Customizing ProductCart - Custom Category Page

Custom Category Page

Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Customizing ProductCart
Forum Description: Exchange messages with other users that are customizing ProductCart.
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=6037
Printed Date: 30-June-2024 at 5:54am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Custom Category Page

Posted By: ammonihah
Subject: Custom Category Page
Date Posted: 23-October-2015 at 11:33am

I can't use the pages feature because it is kind of a weak tool and it will be difficult to manage many articles and posts, so I want to make a category called Find Answers with sub categories and "posts" which are just product pages that don't ship or have an add to cart button.

I have a page that I started called Find-Answers-C213.asp which is basically a copy of the view category page. What I want to do is customize this page so that it looks like this:

Category Title
Category Description

Sub-Category Icon            Sub-Category Icon             Sub-Category Icon
Sub-Category Icon            Sub-Category Icon             Sub-Category Icon

Single Column Table where you replace the description, sku, price columns with a single column of product titles (questions) with alternating table color to separate out the lines.

Question
Question
Question
Question
Question...

The cool thing about this is if this can be done, when they click on a question it will take them to the custom product page where you have:

Product Title
Short description              Image
Long Description
Cross Sell 1            Cross Sell 2                Cross Sell3

This way you can actually have links to the products that you are answering questions about and create sales.

Has anybody ever done anything like this before? If so, how much did it cost to do?

Replies:

Posted By: dwatch
Date Posted: 23-October-2015 at 2:45pm

Interesting idea and everything makes sense. I kind of lost you on this part though.

Single Column Table where you replace the description, sku, price columns with a single column of product titles (questions) with alternating table color to separate out the lines.

Question
Question
Question
Question
Question...

Also, what would the sub-categories be? Topics? I'm assuming each product would include the question and answer, so are you just saying above that you want to have the product (in this case questions) displayed withing the categories with the actual sub-categories?

Posted By: ammonihah
Date Posted: 26-October-2015 at 11:14am

dwatch,

All I am basically saying is that right now, the category page has a table with several columns. Those would go away and just be a single column with the title of each "product" that they can click on to go to the "product" detail page to read the answer to the question.

The more I look at this, the more attractive it is becoming. I can serve as a blog or as a question and answer page and allows nail down, which Google seems to like.

I actually wish that product cart would get rid of content pages and just implement something like this. I would make my life so much easier when it comes to customer service and social marketing as I would now have social media buttons on every question and answer page for people to share, just like they share a product.

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 27-October-2015 at 1:50pm

This is a CMS page:

http://www.cannonfuse.com/store/pc/Frequently-Asked-Questions-d31.htm" rel="nofollow - http://www.cannonfuse.com/store/pc/Frequently-Asked-Questions-d31.htm

It's just a page in "manage pages" using an accordion JS. Does that accomplish what you want?

-------------
GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: ammonihah
Date Posted: 27-October-2015 at 2:48pm

If you only have 100 small pages it probably does. But it doesn't allow for more levels of nail down, it doesn't allow for automated share, like, pin buttons on the page, it doesn't allow me to put related products on the page using the existing related products cross sell features. The competitors I have that are excelling are doing a lot of quality content, cross selling on that content, and automating how their customers can easily share that content on various social media. I just don't think a javascript is anything more than an attempt to make an add on to the content pages feature already there, which is not very robust. Of course that is just my opinion and I'm sure others are using the content pages successfully.

PS. Can you imagine manually adding several cross sell product links to 400 to 500 content pages and manually managing them when a product name changes or a product is discontinued? Whew. One of my competitors has over 2400 content pages that are each tailored to specific unique key words, most with at least 2-5 product cross sell links with pictures.

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 27-October-2015 at 4:16pm

It was not clear from your OP that this would be a format for many pages. Your reference to Find-Answers-C213.asp made it sound like you needed to create a single FAQ page.

With regard to your "can you imagine" question, have a look at this page:
http://www.tastefulgarden.com/store/pc/Vegetable-Gardening-for-Beginners-d27.htm" rel="nofollow - http://www.tastefulgarden.com/store/pc/Vegetable-Gardening-for-Beginners-d27.htm

ALL of the product placement in the growing guide section of that site is dynamic. We engineered a mechanism that allows a set of hidden categories to be managed via the admin, and by using an IFRAME statement one declares which category (or categories) appear on such a page. Declare your categories, assign products, and as you change prices or descriptions or anything else, the changes will render dynamically to your content pages.

Moving on to assigning large numbers of cross sell relationships, I do hope you are aware of this:
https://www.greybearddesign.com/productcart/cross-sell-wizard/" rel="nofollow - https://www.greybearddesign.com/productcart/cross-sell-wizard/

-------------
GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: dwatch
Date Posted: 28-October-2015 at 5:44pm

make sense now.