Forum Moderators: buckworks
We have a rapidly growing retail business which currently runs across 4 online channels-eBay, Amazon Merchants@, & 2 domain stores.
We desparately need a web-based centralized database for our inventory and customer data/crm.
We can't seem to find a complete solution.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
We are willing to change shopping carts for the two domain stores if we could pull everything together.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
-Corey
Thank you for your reply! Sorry about my delayed response, but I needed to look into what server-side language would be best.
We are pc based & use windows, & we'd like a managed, hosted dedicated server with windows (perhaps through Rackspace). We're open to suggestions regarding the hosting. I'm not a coder, so I can't say for sure which language would work best, but I want to choose the best/most flexible/serch engine friendly one before implementing anything.
-tentacles
Would all the products be on all the domain names? If so, it would be pretty simple to set up the MS Access or MSSQL database and have the code read from that centralized database
Each would still have it's own check out procedure but possibly use the same merchant account - depending on the business
-Corey
That said, your data organization and a set of well-defined relationships between each piece or entity of data is essential for smooth growth and acceptable performance. I suggest you sit down with a notepad and a large drawing pad and map out exactly how all the different pieces fit together -- "owning organization" for each web property, category hierarchies, a standard (or a purposeful and well-defined flexible) model for describing and working with products, a way to manage product inventory, aggregate inventories across categories, properties, etc. Then walk through with your pen and paper how you will accomplish each of your goals with the data structure you come up with. This is by far the most important part to starting the process of integration in this case. Then, sit down with someone who is technically competent and figure out the implementation details and adjust as necessary. Starting with a clear frame of reference and flexible data structure will serve you well in the long run.
Just my 2c.
Cheers,
John
That said, your data organization and a set of well-defined relationships between each piece or entity of data is essential for smooth growth and acceptable performance.
Bullseye. If the tools you use are flexible enough, you should be able to establish different category and product relationships to determine which ones (plural) work best for your situation.
And welcome to WebmasterWorld mnjohn!
