Genius needed! Plugins to change photo feed into a shop.

We are using a service that uses product feeds to create a catalog and then we can get those products to our site using a javascript code. If any of you are familiar with Etsy’s mini, it’s the same idea. You can see what we are doing here: https://www.tafaforum.com/market/

We’re trying to solve two problems:

1) Open links into new window. We want people to browse our market, but when they click on an item, the window opens to where that product lives. So, we will lose people who don’t know how to right click or who aren’t patient enough to hit the back button.

I thought that an iframe might work, but the one I tested still went to the host’s window (in effect doing the same thing). Then, I thought maybe we can hack the code (but, I don’t do code). I did look at some search results and it looks like that could be done… The end of the code is:

//–></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”//pin.merchpin.com/js”></script>

2) I have been thinking about how I could make these images searchable. Right now, we are just adding pages with links on the sidebar, but as it grows, that could become unwieldy. I tried a couple of shopping carts (including woocommerce), but couldn’t get them to play nice with the theme and I think that I need something simpler. My thinking was that the categories would be like fake products and have keywords attached to them with one image acting as a category image. Click on the image and the whole collection would display. Or, another way to do it would be to have these images all on one page, click on it and iframe opens with the products.

I looked through tons of image and catalog plugins and got nothing.

Basically, I am trying to figure out a way where people can stay on one page and explore the collections without leaving our site. I also have no idea how something like this would work on smart phones, so maybe I am just dreaming. I spent hours and hours going through plugins and testing them and nothing seemed to work as I imagined, but I have been on sites where if you click on an image something different opens up and you can move around in there (and shop!)and then close that to continue on the same page. Maybe I just don’t know what it is called…

Lots of geniuses around here, so hopefully, this problem will interest a couple of you and we might find something workable. Please speak down to me as I’m just an old creative type with some tech skills, but not really…