Need a professional opinion re how hard this would be

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waterguy

New Member
Hi,
I am a distributor for Multi-Pure water filters and as such the corporate web site has it set so we can refer people to their shopping cart.

However, once one arrives at the shopping cart, the customer still has to put a discount code in the box and that code might be someone else's code instead of my code.

So what would make sense is that when someone enters the MP corporate site and shopping cart via my portal (my distributor web site), it would automatically cause MY code to be put in the shopping cart without the customer having to cut and paste it or write it in the box in the shopping cart.

The company is dragging their feet on doing this because apparently they do not have a web master who can easily do it.

My question is: How hard would this be to do? Is it something that could be done quickly with the right code, or is it something that would take a major overhaul of their web site?

Here's the shopping cart:
http://www.multipureusa.com/ywhite/index2.html

It seems to me that when one enters their site via the Independent Distributor web page, it should not be too hard to write a code that would put the Ind. Dist.'s Coupon Code in the shopping cart so that he would for sure get credit for that sale. Am I right? or is it hard to do this?

Thanks for your help. If I can find out that it is relatively easy then my colleagues can push for it to be done.
 
sysgenmedia

sysgenmedia

New Member
On the surface this seems not terribly difficult, but the devil's in the details. There are actually multiple possible codes to use from your page, so there would probably need to be consolidation of codes or some sort of decision engine determining which code or codes to apply.

Then, the user isn't forwarded directly to a product page when they click a link on your site. So you would probably have to build in a snippet of code to each of their pages that would forward on to the next page whatever variable that indicates the user originated on your site.

Further, they're currently using straight .htm pages for most of their site, and they'd need to be slightly reconfigured to use some form of server-side technology like PHP or ASP (assuming they're suppored by the server, which they should be) in order to manage forwarding these variables around.

So overall, it's not a conceptually difficult project, but the technical aspects of actually implementing this type of feature would probably add up to a decent amount of time / cost.

Feel free to contact me off-forum if you feel like they would be interested in implementing some sort of system like this. We do a lot of custom consulting and integration like this and are adept at working new features into existing systems.
 
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waterguy

New Member
Thanks. The info you provided explains why they have dragged their feet in implementing this. I am told they don't have ENOUGH online sellers to make it worth the time/effort/money to do this.

I thought it would be something they might be able to do with a couple hours of coding.

Thanks. Now I know why they don't want to do it: too costly.
 
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