Re: E-Commerce Package

Ah, migrations. This is another name for "Job Security."

> I'm starting a new job on Monday and my first task would be to research
> companies that offers e-commerce package off-the-shelf that we could
> purchase.

Depends on what they want, actually.

> One factor of consideration is that the maintenance aspect
> should be fairly easy (no full-time IT required).

Hah. And again, I say "hah."

Seriously. Having this kind of functionality means you have to have a geek around who knows servers and server programming. If the whole thing goes *kablooey*, you need someone on the spot to get in and get their keyboards busy. You don't need to be sitting on the phone with the server hosting company AND the shopping cart company, trying to figure out why your applications are misbehaving while you've got irate customers on the phone.

Also, databases that are large and active have a habit of developing troubles. You need someone onsite who does regular *DAILY* backups (and burns them to tape or CD and archives them in a proper rotation. You really will need this because Disasters Happen.) Databases also lose indexes, get full of junk and need reorganizing on a regular basis and so forth.

Database reorg is boring but necessary. Someone has to run the reorg and then sit there and watch the silly machines to make sure there's no power spike or other problem that crashes the database.

> My new employer is a multimedia delivery firm. They go to conferences,
> seminars, workshops and record them for associations. Members could
> purchase these conferences, seminars, workshops in the form of tapes, CDs,
> DVDs. The company would take orders and ship these products directly.

For this, actually any shopping cart would do. You could do it with PayPal's shopping cart, but you'd probably like something more like Amazon.com has.

> Right now the site is functional but needs a complete makeover (for one,
> style-wise, it's poor).

(g) Think of this as "job stability."

> The customer data is stored in FileMaker. The plan
> is to move everything (CRM) online (my other duty is web-based project
> management).

I've been involved with this sort of migration before. It's not pretty and it requires a lot of planning. The *real* beast that will sneak up and bite you will be the various database designs. For instance, your company may need some sort of tracking number (in our case, the commercial package had a tracking number that was 8 digits long. We needed 10 digits. The software company rewrote things for us, but that cost money.)

The FileMaker file could be full of data problems (for example: to humans "Rockridge DR" and "ROCKRIDGE DR" and "rockridge dr" are all the same thing. But they are NOT the same to a computer.) No offense, but if it was set up by someone at the company (and not one of us hoary old geeks who have been programming since Moses was a corporal), it's undoubtedly a real mess.

Synchronizing the old data with the new package can be very time-consuming, depending on how many records there are.

And then there's the issue of security. Remember, this is the Age of the Hacker and cracking-and-snatching databases can be pretty common. People are giving you their credit card numbers, so you need to be a real hardliner about security. I don't know what kinds of inherent file security Filemaker has, but I'm a suspicious old bat and I don't want any live databases just hanging around on Internet waiting for the latest Scriptkiddie to have fun with it.

I like my databases firewalled (preferably with redundant servers).

> Also, to have the site interactive and direct customers to
> downloadable links (for the conferences, seminars, workshops) in order to
> reduce the physical shipping (of tapes, CDs, DVDs).

Great idea, really!

> Any pointers to where I should start looking for the off-the-shelf
> e-commerce package? I have to start doing the research early next week.

You need to sit down and ask a few questions of them before doing research:

1) How big is their current database/databases? What's the size (gigabytes or megabytes) and how many records are in it?
2) What's the record structure (write it down on a piece of paper. If it's just one big file, prepare to flinch because it's going to not be a very consistant file. (I've cleaned these things up before. Not pretty.))
3) What kind of things do they need in a shopping cart? (email order confirmation? automatic shipping charges calculated?
4) What kind of things would they like to add in the future?
5) What kinds of reports do they need from this software (note: this is where things will also sneak up and bite you. Find out what marketing needs as well as what the company has to report (to, say, IRS) and what accounting needs... and THEN find out what management needs.)

For the shopping cart software:
1) ask about security measures. Ask about "record locking" features and "multiple security levels."
2) Ask how many concurrent users (in other words, if you have 8,000 people all trying to access and order the same prodcut (I'm not kidding... like Woot's "bag of c.r.a.p" offers where they WILL get that kind of traffic) -- will it still hold up?
3) Ask to see THEIR database structure (warning: there's a number of them who will say "oh, ANYthing you like!" This means you're getting a database engine and YOU have to set it up. This isn't an "out of the box and ready to run" package, no matter what the salesbeing tells you.)
4) Find out where it sends the records/how it stores them. I'm guessing that most of them will be SQL engines, meaning you may have to dump to ASCII (oy!) and import into Filemaker.
5) When you find a shopping cart, get several volunteers to try it. Have them go to a site (no training) and say "make a purchase." Then get their feedback (what did they like, what was confusing, what did they hate)

I bet your eyes are kinda crossed right now.

Ask questions, as you need to. I won't think this is silly/amateur/dumb. I have gone through several migrations and I know just how complicated and hairpulling it can be.

Take a deep breath... this is do-able.

But the FIRST thing you need to do is quickly become an expert on the setup of the databases at the company.