Bear With Me.... Creating A Store Accessible From Client Galleries

Sorry for the multitude of questions but I'm really stuck on this.

I have a section 'Client Galleries' 

I want to have a 'Store' page selling physical and photo products other than prints (USB of images, boxes, simple albums etc) accessible from within each client gallery.

How do I set this up?

So far I've tried....

Creating a new section.  This works and I can link to this from the client gallery main menu,  but there is a fundamental navigation issue I can't get over - once someone has clicked into the Store there is no way for them to get back to the client gallery without logging in again.  There's no option to add a link anywhere to navigate back to the gallery they came from.  I know that the software *knows* which gallery they came from because it gets linked-to when adding certain products to the shopping cart but I can't see a way of adding that link anywhere else.

Then I tried...

Creating a sub-category of Client Galleries named 'Store' and set up to sell physical products.  I can't seem to get access to this anywhere except from the admin back-end.

I'm probably missing something very obvious but how do I do this?

You can do that like you create prints. Photo Products -> Product Base. Just create new products and select the type "other" and create them that way. And they are seen like the other print products.

They don't have the same visibility  -  you have to actually click into a picture to even realise they're there.  I've had people on my gallery who didn't even realise they could buy stuff.

I suppose I don't get why we can create these different sections and sub-categories etc but can't link them up.

If you don't think your customers understand to click or tap a photo (like they already do on their phones and computers) to see the products you can: 

1) Put in the gallery description "Click or tap the photos to purchase products". You can set default text for each new gallery in the gallery category settings.

2) Create a splash window for the gallery saying the same thing.

3) In the Photo Display settings (tab when viewing the photos in the gallery in the admin) set it to display type "Thumbnail" and be sure icons are not disabled and they will have a cart icon under each thumbnail.

Creating a store section under a client galleries section just isn't going to work. That is not what it is designed for.

Thanks Tim.

Bear with me (again)... this is a positive.

I appreciate it's not how the design may have been intended - and while I don't want to labour the point and take up your time -  the thing is this is *one* step away from working and behaving like the 'shop' feature found in Pixieset or Pic-Time (not saying you should copy these but they are very popular).

Anyway, I have a section (not a sub-category) named 'Shop'.  Within that section I've created a dummy product (box of prints) which can have up to 100 images selected for it.

I've added a link to the main menu (Design >> Menu Links) which means I can now access the 'Shop' from any client gallery easily.

Within 'Shop', my dummy product displays fine.  If I add it to my cart, a little popup appears saying "When viewing your photos, you will see the option to select the photos for this product."  as well as "Click here to return to XYZ gallery" or words to that effect.

Clicking this link does indeed take me back to the gallery I started in and flicking though the photos I can now add them to my dummy 'box of prints' product.

Intended design or not, this process works.

The *one* step that is missing is to have a link (on the menu, or in a button, or whatever) to take me back to the original gallery just so people can navigate to-and-fro easily.  That's the *only* part I can't get to work.

Is there a code tweak or anything I can do to use that gallery URL?  The system clearly knows what the URL is as it's embedded in that popup link so there's a variable somewhere in there holding it.

Again sorry to go on about this but with that one link it would seem to provide a new feature.