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I've just taken on a client who needs a subscription based ecommerce site created using ProductCart software. I'm pretty handy with PHP so I should be able to figure out the software. My question is - what are some things i should be aware of when creating a subscription based ecommerce site? What types of questions should I be asking the client? I need to get more specifics from them regarding the different subscription levels and periods, but what other specifics should I get nailed down? I appreciate any help anyone can give.
thanks...
I would highly, highly, HIGHLY (can I make it any more clear) recommend reading and understanding almost everything on this question: What should a developer know before building a public web site?
It outlines all the big things you need to know about Security and Performance for Public Websites, a lot of which apply to e commerce sites. (When people's money is involved, it needs to work right).
Furthermore, you should make sure any certificates you should have are there, encryption, etc.
For Client's Specific Needs:
Signing Up:
Do they want to have promo codes to discount stuff?
Is there a trial period?
Billing:
When does billing occur? (Probably should be doled out throughout the month)
Should there be an interface to change the billing date?
Leaving:
How long does Customer Information stick around?
How much access does a person have to the site when they unsubscribe
Is there a day of grace period (Useful for file-storage sites)
Some of this stuff might be dictated by the package you are using, but still good to have figured out.
smashing magazine has a nice article on things to look for when designing an e-commerce site.
Be sure to ask what types of payment they want to accept. Credit cards? Which ones? E-checks? Paypal? Google checkout? Are card numbers being stored on the payment gateway? If not are you PCI compliant? Do you already have SSL? If not, who's getting the SSL cert? How do you want to handle refunds? Are cancellations pro-rated? Do you want to support affiliates? Do you want to have discount codes? Do subscriptions have setup fees?
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Social media sign in has become popular to use on websites, but what negatives are there with its use?
Does integration add trackers to your site?
Does it slow overall performance?
Are some social media logins better than others?
I haven't found much info on this online, and all the data I've seen is on conversions and marketing. I'd love to hear facts from the development side.
Edit: I'm feeling confused by the downvotes. How is my question bad or irrelevant? Social sharing buttons were all the rage but most people agree now that it isn't worth it, even though it seemed at first to have great results; and from the development side, it slowed page loading and added trackers to our sites.
The companies most excited about the buttons before, as I recall, were companies selling ways to add a ton of those buttons to your site; and most of the advocates I see now are similarly marketing products that allow you to add a ton of buttons. I'm asking what login does from an angle other than popular marketing.
Using OpenID for login is great because you don't have to remember many different logins, and even though there are some minor problems, I don't think you shouldn't use it (I'll use Facebook as an example here):
The user has to trust you. Maybe you want read access, so you could read what you wrote on Facebook. You could use the data for marketing, even if you just get his ID.
The user (and you) has to trust Facebook. They know on which page the user is logged on (you got a shop for dog food? the user will get ads for dog food as soon as he logs in!), and they could even log in as the user himself - theoretically, of course.
You are missing information like mail address and other things. There are workarounds, and they are working.
Don't ever (!) use only OpenID login or something similar (exception: you need to actually do things with the data you get - e.g. twitter bots)! You're forcing users to sign up for a social network they don't want. YouTube did this, and it wasn't very successful (except for the fact that there are "millions" of G+ users... Yeah.)
Except for that, I don't see anything wrong with OpenID login. Many big pages use it, and as long as the user has the possibility to log in conventionally, why shouldn't you use it?
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As all SEOs know that google is trying its very best to kill SEO and linkbacks are quite a difficult task now. Although content is the key but my boss is still possessed with linkbacks. I can not do directory posting, link exchange, paid linking, web 2.0 and blog commenting as they are spam now. I do not see what other choice i have except forum posting and article posting. Can someone suggest new method to acquire link backs ? I know almost all traditional methods so don't say press release or etc. If you really have something out of the box or not very much common please share.
Google isn't killing SEO, they trying to banish practices that your boss is so intent on doing.
If you want to build a quality reputation - you need to start creating genuine and unique content aimed at your target audience. Research your market, offer your visitors information they want to read and share. Make sure what you create is geared towards Google.
Make it relevant, current, accurate and engaging.
Of course, this all takes time and considerable effort - if you or your boss can't devote the time needed, or at least employ someone to do it for you... the business is going to suffer online.
Buy the links. The majority of online marketing agencies do this as the primary way to increase Google rank.
Or go the natural way and produce so much fine content people will naturally share it.
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Gathering requirements is an essential stage creating software or web applications.
I have searched the web extensively without finding any directions on how to elicit requirements for personal projects. All information i found - including books i read - is focussing on different stakeholders.
So i´m wondering, what would be the best way to 'gather' the requirements for personal projects?
I can't imagine i'm the only one with this question. I have plenty of ideas for webapplications. Since i am the only stakeholder at this time - no users are identified yet, i need to develop a couple of applications for personal use - i find it hard to interview my self to elicit those requirements.
As English is not my native language, apologies for possible textual errors.
You can have a document with all the information you have in your head of the project in a bullet list format called "Project Memoir". Just list all the information & business rules you need to put in the project. You can after that start developing a kind of informal Software
requirements document (as it's for a personal project) containing some essential information for you in the development phase, like a feature list with their description, use cases & scenarios that will help you in testing in later phase, mock up screens for defining the UI look & elements, data elements lists for defining screen contents. Just keep it simple & easy as it's for only your personal use.
Hope that would help :)
The questions are supposed to be a trigger of a thought process.
What makes it any different in case you are the developer next to the stakeholder? Your thoughts are those of a stakeholder and you will have to try to identify your own requirements by this process.
Identifying your own requirements with a structured approach will help you identifying requirements that you would otherwise have encountered during development.
If the sole purpose is not only personal, I doubt whether it is a good idea to start developing. Then you will need to find prospects to interview. Investigate the possible markets.
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I've been working on a uniform payments system similar to Active Merchant for the past few months. So far I've integrated Authorize.net, PayPal Payments Pro, and and Psigate. Basically you use one set of method calls, one set of parameters for making requests, and you get one set of responses.
I've spent the past 5 hours looking for the next gateway to integrate. Braintree has a great API, but unfortunately they lock you into using the SDK and don't just give you the basic API documentation so you can write your own code.
I looked at Barclays, Ogone, Realex, and a few others, but unfortunately many of them don't have public api access (Barclays), have it but don't give you a key immediately (Realex), or have it but the signup process is broken (Ogone).
I'm hoping to cherry pick a few gateways to integrate with who offer something at least half as developer friendly as CampaignMonitor offers with their v3 REST api:
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/api/getting-started/
Can anyone recommend payment gateways that respect the fact that I'm a developer and just want to integrate open source software with them, and shouldn't have to go through a ton of bull shit to do it?
I don't care what country / currency - I'm just looking for developer friendly solutions that will allow me to start writing code today.
You could have a look at http://www.beanstream.com - based in Canada. They support CAD, USD, etc.
I've played a little with their API, but havent done any significant development with it.
I do remember seeing an API wrapper package (maybe in .net or classic asp, I cant remember).
good luck.
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I need to help a human rights organisation to setup a donation page at their website. They have tried PayPal and GlobalGiving and they found some glitches with these services like ceiling, transaction fees, etc. They want to setup their own mechanism. So what are the possible options and how much programming is needed? Is there any free-open source e-commerce or charity modules available?
Sounds like you are looking for something very customizable here, what I would recommend you is to do some custom coding or leverage solution like wufoo. You can build as simple as a form that whole bunch of fields and sends all these result to paypal or other payment gateways. Leveraging pre-built solution like wufoo is often recommended for non-technical people and/or simple, quick tasks like this.
(Alternatively) Most well-known applications like drupal, Joomal, wordpress (you name the rest) have fairly good support/module on this area, however, most of them require some degree of customizations and often become an overkill solution (mainly because of the learning curve).
You might look into Google Checkout. It's not free, but they do have an option tailored to non-profits (link).
The main benefit of going with them is that you won't need to set up a direct relationship with a CC merchant gateway, which can be a good sized hassle, especially for a smaller nonprofit. To me, the other benefit is that it keeps you far away from Raiser's Edge / Blackbaud, purveyors of some of the most awful donation pages I've ever had the misfortune to see or use.