How to: Block duplicate orders with SoftwareProjects Shopping Cart

How do you prevent a customer from accidently ordering the same product twice?

Most shopping carts disable the "Submit order" button, but what if a customer comes back a few weeks later? Or orders a different product that bundles an add-on product your customer already owns?

Duplicate orders cost money, waste resources and annoy your customers.

The SoftwareProjects shopping cart employs two levels of protection from duplicate orders:

#1. Block orders of the same exact product

When you create a new product in the Product Manager, you'll notice a checkbox that reads "Customer can purchase more than a single copy of this product".



By default this is turned off. Keep it turned off to prevent customers from ordering the same exact product twice.

Whether customers accidently hit the submit button twice, or come back to the page a few days later, the system will prevent them from ordering the same exact product twice.


#2. Block orders of products from the same category

At times, you may create multiple versions of the same product. For example:

* Same product with two different payment plans
* Same product with two different commission plans
* Same product with two different autoresponder or order confirmation emails.
etc.

Each product has a unique codename and the system does not automatically block duplicate orders when the product codename is different.

To avoid duplicate orders in situations where you create multiple copies of the same product offering, use categories.

Categories let you to group similar products together and then block duplicate orders of two products from the same category.



Set "Max one product under this category" to YES and then group all similar products under this category.