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Client Requirement
Online shopping cart system with seamless ERP (Enterprise Resource Management) systems. This system should be able to receive and process online orders efficiently. Client also requested that the application should display a wide range of products for online sales and customers should be easily able to place orders with the help of a shopping cart system.
Customer had a wide range of products which were becoming unmanageable. By selecting to use an ecommerce platform with payment gateway integration, customer hoped to make things convenient for users too. The main objective here is to enable customers to easily navigate through the plethora of products from the product listings pages and easily select the one that they choose to buy. This Magento based ecommerce platform was hence designed to make online sales convenient and provide store owners to provide customers with a great shopping experience with discounts and offers.
Client’s expectations from the system in terms of functionality
- Seamless integration of payment gateway
- A convenient order management system
- Easy inventory management system
- Ability to integrate with Microsoft ERP
- Design should be user friendly
- High performance expectations with tweaks to the database.
Challenges
Team faced the following challenges:
- Maintaining performance even on the highest load. When the site is handling millions of active requests, the site should not slow down or crash.
- Incorporating usability into the website for the convenience of navigation for all types of users.
- Integration of the shopping cart with the ERP system and data synchronization with servers on a regular basis.
- System should also take care of the discounts offered to retailers and wholesalers.
- Different pricing needs to be displayed to retailers and wholesalers that needed to be solved with care.
- Safe and secure data transfer and online transactions was a task of great focus.
Technology Used
| Operating System & Server Management | Red Hat Linux OS,Multi-Server Architecture with Staging & Production Environment through Version Controlling releases, Server Optimization, Security & SSL Implementation, Scheduler for Back-ups,Alert Monitoring System Integration,Server Performance Tuning at regular intervals, Software Firewall Configuration & Maintenance. |
| Development Tools & Environments | PHP5+, Magento Community Edition 1.7, Zend Framework, Apache Web Server, AJAX, Java Script, HTML5, CSS3 etc. |
| Database | MYSQL DatabaseServer, DB Clustering,DB Optimization,Master SlaveReplication,Query Optimization, Scheduler for Backups. |
Manpower
| Project Leader | 1 |
| Phone Gap Developers | 2 |
| Phone Gap UI Designers | 2 |
| Quality Assurance Testers | 2 |
Planning
A four tier development approach was used to accomodate the enoromous structure of the website:
- Database Layer – This layer serves the database needs and uses MYSQL Server Database, Tables, Stored Procedures and so on.
- Data access Layer – This layer provides access to the data from the databases via libraries.
- Business Logic Layer – consists of business logic procedures for the modules like shipping, payment gateway, order management, check out etc.
- User Interface Layer – this forms the front end or the GUI (Graphical User Interface) of the website.
PHP and MySQL server was used for the purpose of handling the extensive features for event management. The other modules like shipping management and order management were developed in PHP. These could be executed directly from the UI layer. These PHP files consisted of all the business logics used for respective modules like Save (Add/Update), Delete, Get Single Object, Get Multiple Objects for Listing and were designed to be capable of handling many more logics which were not related to the database.
Development Highlights
The project was successfully conpleted and the system could successfuly handle all the online activities of order placement, shipping, payments and lots more. With thorough research, a robust application was created with useful customizations. Usability guidelines were strictly followed and the navigation was made easy with the use of AJAX, CSS and HTML controls. The site was made live with a span of 6 months.
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