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We launched this recently:

http://www.chicathome.co.uk

EE 1 + Cartthrob.

Tricky project but the tools were all there - just needed to figure it all out 😊

Curious to know what aspects of the project were tricky… Cartthrob customization/implementation? Bundled sets? Payment gateway integration? Great looking site regardless. Nice work!

Hi Mach

It was just a lot bigger than I’d planned. Getting the user account to integrate with CartThrob entries for example. So customers could see the status of their orders. This wasn’t given enough thought when I quoted + the client order section needed to be re-considered - so they can track their customer purchases easily. Still looking for a really nice way to flesh this out, with data visualisation rather than just a tabular list of entries (I believe CT2 has this built in?).

Adding products sets was at first tricky, as getting reverse related entries to work how we wanted was a pain - but some logical thinking + Playa got everything running perfectly. Also made relating products a cinch for our client. Basically Brandon Kelly deserves a medal. Playa + Matrix + Gypsy are the first add-ons I selected for this project.

Perhaps the biggest challenge was an EE one really. Ensuring the site had really clean and SE friendly url’s, titles and meta that were completely controllable by the client through editable categories, fields and default entry data. I wanted the SEO to shine, so there’s all sorts of hooks and stoppers for bots - to ensure (hopefully) the same data isn’t indexed on lots of different URLS and make the UX a simple journey to checkout.

We initially had a big headache with VAT, but simply decided to drop all support for tax, through CartThrob (CT), and calculate on the fly using Mathplus - this shop’s UK-only so was a simple solution to a bigger issue (the problem has been resolved in newer releases of CT).

Paypal was a pain - because their support docs/team are simply awful - so beware if you’re using Paypal Payments Pro (in the UK) - request test Credit Card codes directly (and as soon as you start the project) to avoid an unforseen headache.

CT is simply brilliant. It really does stand aside and let you use EE the way you need to. I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a full Ecommerce solution with all the perks of this CMS. I’ve used CT a couple of times and pitching another E-commerce + EE job today - comfortable in the knowledge I can do almost anything the client requests without having to know any PHP.

That said it isn’t for the feint hearted - there will be lot of headaches - but no more than any other big site presents as the job progresses - my best tip - add plenty of contingency and think laterally 😉 I’m not a developer by trade, so probably made more of this than someone better versed in programming and development, but like anything there’s a light-bulb moment or two that make progress satisfying. That’s a reflection of the software I think - not my learning curve.

I’m hoping to write a series of blog posts + code snippets to help out on the CT forums soon - to help folk starting out with it.

Liam, thanks for the detailed response!

I’ve quoted out a few BrilliantRetail projects in EE2 but nothing’s landed yet. Haven’t used Cartthrob but if there’s ever a need to integrate e-commerce into an EE 1.x site I know that’s the way to go.

I appreciate your insights into the challenges and unforeseen tasks involved in creating an intuitive e-commerce user experience, not only for the customer but for the store administrator. There are so many things you won’t know about until you go through the development process the first time, but your summary helps me (and hopefully others) walk into their first e-commerce project knowing what to expect.

I read about an SEO add-on last night, but some users found bugs and I haven’t seen much activity around it afterward. I would probably approach the SEO requirement much like you did, by adding a few meta tag custom fields into the appropriate field group, declaring default field data, etc.

Overall very impressive for someone not familiar with PHP! That really illustrates the power of EE and its developer community.

Cheers!

Liam,

The site looks great! I haven’t used CartThrob 2 yet but I did launch a site using version 1. It’s a cool product, but it does take a while to get your head around it. I’ve probably forgotten it all now as well!

Just out of curiosity, how did you manage the products and categories? i.e. did you use a combination of EE Channel and Categories, or a different way and did you have to use any other plugins like Low Seg2Cat etc?

Cheers,

Richard.