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E-commerce: Product Brief

Introduction

Many companies will require to offer their existing products to customers on the Internet. In order to do so they need at least 3 ingredients, Product Catalogue, Shopping Cart and Credit Card payments. There are many ways to accomplish this from simple catalogues that can be set up from a browser and hosted by an ISP (such as WorldPay) through to major bespoke developed systems hosted in-house such as SAP. Each option has a valid situation in which it can be used. EcomPlus has been developed to provide web on-line catalogue facilities for small and medium sized companies at low cost using the latest Microsoft technical architectures.

The Catalogue Manager provides facilities for managing all the site's data. It provides an easy-to-use interface which removes all the Web technicalities so that Products, Orders and Customers can be maniplulated by anyone. The actual web page design resides in the Web Templates which can be edited in any HTML editor. This would normally be done by a Web Designer to get the best effect.

Although it can be used as a standalone catalogue, it has also been designed to attach to the Sage Line 100 Accounting System.

This allows the accounting system to

• receive sales and cash postings directly from the web sales activities
• receive sales orders for progressing in Line 100 (i.e. stock allocation, warehouse picking and invoice posting)
• provide real-time stock information for use in the web catalogue
• "pump" product pricing information from the Stock Control File to the catalogue
• provide sales ledger account information to the web order system to allow a Members Area that customers can sign into individually to receive personalised pricing and place orders on account

Design Brief

EcomPlus has been designed to be a single program to process products and orders which can be used on many web sites, each of which can look as individual as you like. It assumes that the web site can be split into two different types of pages, the static pages and the generated pages.

The static pages are those which are designed by the web designer and then published to the server. These pages do not change until republished. They typically contain information which does not change very often and which does not form part of the core operations of the company, for example welcome, general information, link and contact pages.

The generated pages are those which are created for the user to view at the time the user clicks on something on a web page. They are constructed from data elements which are stored in a database and form part of, and are shared with, the company’s core operations. Such pages contain product, customer or order information that tie into core operations are sales, purchasing, stock control and accounts.

EcomPlus has been designed so that the user can navigate the site and move between these two types of pages without noticing that a transition has occurred. This is done by using HTML templates which form the skeleton of the generated pages. These skeletons contain all the information to format the pages as per the static pages, ensuring a common look and feel for the whole site.

The database is capable of handling product catalogues of any size with perhaps hundreds of thousands of lines, for example car parts. Each product can have multi-currency, personalised pricing and limitless product specification information.

In addition to the Web facilities EcomPlus includes a full Windows management application which is used by the back office to manage the catalogue, orders and customers.

Page Design

There is no limit to the possible designs of the static pages or generated page templates on a site. Web site design is greatly simplified if all pages use one or more Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the site’s basic fonts and colours. The generated sections are added to these templates during the user request by replacing special tags on each page with the final information. The tags can be placed anywhere on the page and will inherit attributes from the page. When EcomPlus replaces tags with HTML fragments it will often be generating page elements such as tables which will also have to match the page design but which cannot inherit sufficient attributes from the page. For this we use a series of reserved style names in the Style Sheet which EcomPlus will use to generate these HTML fragments to match the pages themes.

Where tags generate HTML fragments with buttons, the button captions can be defined in the EcomPlus database.

Product Catalogue

Product catalogues can be virtually limitless in size. The aim of the web-based catalogue is to

Each product can be allocated to one or more search Categories and can be allocated to a Manufacturer. This allows one product to be found in different searches, for example a washing machine could be allocated to "Washing Machines" and/or "Domestic Appliances".

The main Product Search page can contain many types of search facility such as product catagory drilldown, search icons and buttons, alphanumeric search, Item Code direct entry etc.

If the catalogue contains very few products the database can be set to display all products on a single page without offering a search page. This number of product which forms this threshold can be defined individually for each site.

Some products are simple and require only a Code and a Name. Usually however a product will require additional textual information and pictures. Complicated products such as vehicles or software require a great deal of information per product to allow the customer to browse and make his purchase. EcomPlus has been designed to store an unlimited amount of this information safely within its SQL Server database. It does this by maintaining a Product Note library of each piece of information. Each Note is a database record which contains HTML text and/or an image. The image can be of any size and the display size can be scaled to fit the exact size for a particular page. Having created the library, each of the Note records can be associated with one or many Products. This allows one "chunk" of product or company data to be shared amongst lots of products without duplication. For example a single engine description and graphic, or a common warranty statement can be shared amongst all the vehicles to which it applies. Any updates to the library record will automatically apply to all associated products.

During the association of the library note to the product, the sequence in which the notes will be displayed, and a number of other attributes, can be set to maximise the effectiveness for each product.

In this way the database can be set up with a huge number of products and specification notes but duplication is eliminated and the creation and maintenance of the catalogue is easy.

Product Pricing

Product pricing is one of the more complex issues when selling anything, especially on the Web where customers serve themselves. EcomPlus has been designed to handle

Product variants (e.g. size and colour)

Automatic Price expiry and commencement

Implicit and Explicit Multi-currency pricing and margins

Each product has at least one Variant, which will be a variation of the base Product. Each Variant will describe itself and can have Item Code prefix and/or suffix. In this way the final Item Code can be built up from the base Product plus the Variant prefix/suffix. Each variant in turn has at least one Price Group. The Price Group defines when a group of prices is to be used. A Variant may have several Price Groups which would allow prices to be automatically varied over time, for example for January Sales or for a scheduled price increase. These changes can be set up at any time before the event thereby avoiding any panics.

Each Price Group has at least one price which must have a Type and a Currency. The Type is used to determine which price can be displayed to a particular customer. For example a normal anonymous Web customer might be allowed to see the "Recommended Retail" price Type. However a validated user (one that has Signed In) may be allowed to see the "Trade Price". In this case the Price Group will require 2 records, one of each Type. Any number of Price Types can be set up to allow an unlimited number of personalised prices. To control this behaviour each customer is linked to an appropriate Customer Category.

Each product price can be displayed in any of the Currencies defined for the site. There are two ways of generating a price in any chosen currency. If a price record exists whose Currency matches the required currency, that price will be displayed directly. This has the advantage of allowing rounding of prices so that they appear more sensible in the customer’s currency and allows different margins for different currencies. However if this match cannot be found the price is calculated from the price record whose Currency matches the preferred currency for the product. As the preferred currency is likely to be the purchase currency, this reduces the likelihood of margin "creep" due to exchange rate fluctuations.

If the site is integrated with Sage Line 100 the available stock levels can optionally be displayed alongside prices. Future versions will support multi-depot stock allocation.

In summary EcomPlus can produce prices for a product for any product variant, customer, time or currency that may be required.

Shopping Basket

The shopping basket is the mechanism by which a sales order is assembled by the customer and finally confirmed. Any number of items can be added to the order for delivery to a single address. During the checkout process EcomPlus asks whether the customer is a new customer or has bought before. For new customers EcomPlus asks for and stores personal and delivery address details and offers all valid shipment options for the items selected. The Delivery Address is automatically copied into the Billing Address by EcomPlus and both addresses can hold a unlimited number of contact details such as phone, fax and e-mail addresses. For existing customers all addresses and contact details are retrieved and displayed for checking and possible amendment by the customer.

Shipment options presented depend on the items selected. Each product is associated with one or more Shipment Options and only those options which apply to all the items in the order is displayed. Freight charges are calculated on a per item, a per shipment basis, or a combination of both.

At any point the customer can change the currency in which prices are displayed. This is for customer convenience and does not necessarily mean that payment will be affected in that currency. The Payment currency depends on the settings for the Merchant Account that is in use and EcomPlus will convert to the Merchant Account currency during payment authorisation.

The customer is offered the ability to review or delete the order during the confirmation process. New customers are requested to provide a password so that the information they have provided can be automatically retrieved next time saving their time during the next order. Customers can be defined as requiring order pre-payment, which requires on-line authorisation of a credit card, or as a credit customer where sales can be automatically confirmed subject to the current credit limit of their per-configured Sales Ledger account. Credit customers are only supported where the Accounting System integration is active. Either way when the order is finally confirmed a web page is generated as a receipt/confirmation and optionally a confirmation e-mail is sent to each of the Delivery and Billing addresses, if different.

If the Accounting System option is active the stock is allocated during the confirmation process, thereby ensuring that the promised delivery time can be met.

On-Line Payment

The sequence of screens seen by the customer depends on the Payment Gateway set up for each site. For on-line payments both direct and indirect Payment Gateways are supported. For Indirect Payment Gateways such as Netbanx, WorldPay and Planet Payment EcomPlus redirects the users browser during confirmation to the Payment Gateway site which asks for payment details using secure communications facilities. These pages can be tailored to some extent to match the merchant site but the Payment Gateway logo is usually prominent and it is obvious that the customer has left the merchant’s site. Following successful authorisation the Payment Gateway sends a confirmation to EcomPlus which confirms the order. This is the cheapest and easiest interface to implement.

For direct connections such as Barclays BMS EcomPlus can achieve card authorisation directly. This means that EcomPlus will handle all payment related screens to the customer without redirecting to another site, i.e. request card details, acceptance and rejection screens. The merchant site must purchase and implement a valid digital certificate to allow secure communications. In this way the customer sees the reassuring padlock in their browser confirming that they are connected to a secure server.

Customer Data and On-Line Queries

Having placed the order the customer will be allocated an order number. New customers will also receive an account number and all their details will be stored on the system. For direct Payment Gateways this will also include credit card information. EcomPlus allows the customer to view and amend where possible the following information

Current Orders and Shipment Status

Past Order history

Delivery and Billing Addresses

Account Password

EcomPlus uses the e-mail address and the password to control access to these facilities. If the password has been forgotten there are facilities to retrieve a forgotten password. Customers are asked for their e-mail address and if they can correctly enter a credit card number or Order number that they have used before on the site, an e-mail confirming the password will be immediately sent to them.

Technical Architecture

EcomPlus is designed to run on 2 logical servers, a Web Server and a Data Server. The Data Server may in turn connect to a third logical server which hosts the Accounting System, if it is required. Although each server is logically separate, all three logical servers could be hosted in a single physical machine. This allows full control over server location, loading and security.

The application has been designed using Microsoft Distributed InterNet Architecture (see http://www.microsoft.com/dna) to ensure scalability and fast easy development for Windows environments. The system has been developed with SQL Server with extensive use of stored procedures and offers very high throughput. Both synchronous and asynchronous (queued) COM components are used for data access to further increase efficiency.

Access to the Sage Line 100 Accounting System is via a series of COM+ components which run on the Data Server. This allows the Sage data files to be located on any server platform, e.g. Netware. This 3-way separation allows a firewall to be active between each layer, providing the maximum security.