E-Commerce Services
Guiding You Through Complexity
There are a number of ways to manage online transactions, ranging from simple to comprehensive. The final solution must coordinate many different areas of your business (like the accounting department and your bank). How do you harmonize all the players into a single strategy?
Imaginary Landscape will guide you through the process, beginning with an analysis of your products and services. Here is a selection of questions which will impact which method best serves your needs:
Fulfillment Timeframe
How are you fulfilling purchases? Immediately (like software downloads or PDF delivery of an article) or traditionally (UPS/FedEx delivery of physical product like a book or jar of salsa)? Immediate fulfillment requires real-time processing whereas traditional fulfillment offers the option of offline processing.
Shipping Methodology
If you are fulfilling via traditional methods, how many options do you want to provide? How would you like to calculate shipping charges? Options include shipping based on total purchase price or via a real-time link into your shipping company's database, which require weight and box dimensional calculations).
Purchase Frequency
How often are customers likely to purchase products? Does it make sense to offer the option of customer registration? Benefits include faster ordering and reordering based upon order history.
Trust the Experts
There are many more decisions that are required to provide a comprehensive and tailored solution for your specific needs. The Imaginary Landscape team of project managers will work with you to translate your business needs into the appropriate system. They will ask all the questions and provide all the context you need to make the right decision.
E-Commerce from Imaginary Landscape offers the following benefits:
Informed Consultation
A specially trained Imaginary Landscape staff member guides you through the process, understanding your business needs and constructing a solution that best fits your needs.
Options
Not every scenario requires sophisticated real-time transaction processing. Sometimes an easier and more affordable solution is best. Start by proving the concept, then make the decision for a more advanced solution - when there is data to support the increased expenditure.
Sophistication
If your needs are sophisticated, Imaginary Landscape has the depth and experience to provide the right solution. Imaginary Landscape can address your needs, inclulding:
- third-party fulfillment companies
- multiple, real-time shipping options calculation
- user registration and "one-click" purchasing
- related products
The three most common variations of E-Commerce are native, off-site and faux. Each is discussed below:
Native
Imaginary Landscape teams up with VeriSign and their transaction processing software PayflowPro. The software is installed on your server and securely transfers credit card information in real-time to a clearinghouse for approval. It operates exactly like the swipe at your grocery store. The real-time transfer results in a return code which indicates approval or denial. The Web site reacts differently based upon the return code. The user remains on your site throughout the purchase process.
Off-site
Still real-time, but this variation sends the customer to another site for processing. Imaginary Landscape teams up withVeriSign and Paypal to configure the following aspects of the off-site transfer:
- Passing of variables - what is being purchased and the price
- Design of landing page - customizing the look of the off-site transaction page
- Feedback loop - utilizing information available back from the off-site transaction processor
Faux
The appearance of transaction processing, however the purchase data is stored in a secure database on your server and requires staff to log in and manually process transactions. The site is designed to do some error checking (e.g. making sure the credit card expiration is in the future), but approval/denial is handled by staff.
