You might’ve missed it, but Turtle skin can be used to sell your photos or products too. To use this option you need to hold a Pro license or a Power storage account with jAlbum. Although the payment is routed through Paypal or Google Checkout, your customers don’t need to be signed up with these payment processors, they can simply use their credit card as well. Here’s how you can create an album with a shopping cart, and how the visitors see the process.
Creating the album
First collect the photos (of the products) you want to sell, and create a new album in the jAlbum application.
- Add the photos by the Add button or by dragging them onto jAlbum
- Choose Turtle skin
- Add an image to be used as “Theme image” on the index page. Right-click → Use as folder thumbnail, and Right-click → Exclude
- Switch to Edit mode (Pencil icon) and add captions to your items with the details of the product (you can use HTML code too in the captions)
Setting up the shopping cart
In order to use either Paypal or Google Checkout as payment gateway you need to be signed up with them. Here are the links to sign up with Paypal or Google Checkout. With Google Checkout you can usually use your Google Account if exists. For receiving more then just one or two payments a year you need to have a Merchant Account. Please read the provider’s documentation first about the conditions.
- Make sure you are signed in with jAlbum. If you are not, there will be a button on left top of the window with “Sign in”. If you’ve singed in after you’ve opened the album you might need to re-open the album by clicking the “Empty project” and back to the actual again.
- Go to Settings window, and switch to Selling photos
- Check the Add a smart shopping cart to your photos
- Choose your preferred payment processor: Paypal or Google Checkout
- Add your Seller ID: the email you are using with paypal or the long Merchant ID string.
- Specify the currency you want to receive payments in. You can use only one currency in a shopping cart!
- Add Overall handling if applies. This is an amount will be added only once on top of each finished shopping cart. E.g. a flat package and posting fee.
- Add your default Shop options in the following syntax: Shop option name=Price, e.g.
10x15" Print=1.00. Please note, you must not use the currency sign here! - If you want to add a shipping fee on top of each item you can use the following syntax: Shop option name=Price+Shipping, e.g.
A1 poster=50+10– this means the price for the poster is $50, and will be added $10 on top of each as shipping cost. - You can add as many options as you wish – each in a new line –, and naturally you can combine the ones with and without shipping fee
Setting up individual shopping options for the pictures
If your items have different prices or you want different options attached to them, no problem, you can specify individual shop options in Edit mode. Click the Pencil icon on the top right, and open the Image data tab near the bottom right. There you can specify the shop option you want for the actual picture only. The syntax is the same as with the global options, see above. If you want to use the default option just leave this box empty. If you don’t want the shopping cart added to a specific picture just add a minus sign here.
Final touches
Before you release the album to the public you might want to tweak the album here or there. Here are some of my suggestions for albums made for selling.
- Set the shopping cart as visible by default: Settings / Turtle / General / Info panel visible by default and Selling photos
- Add Terms and Conditions as Album info Settings / Turtle / Header / Album info window or as a separate page.
- You also might want to add social plugins to your shop on the Settings / Turtle / Sharing page
Now it’s time to see what we’ve done. Hit Make and when that’s finished hit Preview or press F12. You can now check if the shopping works, but do not go to checkout unless you have a sandbox account with Paypal.
The shopping process
- Your visitor will see the shopping cart by default
- He / she can choose the shop option and specify the quantity. The total amount will be displayed next to it.
- The Add to cart button places the item in the shopping cart and a popup window will come up with the items already placed in the cart
- The View Cart button is there to check the shopping cart content without placing a new item in it
This is how Paypal’s shopping cart looks like. You can remove items, change quantities here, and when you are ready you can go to check out and pay either from a Paypal account or by a Credit card. See right.- When the payment has completed you will receive a notification in email with the list of sold products each with folder and file name, the shop option chosen and the quantity
Now it’s your turn to fulfil the order
Failing to do so will result in a “dispute” opened by the customer, and if there’s no agreement within 3 weeks, Paypal will get back the money from the seller, and devalue its “reputation”, which easily lead to a locked seller account, with locked money too.
Conclusion
Opening a shop with the help of Turtle skin is that easy. Fits perfect for web-shops selling just a few items and don’t need advanced commercial features, like discounts or database-driven stock handling.