Quote Engine

Morning all,

I am trying to get a project rolling and need some help from an experienced developer. I am building a fairly basic site for a company and am really using this as a test for future MODx based sites. For this specific site I have two items I would like some assistance with.

Quote Engine

• First option is a quote cart that functions much like a shopping cart. A user (who we do not want to force registration upon) will browse the site and click items and enter quantities of an item. Upon check out we would send a note to the visitor thanking them and giving them a list of items they requested a quote on. A second message is sent to an admin who will respond with a custom quote. Fairly straight forward but we don’t want to have registrations. And it is not entirely necessary to save the info to a database either - mail forms are fine. The key is that I believe it will require sessions or some sort so a user can browse different sections of the site to add items to the cart. If we go this route the products should be updatable via uploading an Excel spreadsheet (can be done via a separate database) which will be preformatted.
• Second option is a form on different parts of the site that would include some simple items and quantities; the user would enter their contact info and submit the form. When the user visits the form elsewhere on the site (a different version of the same, just different products) I would like their contact info to auto complete. For this option it is not necessary for a user to come back weeks later and have the site remember their information, mainly just the first visit.

The budget is not large for either option but I need to gather a feel for what it will take in regard to development time and cost.

Thanks in advance,
J

hi


so the users can not checkout but sends just a request for a quote?

how many products would be? with pics?

Di.

Correct, the check out is submitting a RFQ to us and sending the user a thank you letter that includes what they requested for quote.

There will be somewhere between 175 and 300 items in the quote engine.

-J

this would mean to modify a shopping cart and some engne

can be done, do u want me to test it?

Not really looking for someone to do any testing as of yet? I am looking for someone to create it and see what it would cost.

The flexibility of up dating the products in the database via an easy-to-update mass method is important. Do you have experience modifying shopping carts? What ever solution we end up with it needs to be SEO friendly.

-J

yeah yeah I mean it - to see how it can be customized and c how long will it take first than other steps
D

Esp if you have experience with customizing a cart. Feel free to shoot me some time and dollar estimates in a PM.

well i specialize in oscommerce, and its clones

now go into modx as well


could you describe products or services u r gonna provide?

i can write a snippet and its call for a form, the form would put to the database a product name and what ever more details for each product

also, the page will be created to show you the requested products/services quotes with edit function

please provide comments,
D.

FWIW, I almost always leave sites that won’t give me an immediate price on what I’ve selected (or that require me to register to get a price) and go to a more web-savvy competitor.

Here’s a good example of a cart with progressive configuration (click on "Configure"): http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/deluxe-window-awnings/20338d.

I think a whole lot of businesses don’t understand this about the web and are losing a ton of business because of it.

That said, the client is always right.