Non direct sales (product page without buy option)

[CFashion]

One of our customers sell products that are not allowed to be direct sold on a webshop by the product producer.
For these "Non direct sales" there needs to be a product page with almost no information and a "ask for information"-button. After filling in an email address and pressing the button the customer should receive a link to a product page that has all the information filled and a buy-button.

How can we achieve this?
Is there standard Shopify functionality we can use or is there an app that helps with this?

[Elias]

Greetings, @CFashion.

Thank you for reaching out and posting this question!

I understand you're looking to change the add-to-cart button to an "ask for information" button for some of your products as well as a way for customers to purchase the product after filling in their emails. While everything that you're looking for might not be possible, there are a couple of workarounds that you can explore.

One option is by replacing the add-to-cart button with a contact link using a separate product page template with all the product information removed. After customers contact the store, you can create draft orders to allow them to complete their purchases. While you can also create a second product page that maintains the add-to-cart button, you wouldn't be able to hide this page without disabling the checkout for those products. Nevertheless, you can consider locking this second product page using a locking app (eg. Locksmith) and grant access to customers after they've made contact. 

It is also possible to add a field to capture the customer's email address by custom coding or using an app (eg. Custom Fields). However, I'm not sure if this is the best solution, as this is more applicable towards certain tasks (eg. newsletter signups, contact us page, customer account creation, or order processing). You would also need a mailing service with automation (eg. Klaviyo) in order to automatically send a link to  the customers. 

You can consider using the Buy Buttons to create a link that you can use in an email template. However, it's not recommended for your own Online store as it can cause problems with the checkout process. Instead, you'll want to consider using permalinks to pre-load the cart. Again, you would still need some sort of mailing service to automate sending the links to the customers. 

In short, the easiest way is to replace the add-to-cart button with a contact link and then sending draft invoices to the customers. Other methods would require either, setting up a locked second product page or an offsite product page using Buy Buttons, and a mail service to automate the process. Unless the customers have an account created already, there isn't a way to pre-load their info onto the draft order or the checkout. 

I'd love to know if any of these workarounds would work for you. Let me know!