Re: e-Commerce Solution provider needed
Hi Richard,
In my previous company we looked too for creating an e-commerce web site that would allow us to service our customers with spare parts and accessories for our products, something that was handled by phone and e-mail before and subcontracted to a partner (very costly situation). Have a look at the today's version : www.pelicansport.com/ (click on Buy Online or the Shop picture). The site hasn't much changed since the first day it went live (aside of refreshed pictures and products).
We looked at commercial products like Azox and Nodus, but they were way to expensive for our GP 8.5 integration (at that time, in 2007). Then we looked at what was available from Open Source and we decided to go with the OSCommerce solution. Since we already had EDI processing in-house with our major distributors and we owned Scribe software to process the EDI incorming orders, we decided that the eCommerce orders could as well be handled with Scribe too. We had the resources inside to develop the web site, which was enhanced in the graphics and presentation by our internal marketing team & designers, and with the help of a junior programmer, we setup the OSCommerce solution on a hosted platform (Linux, MySQL & PHP) which costs roughly 25$/month. We then selected a credit card processing company for the payments and refunds, and the whole project took about 3 months to put in place with all the testings. The PO processing is done daily by downloading the newest orders from the MySQL database into a file and crunched thru Scribe to generate the Sales Orders in GP.
Shipping and tracking is done via GP and UPS, the tracking # being written back every day to the MySQL database, so the customer can have the tracking number with an updated timestamp.
The eCommerce site has served more then 6 millions requests since June 2007 when it went into production... and the only costs associated with it are the hosting fees, the CC processing fees, and your GP / Scribe licenses... OSCommerce interface to manage the product catalog is very easy and you can manage multiple languages.
Good luck with your quest...