Just recently, the payment module in Zoho Creator was introduced. With the help of this module, users can set up a payment gateway using their PayPal account. Once this gateway is set up, users can build a variety of applications that involve collecting payments, donations, etc. Our enthusiastic users have come up with a dozen applications that use the payment module in innovative ways. Today, I am showcasing a simple e-commerce application using your familiar Zoho Creator forms.
The heart of the application is an order form. Potential customers can place their orders for the goods offered for sale through this form. Not just that, they can also pay for the orders that they placed. In this sample application that I created, I am offering discounts on bulk orders, sending email confirmations of the order and generating invoices to send to the customers. While this sounds like a lot, it’s really easy to put it all in place. My PayPal account is tied to the order form for collecting the payments, and the customer can pay using either a credit card or PayPal account.
In this application, I am offering customized t-shirts on sale. Customers placing orders for 20 t-shirts or more will get a 10% discount.
First, I create the Order Form and tie it up with my PayPal’s sandbox account. You can find this option under the Settings tab of your application. Note that the payment module is available only for Professional and Enterprise plans.
Zoho Creator creates the base form, which will contain all the items up for sale and their respective prices. It also includes the fields from the base form in the order form. I can customize the order form to add more fields, like the buyer’s contact information, shipping address, etc.
Next, I include bits of Deluge Script that will calculate the discounted prices for the order, send the email confirmation and also generate an invoice to be sent to the customer.
Now that the application building part is over, I go over to the Items form and start adding the items available for sale.
The application is now ready. I simply embed the order form in my website. The orders start pouring in. Now that took me only an hour to build. Isn’t that neat? Do feel free to try the application. How could you use the payment module for your business application?
Building the order forms has been very 'easy to understand' explained. It is quite attractive post.
@Bapa
Users are the people to whom the application is shared to. If the order form is public, customers need not log in into Zoho to place their order. They will not be counted as users.
We are having a terrible time determining who counts as a "User" and who doesn't.
In this case, do the Customers who order T-shirts count as Users?
Can you point us to a definition or discussion of 'users' vs. members of the public who don't add to our user count?