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| AN E-COMMERCE STOREFRONT IMPLEMENTED USING .NET FRAMEWORK |
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| In its endeavor to provide value-added
services to its customers, our client revamped their e-commerce
storefront. The enhanced storefront provides category
management tools to classify books & multimedia CDs, while
incorporating powerful search capabilities and enhanced online
transaction processing within the user interface. In addition,
it provides up-selling capabilities, implemented by generating
advanced queries through the SQL Server 2000 database. Designed
for a global customer base, the solution provides seamless accessibility
and secure online shopping to customers. |
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| Customer
Profile |
| Our client, an organization based
in India, is a leading source for Indian book titles
and information products. The company started operations in
1990 and has grown to the stature of the preferred “support
services provider” for major libraries across America,
Europe, and Asia. |
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| Business
Requirement |
| Our client retails its range of
products comprising of books and CDs, through its online storefront. Launched in 1998, the website is an e-commerce
storefront that enables customers to search for products, place
orders, make payments online, and also track their orders. Use
of robust and futuristic technology that would allow easy integration
with third-party software and mobile devices at a later date
was a key consideration for our client. The storefront had to be overhauled keeping precisely
this in mind. |
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| Leveraging
Functionality for an Enhanced Customer Experience |
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| Benefits |
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Fully customized and administrator driven
processes to regulate front-end features |
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Comprehensive access to the product and order information |
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Value-added features such as the Up-Sell Recommendation
Engine* to further increase sales and to assist the customer
to make a better buying decision |
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ASP.NET/XML Web Service/SQL Server architecture for
improved performance and scalability |
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| Technologies used in developing this web application are: |
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| *Up-Sell Recommendation Engine –
refers to the “People who bought this book also bought”
section in the website, which lists the products that were bought
with a particular product. This section helps in promoting products
and in turn, the sales for our client. |
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The website has been the key success factor
behind increased sales volumes achieved by client.
However, as trends in the e-commerce market changed, our client realized the growing need to enhance the functionality
and upgrade the technology of the storefront.
They observed that it was slow to download and lacked features
to manage its vast database of books and CDs. In addition, the
organization intended a paradigm shift of the storefront in
terms of its functionality and ease-of-use. These factors, eventually,
led to the decision to completely overhaul the exisitng website.
our client chose Icreon to develop an easy to use, scalable
storefront with the end objective of improving customer experience
and manageability of operations for the administrator. |
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The long-term goal for Icreon and our client was to develop a business-to-customer storefront
that not only provided the essential storefront functionality
but could also scale up to handle customer transactions and
be able to provide better service to Libraries and institutional
buyers in America, Europe, and Asia. The biggest challenge was
to establish the website as a global online shopping storefront.
We had to ensure that the storefront would be able to meet the
service standards of customers, globally.
The success of the website totally depended on value additions
that we provided in terms of technology, design, performance,
and functionality.
Satisfying client expectations; Delivering high-end solutions;
Meeting the restricted timeframe – It was all a part of
our team’s daily schedule for this project. At each phase
of development, the Icreon team interacted with our client
to ascertain that the product met the desired expectations.
This, in turn, gradually increased our client's
confidence in us and steadily eliminated the chances of cohesion
errors and requirement mismatch.
The website can be broadly broken into two extensive modules
- the public portal and the administrator module. The public
portal is accessible to all customers. They can view book titles,
create user accounts, search for books & CDs, place orders
through the storefront and also track their orders. The payments
are coordinated through the VeriSign payment gateway, for high
reliability and security.
The administrator needs to manage and validate all transactions
that take place through the website. Using the administrator
module, various administrative tasks can be performed, which
include adding new books, publishers, authors, and CDs to the
database and managing user accounts created through the website.
The personal details and preferences as provided by customers
while registering with the website, are stored in the database.
The administrator can access this data and send offers and e-mails
to prospective customers as per their preferences. |
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| To provide a robust and more scalable
solution, we suggested using the .NET framework. |
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| We developed the website on a 3-tier architecture,
providing a highly reliable and multithreaded environment. The
front-end consists of ASP.NET for enhanced search capabilities
and user account management for customers. JavaScript validations
check user inputs while creating user accounts, entering search
criteria, or performing administrative tasks. On the backend,
the SQL Server 2000 database manages the records for books,
authors, publishers and CDs. Using XML Web services as the middle
layer, the request and response functionality is implemented
for a distributed and platform independent setup, which increases
data access and transaction processing for the storefront. |
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| Summary |
| Developing the solution has been an invigorating experience
for Icreon. The team has been able to comprehend and deliver
the solution, better than its conceptualization. Exploiting
the .NET technology to the core, we were able to achieve the
desired aim of enhanced functionality and quality of service. |
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"We are extremely pleased with the
efforts of Icreon in relation to the development of our
family of marketing products. Icreon has demonstrated a special
‘commitment to our client’ with exceptional communication
and attention throughout the project…” |
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ELVY
Vertical - Retail
Platform - Linux/PHP |
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AAMR BOOK STORE
Vertical - Retail
Platform - Microsoft .net |
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STOREFRONT FOR GIFT ITEMS
Vertical - Retail
Platform - Microsoft .net |
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QUALITY
PROCESSES
(Web Page) |
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OUR
CUSTOMERS
(Web
Page) |
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ENGAGEMENT
MODELS
(Web
Page) |
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CASE
STUDIES
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