ASP.NET E-commerce Starter Kit (Second Edition)

Author: Li-Hao Zhang
Publisher:
Publish Date: Not Available
Features: This book comprehensively and detailedly introduces how to build an e-commerce Web site, teaching you the specific process of designing and constructing the site through numerous code examples and step-by-step guidance. You will learn to build an online product catalog with a shopping cart, create search and product recommendation features, and implement management functions, customer accounts, order processing systems, and more. You will also learn how to integrate products such as PayPal, DataCash, and VeriSignPayflowPro to enable payment functionality. Every new feature you add to your Web site presents a new challenge and the opportunity to learn a new theory. This book guides you through these progressive processes, helping you gradually master each technology, overcome challenges, and ultimately build a powerful and flexible Web site.
[Preface] Preface The rapid growth of retail on the Internet has encouraged more small and medium-sized enterprises to consider the advantages of establishing e-commerce Web sites. Online transactions offer many obvious benefits, but developing a retail site also involves many hidden pitfalls. This book provides a practical, step-by-step guide for beginners to build e-commerce sites. It guides readers through the design and construction process, helping them quickly and easily build high-quality, scalable e-commerce sites. As you learn from this book, you will gain insights into all the relevant technologies that connect your business to the web. These technologies are applicable to readers worldwide and do not require high-end Microsoft SiteServer-based Web solutions. A case study introduces this information, helping you continuously expand your knowledge as the complexity of the case study gradually increases. The book is divided into three phases to introduce this case study.
Phase 1 focuses on establishing the site and running it as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. This approach minimizes financial issues if the site is not used and allows for rapid revenue generation if it is. By the end of this phase, you will have a functional site that can be utilized or adapted as needed. The revenue generated can be used to fund future development.
Phase 2 primarily introduces ways to increase revenue by improving the shopping experience and actively encouraging customers to purchase more products through product recommendations. By the end of this phase, you will have a fully functional site that can be adapted as needed.
In Phase 3, you will have a running site that is performing well. This phase focuses on reducing costs through automation, streamlining order processing and management, and handling credit card transactions personally, thereby increasing profitability.
Target Audience This book is aimed at web developers seeking guidance on building complete e-commerce sites from design to development. However, it requires readers to:
● Have some knowledge of using VB.NET with ASP.NET.
● Have experience with Visual Basic .NET or Visual Studio .NET or later versions.
● Be interested in building e-commerce sites.
The book also offers valuable insights for ASP3 developers who can learn from the examples and experience hands-on ASP.NET development techniques.
Table of Contents In this book, you will learn the following:
● Building an online product catalog that can be browsed and searched.
● Implementing category management pages to allow adding, modifying, and deleting products, categories, and departments.
● Creating your own shopping cart and checkout system using ASP.NET.
● Increasing sales by implementing product recommendations.
● Handling payments using PayPal, DataCash, and VeriSignPayflowPro.
● Implementing a customer account system.
The Apress Forum is a platform for exchanging code and ideas, helping you extend your site with new modules and modifications. Below is an overview of the content in each chapter.
Phase 1
Chapter 1: Introduction to E-commerce Sites
In this chapter, you will learn the basics of real-world e-commerce sites, the importance of focusing on short-term gains and reducing risks, and three fundamental methods to make an e-commerce site profitable. You will then see how these principles apply to the three-phase plan, with deliverable, usable sites provided in each phase and expanded upon later in the book.
Chapter 2: Building the Foundation
After discussing real-world e-commerce, you can now decide to develop a site and explore the details of building a foundation for future work. This chapter discusses the technologies and tools to be used, and more importantly, how to use them.
Chapter 3: Creating the Product Catalog: Part I
After learning about the three-tier architecture and implementing parts of the site's homepage, you can now proceed to create the JokePoint product catalog. Since the catalog consists of many components, it is divided into two chapters. In this chapter, you will create a database table, create a stored procedure, and implement data access methods in the middle tier. By the end of this chapter, you will have dynamic content generated on your web pages.
Chapter 4: Creating the Product Catalog: Part II
In Chapter 3, you created a selectable department list for JokePoint. However, the product catalog includes much more than just a department list. In this chapter, you will add the remaining features of the product catalog.
Chapter 5: Searching the Catalog
In Chapter 4, you implemented a feature-rich product catalog for JokePoint. However, it lacks a crucial search feature. The goal of this chapter is to allow visitors to search for products on the site by entering one or more keywords. You will learn how to implement search result sorting and how to browse search results by page. You will see how new components can be integrated into the existing architecture to easily add new features to a running site.
Chapter 6: Improving Performance
This chapter will analyze possibilities for improving the performance of the JokePoint project. While a dedicated chapter on improving ASP.NET performance is beyond the scope of this book, Chapter 6 will teach you principles you can follow to enhance your site's performance.