Format of session

1
Format of session

• E-Commerce Site creation - start of discussion of
  how to establish a shop front
• Example sites and software
• E-Commerce Site with Shop_at_ssistant - start of use

2
What is the main issue of the session?

• How you (an E-Commerce co-ordinator/project
  manager/consultant) can make an INFORMED
  choice/recommendation of which e-commerce
  development path to follow - this is what I have
  to do
• Look at the questions asked in the practical to
  understand the issues faced by industry - we will
  come back to the practical later

3
What do you get from this session?

• Shop front model awareness
• An understanding of the development options you
  have in order of difficulty
• Bespoke development e.g. VB6.0ColdfusionDreamwea
  ver etc
• Instant mix package e.g. Shop _at_ssistant Actinic
  etc
• Simple hoster service provided by firms like
  thepotterieshasit.co.uk or work24
• Hands-on experience of a Shop_at_sssitant

4
Options - what are they?

• Decisions to make before the project starts! Do
  you...
• Go In-house - grow your own team without any
  help?
• Go In-house with some help from an organisation
  like the University or a internet services firm?
• Link a shopping cart package to your existing web
  pages?

5
Options - what are they?

• Go for the simplest solution and use one of the
  hosting services like freecom.net?
• May be use an off the shelf solution to begin
  (usually involves the use of standard templates
  to choose from) and then replace it with a design
  of your own when appropriate

6
Class Discussion

• Can you see the problem? - what criteria can you
  use to decide which path to follow
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of each
  of the options I have mentioned?
• Hints skill set time budget
  customisationmodification brand - there are
  lots more to come up with
• Lets have a look at each option in a bit more
  detail..

7
Options - outsource the project

• Outsource - internet services firm - hand over
  responsibility to a 3rd party who supposedly know
  what they are doing!
• Local firms specialise in this type of work - why
  go outside the area?
• Staffordshire examples
• Espere Internet Services - Stone
• Ash Creative - Hanley
• Dataflex Systems - Stafford

8
Options - Site building by numbers!

• There are a number of service providers providing
  help on setting up an E-Commerce site.
• For example anyone who has used WH Smiths online
  ISP service will notice that the free web space
  is supplied by tripod.com - and apart from
  wizards to set up a web site, you can E-enable it
  as well

9
Options - Site building by numbers!

• Using any of these services is certainly easy and
  you need very little technical knowledge
• Some students were asked to have a go with the
  freecom.net offering and those that did will
  confirm how easy (although basic) the site
  creation and maintenance was
• But remember - it would helpful before using any
  of these tools to have some idea of what the site
  is trying to do - strategy!

10
Options - Site building by numbers!

• Without doubt setting up shop has never been
  easier or cheaper
• Inexpensive off the shelf on-line stores can be
  provided by a number of vendors including British
  Telecom
• Back to what we discussed two weeks ago - depends
  on what your strategy is - you can have a website
  for 250 set up which may then account for 25 of
  your business!

11
Options - Site building by numbers!

• So one option is to use an off the shelf solution
  to begin (usually involves the use of standard
  templates to choose from) and then replace it
  with a design of your own when appropriate using
  something like Microsoft Publisher 98 (costs
  about 99)
• BT currently charge 10- 12.99 monthly for
  running a site of one of JCWs customers - prices
  are set to fall
• IBM first step Homepage Creator 10-15 per month

12
Options - Site building by numbers!

• Amazon is offering its Z-store concept - you can
  erect a shop front on their web site
• Yahoo! have something similar

13
More complex product offerings

• Intershop has a product called ePages has no set
  up fee, costs 20 a month and enables companies
  with little or no IT expertise design their own
  on-line stores
• Alternatively for a SME who wishes to do a little
  more than just use templates then prices start at
  about 4,000. For larger companies who are
  looking for a corporate solution we can be
  talking about 100,000
• Broadvision is another large US E-Commerce outfit
  which has product offerings worth considering

14
Use shop cart technology

• These are the well known shop cart technology
  packages on the market
• Actinic
• Shop_at_assistant - trial copy can be download for
  30 day use
• Cossax
• ecBuilder Pro
• All the above are rich in functionality and are
  not to be sneered at

15
Grow your own - a nice option

• Given the right conditions it may be advantageous
  for a company to develop the e-commerce project
  in-house - it is a question of risk and looking
  long term
• It demands an infrastructure of hardware and
  suitable software
• Skill set of staff needs to be considered
• Example configuration Visual Interdev for
  dynamic pages, scripting languages such as
  JavaScript and VB script, SQL Server database,
  server running Microsoft Transaction Server

16
How much money to spend?

• Is the low cost option the best solution - not
  necessarily
• Example DVDplus spent 3k to license a shopping
  software engine from Intershop and a whopping
  70k on a developing a site provided by Uovo!
• So, the conclusion could be that if you want to
  test the water, then a cheap solution may be
  good but if the conditions demand something much
  bigger from the off, then start up costs are much
  higher

17
Shop _at_ssistant

• We currently use Shop _at_ssistant from the Floyd
  Consultancy
• see www.floyd.co.uk
• www.hometown.co.uk
• Cost about 199 for Classic version and 1,000
  for DB version
• 30-day/60 day downloads (including manual) are
  available from the floyd.co.uk site of the
  Classic version(the one we are using in todays
  session and the database version)

18
Shop_at_ssistant software

• This week we will use this piece of software to
  evaluate aspects of E-Commerce site building
• It is not meant to be an exhaustive look at
  Shop_at_assistant given our time constraints
• Next session we will continue with Shop _at_ssistant
  by looking at how we can link up to a catalogue
  database
• The Shop_at_ssistant software can be found on ltpath
  will be given relating to APIIT installationgt

19
Brief features of Shop_at_ssistant

• The product is based on a number of html pages
  with supporting folders
• The pages are customisable, for example, you
  change the shape of buttons, text, pictures etc
• Before we have a go at creating a site from
  scratch (next week) and link it to some data we
  want you to have a look at some of the sample
  sites

20
Brief features of Shop_at_ssistant

• It can be implemented on both new and existing
  sites
• quite a bit of freedom in page design
• requires no server side support apart from
  mailing script (mailto.exe for NT)
• outsources the payment and hence the security
  issue

21
Shop _at_ssistant demo pages

• Tour of a demonstration sites - this can be found
  on the /sassdemo folder in path specified earlier
  on trent1
• From windows explorer copy the /sassdemo folder
  from ltapiit pathgt folder to your c\temp on your
  PC - the copy takes about a minute or two
• the demo can be run directly by clicking on
  index.html file or by opening the file in either
  MS Explorer or Netscape Navigator browsers
• This demo is useful as it points out aspects we
  can think about for a site of your own
  specification

22
Demonstration store

• Follow me!
• After clicking on index.html a Welcome to the
  Demonstrations page will appear - just click on
  the Load Files button
• A page will appear with demonstration sites e.g.
  Book Shop
• Click on the Book Shop button and it will take
  you to the Book Shop homepage

23
Demonstration store

• Apart from being able to click on the image of
  the book to order you will see standard three
  buttons at the bottom of the page
• Order this Book
• 3 Copies for 2 Offer
• Review Basket
• So consider - from a design point of view the buy
  initiation can take several methods

24
Demonstration store

• Click on the image of the book or the order
  button and the shopper is transferred to the
  Basket Review Page
• All of the page is customisable when we build on
  our shopping basket
• Notice the features - the hyperlink for the book,
  the remove check box, the bullet pointed help
• Go back to the Shop Entrance and choose OS Maps -
  notice some of the other features available

25
Demonstration store

• Take a look at the Cashier page by clicking on
  the Cashier button and following the steps -
  Customer details, payment details, send order now
  and finally goodbye page
• Other examples of live sites which have been
  shop_at_ssistant enabled stores can be found on
  www.hometown.co.uk

26
Building your store - things to consider

• Pages showing the products for sale
• We need to provide this - we can use examples
  given by the product
• Shopping basket which interacts with these pages
• Shop_at_ssistant will provide this
• Payment transaction services interaction
• Shop _at_ssistant will provide this (of course we
  will not register with a credit card payment
  authority)

27
Your store - instructions

• We need to use a blank folder for Shop_at_ssistant
  development
• Copy the /sassblank folder from ltapiit pathgt
  shop_at_assistant folder to your c\temp on your
  hard disk
• This takes about a minute or two
• We then have a development environment in which
  to work

28
Your store - instructions

• The initial trick with Shop_at_ssistant is to
  understand how it loads
• There are two index files used by the product -
  firstly the index file in the root of the
  sassblank folder - this loads shop_at_sssistant and
  the code looks for another index.html file in the
  pages folder of the sassblank folder. This
  secondary index.html file is your product page -
  i.e where your customer can select something to
  buy

29
Index file which loads shop _at_sssistant
30
Index.html file of the pages folder in sassblank
- this is the order form
31
How to create an index.html file

• You need to have an index.html file in the pages
  folder
• This session we will use an an example order page
  available fror the pages folder of the sassdemo
  folder(there are many examples)
• In windows explorer and using the right click of
  the mouse, copy the ex01.htm file from sassdemo
  pages folder and paste into the sassblank pages
  folder

32
Ex01.htm file in sassdemo pages folder
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(No Transcript)
34
ex01.htm now in pages folder of sassblank
35
Next step

• Next we need to rename the ex01.htm to
  index.html(it must be .html extension for it to
  work)
• IMPORTANT! Before you do that please make sure
  that the you have taken off the check flag OFF
  the Hide File Extensions of known file types
• You can get to this via the View menu option in
  Windows explorer
• If you dont do this then you will get a file
  renamed as index.htm.html - which wont work

36
Next step

• Having successfully renamed the ex01.htm file to
  index.html we can now do the following
• From your internet browser File menu use the Open
  option to open the index.html in the root of the
  sassblank folder(not the one in the pages folder)
• You will see that Shop _at_ssistant loads and
  following this your simple order form will load
  as well

37
Next step

• Click on the buy button and see what happens
• Other examples from the sassdemo folder can be
  used in exactly the same way as described - copy
  across and then rename to be index.html. If you
  wish to keep the a previous example in sassblank
  then just simply rename to another name - e.g.
  myex01.htm
• These example HTML pages can be customised or of
  course you could create your own

38
And finally.

• Example of University shop
• You need to open the shop.html file in your
  browser first and this calls index.html etc etc