Patent ID: 7580869

Claim:
A method for a consumer to order products, via a network, from a plurality of merchants using a web page comprising a consistent user interface, comprising: determining, by a computer processor, whether information in a local database associated with a web page and relating to a product is at least one of: outdated and missing; determining, by said computer processor, whether said information is from an affiliated merchant or an unaffiliated merchant in response to said information being said at least one of: outdated and missing; retrieving, by said computer processor, additional information from said affiliated merchant in response to a merchant identifier matching one of said stored affiliated merchant identifiers, wherein said additional information is retrieved in response to said affiliated merchant granting permission to access an affiliated merchant database; screen scraping, by said computer processor, additional information from said unaffiliated merchant in response to said merchant identifier not matching one of said stored affiliated merchant identifiers; displaying, by said computer processor, said additional information within said web page comprising said consistent user interface; receiving, at said computer processor, a product selection command indicative of selecting a product for inclusion in a universal shopping cart; determining, by said computer processor, whether said selected product is from an affiliated web site by parsing an order string to determine said merchant identifier for said selected product and matching said merchant identifier with one of said stored affiliated merchant identifiers in a database; transmitting, by said computer processor, raw data in a data file for an order for said selected product directly to a processor associated with said affiliated merchant database in response to said selected product being from said affiliated web site and in response to said affiliated merchant granting said permission to said affiliated merchant database; injecting, by said computer processor, said order at an unaffiliated webpage in response to said unaffiliated webpage being associated with said selected product, wherein data elements of said order is injected to said unaffiliated webpage according to matching said data elements to respective fields associated with said unaffiliated webpage; and, determining, by said computer processor, a common payment method which is accepted by each of said at least one of said affiliated merchant or said unaffiliated merchant which respectively sell each of said selected product in said universal shopping cart, wherein said at least one of said affiliated merchant or said unaffiliated merchant is paid via said common payment method.