Case Studies

Online Storefront for Retailing Niche Objects

Our client, an India based art dealer, wanted to expand their area of operations by reaching out to the large online community of art lovers spread across varied geographic locations. For this purpose they desired an online storefront to retail their collectibles. Based on their requirements Open Source Development delivered to them an online storefront developed using PHP and MySQL. The art lovers can search for art works and place orders for the same online. A whole range of features have been built into the application in order to provide users with an enhanced browsing experience. The online storefront can be managed by the storefront administrators via the back-end interfaces provided.

Customer Profile
Our client is one of the few virtual businesses that has achieved success since its inception. As an e-tailor dealing in various Indian art forms, the business offers a vast selection of collectibles to suit the tastes of different art lovers.

Business Requirements
The client wanted to increase its clientele through effective but inexpensive marketing. An online storefront was thereby the most suitable option. The idea was to showcase and sell artworks available with them by allowing customers to view artworks and place orders online.

Business Driven Approach for Effective Online Presence
Benefits

• Dynamic & database-driven management of the storefront

• Easy order processing & transaction management

• Catchy & user-friendly interface

Technologies used in developing this application are:

                              

Artwork appeals to a niche audience. The clientele, therefore, constitutes a restricted section of the market. The client wanted to tap this market internationally through its online storefront(open source e-commerce storefront development). Open Source Development had to develop a customized interface for the online storefront, to meet specific requirements, including facilities to place order online, view details about products, newsletter subscriptions, manage alliances with other online stores. A complete business-oriented solution, the website had to be strategically designed within a constrained budget, while maintaining high quality and service standards.

The solution has been developed with the Business-to-Customer approach. It is for this reason that the site is extremely user-centric. Users can view the product listings and select to view the details of a particular item. If suitable, an order can be placed by filling out a simple Web order form. The storefront provides the facility to search for product listings by category. In addition, the storefront provides features like 'newsletter subscription' and 'mail to a friend'. The "Mail to Friend" feature offers the facility to customize the artwork with a certain background color. The selected artwork is sent to the specified e-mail address with customized color combinations, giving is an appealing look. Users can fill out the "Guest Book" to provide suggest enhancements to improve the services offered by the website. The administrator interface offers facilities to add and modify categories of artworks and new product listings.

The architecture for the solution is 3-tier, with PHP as the business logic layer for managing request/response functionality between the backend database – MySQL and the front-end Administrator and website interfaces.

Summary
The client in this case was an art collector and had planned a long-term development strategy for online business. Open Source Development has been involved in this project since 2000 and has performed various upgrades, to meet customer requirements. The online storefront serves as a business-critical tool for the client to market its products and increase clientele.