Let's start with creating a first sales order, just to have a closer look at what your customers will see in your store:
- From our demo store home page, just select a product, or first click on a category in the main menu and select a single product from there:
- On your product detail page, take a closer look at all the items that are being shown. Remember that by playing with Magento's settings it's possible to influence what is and isn't visible here. Anyway, add the item to your cart.
- Next, your cart is shown. In here pay attention to items such as the shipping calculator (see Chapter 8, Configuring Shipping), the products on the right (Chapter 4, Simple Products), and the possibility to check out using multiple shipping addresses:
- When we're continuing our sales process in the checkout, the first step a customer has to take is to login, create an account, or to checkout as a guest. This last option can be enabled or disabled. It's up to you whether or not you want to allow Guest Checkout. Just be aware that in a consumer-oriented website enabling the Guest Checkout can really increase your sales. Navigate to System | Configuration | Sales | Checkout | Checkout Options:
- If you take a closer look, you will notice that the Magento Checkout procedure requires six steps for the customer to take. This might seem overwhelming, but in fact you're staying on the same page all the time. It isn't bad at all, but some store owners just want a simpler method and less steps to take or even a ''One Step Checkout''. If you want to change the default steps of Magento you'll need an extension to help you out. More on this topic can be found in the next chapter. For now, just continue taking all the necessary steps and start with entering your personal details, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Note that the customer can decide to use the same address as a shipping address or enter a different one. If you keep the default, step 3 of the checkout process will be skipped.
- Next, choose the shipping method. In our example, we just used one fixed rate for all items. More on configuring shipping methods has been discussed in the previous chapter:
- In step 5 of the checkout form, you can select the payment method you'd like to use. The contents of this part, of course, completely depend on the configuration of your payment methods, which we've discussed during Chapter 7, Accepting Payments. In the following example, we simply enter our credit card information, using a test account:
- Finally, check your order once more for all the details in an overview. Confirm it by clicking on Place Order. Note that in this example, there's no additional sales tax applied! More on using tax for your orders was discussed during Chapter 2, General Configuration:
- Once confirmed, your customer will receive an order confirmation by e-mail and will be redirected to the Thank you page. As a store owner, you might want to receive these confirmation e-mails as well. You can enter your e-mail address to do so in the backend. Navigate to System | Configuration | Sales | Sales Emails, if you want to receive a copy of all sales orders:
The confirmation page may have additional information. For instance, when ordering a downloadable product, Magento will show a link to your account, where you'll be able to download your item. Because of this, it is always required to create an account in Magento when you're ordering downloadable products. Therefore, a guest checkout isn't possible in this case:
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