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Bagchee.com –
An e-commerce storefront implemented using the .NET frameworkProject
Duration: August 2003 – November, 2003.
In its endeavor to provide value-added services to its customers,
Bagchee Associates revamped its e-commerce storefront, Bagchee.com.
The enhanced storefront provides category management tools to
classify books & multimedia CDs, while incorporating powerful
search capabilities and enhanced online transaction processing
within the user interface. In addition, it provides up-selling
capabilities, implemented by generating advanced queries through
the SQL Server 2000 database. Designed for a global customer
base, Bagchee.com provides seamless accessibility and secure
online shopping to customers.
Customer Profile
Bagchee Associates, an organization based in New Delhi, India,
is a leading source for Indian book titles and information products.
The company started operations in 1990 and has grown to the
stature of the preferred “support services provider”
for major libraries across America, Europe, and Asia.
Business Requirement
Bagchee Associates retails its range of products comprising
of books and CDs, through its online storefront – www.Bagchee.com.
Launched in 1998, Bagchee.com is an e-commerce storefront that
enables customers to search for products, place orders, make
payments online, and also track their orders. Use of robust
and futuristic technology that would allow easy integration
with third-party software and mobile devices at a later date
was a key consideration for Mr. M.K. Bagchi, the CEO of Bagchee
Associates. The storefront had to be overhauled keeping precisely
this in mind.
Solution
Benefits
 Fully
customized and administrator driven processes to regulate front-end
features
Comprehensive
access to the product and order information
Value-added
features such as the Up-Sell Recommendation Engine* to further
increase sales and to assist the customer to make a better buying
decision
ASP.NET/XML
Web Service/SQL Server architecture for improved performance
and scalability
Technologies & Platforms
ASP.NET
VB.NET
JavaScript
XML
Web Services
SQL
Server 2000
IIS
*Up-Sell Recommendation Engine – refers to the “People
who bought this book also bought” section in Bagchee.com,
which lists the products that were bought with a particular
product. This section helps in promoting products and in turn,
the sales for Bagchee.com.
Requirement
Bagchee.com has been the key success factor behind increased
sales volumes achieved by Bagchee Associates. However, as trends
in the e-commerce market changed, Bagchee Associates realized
the growing need to enhance the functionality and upgrade the
technology of the storefront.
They observed that it was slow to download and lacked features
to manage its vast database of books and CDs. In addition, the
organization intended a paradigm shift of the storefront in
terms of its functionality and ease-of-use. These factors, eventually,
led to the decision to completely overhaul Bagchee.com.
Bagchee Associates chose Icreon to develop an easy to use, scalable
storefront with the end objective of improving customer experience
and manageability of operations for the administrator.
Leveraging Functionality for
an Enhanced Customer Experience
The long-term goal for Icreon and Bagchee Associates was
to develop a business-to-customer storefront that not only provided
the essential storefront functionality but could also scale
up to handle customer transactions and be able to provide better
service to Libraries and institutional buyers in America, Europe,
and Asia. The biggest challenge was to establish the Bagchee.com
as a global online shopping storefront. We had to ensure that
the storefront would be able to meet the service standards of
customers, globally.
The success of Bagchee.com totally depended on value additions
that we provided in terms of technology, design, performance,
and functionality.
Satisfying client expectations; Delivering high-end solutions;
Meeting the restricted timeframe – It was all a part of
our team’s daily schedule for this project. At each phase
of development, the Icreon team interacted with Bagchee Associates
to ascertain that the product met the desired expectations.
This, in turn, gradually increased Bagchee Associates’
confidence in us and steadily eliminated the chances of cohesion
errors and requirement mismatch.
Bagchee.com can be broadly broken into two extensive modules
- the public portal and the administrator module. The public
portal is accessible to all customers. They can view book titles,
create user accounts, search for books & CDs, place orders
through the storefront and also track their orders. The payments
are coordinated through the VeriSign payment gateway, for high
reliability and security.
The administrator needs to manage and validate all transactions
that take place through Bagchee.com. Using the administrator
module, various administrative tasks can be performed, which
include adding new books, publishers, authors, and CDs to the
database and managing user accounts created through Bagchee.com.
The personal details and preferences as provided by customers
while registering with Bagchee.com, are stored in the database.
The administrator can access this data and send offers and e-mails
to prospective customers as per their preferences.
To provide a robust and more scalable solution, we suggested
using the .NET framework. |
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We developed Bagchee.com
on a 3-tier architecture, providing a highly reliable and multithreaded
environment. The front-end consists of ASP.NET for enhanced
search capabilities and user account management for customers.
JavaScript validations check user inputs while creating user
accounts, entering search criteria, or performing administrative
tasks. On the backend, the SQL Server 2000 database manages
the records for books, authors, publishers and CDs. Using XML
Web services as the middle layer, the request and response functionality
is implemented for a distributed and platform independent setup,
which increases data access and transaction processing for the
storefront.
Summary
Bagchee.com has been an invigorating experience for Icreon.
The team has been able to comprehend and deliver the solution,
better than its conceptualization. Exploiting the .NET technology
to the core, we were able to achieve the desired aim of enhanced
functionality and quality of service.
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