Help with a different kind of Store

[casey]

I am a complete novice when it comes to eCommerce applications and shopping carts, so I'd be grateful for some advice:

My "store" is not really a store, I am building a website (hosted by FQ) for a conference where delegates can pay their registration fees online by credit card (merchant details, payment gateway etc have already been determined). The delegates have only three conference pass options to choose from, they are not buying a product as such, and I do not want to use the "Add to Cart" and "Checkout" buttons/functions, but rather an automatic transfer to the payment page when the "Submit" button is clicked, with the total of the conference payment appearing on that page. There shall be no "View Order" or "View Cart" functionality.

I am seeking therefore, a very basic program/shopping cart. Would someone be able to tell me how well Merchant Order Form works on FQ servers, and what I need to do to get it working correctly etc? Any advice with regards to this cart, or any other cost-effective application would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Casey

[Rich]

I don't have any experience with the MOFcart, so I'll leave that to others here who may have.

However, I believe the right question to ask is not "what is the most cost effective solution" but rather "what is the most profitable solution."

Many merchants falsely believe that they must have a shopping cart. Unfortunately, a shopping cart is one of the quickest routes to lost sales. Customers tend to find shopping carts confusing and the order abandon rate for carts is many times greater than simple forms.

For some businesses a shopping cart is necessity. If you sell multiple items that customers might want to collect together to purchase, then there is no avoiding a shopping cart. But many times, products can be sold one-at-a-time using html forms and a backend processing script.

From the description you have provided, it would appear that you can get all the information needed into a single form. You might want to consider getting a few quotes to have a developer build this backend processing for you. The end result will be an order form with a much higher conversion rate.

Another, lower-cost, lower-skills-required option: if your gateway is the type that offers an online payment form option on their site, then you could design a simple FormMail type form that would email you the conference registration information and then redirect the customer to the gateway's page to collect the payment information.

Rich

[Daytripper_MI6]

I know that with Paypal you can create customized buy buttons for your customers to choose from ie: 1 for package A($xx) 1 for package B($xxx) etc. Basically for single item purchases it may be something to look into