eCommerce : Structure, Information Architecture, SEO

Electronic commerce, commonly written as e-commerce or eCommerce, is the trading or facilitation of trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle, although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail.

Information Architecture (IA) may sound dull but it’s a critical component of ecommerce and helps put the right data structures and standards in place to enable, amongst other things:

• Site & catalogue structure
• Core processes & functions e.g. site search
• Business reporting & web analytics
• SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is really just a series of educated guesses. It is educated guessing mixed with data-driven decisions that lead to more educated guesses and more data-driven decisions. Fear not though because even within all this guessing remain some basic principles and best practices. The most important SEO consideration for an eCommerce website is the website’s categorical structure / website architecture.

nopCommerce - ASP.NET open-source ecommerce software

nopCommerce is the leading open source shopping cart, allowing anyone to set up an online store quickly and easily.
One key feature of the nopCommerce is its pluggable modular/layered architecture which allows additional functionality and presentation elements to be dynamically added to the application at run-time. This pluggable modularized architecture makes it easy to create and manage your web sites.

Reference Link: http://www.nopcommerce.com/

 

Topshelf : Easy to create a Windows service

Topshelf is a Windows service framework for the .NET platform. Topshelf makes it easy to create a Windows service, test the service, debug the service, and ultimately install it into the Windows Service Control Manager (SCM). Topshelf does this by allowing developers to focus on service logic instead of the details of interacting with the built-in service support in the .NET framework. Developers don’t need to understand the complex details of service classes, perform installation via InstallUtil, or learn how to attach the debugger to services for troubleshooting issues.
Topshelf works with Mono, making it possible to deploy services to Linux. The service installation features are currently Windows only, but others are working on creating native host environment support so that installation and management features are available as well.

Reference Link: http://topshelf-project.com/