App. When viewing the cart’s contents, items can be removed from the cart by clicking the X beside an item.
To begin the checkout process, users can click Review and place an order to review the cart contents. If the cart contains one or more items that are already active on their account or contains one or more of the same package or product, they will see a warning on the Cart Contents screen.
Once a user has reviewed their cart and is satisfied with their order, they can click Proceed to checkout to fill out a combined order form for the products in their cart, if applicable.
Clicking Next will bring them to the Order confirmation page. For partners with Vendasta Payments already set up, users will be able to enter their payment information and click Agree to Purchase, and automatically enable the products in their cart. Users will also receive a receipt for their payment via email.
When a product is activated, partners are charged the wholesale cost of the product. During this process, if the payment information saved under Partner Center > Administration > My Billing > Payment Method fails, your customer's payment method will still be charged but the product will not be activated. If this occurs, partners may need to update their Payment Method and manually activate the product afterward.
For partners who are not using Vendasta Payments, or when the cart contains one or more products that can’t be purchased through the Shopping Cart, users can click Submit order at the end of the checkout process. Once the order has been reviewed and the products have been activated, users will be able to access the products they ordered via Business App.
Note that some products in the Marketplace may require the vendor's approval before being fully activated on an account. When these products are activated, either manually or through a customer's Shopping Cart purchase, we automatically notify the vendor that their approval is needed for activation. Before the vendor gives their approval, partners may briefly see a status of Pending activation (waiting on vendor approval) on the requested product when viewing an account's Products section in Partner Center > Businesses > Accounts.
Purchasing subscription products with the Shopping Cart
When using Vendasta Payments to enable purchases via the Shopping Cart, Stripe will securely save the customer’s payment information automatically. Depending on an account's Billing Settings, saved payment information can be used to charge an account automatically each time a product renews, send invoices for renewing products automatically on a monthly cadence, or generate draft invoices automatically that can be manually sent at any time.
When a customer purchases a product with a recurring subscription (i.e. monthly, yearly) through the Shopping Cart, their account's Billing Settings will determine whether or not they are charged automatically when their product's subscription renews.
To edit an account's Billing Settings, view the account's page under Partner Center > Businesses > Accounts, and click Billing settings under the Products section. Under the Billing automation section, partners can configure how an individual account is invoiced or charged automatically for products and services with recurring subscriptions.
Note that an account's Billing settings are always Off by default.