Unlike most of my reviews, I am writing this one while I am still in the
middle of evaluating the
product. Why? Unlike most of the tools I review, LaGarde's Store Front
(Advanced Edition) is a huge application. Actually, it's more of a suite of
tools or even an ecommerce development environment. So if I waited until I
performed an exhaustive analysis of every feature and option, it would take me
months to cover it all. I don't want to wait that long because this is a tool you need
to know about. It is going to make your life much easier.
If you want to sell merchandise online, you will encounter many obstacles
including the need for a merchant account, the development of an online
catalog and ordering system, customer service tools, billing, and affiliate
management tools (if you decide to build an alternate sales channel -- and if
you're on the web, you NEED to do this -- affiliates can easily account for
25% or more of your business without you even lifting a finger).
All of this can be very formidable, especially if you are new to the Net.
Sure, there are ways to do this using several different tools and services,
but LaGarde's Store Front brings all or most of these things under one
roof and this makes it invaluable and a great value.
Store Front comes in several flavors: the SE and SE Professional
versions enable you to build sophisticated web stores with a suite of
management tools and the Professional version supports SQL. The Advanced
Edition (AE) is an enterprise-level solution and includes a hefty inventory
tracking system. It also allows for multi-tiered pricing, sales coupons, gift
wrapping, wish lists and more. It also includes affiliate management, shipping
management, and detailed sales reporting. It's about as complete and as
powerful an ecommerce solution as you can get. I'm sure you could build an Amazon-like
clone with these tools without blinking an eye.
Now Store Front
is NOT for the meek or uninitiated. While it can be
integrated into Microsoft FrontPage, it still requires a lot of horse power
and development knowledge to customize it. While you can certainly create and edit a store
front live on your server using FrontPage, it is probably to your advantage to
work locally on your PC and then publish the store front to your web server
later.
To do this your PC will require 32 MB RAM, Microsoft Personal Web Server, Support
for Active Server Pages (ASP), 32 bit ODBC Microsoft Access (SQL Server and
Oracle are also supported), FP2000 or higher, and MDAC version 2.5 higher.
Likewise, your web server will require NT or Windows 2000, ODBC Microsoft
Access, Store Front
compatible email component, Java Virtual Machine, and a
number of other options if you want to support shipping and payment processing
for credit card transfers.
Once this is all in place and the application is installed and integrated into
FrontPage 2000, you can begin work. Store Front
is wizard-based and for the
most part this isolates the real technical stuff from the end user, making the
creation of a store front fairly non-threatening. You do not need to know ASP
code as the system writes it all for you. You simply select the business
rules, use themes to create a look and feel, add the products and pricing
information, and publish the store front to your web server.
The end result is very easy on the eye and intuitive to the
site visitor. Folks order items and add them to their shopping cart (the
system can even recommend add-on products!). The shopping cart can recalculate
the total as products are added or deleted or quantities changed. When the
visitor is ready to check-out, they can enter their billing information -- or
simply login if they are a returning customer (a very nice feature). After
they enter their shipping preferences and credit card information, the rest is
fairly standard.
Where the real power and beauty of Store Front
lies is in its ingenious
add-on sales and marketing tools. In addition to running a variety of
nice sales and inventory reports, you can also manage a mailing list of your
customers and blast sales announcements to them.
Perhaps the best tool is the ability to track affiliate sales.
You can assign a code to an affiliate webmaster. They post a link to your
store on their site. If someone clicks on that link, visits your store and
purchases something, the affiliate earns a commission. Affiliates may login to
your system to view their sales and commissions earned at any time. You set
the terms of payment, and they send sales your way.
All of this power comes at a price: the SE and SE Pro versions are
currently $279.00 and $479.00 respectively, and the enterprise-level AE
version is $879.00.
Competitive products may include similar features; however, they typically
price themselves by the domain license or by the number of products allowed in
the store.
All versions of Store Front
allow you to handle an
unlimited number of products and stores, and they provide full source code, so
if you are the tinkering type, you'll be able to hack away at their original
code to tweak it just the way you want it. To find out more, click here.
Store Front
