accomplish added advance button buttons buyer buyers cart checkout clicking code create custom customers defined describe discount ensure field free happens help image item manually multiple option order page particular price product products replace reply standard thank-you-page url whenever

Hi folks. New user here. I'd like to collect a single variant choice from every checkout but it is not related to a specific product. More just a general question for my customers. Is there a way to add a variant to the cart, but not to an item?

Thanks for any help!

If these would be specific, predetermined values you expect the buyer to enter in the cart manually and accurately, you might be able to use our Discount Codes feature for that:
http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.discounts.htm

Basically, you would create a Cart Discount code in advance for every value you expect buyers to enter, although you could define these to grant 0.00 actual discount off the order. Then whenever a buyer enters a code in the cart's Discount Code field (you can change the field's label to say something else), if that happens to match a Cart Discount code you've already defined, then that value would be passed with the order data.

Otherwise, could add a &custom=YOUR-VALUE-HERE parameter to every Add to Cart button's URL. This could be a static value hard-coded into the buttons on each page, or you could have some custom scripting in your page that appends an arbitrary custom value to every button dynamically. This would ensure that the custom value gets passed into the cart regardless of which product(s) are being ordered. Only one custom= value can get passed per order, and the last item with a custom= value that gets added to the cart determines the custom= value that gets passed with the order.

Was there a particular purpose you had in mind for this? If you could describe what you're trying to accomplish, we might already have a more straightforward way to meet your need.

thanks for the reply. i actually need it to be a multiple choice option instead. essentially it's just a sort of poll, i want the customers to be able to "vote" for potential upcoming products from a handful of ideas i might have. if i can't do it with the cart perhaps i can embed a third party poll widget into my thank you page or something.

In that case, you could just make a free product (price 0.00) using "Variations which tell more..." to specify your poll choices, then replace our standard Add to Cart button image with your own Vote button for the free poll product's button code, so selecting an option and clicking Vote would add their free vote "item" to the cart.