Maps for Nearby Stores
FileMaker, Inc. got wind of one of our projects, and did a write-up of it. I think it made a good write-up – this is a conceptually pretty straight forward idea, that really shows off a couple of FileMaker’s unique features.
Our client, The Fest for Beatles Fans, has a very popular web store and wanted to upgrade it, redesign it, make it a bit splashier (spoiler alert: here’s the final result). At the same time, they had been managing their product inventory and sales using FileMaker forever. So we needed a solution that would marry these separate systems in a way that made it easy for our client to keep inventory up to date, and to manage all their orders the same way, whether they were from the web, phone, mail, or their many conventions.
We chose to go with Zen Cart for our Web Store for several reasons:
- No-holds-barred full-featured shopping cart. We didn’t want to compromise on this point. We wanted the best cart we could get – the kind of stuff the big guys use – like “Customers who bought this, also bought these,” “Tell a Friend,” Sale Products for special customers, Best Sellers within categories, reviews and ratings, individual accounts for order tracking, etc.Â
- Open Source with wide support and depth of add-ons. So when our client needed a special calculation created for shipping, we could turn to their vast library of plug-ins. Ultimately, we worked with a Zen Cart specialized developer, Scott Wilson, to create some of our Christmas specials.
- PHP and very customizable. The system was designed to customized, to the point that you can do an upgrade to the system without messing with your customization. And PHP is a language that FileMaker supports, and one that we work with a lot.
- mySQL-based (this was the clincher), so FileMaker could talk directly to it using their new ESS feature (External SQL Sources). This enables FileMaker to see any SQL database as if it was part of FileMaker, giving us all the tools and features that we use for the rest of his system.
So that’s how we ended up with Zen Cart. We’ve used this for several of our clients, and the results have been great.
Among other things, the solution we created for them allows them to edit product information directly within FileMaker. We created some synchronization scripts to update the online version with new prices or other information. The really cool part, is they get to see the updates as they make them, exactly as it appears on the web.
We are also posting shipping information back to the web site, and emailing the customer when the order ships. To facilitate keeping this information within FileMaker, we used NRG Ship UPS for our UPS shipments, and Endicia for our US Postal Service shipments. Both of these products were pretty quick installations. We added a feature not available in either of these products: quickly compare pricing between UPS & USPS using the FileMaker web viewer. Then load your order into the correct software depending which method you choose.
Feel free to stop by TheFest.com and let me know what you think.
If you any questions about this solution, feel free to contact us anytime.
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