shopping cart software

Within the Volusion shopping cart's 1-Page-Checkout portion of the storefront (where customers go to make payments and finalize their order), there is an option that below the billing portion of the page for all first-time customers as well as customers visiting this page without being logged into their store account that reads: "I wish to receive occasional newsletter emails from Volusion Inc.". This option is checked by default.

With this option checked, once a customer places an order from the Volusion store for the first time, the customer's account will be flagged to have opted-in to receive newsletters from the store. This flag is set in the customer's online store account and can be viewed by merchants by clicking on the Customers tab and clicking on the Customers link in the purple menu bar, then accessing individual customer account settings by clicking on the customer's ID number. Customers who are flagged to receive newsletters will automatically receive all newlsetter email the merchant creates and sends.

Getting Started:

Please note that this newsletter opt-in function pertains specifically to the individual store hosted through Volusion. The "Volusion" text within the checkbox option is merely used as a place-holder. Merchants wishing to use this option should use the steps described in this article to modify the text, replacing the Volusion name with that of their online business. Note that Volusion does not use this or any other feature of the online shopping cart software to collect information about Volusion-based merchants' customers.

Some Volusion users may wish to remove or hide this option from their store or simply change the wording of the checkbox option. Doing so is simple and requires the user to edit one file within their Volusion store's Administration Page. The following article details how to do this: 

Winter '09

• First the user will need to log into their Volusion store's Admin Page and click on the Design tab.
• From there, users can click on Site Content link the the blue menu bar.
• Next, use the View dropdown to select PageText.
• Using the Category dropdown, select Checkout.
• Scroll to the bottom of this page and you will see ID 694 where you can edit the text for your store.
  

Version 5

• First the user will need to log into their Volusion store's Admin Page and click on the Design tab.
  
• From there, users can click on the Website Text link in the dark, blue menu bar.
• In the following page, scroll down to the Company Information header and click on article ID 102 to edit it.
• Users should now be viewing article 102's contents within the Articles page.

This website text article is specifically designed to control the behavior of the email newsletter op-in message. Notice that the spot-key for this article reads, Email_Subscriber_Preferences. This spot key setting assigns a specific behavior to the article. It is recommended that Volusion users do not modify this article outside of the instructions provided within this article.

Changing the Newsletter Option Text:

Changing the text for the newsletter option is very simple. In the ArticleBody field, remove the default text and enter the text or HTML that should be displayed within the shopping cart instead. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page to finalize the article changes.

Hiding the Newsletter Option Text:

To hide this checkbox option outright, simply delete the default text within the ArticleBody field, enter a single SPACE and click Save Changes. This will hide not only the article's text but also the checkbox for that option.

Setting the Newsletter Option as Unchecked by Default:

As stated above, the newletter option is enabled by default for newly-registering customers. Some merchants may wish to provide this option however set its default value to a disabled state (to prevent customers who ignore the newletter option message from accidentally signing up for the store's mailing list). This can be done quite easily by adding some basic Java Script to the newletter article body:

Simply edit article 102 or 694, depending on the Version of Volusion you are using, as described above. Instead of restyling or removing the text located in this article, append to the ArticleBody field the following JavaScript code:

The script listed above will simply redefine the checkbox and its associated variable to be "false" when article 102 is rendered. Customers must check this option the to sign up for the store's newsletter mailing list during registration.

Summary:

This article should provide merchants with further information on how to customize their store in specific ways to better sell online. An important note regarding hiding this email newsletter option: Even though merchants may have configured article 102 or 694, depending on the version of Volusion you are using, to hide this option, the hidden option will still be enabled provided a new customer registers with the Volusion store without proceeding through the initial checkout page first. As such the newsletter subscriber flag will be set for new customers only in this case.