Placing Orders

After a merchant has set up their website, set up their Creative Cart account, placed buy buttons on their web pages, and uploaded the new web pages to their web server, customers can begin placing orders using the shopping cart.

When a customer comes to the site, they can find and read about the products from the vendor's website. When the customer chooses to order something, they click on the buy button. This sends a request to a program running on one of the Creative Cart servers. Creative Cart displays the "View Cart" page to the customer. The customer can then choose to continue shopping on the merchant's website, or the customer can check out.

Checking out is a secure process where the customer answers questions and fills in their information. When they have finished, they submit their order, Creative Cart displays an order confirmation page, and an order confirmation e-mail is sent to the customer's e-mail account. Additionally, if the merchant has allowed it, an order notification e-mail is sent to the merchant. This configuration is on by default, but can be disabled for vendors who have many orders per day and do not want their in box constantly filled with order notifications.