Publishing
Custom Ecommerce for Ebook Publishers
One of our favorite clients is a niche ebook publisher featuring a large number of titles, an active author and fan community, and new titles appearing on a weekly basis. They sell ebooks and paperbacks through their own website, Amazon.com and BooksAMillion.com.
This publisher came to Boomcycle with a completely custom but unfortunately bug-riddled soft-goods ecommerce website written in one of the less-common programming languages, ColdFusion with a MySQL database. Customers were experiencing site delays and errors with orders, and products were “falling out” of their shopping cart.
Like many of the jobs that Boomcycle tackles, a solo software developer had authored nearly the entire code base. This same developer was responsible for site and data maintenance as well as bug-fixing. And while the site often worked, it was clear to the company’s founders that the company’s success as a business model was out-stripping their website’s ability to keep up with customer demand.
This ebook publisher had outgrown the small business software development model and needed a custom e-commerce solution which would allow them to keep growing.
How can we help make your publishing business more successful? Contact Boomcycle today
Site Design Considerations
Customer experience was of primary importance, and the company’s executive team requested that Boomcycle designers create a more engaging and convenient online shopping interface.
Of paramount importance was the ability to show a massive number of titles on the home page in a fast, intuitive and esthetically pleasing manner. Our Javascript, database, PHP and Apache experts were employed to create a blazing fast book “rotisserie” that customers can easily rotate the control to view any title they wish.
This ebook ecommerce project also involved a large SQL data migration from the client’s previous custom MySQL database. This involved mapping all the tables, columns and data to their equivalents in the new osCommerce-based schema.
The ecommerce upgrade also addressed back-office limitations of the previous system, with an all-new administrative section (including image uploading and Javascript/jQuery/AJAX-powered forms).
Ecommerce was integrated with Authorize.net and their CIM payment gateway. CIM allows our client to securely retain customer payment information to help encourage return business.
In addition to the base ecommerce site, this publisher wanted to integrate a robust blogging platform. Boomcycle recommended the very sturdy and well-deployed WordPress CMS and blogging system. With both a custom ecommerce system and WordPress running simultaneously, the user experience nevertheless had to remain seamless. This was accomplished through a clever design, with the same menus and other user interface elements appearing on both the WordPress side and the ecommerce side.
The Custom Ecommerce Solution
The ultimate measure of success of any system upgrade is the return on investment.
Boomcycle reduced our client’s hardware expenditures by 50% yet improved response times. Orders were no longer lost and the client’s shopping experience and overall engagement with the brand has improved. The site is securely processing over six figures in sales per month.
The workflow of the new back-office section is far improved, and our client’s staff is more productive than ever. New titles are introduced easily, and the system allows for complex discounting based on release and purchasing dates.
Data access speed has improved, and sales reporting has been dramatically enhanced as well, with reports customized to speak to specific business objectives.
Thanks to the use of open source software, including PHP, osCommerce and WordPress, the fundamental software underpinnings of the site were available for free. From that basic functionality, Boomcycle developed a completely customized system that met every one of our client’s needs.
Perhaps just as critically, when problems do crop up, Boomcycle engineers quickly and efficiently resolve the issue to the complete satisfaction of our client.
How can we help make your publishing business more successful? Contact Boomcycle today