If you have been operating a shop or have started building a shop using Zen Cart, you will know what a banner ad is. A banner ad is a form of advertising on the Web used frequently to display product advertisement into a web page. Clicking on a banner ad takes you to a site or a webpage.

Banner ad tool in Zen Cart can be used for advertising both external and internal products. You can display any banner ad through this tool. In Zen Cart, there are three places where you can display banner ads.

You can control banner ads in your Zen Cart shop from Tools | Banner Manager. From here, you can add, delete, and edit the banners:

Types of Banners

Two types of banners can be used in Zen Cart: sidebox and wide banners. Sidebox banners are just like a sidebox suitable to be shown in the left or right column. Wide banners span the width of your page.

Each banner is assigned to a group, and you can give it any name. A group contains multiple banners and one from the group will be randomly shown at a time . For each group, you also need to indicate the position where it is to be displayed. This is done from Configuration | Layout Settings.

By default, Zen Cart has three predefined banner groups: BannersAll, SideBox-Banners, and Wide-Banners.

Banner statistics are also tracked on a day-to-day basis. You will see the banner views and clicks statistics for the last three days on this window.

You can add/edit banners from Tools | Banner Manager from the administration panel. To edit the properties of a banner, select the banner and click on the edit button. For adding a new banner, click on the new banner button. This will open the following screen:

You have to fill or edit the following information in the banner editing/adding screen:

Promotional discounts are often used in online shops. You can offer special discounts to customers on different occasions such as the New Year, Christmas, and so on. Zen Cart has built-in tools to configure promotional discounts on products in specific categories or on selected products. You can also configure the promotion start and end dates.

Special prices can be configured from Catalog | Products Price Manager. First, select a category to show the products under it. Once the product list is shown, select the product for which you want to assign a special price. Then click on the install button to the right of the Special Price Info field.

A special screen will display a list of products in the Product list box. Select a product from the Product list box. Then assign the special price in the Special Price field. You can assign a new price for the product, or assign a percentage discount (say 20%) in this field. Then select the start date at the Available Date field and the end date at the Expiry Date field. If you want to start the discount immediately, keep the Available Date field blank. Similarly, if you want to keep the discount continuing for an indefinite period, keep the Expiry Date field blank.

Cross-selling, up-selling and better-together are some of the sales techniques used widely in online shops. Although Zen Cart has no built-in capability of doing these, you can implement these features by adding contributed modules. In this section, you are going to learn how to implement cross-sell, up-sell and better-together features.

Cross-Selling

The idea of cross-selling is to sell additional products or services to a customer. Cross-selling may be of different forms. For example, while you are selling a novel, you may try to sell other novels by the same author; while selling a computer, you may try to sell other accessories; or when you are selling a product which requires maintenance, you may sell servicing and extended warranty along with that product. The idea of cross-selling is to sell relevant products—not substitutes for that product.

Zen Cart has no built-in capability for cross-selling. However, several modules for cross-selling are available at the Zen Cart website. You can use one of those and start cross-selling. We are going to discuss one such module—Cross Sell by Tony Corbett. This module allows you to add up to 6 products as relevant in your product information page.

The installation process of the module is described in the Install.txt file in this package. Follow the instructions for installation. First, you have to apply a patch (in products_xsell.sql) from Tools | Install SQL Patch. Then, upload the files in to the appropriate directories. Replace YOUR_TEMPLATE with your template's name, for example, packt. Then you have to edit two files:

• Add define('TEXT_XSELL_PRODUCTS', 'We Also Recommend :'); just above the final ?> in includes/languages/english/product_info.php and save it into includes/languages/english/packt/product_info.php.

• Edit the product-info template file /includes/templates/template_default/ tpl_product_info_display.php and insert the following code at the point where you wish the Cross-Sell box to appear. Usually, best at the end of the file:

  <?php
  require($template->get_template_dir ('tpl_modules_xsell_products.php', 
  DIR_WS_TEMPLATE, $current_page_base,'templates'). '/' . 'tpl_modules_xsell_products.php'),
  ?>
  

  Save the file as /includes/templates/packt/ tpl_product_info_display.php. Add the above codes for any other product type for which you wish to enable cross-sell display (for example, files such as tpl_product_music_info_display.php).

After successful installation, you can configure the options for this module from:

• Configuration | Minimum Values | Display Cross-Sell Products - This is the minimum number of configured Cross-Sell products required in order to cause the Cross-Sell information to be displayed.

• Configuration | Maximum Values | Display Cross-Sell Products:This is the maximum number of configured Cross-Sell products to be displayed.

• Configuration | Product Info | Cross-Sell Products Columns per Row: This refers to the Cross-Sell Products Columns to be displayed per Row. A value of 0 means off. You can set a sort order.

• Configuration | Product Info | Cross-Sell - Display Prices?: Select whether to display prices in the list of cross-sell products.

Once you have configured these options, you can start using the Cross-Sell module from Catalog | Cross Sell Products. The screen will list all the available products. Select a product for which you want to assign cross-sells. Another screen will appear, where the selected product will be shown at the top, and you will have the option to check the products that you want to sell with the selected product. Select all the related products and click the update button.

Once you have configured the cross-sells, you can work on the product details page. Click on the product for which you have configured Cross-Sell, for example, Matrox G200 MMS. Another centerbox, which looks like the following, will be displayed at the bottom of product description page:

One of the limitations of the Cross-Sell module is that the cross selling is configured one way. If you configure product A to sell with product B and product C, you will get cross-sell listing only for product A. When a customer clicks on product C, she will not see product A as a recommendation. This can be solved by using Cross Sell - Just Another Cross Sell Mod, available for download from the Zen Cart website.

The Read_me.txt file with this package describes the installation of this Cross-Sell module. Before installing this module, you must have installed Cross-Sell module first. Upload all the files to the admin and js folders. Then, apply sql_patch.sql through Tools | Install SQL Patches. With the patching of SQL, the installation would be complete, and you will see one option in Configuration | Cross Sell and a set of options under Catalog | Advanced Cross Sell.

In Configuration | Cross sell, you will find the field Input type to be used in form. If you set this to id, you have to use the product ID when you insert new cross-sell in the cross-sell form at Catalog | Advanced Cross-Sell. If you set this to model, you have to use the product model when you insert a new Cross-Sell. You can insert all Cross-Sells from Catalog | Advanced Cross-Sell. The screen looks like this:

Up-Selling

Now, let's talk about up-selling. You may have seen up-selling several times in your life. When you go to buy a dress, the salesperson may recommend you buy a dress that is of a better quality and higher price. So, up-selling is a sales technique where a salesperson attempts to have the consumer purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale.

Upselling in Zen Cart can be implemented by the Cart Upsell/Cross sell module available from the Zen Cart website's download section. The installation process for this module is described in the install.txt file. First, you have to upload all the files as per the directory structure. Then, edit the tpl_shopping_cart_default.php file and add the following code before the last </div> tag:

<?php
require(DIR_WS_MODULES . zen_get_module_directory(FILENAME_CART_UPSELL));
?>

The last thing you have to do is edit the includes/modules/YOUR_TEMPLATE/ cart_upsell.php file, and replace YOUR_TEMPLATE with the name of your template, for example, packt. You will find the following set of variables defined in this file:

// number of upsells/xsells to display
define('NUMBER_UPSELLS_DISPLAY', '9'),
define('NUMBER_XSELLS_DISPLAY', '9'),
// number of upsells/xsells columns to display
define('UPSELLS_COLUMNS_DISPLAY', '3'),
define('XSELLS_COLUMNS_DISPLAY', '3'),
// upsells/xsells box title to display
define('UPSELLS_TITLE_DISPLAY', 'Customers who selected the items in your cart also chose...'),
define('TEXT_XSELL_PRODUCTS', 'To go with the items in your cart we also recommend...'),

Among these some are for displaying the number of up-sells, and some are for defining texts for the up-sell headings. Change these to suit your needs.

If you have installed the Cross-Sell module, edit the includes/languages/english/packt/product_info.php file, and add the following line (if it is already not there):

define('TEXT_XSELL_PRODUCTS', 'We Also Recommend For: '),

By doing this, your installation is complete. Now, you can see the up-sell feature in the product info page. Just below the product description, you will find the 'Customers who purchased this item also purchased...' box as shown here:

Note

Don't panic if you do not see the box for up-sell after installing this module. If you have no successful record of a completed order, then the 'also purchased' box will not be displayed. As there is no buying history based on which "customers who purchased this item also purchased..." can be displayed. Add some orders first, and then you will see this box.

The single configuration of this module is setting the number of columns per row to display in the up-sell box which is done under Configuration | Product Info. Set the appropriate number in the Also Purchased Products Columns per Row field. You can also change this value by editing the includes/modules/YOUR_TEMPLATE/ cart_upsell.php file.

Better-together

If you have ever visited Amazon.com, you will know what 'Better Together' is. Whenever you view a product description, the 'Better Together' title will suggest more products to be bundled with your chosen product. Packt online shop (www.packtpub.com/books) also suggests better-together products. You can implement this feature in Zen Cart by using the Better Together module written by Scott Wilson and available from the Zen Cart website's download section.

For installing this module, upload all the files as per their directory structures. Then, login to the administration panel. In Modules | Order Total, you will see Better Together listed along with all the other modules available. Click on Better Together to highlight the module, and click on Install. Then, you have to assign a sort order. You may also decide whether to show taxes with the Better Together offer, or whether taxes will be calculated based on the better together price offer.

One of the pitfalls of this module is that you cannot configure the discounts from the Administration panel. For this, you need to edit the includes/modules/ order_total/ot_better_together.php file. You have to provide links for the products and mention discounts. Find function setup() at line 497 in this file. You will see some commented examples. First, uncomment the examples and provide your product ids and discounts. You may add the discounts as follows:

// Buy product 10, get product 11 at 50% off
$this->add_prod_to_prod(10, 11, "%", 50);
// Buy product 21, get one free
$this->add_prod_to_prod(21, 21, "%", 100);
// Buy product 1, get an item from category 3 free
$this->add_prod_to_cat(1, 3, "%", 100);
// Buy an item from category 1, get an item from category 2 free
$this->add_cat_to_cat(1, 2, "%", 100);
// Buy item 14, get a second one free.
$this->add_twoforone_prod(14);
// Buy any item from category 3, get a second identical one free
$this->add_twoforone_cat(19);
// buy two and get one free
$this->add_prod_to_prod(11, 12, "%", 100);
//buy 14 & 15, get 50% discount on 15
$this->add_prod_to_prod(14, 15, "%", 50);
// buy item 16 & 17, get 25% discount on item 17
$this->add_prod_to_prod(16, 17, "%", 25);
//buy two items from category 2 & 3, and get another item from these categories free
$this->add_cat_to_cat(2, 3, "%", 100);
//buy two and get another item at 50% discount
$this->add_prod_to_prod(22, 25, "%", 50);

After adding the discounts, save the file. Now, you need to edit tpl_product_info_display.php to advertise your discounts. Add the following code in this file below the product description block:

<?php
require($template->get_template_dir('/tpl_better_together_marketing.php',DIR_WS_TEMPLATE, $current_page_base,'templates'). '/tpl_better_together_marketing.php'),
?>

Save the file in the includes/templates/<Your Template>/templates directory. Replace <Your Template> with your custom template directory, for example, packt. Be sure that you have installed tpl_better_together_marketing.php in this same directory. Now, the better together module is ready for use. Browse to a product and you will see the following:

Remember that you have configured to give DVD free with a Matrox G200 MMS. You can make it vivid by adding the following declaration in the stylesheet.css file:

#betterTogetherDiscountPolicy {
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.5em;
color: red;
}

Now, the better together discounts screen will look like this:

When you order both Unreal Tournament and Microsoft Internet Keyboard PS/2 together, you get a 50% discount on Microsoft Internet Keyboard PS/2. This discount will be shown in the Order Total Section in the Payment Information Step (Step 2) during checkout:

Online shops often introduce a sale for special events, or a season, to attract more customers, or to clear stock quickly. For example, a book shop may offer a 35% discount on all books for the New Year. Zen Cart has an excellent tool called SaleMaker to manage such sales. You can access SaleMaker from Catalog | SaleMaker.

In the SaleMaker screen you will see the list of sales including the deduction amount, the Start Date and the End Date, and the status of those sales. Selecting one Sale will give you the option to edit, copy to or delete that sale. You will also get information about that sale by selecting it.

You can add a new sale by clicking on the new sale button. It opens a screen that looks like this:

Suppose that you want to offer special discounts on all books during Christmas for two weeks. Type the sale name, Christmas Book Discount, in the SaleName field. Then, type the discount. You can specify the discount as a percentage of the price, or as an absolute amount. For example, if you want to offer a 35% discount, type 35 in the Deduction field, and select Percent from the Type drop-down list. You will get three options here: Deduct Amount, Percent, and New Price. This means that you can specify a new price for the product. In the product price range field, you may specify the product price range for which the discount is applicable. For example, you may want to apply a 35% discount on books whose price ranges from $ 30 to $ 150.

Some products may already be having specials. In that case, the sale discount to be applied can be configured from the If product is a special drop-down list. You have three options: Ignore Specials Price-apply to product price and replace special, Ignore Sale condition-No Sale applied when Special exists, and Apply SaleDeduction to Specials Price-Otherwise Apply to Price. Choose one option from these.

Then select the Start Date and the End Date of that sale. If your sale is open-ended, keep the End Date blank. Keeping the Start Date field blank will activate that sale immediately.

You may apply the sale to a whole product catalog or some specific categories. If the sale is only for books, then check the Books category. Remember that applying the sale to a parent category automatically applies it to its child categories. Therefore, if you apply a sale to the Books category, that will also be effective for other sub-categories under Books. While selecting categories, you can also see the categories that are already on sale. A more link will be shown beside such categories to display the details of the products on sale.

By this time, you may have already noticed on the homepage a center box that shows New Products for that month. It also shows a center box called Monthly Specials for that month. New products are displayed according to the date when they were added to the product catalog. But for Specials, you have to specify the products that fall under that category. Specials often have discounted prices. This is another way of attracting customers.

You can decide whether New Products, Special Products, Featured Products, and Upcoming Products center boxes should be displayed in the main page or not. To do this, select Configuration | Index Listing from the Administration panel and find the following options:

A value of 0 means that the center box will not be displayed. If you want to show the box, just type the sort order. A lower sort order will display that center box in a higher position.

As said earlier, new products are chosen based on the date they were added to the catalog. However, you can define what the New Products, Featured Products, and Specials Products mean. Select Configuration | Maximum Values and find the following options:

Special Products

You can manage Special products from Catalog | Specials. The screen will list the products on Specials and display their special prices. You can add, edit, or delete a product from Specials, or manage special prices from this screen.

To create a new special product, click on the new product button. Then, select a product from the list of available products, assign special prices, available date and expiry date. Special Price can be set as a new price or as a percent deduction (for example, 14.70 or 25%). Once the values are set, click on the insert button.

Featured Products

Featured products are like special products but they have no discount price. You can add some products to the Featured Products to draw the customers' attention to them. Featured Products are managed from Catalog | Featured Products. The screen is similar to the Specials screen. You can add a new product to the featured list by clicking on the new product button. Then, you have to select the product, assign an availability date and an expiry date.

For a large product catalog, it's difficult to select a product from a list. For such product catalogs, you can add a product to the featured and specials list by clicking on the select button on Catalog | Specials or Catalog | Featured Products screen, and then typing the product id.

As a shop owner, you can send Gift Certificates to any customer, whenever you want. To send a Gift certificate, go to Gift Certificates/Coupons | Mail Gift Certificate. The Send Gift Certificate to Customers screen will be displayed.

Fill in the following fields:

Once all these fields are filled up, click on send mail to send the gift voucher to the customer.

You can sell Gift Certificates through your shop, just like your other products. Customers who buy Gift Certificates can redeem it and pay for their purchases. They can also send that Gift Certificate to others. Therefore, it is a convenient way to send gifts to friends and family members—you send the Gift Certificate—and your friends and family members can buy the product of their choice.

Gift Certificates can be added from Catalog | Categories/Products. First, create a category named Gift Certificates. Then add a product named Gift Certificate and configure it as follows:

Now, go to Modules |Order Total and click install to install or the edit button to configure the Gift Certificate (ot_gv) module. Define whether tax is to be included and how to recalculate tax.

Once the Gift Certificate product is added to the catalog, and the Gift Certificate module is enabled in Modules | Order Total, that will be displayed in the catalog. Customers can see it through the Gift Certificates category in the main page. However, you may draw attention to gift certificates on your store by creating a homepage graphic with a link to your Gift Certificate category. A new sidebox for displaying such graphics can also be used.

Customers can buy a gift certificate just like the other products. They can add it to the cart and pay for it through the checkout process. When Gift Certificates are purchased, as an Administrator, you have to log into your administration area and release them. Once a Gift Certificate is released by an Administrator, funds will be made available to the customer.

Upon the release/approval of Gift Certificates, emails with a redemption code are sent to the customers. Then customers can redeem that code either by clicking on the link, or by keying in the code on the checkout-payment page (or the Gift Voucher Redemption screen). Once a gift voucher is redeemed, funds for that gift voucher will become available to the customers, and they can use them in future transactions. Customers will see their gift voucher balance in their My Account page.

Customers can use those funds for themselves, or send it to their friends and family members. They can email as much as they want, to various people, for the amount they have purchased. Whoever they email it to will receive a new redemption code and must follow the same redemption process. They can in turn email the code whoever they wish to.

In Zen Cart, discount coupons are managed from Gift Certificates/Coupons | Coupon Admin. The coupon list is displayed in this screen. You can insert a new coupon, delete old one, send a coupon already configured, and view Report of coupon usage.

You can edit, copy or delete a coupon by clicking on the edit, delete or copy button respectively. Click on the email button to mail a coupon to the customers. You can also assign restrictions on the usage of this coupon.

To create a new coupon, click on the insert button. The Discount Coupons screen will be displayed as follows:

The following fields have to be filled up for a new coupon:

Once the above fields are configured, click on preview to see the discount coupon, and click on the confirm button to save it.

Creating a coupon does not send it to customers instantly. To send a coupon to customers, select that coupon, and click on the email button in Gift Certificates/Coupons | Coupon Admin screen. The Discount Coupons screen will be displayed. Select an individual or a group of customers, just as in Gift Vouchers, type, subject line, and a message. Then click on the send mail button to send it to the customers.

Another way of creating similar discount coupon is to copy that coupon and change some properties as needed. You can copy a coupon by selecting that and then clicking on the copy button.

As a shop owner, you may want to see which of your discount coupons are used. You can see uses of discount coupons by clicking on the report button. You will be able to know which customer has redeemed the coupons, and on which date, and from which IP address.

You can apply restrictions on using this coupon by clicking on the restrictions button. In the Discount Coupons Products/Category Restrictions screen, you can assign the products and categories for which the coupon can be used. For example, if you want New Year 2008 Discount Coupon to be used only for the purchase of books, limit the use of this coupon to the Books category—allow for this category and deny for all other categories.

Product notifications can be sent to customers who have opted to receive them. While browsing products, customers can sign up for product notifications via the notifications sidebox. This sidebox is visible only on actual product pages (if it is enabled by administrator).

You can also subscribe to product notifications by clicking the checkboxes shown upon checkout success. Checking the boxes and clicking the submit button will allow the customers to view the notifications for a product. For this, the customers should have an account with the online shop. The customers can also manage the products for which they want to receive notifications.

As an administrator, you can also enable/disable the Product Notification System for the customers. To enable/disable the Product Notification System, go to Configuration | Customer Details. Change the setting for Customer Product Notification Status to on or off. If Customer Product Notification Status is on, the customer will be asked about product notifications after checkout success and in account preferences.

Customers themselves can modify their product notification subscriptions from their My Account area. Click on View or change my product notification list link to edit the subscription to product notifications. If you have subscribed to any product notification, it will be shown here. You may subscribe to Global Product Notifications by checking the Receive notifications on all available products checkbox.

Newsletters/Product notification system is not automatic. You have to send newsletters/notices to the people who have subscribed to newsletters and product notifications.

To send notifications to those who have signed up, go to Tools | Newsletter & Product Notifications Manager. Then, create a newsletter/notice by clicking new newsletter button, choose product notification as the module. While sending the notifications, it will ask you for the products which the notice applies to. Select products to which the notification applies and click on the send button. You may click on the Global button to indicate that the notification is for the whole product catalog.

Newsletters also need to be created and saved first. The process of creating a newsletter is the same as creating a product notification, except that you have to select newsletter in the Module field. Then, you will see the newsletter on the Tools | Newsletter and Product Notification Manager screen. Select the newsletter you want to send, and click on the send button. Then, you have to select an audience to whom the newsletter will be sent. The options in this drop-down list are: All Newsletter Subscribers, Dormant Customers (>3 months)(Subscribers), Active Customers in the past 3 months (Subscribers), Active customers in the past 3 months (Regardless of subscription status). Once a customer group is selected, click on the select button. A preview of the newsletter will be displayed in the next screen. Click on the send mail button to mail it to the customers.

The first step in search engine optimization is to use meta-tags properly. Zen Cart has a built-in feature for adding meta-tags for categories and products. You can add meta-tags to each product and category so that a search engine can index them appropriately.

If you are a long time user of the internet and have some interest in search engine optimization, you will find that one of the drawbacks of using shopping carts such as Zen Cart is its URLs. If you look into your browser's address bar, at the first sight, you may be perplexed. The URL reads something like: http://www.yourdomain.com/ /index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=12. In fact it is a link to a DVD titled Die Hard. As a human, you cannot remember the URL. On the other side, robots from Google and other search engines also dislike these types of URLs. URLs with ‘?' are usually not indexed by search engines. This means your shop may be out of the search engine, or in the worst case, Google may index only your store's homepage, and not all the products. This is awful!

Several attempts have been made to use Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs in such shopping carts. Although other CMSs like Joomla! have built-in SEF feature, Zen Cart is yet to develop such SEF URLs on its own. However, third-party contributions are available for implementing SEF URLs in a Zen Cart shop. We will know how to use the Ultimate SEO URLs module in Zen Cart.

The Ultimate SEO URLs module can be downloaded from Zen Cart's download section. It is located in the Other Modules category. Its installation is simple, and works perfectly in most of the cases.

After downloading this from the web, extract it on to your computer. Then, upload the files from _zen_cart_folder to your Zen Cart installation directory. Now see the files in the v137-specific-files folder. Backup these files in your Zen Cart installation. Then, upload these files to your Zen Cart installation. A sample .htaccess file is included with the package. Rename it to .htaccess, and edit the word /shop to reflect your site's installation directory. Once done, you can configure this module from Configuration | SEO URLs.

You have to configure the following options for Ultimate SEO URLs:

Once you have configured the SEF URLs, you can browse products in your store and see their rewritten URLs. These will look like: yourdomain.com/matrox-g200-mms-p-1.html, yourdomain.com/hewlett-packard-laserjet-1100xi-linked-p-27.html, and so on.