markMandel wroteDoes anyone know when will the aspdotnetstorefront module be released ?
I have an ecommerce site i need to plan a build schedule for and need to know if using DNN and aspdotnetstorefront is an option.
thanks in advance
Mark
Guess I'll pop in for a bit of advice. We ran a online resale business for over 10 years... in fact, we'd made it to #80 in Dunn & Bradstreet on global scale in a extrordinarily competitive genre of merchandise. We were not really looking at the time to get into eCommerce but we were convinced to "give it a go" by Bing Gordon who was CEO at the time of Electronic Arts (now on Amazons Board Of Directors last I knew). Without going into the various details of it all... suffice to say we gave it a go and go it did. In fact, we've been considering jumping back into it on & off for the past 6-8 months.
Anyways... BOY did we learn ALOT about eCommerce, hosts, security, eCommerce software and then some.
We tried over the years perhaps 25-40 maybe more commerce packages everything from Miva Merchant to various others such as PDG, Cart32 on and on. Some rules of thumb are: Just because someplace tells you this/that dont believe anything. Maybe its true, maybe not, either way its immaterial. For example, Miva has literally hundreds of thousands of stores running using it and when we'd worked with it the software was cumbersome, a real pain in the neck basically all the way around. It'd do anything you ever wanted to do in eCommerce but well... Lets put it this way, DNN is simple comparatively (simple).
Anyways... We'd used many, AIT (a large host provider) managed to have security issues which they blamed on shopping cart software. This put us through an 8 month jaunt of legal council, Visa, MC, Amex, Discover that was to say the least a pain but we were vindicated from any liability. How? Well, its all quite a long story. But, a friend of a friend had a buddy who worked for Nortel Networks as a Lead Systems Admin/Engineer for the entire Northeast including Nortel Net's work in the Pentagon. He buzzed through AIT's security, proved it. Done deal. We became good friends and still are.
He hooked us up with Affinity back then, they were running Silicon Graphics Servers with IRIX (a unix derived OS). Zippy zippy.
Then we started looking for new commerceware. We tried many and we asked Tony to try and breach em'. Many took him little time, others took him more... Miva was secure. However, one day he pointed us towards another solution and informed me all about the differences in security between Europe and the USA. Europe (at least at the time) was CONSIDERABLY more strict, Germany still is for sure.
We gave his advice a try with "Actinic Catalog" and for 6 or so years we ran it without any issues. Secure, Fast and nicely runs on YOUR PC and UPLOADS the site. That came in handy SEVERAL times. Ask yourself what happens when your host provider's hard disk bellies up and the backup is corrupt. Dont say it cant happen as it happened TWICE to us with differing providers.
With Actinic since it runs on YOUR PC you simply hit one button (Upload) and walk away, entire site is restored.
Other advantages such as deploying more than one store using you same base installation. Administrate it on your local PC. Orders need not "hang out there" online along with peoples credit card data, paypal accounts, whatall. Integrate with Quickbooks accounting etc. and quite affordable.
Today there are several other packages that also will run local on your PC and most could care less whether your server is Unix or Windows based as long as it has PHP or Perl etc.
In our ten years of high volume online sales I can tell you for certain that I would never, never ever go with a eCommerce package that is administrated online ever again. Its fine that there exists the "online cart engine" but as far as administrating it, taking your orders down, processing them, updating your site on and on those that are PC Applications are the best way to go. If you ever want move to a new host, easily done, no mickey mousing and hours of baloney. Virtually all of them have working demos that can be downloaded for trial usage as they know, once you work this way you'll never go with a completely online administrated cart again.
Today really for a "Commercial shopping cart" solution there is no excuse for packages not having complete Windows based clients for administrating and indeed the overall security of the online store. Even Amazon.com has worked towards several solutions for vendors to work with the platform all using a client on your local PC.
Administration wise there were just so many benefits, instead of things taking time such a moving, deleting products, creating new SKU's, specials on and on a online administrated platform it took us literally a few minutes. With Actinic we'd pull orders down, print em', charges done, packing list generated and items off inventory at a rate of 2-3 orders per minute and the site was COMPLETELY secure. In fact, users did not even NEED to use Login's as their card data never sat online in some database.
ANY shopping application could be integrated with DNN through a simple gateway page. While I have never used the package mentioned for DNN it may be very good, OSCommerce is very good (free) if you care to use a complex online administrated package. A Cart package can make or break a business we learned that. Search engines become VERY important as does the ability to easily integrate feed's to various advertising/point of sale prospects.
When shopping for commerce software dont believe a thing you read. You "try" the software, if that's not allowed then move on as many (many) others do allow you to try it. Find what you like, make sure and try both online and local based solutions and decide which is best for your needs. Miva when we went with it advertised hundreds of thousands of installed stores and that's absolutely true. However, for our needs it was cumbersome, painful even. Actinic allowed us to focus our time on selling and making more and more money, not having to fight with the software.
Most eCommerce startup's fail and there are various reasons. However, the first and foremost item of importance is both what users see online, ease of purchase and your ability to administrate. Again, we'd reached #80 in Dunn & Bradstreet, a Two person operation. We'd opened agreements/feed's to the likes of the Onsale Supersites (was the #1 leader in electronics eCommerce on the net before the "bubble burst" of the net) as well as the likes of Egghead software, C/Net Inc. (again before the bubble burst and aquisition of Ziff Davis etc etc). A two person operation dealing with big corporate poppa's SIMPLY because we had the RIGHT TOOLS/Software to do it. With Actinic it used a JET (Access) database so simply using Microsoft Access and Excel we could create feeds in a matter of minutes, eventually we coded up some of our own tools in Visual Basic that completely automated it.
We've been kickin' round the idea of getting back into eCommerce as there are a few niche areas somewhat recently brought to my attention where we could score good revenues.
eCommerce is a funny thing, that is... how its perceived by entrepenuers. If a lady sets up shop and 6 months later on the net she's doin' $100 or $150 a day she thinks, "I've done it, I am a success". Uh uh. At least, not in business terms. On the web that means she's not even "there" basically. She might consider it success but that is only because she has not witnessed what real web commerce success is. There exist myraids of things that can go wrong and go right.
I learned enough to write a book, perhaps several. Engineering wise, software wise, consumer wise and most of all marketing and perceptions. Marketing is so much more complex than computer programming its well... Hmmm... Lets compare building a "Lego Toy" to "Creating DNN", this is the level of difference in complexity of Marketing vs Software Engineering. I am fortunate, I now know both.
If someone's entering eCommerce to make a few bucks on the side... that's cool as long as thats the ambition. If however someone get in on it with the thoughts of "I want to make a living and then some" from it then its extremely important to *NOT* do what we did. Huh?
Yeah... Bumble around for 2-3 years with tools that were sold to us instead of finding the right tools from the start. I'm persistent, failure is not an option. Most folks would have folded after they watched thousands (and thousands) go out the window only to get sales that results in break even or a bit better. Once we found the software that allowed us to "SELL" we had the time to go AFTER sales. Thats important. On the web marketing is all you have, never expect sales to come to you if your serious about eCommerce. You go after them and that takes some risks.
I dont know what the figures are now. But back when we'd hit paydirt Chase Manhattan (who helped us quite a bit) figured a startup web business with any chance of profit via effective marketing was looking at $50,000-$75,000 initial investment. I think we got away with $35000-$40000, somewhere in there. There are of course anomolies. There is a guy local to us who sells, "Female/Male enhancement" All Natural LOL stuff on the net. I have'nt run into him in a few years but he was doing very (very) well last I knew. House Built on Lake Ontario, Hummer, Vette all the toys. Sell's this stuff at $50 or so a pop and has a COG of $2.50.
Anyways... Best of luck to all whom try.