| Welcome to Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005: From Novice to Professional! The explosive growth of retail over the Internet is encouraging more small- to medium-sized businesses to consider the benefits of setting up e-commerce web sites. Although online retailing has great and obvious advantages, there are also many hidden pitfalls that may be encountered when developing a retail web site. This book provides you with a practical, step-by-step guide to setting up an e-commerce site. Guiding you through every aspect of the design and build process, this book will have you building high-quality, extendable e-commerce web sites quickly and easily.
Over the course of this book, you will develop all the skills necessary to get your business up on the web and available to a worldwide audience, without having to use high-end, expensive solutions. Except for the operating system, the software required for this book can be downloaded free. We present this information in a book-long case study, the complexity of which develops as your knowledge increases through the book.
The case study is presented in three phases. The first phase focuses on getting the site up and running as quickly as possible, and at a low cost. That way, the financial implications if you are not publishing the site are reduced, and also, should you use the site, you can start to generate revenue quickly. At the end of this phase, you’ll have a working site that you can play with or go live with if you want to. The revenue generated can be used to pay for further development.
The second phase concentrates on increasing revenue by improving the shopping experience and actively encouraging customers to buy more by implementing product recommendations. Again at the end of this phase, you’ll have a fully working site that you can go live with.
By the third phase, you’ll have the site up and running, and doing very well. During this phase, you’ll look at increasing your profit margins by reducing costs through automating and streamlining order processing and administration, and by handling credit card transactions yourself. You’ll also learn how to communicate with external systems, by integrating the Amazon E-Commerce Service (formerly known as Amazon Web Services—AWS), into your web site. |