Solutions

Internet Strategy & Project Planning

At the end of the twentieth century, we witnessed a blind and often irrational belief in the power of the internet. Existing and would-be businesses spent an enormous amount of time and resources developing an online presence in the belief that the mere existence of a web site was sufficient to attract hordes of new consumers, and to magically create new businesses where there were none.

The era of golden naivete has passed, and the surviving businesses have learned that an effective online presence can offer substantial benefits to existing and burgeoning businesses, provided that such online presence furthers the larger goals of the business, and has been carefully planned and executed.

We at eCommerceStudio.com have been planning and executing internet strategies since 1998. We will help you clarify your priorities for the internet and identify the optimal strategy to accomplish your business goals cost-effectively. We will then help you devise a realistic timeline, and assist you in allocating your resources effectively in order to accomplish your vision.

Our core approach is to ask ourselves what would most satisfy your customer's aspirations, with the full knowledge that delivering an outstanding experience for your customers will insure the success of your online presence, and your satisfaction.

Spring, Hibernate & Lightweight Java Consulting

The Spring Framework is a light-weight application development framework that delivers key benefits that are not possible to achieve with heavier technologies.

Hibernate is arguably the leading open-source Object-Relational mapping tool, enabling your developers to bridge the gap between Object Models and Relational Databases in an elegant, performant and cost-effective manner.

Leveraging these two technologies together provides the following key benefits

• Flexible configuration: they provide a uniform way to configure applications, and removes the configuration from the code, where it cannot be changed so easily
• Portable Design: they enable your code to focus on the business problem that you are trying to solve, and makes the design portable to different technologies by making it possible to change an implementation without affecting the design.
• Declarative Transaction Management: they provide transaction management that is portable across multiple databases, and eases the use of relational mapping tools such as Hibernate. It delivers an extremely cost-effectively solution to a requirement that up until now required you to 'lock-in' to a costly database vendor, or heavy-duty EJB technology.
• Lightweight Java: they make it possible to deliver sophisticated and scaleable applications that can be developed using Plain Java Objects and a simple and lightweight architecture, thus increasing development speed and decreasing infrastructure costs.

Leveraging the features of hibernate via Spring provides a powerful way to develop well-crafted applications that will be cost-effective to maintain, and will withstand changes in technology. Getting up and running with Spring and Hibernate and reaping the full benefits of these technologies is not for the faint of heart. At eCommercStudio we have been working extensively with these tools for the past two years, and we have a thorough understanding of how to setup projects to reap the benefits of these tools.

Customer Interface Design & Information Architecture

The web pages or desktop software with which a customer interracts are the single point of contact with the products or services that your site or software provides.

As such, this single point of contact should provide a consistent, intuitive and memorable experience that will enhance the brand of your business. Your customers should not be required to learn or know any more than they already know in order to have a successful and rewarding experience.

Creating an effective Customer Interface is a balancing act. It requires the optimal division of limited resources between the creative side of the interface and the software code supporting its functionality.

Focus too much on the creative side, and you will have a fancy-looking interface that does not perform the functions which the Customer requires. Neglect the creative side, and you will end up with a fully-featured site that can only be used by the engineers who created it. Sound familiar ?

At eCommerceStudio.com we will help you make the smart design choices needed to create an Outstanding Customer Interface that will attract new Customers, retain your existing Customers, and minimize your customer service and/or training costs.

Software Architecture, Design & Implementation

Technology changes much faster and more frequently than your business. Because of this, when creating a software solution we focus on your business, rather than on the technology used to implement the solution.

If necessary, we use tried-and-true software design principles to best model your business. Creating an accurate model provides you with a solid foundation that will age gracefully and will be less costly to extend and to maintain.

We are firm believers in using open industry standards, and avoid proprietary solutions unless they provide critical benefits to your business that cannot be achieved otherwise. We have experienced firsthand the immense cost/benefit advantage of using open source software, which savings we pass on to our customers.

We implement our solutions primarely on Unix/Linux and Windows platforms, using a variety of software tools and technologies (Java, perl/php, XML, SOAP). When appropriate to the project, we leverage the benefits of enterprise-level software such as the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) using a variety of vendors (Websphere, Weblogic, JBoss, Jakarta Project).

In the end, whatever technology we use is tailored around the needs of your business and your customers. The right choice for us is the one that will deliver to you and your customers an Outstanding Customer Experience.

Managed Hosting Services

We offer fully featured hosting packages hosted on Linux platforms, in association with top-rated Internet Service Providers. We have found Linux to be the most cost-effective platform, providing the lowest total cost of ownership to you.

We enhance the basic hosting services with add-on administration and monitoring services so that you can take the worry out of hosting your internet site or eCommerce storefront.

We tailor our rates to your needs, whether you have a small informational site with modest bandwidth needs, or a dynamic eCommerce site with a large number of concurrent users.