we plan to use uCommerce to sell items that are unique, ie there's only one of each item in the store, and after a confirmed sale the item is removed. there may be similar items but each item has difference characteristics and thus cannot be represented by a single product.
is uCommerce a suitable solution for what we want to achieve? if so, pointing us to the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
It's suitable. In fact one of the very first uCommerce solutions ever done is pretty much exactly like what you describe. I can't believe I'm actually linking to this site again. Please don't look too closely at the design (they wanted it like that :)).
If you scroll down the page you'll see the word "Solgt", which means "Sold". That's an example of single sale item, which can never be sold again. Not sure why they keep the listing, but that's their choice.
The basic idea is to create the products like you normally would. To ensure that products aren't sold twice a custom pipeline task is used in conjunction with an additional field on the product definition.
Basically what the pipeline task does is update this field to indicate that the product was sold.
One thing you need to figure out with your client is when to mark the item as sold, e.g. is the item available when a customers puts it in the basket or not? I would say it is, but it does mean that two or more customers will be fighting over that same item and ultimately only one will get it (the first one to check out) and the others will have to be told about it.
You'll probably need a second pipeline task which will remove the product from the cart again if it turns out it was sold to another customer.
uCommerce: setting up of unique items
Hi,
we plan to use uCommerce to sell items that are unique, ie there's only one of each item in the store, and after a confirmed sale the item is removed. there may be similar items but each item has difference characteristics and thus cannot be represented by a single product.
is uCommerce a suitable solution for what we want to achieve? if so, pointing us to the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Hi Justin,
It's suitable. In fact one of the very first uCommerce solutions ever done is pretty much exactly like what you describe. I can't believe I'm actually linking to this site again. Please don't look too closely at the design (they wanted it like that :)).
If you scroll down the page you'll see the word "Solgt", which means "Sold". That's an example of single sale item, which can never be sold again. Not sure why they keep the listing, but that's their choice.
The basic idea is to create the products like you normally would. To ensure that products aren't sold twice a custom pipeline task is used in conjunction with an additional field on the product definition.
Basically what the pipeline task does is update this field to indicate that the product was sold.
One thing you need to figure out with your client is when to mark the item as sold, e.g. is the item available when a customers puts it in the basket or not? I would say it is, but it does mean that two or more customers will be fighting over that same item and ultimately only one will get it (the first one to check out) and the others will have to be told about it.
You'll probably need a second pipeline task which will remove the product from the cart again if it turns out it was sold to another customer.
It doesn't take a lot of code to it.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Soren,
at least now i know i'm on the right track. next big hurdle for me is to familiarize with umbraco and ucommerce as i'm new to both.
Let me know how you get on. I'd love to promote your new site once it's done.
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