Anonymous Checkout Mod for ProductCart 3.51

This modification for ProductCart 3.51 revises the logic for "anonymous" checkout - allowing customers to continuously check out without "officially" creating an account.

Many merchants have a customer demographic that prefers to be anonymous when they order. Other merchants will find that they will remove a simple objection to purchasing by allowing customers to checkout without creating an account.

The difference between creating an account or checking out without creating an account is purely psychological -- but psychology is the better part of sales approaches.

In point of fact, shopping carts, including ProductCart do need to retain all of the information a customer provides during checkout in order to provide the information a merchant needs to fulfill an order. The only difference -- on any shopping cart, really -- is whether the customer establishes a password so that they can log back in to their account later.

That is, the issue for customers who don't want to create an account is purely psychological. That being said, psychology is a fundamental aspect of marketing, and many customers will feel better thinking that they are anonymous.

On the other hand, well written shopping cart applications like ProductCart will want to protect against the same person creating multiple customer profiles. This is the reason ProductCart only allows an "anonymous" checkout on the first pass through, and thereafter recognizes the customer's email address and then prompts them to use "forgot password" and log in to complete their order on the next checkout attempt.

This modification solves both the psychological desire of the customer and the technical issue for the shopping cart application by allowing customers to repeatedly check out "anonymously" while retaining the same customer profile for them over time.

What is more, because that history is indeed maintained, the customer can at any time convert their anonymous account to a live account OR start a new account using the same email address they've been using all along (however, if they opt to create a new account, they will indeed have a brand new account).

If a customer has already checked out anonymously the first time before you've installed this modification, it will catch that and allow them to keep checking out anonymously.

Finally, if for some reason a customer wants to start checking out anonymously even after they have created an account, it will allow that as well.

Support:

please see our policy for ProductCard add-ons and mods

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Stores using this add-on:

Ordering:

We strive to make our mods and add-ons as simple to install as possible. Only the most cursory understanding of ASP is typically required. Any semi-experienced ASP developer should be able to install the vast majority of our mods or add-ons in less than 5-15 minutes (depending on whether a database upgrade is involved -- and that simply requires a ninute to log into the store's Control Panel and push the upgrade button).

You might also want to revert to your backups and try your installation again paying closer attention to what you are copying and pasting.

If you indeed find an issue with our code, we will of course remedy the issue free of charge, provided the issue falls under the functionality of the mod or add-on as we've described it.