non technical question on operation of basket

mars16

am doing a simple basket but am not clear on something.

When a user wants to buy an item and selects quantity (from a pull down) and then clicks "Add to Basket", that item, its id and its quantity it added to Basket table.

Lets say initially the pulldown had numbers going from 1 to 30, and user selected 15 to add to basket.

Q: the user will almost certainly choose to continue shopping and not checkout immediatley, if the come back to that same item, should the pull down menu now state 15 or 30? bear in mind that they havn't bought the other 15 items, they just added to basket.

leatherback

It should say 1, as that is a likely number to add. However, you could add a little line underneath the dropdown stating "You currently have ... in your basket" to make it user friendly.

mars16

hi leatherback,
It should say 1? surely you mean it should say 15? if not, please explain what u mean because it doesn't make sense to me.

leatherback

It should say EITHER 1 OR 0.

0 if the default is to not add anyting. 1 if the default is to add 1 items.

What you put in the quantity to add dropdown should not be dependent on what is in the basket.

mars16

sorry leatherback but i think you misunderstood me.

the "items" thats being added to the basket are hotel rooms and was worried about over booking, so thats why i was asking if thre are 30 rooms in a particular hotel and 15 has been added to basket by the user, what should the pulldown qantity contain now if i go back to that same hotel? 15 or 30. currently, it stay as the 30, which means user can select, lets say 20 from the pulldown, to add bbasket, so total rooms aded to basket are 35 and there is only 30 rooms in the first place.

my idea originally was to allow this but when it comes to checking out, to throw up an error as rooms being checked out are more than whats in the qty of that hotel.

sorrry if, you already were clear on this, i do appercaite the help.

leatherback

Ok, if tha is your worry..
Make the limt of the dropdown the number of rooms which are available - the number in the basket, unless that is more than 30, then limit to 30 (if that is your disired max).

But really.. .that is a personal choice to make, perhaps together with the client for whom you are buoilding (If building for yourself: your choice!).

But it is more user friendly to not let them select more rooms than available

mars16

no, its not for client, just learning different techniques.

i am happy to go with your idea that qantity pulldown=(rooms available - the rooms added to basket)

so lets say 30 rooms initially and user adds to basket 20 rooms, so 10 are left.

the pull down menu will now say 10 rooms are left

i want to take this further and your opinion on it.

question: imagine that another user also is accessing the site, because the first user added 20 rooms to his basket, the new user accessing the site will only see 10 rooms left.

my concern is, what happens if the first user decideds to change his mind and drop the rooms added earlier from his basket (which he didn''t actually buy). Issn't there a flow in the system because from business point of view someone who might not checkout the content of his basket is potentially loosing the company money coz there might be other user who want to buy but the rooms aren't availbe to him to see coz they is someone else's basket who didn't go through to checkout.

what do you think of this? is this how professional sites operate as well?

leatherback

I think you should not make things unavailable to other users untill it is checkout time.

Mind you: It is not very likely that 2 users are both booking a large number of rooms at the same time.

In any case: Once you do the checkout you need to verify available rooms. If at that time the rooms have been booked.. That is too bad for the person who looses out. You cannot cater for all that (Unless you want to lock out the options that are in a basket. Personally, I wouldn't. In the end you are in it to make money, first come first serve.