Development of a e-Commerce Website for a US Client

The Client

Our client manages a big fashion store located in US.

What the client wanted
As a hotspot in current IT days, e-commerce website offers a new information and sales vehicle for companies by giving benefits not available with traditional trading methods, 24X7 customer access, and reduced cost. The client wanted to increase its clientele through effective but inexpensive marketing, an e-commerce website was thereby the most suitable option. And Shinetech was chosen as its partner to build their online storefront. The site needs to satisfy the basic needs of end users, as well as some other features to attract and retain customers:

User registration	System management
Product classification by brand and style	Product presentation
New arrivals release & notification	Dynamic preview
Search engine	Shopping cart
Frequently asked questions	Account
Box of suggestions and comments	Customer service center
Site map	Log analyze

Approach

The following activities were included in the process of the development:

Since the client only provided application functional requirement, Shinetech recommended developing the online store using the technology of Struts after doing in-depth e-commerce requirement analysis by working in conjunction with the client,

The design stage which is supposed to be the most important in the whole lifecycle involved planning the architecture of the site and the details of the shopping experience. Shinetech spent much time to make sure that everything was exactly the same as what had been required.

Following this came the implementation phase. The programming was executed in sync with the database design to bring the prototype into a real, efficient application on the web. We executed RUP development and adopted MVC design pattern. The framework involved Struts, DOM4J, JDBC, iText, JavaScript, XML etc.

The final fine tuning was adopted at last; minor changes in code and subtle design changes were done to improve the looks and navigability of the website.

Some of the featured solutions Shinetech provided to meet the online store's functional requirement are following:

• Shopping cart - Customers could order products, track the status of the purchase and have exchanges due to the wrong size order.
• New arrivals notification - A personalized email and calendar reminder script was written as well for the form which enabled the end users to be informed of new arrivals based on their previous purchase and the date of order and delivery.
• Product presentation - The profile of the products could be presented through multiple angles, different color and size, moreover be magnified. Size contrast chart containing the standard of US, EU, UK was available and the products could be displayed dynamically to provide a vivid image.
• Account - Statistics on click rate was available so that development strategies could be adjusted in time.
• Customer service center -A back office including product managements, user management, system maintenance and image management was implemented by building a back-end component to the website using PostgreSQL and SQL Server.

The result was an aesthetic, robust and neatly organized website that reliably performs all the functions listed above exactly as the client required and the storefront was interesting and inviting.

Benefits

• Time-to-market of new products was dramatically cut down and sales opportunities of the client were significantly increased.
• An extensive increase in customers' satisfaction.
• A reliable and easy-maintenance system.
• Development and maintenance cost had been slashed.
• Dynamic & database-driven management of the storefront.

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