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Notes:
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Here are a number of ideas related to eCommerce... no specific order... just dumping... - Small time eCommerce is where we want to go with this thing (adilas). People will pay the monthly fee just so that they can sell things. - We have created a fun thing in the buttons and what they can do (my cart favorites)... What if we allowed a similar thing with eCommerce. - A customer sign-in could be the customer id number and the email associated for that customer. The customer id would be able to look up the corp id. - I want to have a customer bill pay section where they can pay their bills, look at their payables, print invoices, and histories. Maybe even their own statements with limited functionality. - One big challenge might be shipping and handling... They are separate but somewhat linked. We need free, set, dynamic, and variable options. - I will be building a cart on one server and then passing the whole cart to another server for payment and committing to the database. That could get a little bit tricky and making sure that both sites (send and receive) get updated correctly. - What about inventory levels and selling items that don't exist? How do we handle back orders? - What about custom or web service options... Do we want to use XML, ColdFusion web services, basic HTML, etc? We want to make it portable, yet flexible. We will provide a cookie cutter or pre-built cart and allow for custom options. - Building custom carts could be a great side gig and money maker for me and/or another development company. That may be a great spot for interns and college folk. Create the tools and then open up the road. - We may need some mass or bulk update tools to help with shopping cart stuff. Sales, hide/show, active/inactive, my cart favorites, etc. Special reports. - Make the process as easy as possible. Many of our clients will be in the under 10 items pool. We may have others who are in the 100-10,000+ item pool. Think small to big... - Add photo upload options for part categories, buttons, and promotional banners. The more we can put at our user's finger tips, the better! - Allow a customer to create and save their own quote. - What about merging customer info... We already have them on file but they get entered or created again. - There will need to be corp-wide settings setup and maintained just for the shopping cart... What location, what invoice type, what user (generic), what customer type, what taxes, what promotions, etc. - A flash shopping cart may also be a fun option. Kinda extra. - Emails and promotions, etc. - Quick reports and notifications. Email about new sales. - Ask customers and clients what they want. - We may need a page that has or shows specials. Key off of the web price settings. Maybe have a section for special web prices, best prices, etc. - The price setting per item will either allow a sale or not. - What about quantities on hand? How do we monitor that? Do we check the real site or do we just do it and sort things out later (like back order, credits, refunds, etc.). For the record, it is easier to check first and deny at the door rather than ask someone to leave that is already in and committed. - Our goal is to provide the service... however, wherever possible we should also help our users learn and use good practices. - Keep it ultra simple - show a crumb trail (where you are at and where you are going). - Use email and/or text messages. - Have special reports for web sales. - Treat all sales as either customer sales or transition invoices. - I want to provide some simple buttons that allow a customer to create basic things like a quote, restore to cart, save as... (new quote), statements, pay a bill, real cart checkout, check on outstanding invoices. - Allow custom HTML to be assigned to parts and stock/units. This could be links to movies, tables with rates, calendar graphics, virtual tours, sub navigation, additional verbage, headers, footers, special notes, etc. Think anything custom. It could be added before or after an item - or even both. It could be a one-to-many relationship between the custom sections and the items. We need to allow for sorting, spacing, etc. Basically, a mini snippet or wrapper. Other ideas... links to like products, promotions, ratings, testimonials, availability, reminders, colors, sizes, options, recommendations, waivers, forms, checklists, rosters, syllabus, course work, coupons for local businesses, updates, closures, etc. - Maybe pass back data in XML format instead of letting ColdFusion generate the data. This would make our methods more usable to other developers. Maybe a step further down the line would be to pass a param (coldfusion or xml) to the web services and then let the user decide how they want to deal with the results. If xml, convert and send back. If coldfusion, just process as normal. The XML could be a standalone function that takes a ColdFusion structure and creates the XML notes and pieces. Think reuse... - On the stock/unit photo galleries... we need the captions to show up like they do on the parts galleries. - eCommerce may also include custom pdf documents or other special paperwork or forms (pdf, word, excel, other). - On the corp-wide settings... Maybe have options for show only (default), quote only, or full eCommerce. Maybe instead of a choice (one or the other), maybe create a list of options and let the users select what they want people to do. This list may be extended to customer login, bill pay, reservations, statements, etc. Think options... To help with outside code (additional web services or custom eCommerce web sites), pass all incoming data through a verifier or validator or sorts. If the incoming data is missing one or more pieces, either ask for it or use a default value. That way all of the main code can run as needed. This allows us to update things (normal flow and values) and still allow for possible older outside code to function correctly. |