| 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. |
