WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin for Print on Demand

[jferrari]

Has anyone found a WordPress (free or inexpensive) solution to take orders from clients/customers? Seems simple enough: Client logs in. chooses a product (let's say a canvas gallery wrap print) inputs the exact desired length and width, then uploads their image file. This "product" is added to their cart and they can either checkout or continue shopping. I've been searching for days and have not fount anything suitable. Ideas? Thanks.   - Jim

[watching paint dry]

I've used one called WP-Cart in the past which did the job of selling a handful of products nicely, without being an overly complicated e-commerce system. It appears to have evolved into a product called "WordPress eStore" now. Link here: https://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/products

More recently I've been looking at WooCommerce which also looks good, but I've yet to set it up. Here's the link to that: http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/

[jferrari]

Thanks for your reply. I'll check out the eStore product, I have not tried that one yet. I have tried WooCommerce but it suffers from what all the other "Cart" style plugins I've tried lack which is the ability to perform a calculation to determine product price. For example, my pricing structure is Length times Width times the cost of materials per square inch plus a flat labor charge. I actually purchased Check Out from Tribulant Software on the premise that it would perform that function but it does not. Money wasted. The search continues.      - Jim

[jferrari]

Ok, this topic has received 1000 views and has yet to produce a suitable answer. I wonder if there is no solution or if no one is willing to share. You can PM me if you want to keep it a secret! I just need a product that actually works and can perform a calculation for determining the price: L x W x (cost of materials) + (cost of labor) =   

Thanks.    - Jim

[jferrari]

I think you'll need to work out the sums yourself for the print sizes you offer and then let the plugin handle the order for the client's choice.

Thanks for the reply KL but that solution won't work well for my business model. I print custom to the fraction of an inch but even if customers round off to the nearest inch that's still over 2400 different combinations. (Addmittedly only about two hundred or so realistic combinations) Crazy, I know, so that's why I need a calculated price on the front end. I used to use a custom form (Formidable Pro) that I made and it worked perfectly for pricing custom products including large file upload but it did not do any kind of shopping cart so order summaries and payment/shipping options were non-existent. I know other printing businesses with an online presence have high-dollar solutions (some are even $4,000 per month!!!) which I can't afford.

Maybe I'm the only one on LuLa offering custom size printing on the web? Or maybe the solution is a closely guarded secret for fear of competition? IDK...    - Jim

[MrImprovement]

The shopping cart functionality you want might have to be "hacked". For instance, create an item that is "1 square inch" and then they buy as many of those as needed.  Include a small JS calculator on your site, that lets them calculate down the sq inch, what they will need. e.g. 20x30 full bleed (no margin, print to the edge) = 600 sq inches, thus, they buy 600 of "1 square inch" in your shopping cart.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Why do you need such fine granularity in your pricing? If I were in your place, with some 200 realistic combinations, I would put them into 20 different buckets, in one of two ways:
1.  Any print up to 8x10" costs $xxx; up to 11x14" costs $yyy, etc., or else
2.  Any print up to 80 square inches costs $xxx; up to 160 square inches costs $yyy; etc.

In case 2 you can include a simple calculator on your site to compute square inches (or cm, or whatever unit you want).

Then you have a small, finite number of different prices, which you should be able to plug into any cart system easilty.

[GavinB]

Hi,

It's taken me a while to reply to this, but I've been making a site and wondered if this test I made would help you. It's not on a product page, but a normal Wordpress page so you're unable to add to basket currently - It's easily made into a product which would be addable, the link below is just for lookseys.

http://photofusiondigital.org/paper-size-calc/
PW: LL001

Password is only added so any clients won't stumble onto it, I'm happy for anyone to have a look while it's there.

The pricing is based on a randomish number of my choosing but can be changed to anything you like. Let me know if you'd like me to walk you through any of the steps. We're using Woocommerse, Gravity Forms and GF: Product Add Ons for the e-commerce gubbins.

[jferrari]

Thank you GavinB. It looks like you've got something working for you. At this point I have a site that is functioning albeit not 100% the way I would like. I decided to use Formidable Pro and Tribulant's Shopping Cart plugin with some custom coding. I am able to conduct business but there remains a great deal of room for improvement.     - Jim

[GavinB]

To be honest that was an early test that I ditched. We decided to go down what we felt was a slightly easier route using more of a fixed size pricing structure. I just thought it might help, but glad to hear you've already got something working.

[Phil Indeblanc]

Interesting. I did the fixed sizes with 10 options. In WooCommerce, but the attributes and variables are a pain to deal with. It looks like I have to first setup attributes, and then add the attribute in the variables section. But it works once input.  I think as mentioned, there is a plugin for the calculated method. They are usually about $40-100 for plugins.