A B2C E-Commerce Storefront

Our client, a UK based organization, wanted to provide their customers with an online store wherein they could purchase electronic goods. Based on their requirements Open Source Development came up with a storefront that enables customers to browse through the product details and place orders online. The solution provides the administrators with the ability to manage and operate the online storefront. The solution enabled the customers to track their orders online via the website. An administrator module was developed enabling the storefront administrators to easily operate the online store.

Customer Profile
Our client, a UK based organization, is a competitive online reseller of computer and computer peripherals at the best prices.

Business Requirements
Our client required an online B2C portal which could fulfill the objective to buy, search and browse products/ accessories / items online. The solution was developed as a comprehensive set of interoperable modules with in built capabilities to identify prospective customers, generate and send customized newsletters to customers, process orders online, and monitor online transactions. The organization was looking to develop a Search-Engine friendly website to manage inventory of stock and facilitate an admin web based console to contrive the different features of the website.

An Online Portal to Empower E-Commerce
Benefits

• Provides high level of self service to the customers in purchasing electronics goods.

• Fully customized and administrator driven processes to regulate front-end features

• Comprehensive access to the product and order information.

• Secure online transactions

Technologies used in developing this application are:

                              

The solution is based on the following system architecture:


The website is designed to serve both the distribution business as well as retail customers of the client. The retailer’s website can be accessed by any visitor or the general public, but the distributor’s site is accessible to its users only. The distributor’s site is visible only after user authentication, and therefore, not accessible to the general public.

Both sites have similar functionalities and design. The only difference in the front end of both the sites is that the distributor’s site is accessible to its users only and the prices of products on the distributor’s site are different from the retailer’s site.

The whole website is categorized under three broad level sections - Management, Public and User. The Management Section refers to the administrator area of the website. The Public Section refers to that area of the site which any user including the visitors of the site can access without authentication. The User Section refers to that area of the site which is available to the registered users of the website.

A brief explanation of each of these sections is outlined as under:

Admin Management Console
Both retailer’s and distributor’s Admin Console is managed by a single administrator.

This section defines the features available to the administrator of the website. The admin management console is used by an administrator to make reviews/modifications of the content/product/order and other sections of the site. This application allows updates to be made to the E-Commerce database in an intuitive fashion while maintaining data integrity and table consistency.

The application has three levels for Category Management. The first level is referred to as Stores, the second level contains the Main Categories under these Stores and the third level has further Sub-Categories defined under Main Categories.

Public Section
The Public Section of the distributor’s site is similar to retailer’s site but have different accessibility approaches. The distributor’s site is only accessible to its registered users. The product price on both the sites differs. The users of distributor’s site are created by its Administrator.

The Public Section displays all products and services offered by computersupermarket.com. Visitors arrive to this section of the website which allows them to view and browse through product information although they are required to get registered before making a purchase.

User Section
This section defines features and functionalities available to registered users who can browse through this section after a successfully logging on to the website. The User Section allows registered customers to View and Modify their Profile, create their Additional Buyers, view past and pending Orders, and other relevant features.

Summary
Developing the solution has been an invigorating experience for Open Source Development. The b2c e-commerce storefront development team has been able to comprehend and deliver the solution, better than its conceptualization. Exploiting PHP technology to the core, we were able to achieve the desired aim of enhanced functionality and quality of service.