Zen Cart Buy Both Now for Better Together Marketing Text

Buy Both Now for Better Together Marketing Text is a Zen Cart™ extension which allows a shopowner to enhance the product info page marketing text with a one click purchase of two items grouped using my Better Together Contribution.

Note that Buy Both Now for Better Together Marketing Text and the Promotional Page with Add both to Cart are sold separately.

Relevance: Zen Cart™ 1.3.5 - 1.3.9, 1.5.0, along with Better Together

This extension is part of the Better Together World.

Current Version: 2.3b (versioning is based on Better Together)

Cost: $20.00 Buy Now! (Note: this low price covers software only for self-installation)

Installed Cost: $80.00 (Professional installation by That Software Guy)

Installation Difficulty: Moderate (Some file merging)

Installation Instructions: click here

Support Thread: My commercial software is not supported on the Zen Cart forum. Please email me questions instead.

FAQ: click here

See it Live: Go to product 3 in my demo shop you will see the cross-sell message for product 25, along with a button that allows both products to be purchased with a single click. The code that created this Better Together linkage was:

         $this->add_prod_to_prod(3, 25, "%", 50);

Add Ons: Better Together Promotional Page with Add both to Cart (sold separately)


osCommerce User? This is a Zen Cart page. Look at the Better Together for osCommerce World for osCommerce help.

Overview:

This product complements my Better Together contribution by allowing you to have a single button that adds both items to the cart - just like Amazon does. The button is displayed on the product info page for products with no attributes which are linked using add_prod_to_prod or add_twoforone_prod.

Product Info Page displaying Buy Both Now

If you prefer, you may add an image to this text as shown below:

Product Info Page displaying Buy Both Now with Images

Restrictions

• The linkage must use only products. In other words, only add_prod_to_prod or add_twoforone_prod. Linkages like add_cat_to_cat() and add_prod_to_cat() will not display a "buy both now" button.
• The product must not have attributes. If you look at product 14 in my demo shop you will see that since it has attributes, it does not display a "buy both now" button.
• The marketing text must be at the very top (recommended) or the very bottom of the page. Details are provided in the README file.
• Of course it works for twoforone_prod linkages! Look at product 6 in my demo shop for an example.
• Buy Both Now is for Better Together only; it does not understand Combination Discounts linkages.
  
  For Combination Discounts, see Buy The Set.

Note that Buy Both Now works best with Discount Preview. This way, customers can see their discount on the shopping cart page instead of having to wait for the Checkout Payment page.

Installation Instructions:

The first steps are the same as the Better Together installation instructions. Note that the instructions for adding marketing text are left out, because Buy Both Now is the same as marketing text.

1. Back up everything! Try this in a test environment prior to installing it on a live shop.
2. Install the latest version of Better Together. The download is here. If you already have the Better Together module installed, please deinstall your old copy by going to Admin->Modules->Order Total, selecting "Better Together" and pressing the "Remove" button. Make a note of your settings so you can apply them to the new version.
3. Copy the contents of the unzipped folder to the root directory of your shop.
   The names of these files reflect a template name of "custom." If you are using a different template name, please change file paths using "custom" to use your template name instead.
4. Login to admin and in Modules->Order Total you will see 'Better Together' listed along with all the other modules available.
5. Click on 'Better Together' to highlight the module and click on 'Install'
6. Decide on the linkages you wish to use, and add them to the setup() function in includes/modules/order_total/ot_better_together.php. Open a shopping cart in another window to test these discounts. They are shown on the second step of checkout in "Your Total" under "Better Together."
7. If you wish, install the Better Together Promotional Page (which displays all your Better Together discounts on one page).

Next, you have to add Buy Both Now by customizing your product info page.

Customize the tpl_product_info_display.php file to advertise your discounts. Put the file includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_product_info_display.php into includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/templates, and be sure you have installed tpl_better_together_marketing.php in this same directory.

Now you must add this block of code to the tpl_product_info_display.php file

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

to use images, use

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

NOTE! There are only TWO places this block of code may be inserted. It must be either immediately before the first "bof Form start" (line 18) or immediately after the last "bof Form close" (line 238 in 1.3.7).

If you have an old copy of tpl_product_info_display.php with this code after the product description, you must move it.

Installation Problems:

The most common installation problems for this module are as follows:

1. Forgetting to put the marketing text either before or after the <form> tag. The marketing text cannot be placed arbitrarily on the page with Buy Both Now; it must be before or after the form begins or ends. See the README that comes with the module.
2. Trying to use Buy Both Now on items with attributes. Buy Both Now only works on product linkages (add_prod_to_prod or add_twoforone_prod) with no attributes.

If you are having trouble installing this module, you should also refer to my Guide to Mod Installation on Zen Cart. I'm also happy to install most of my mods for a fee.

Major Versions

Buy Both Now and Better Together are versioned in lockstep, so to see the version history of Buy Both Now ,see Better Together. Note that in order to use Better Together Admin panel version 3.1 or higher (with Cross Sells), you must upgrade to Buy Both Now version 2.3 or higher.

FAQ

Q: What's the difference between Buy Both Now and the Better Together Centerbox with I Want Both and the Better Together Promotional Page with Add both to Cart?
A: They're all separate products. Buy Both Now works with the marketing text on the product info page; the Promotional Page with Add both to Cart works on the Promotional page, and the Centerbox (and the I Want Both button) works on the main page.

Q: Why doesn't Buy Both Now work with products with attributes?
A: Buy Both Now automatically adds the two items to the cart. You can't just add something with attributes to the cart automatically because you don't know the correct attribute settings; there are as many possibilities as the arithmatic product of the number of options. There's no way to know which one is right. So then the customer would have to go in and modify that item and add a new one with the correct attributes (because you can't edit an item in the cart), and then delete the old one. In addition, if there was javascript validation of the attributes, this would be sidestepped if I allowed Buy Both Now to automatically add items to the cart. So given all these complications, I decided to not allow it and clearly advertise this fact.

I charge a fee of $20.00 for Buy Both Now for Zen Cart. The fee covers software only; installation is extra if you require help.

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