Overview

When your customer wants to buy a product from your online store, they typically navigate your website to find the item they wish to buy. If your website is hosted externally to the UltraCart platform, you will use Buy Links to get products from your external site into your UltraCart checkout (also known as the shopping cart).

Note: If you are using an UltraCart StoreFront, you do not need to use Buy Links to display and sell items. You can assign items to your StoreFront directly from the StoreFront page editor or the Item editor.

Buy Links offer a straightforward method for your customers to add products from an external site directly into their UltraCart shopping cart. UltraCart automatically generates a Buy Link for each item you add to the system. When a customer clicks this link on your external website, the corresponding product is added to a shopping cart session within UltraCart.

Locating Your Buy Links

To access the Buy Links for your items, follow these steps:

Navigate to the Main Menu.
Select Items.
Choose Item Management.

Main Menu → Items → Item Management

On the Item Management page, you will see a list of your created items. Next to each item is a set of action icons.

Clicking on the Links icon for a specific product will direct you to the Buy Links page for that item

A "Buy Link" is essentially an HTML snippet designed to be embedded on your web page, often alongside an "Add to Cart" button graphic. This HTML snippet contains the necessary code to ensure that when clicked, the correct item and its associated attributes are added to the shopping cart.

Basic Buy and View Cart Link

To integrate an item onto your site using a basic link, simply create a link that says "add to cart" and point it to the provided buy link. You have the option to use a graphical "add to cart" button instead of plain text.

It's important to note the simplicity of a basic buy link. The buy link contains two primary parameters: your merchant ID and the item ID. When creating buy links for different items, the only part of the URL that changes is the item ID. For example, in the URL below, the item ID MENS-HOODIE is highlighted:

https://secure.ultracart.com/cgi-bin/UCEditor?merchantid=T1000&ADD=MENS-HOODIE

If you were to copy and paste this link throughout your site for different products, only the MENS-HOODIE portion would need to be changed to the respective item ID.

Since you can have multiple StoreFronts configured in UltraCart, a dropdown list is provided just above the buy link. This allows you to select which StoreFront the generated link should be associated with, enabling you to direct customers to different StoreFronts for the same item based on the link they click.

Elements of a Buy Link

Below is an example of the HTML code snippet for a basic buy link:

<A HREF="http://yourstorefronturl.com/cgi-bin/UCEditor?MERCHANTID=T1000&ADD=MENS-HOODIE">Buy Now</A>

There are three key elements within any buy link:

StoreFront URL: In the example above, yourstorefronturl.com represents your StoreFront URL. Replace this with your actual StoreFront URL.
Merchant ID: In the example, T1000 is the merchant ID. Replace this with the merchant ID assigned to you during your UltraCart signup.
Item ID: Each item in your store has a unique item ID. The item ID is included in the link's target. In the example, replace MENS-HOODIE with the item ID of your product.

Advanced Buy Links

Within the Item Links / Buy Links page, there is also a section dedicated to Advanced Buy Links. This section allows you to include additional parameters in the buy link. For instance, you can add a coupon code so that it is automatically applied when the customer clicks the link. Including a coupon in the link will automatically add that coupon to the customer's cart.

While a basic buy link is simple (containing only the merchant ID and item ID), the advanced buy link builder allows you to configure many more options and generates the appropriate link for you

As illustrated, by simply entering the desired coupon code into the field, the link builder automatically incorporates the correct code into the generated link. From here, you can copy and paste this link into the element on your website that you wish to link to the checkout.

Getting all your buy links at once

Clicking on the links icon for each individual product to retrieve its buy link can be time-consuming, especially if you have a large number of items. To simplify this process, UltraCart provides a button at the bottom of the Item Links page that allows you to download all of the buy links for your current items at once.

Utilizing this feature will download an Excel spreadsheet containing a list of your items and their corresponding buy links.

This provides you with all your buy links in a single location, eliminating the need to navigate to each item's links page individually.

Buy Links