The StoneHenge blog

I've been working a lot lately on e-commerce websites. I'm working with three different clients, in three different industries, with three different e-commerce needs. And yet all three had the same viewpoint, initially: "What's so hard about e-commerce? It's just a shopping cart, right? I mean, it looks pretty simple on Amazon."

My reaction is: Amazon spent a whole lotta time and talent to make it look pretty simple, and no, it's much more than just a shopping cart. In my opinion, the real heart of any e-commerce system is its administration user interface.

First, the basics. To the customer, an e-commerce system is a process by which they can buy something online. Typically, the process goes like this:

1. Find the product they want. Click "add to cart".
2. Go to the shopping cart page. Click "check out."
3. Log in to your account (if you're personalized) or create an account (if you're not.)
4. Review order, and select shipping method and payment method, and click "buy it."
5. You're done! Happy dance time.

This process is true whether the user is buying a product, like shoes, or subscribing to a service, like a magazine, or registering for an event, like a summer sports camp.

The admin interface

The real work comes on the backside. How well does your software allow you to manage your business? Can you see easily what products are selling best and worst? What customers are most loyal and most finicky?

InstaOrder (above) offers a wealth of sales reports

At StoneHenge Partners, we have selected Sitefinity as our content management system and Mallsoft InstaOrder as our e-commerce system for all three clients we're working with. The biggest reason is the great depth and richness of user controls on the backside. Here is a brief list of InstaOrder's features we're planning to build into our latest websites.

Departments/Categories

• Add unlimited departments and sub-departments
• Drag and drop departments into desired organizational structure
• Add unlimited descriptions
• Descriptions can be localized

Products

• Add unlimited products
• Define weight, retail price, sku, sku pattern, taxable, and many more properties to each product
• Assign a product to one or many departments
• Assign a manufacturer, box type, role or product type
• Add unlimited descriptions to define the product: overview, description, shipping details, etc.
• Descriptions can be localized
• Inventory control mechanism
• Add meta data fields
• Upload image and alternate image, automatic generation of images
• Assign upsell, cross-sell, a la carte items.

Product Options

• Add unlimited product options such as year, make, model, size, color, etc.
• Assign weight, additional price, sku, images to each option.
• Options can have parent/child relationship or can be flat

Images

• Unlimited images can be uploaded for products, options and departments
• Images can be bulk uploaded and run script to generate resized images
• Image sizes and properties can be defined in Image store settings

Store Settings

• Set tax rates, shipping carriers and services, countries, states, etc.
• Define payment processor and settings, integrated with PayFlow Pro, Authorize.net among others.
• Define email templates, packing slip, receipts
• Reports, Promotions, Customers, Orders

Integration between content and product

Best of all, InstaOrder is tightly integrated inside Sitefinity, so that when the editor is editing a product, there's no schizoid split personality between the content side, like text and images, and the business side, like prices and SKUs.

CMS fields, such as the description, and inventory fields, such as price, are managed on the same screen in InstaOrder.

The good news is, because of the wealth of out-of-the-box features and configuration options, what once was a massive development project requiring dozens of programmers for months at a time, now can be built much more efficiently and effectively. Shorter development time means a rich interface is now cost-effective for medium and even small businesses.

However, the flip side is that now the user-experience design is even more important. In-depth business requirements, including a customer-facing content model, internal-facing business rules, and admin user training is becoming the critical element in a successful e-commerce website.