Usable Shopping Carts [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Jon Stephens (Author), Jody Kerr (Author), Clifton Evans (Author)

Book Description

Series: Constructing Series. | Publication Date: October 2002

Creating a usable e-commerce application is a daunting challenge. There is so much to do, from the initial concept, through to designing and coding the application. This leaves a lot of scope for things to go wrong.

In this book we take all the hassle out of online shopping applications, by showing you how to plan your application, design the user interface and datastore, and code the entire thing. But it doesn't stop there – we provide the complete code for two complete shopping cart applications, customizable for your own needs.

In this book we cover:

- Planning an e-commerce application

- Designing the application, from customer surveys and wireframe models, to UI design and prototyping

- Designing and implementing the databases that will hold your product and order information

- Implementing the Product Catalog, Shopping Cart, and Checkout system

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book is for any web professional who wants to implement a shopping site, or add e-commerce functionality to an existing site. HTML knowledge, as well as knowledge of one of the backend combinations (ASP/SQL Server or PHP/MySQL) is essential to get the most use out of this book.

About the Author

Clifton Evans practices user interface design and information architecture. He has been active in this industry for more than nine years. Clifton’s experience covers writing and public speaking through to UI and IA on investment tools, legal publishing and real estate systems. His clients have also covered the spectrum, from music and fashion, to FTSE and Blue Chip. He is a regular contributor to boxesandarrows.com, the premier resource for Information Architects.

Jody Kerr is a web architect and developer focusing on e-learning web systems and e-business web applications. He works with a slew of technologies as a generalist programmer, idea geek and coffee boy.

Jon Stephens is an itinerant American technical writer, reviewer and site developer. He has co-written more than five books on web development, including Usable Forms for the Web, released in 2002 and Constructing Usable Web Menus, out in January 2004.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Glasshaus; 1st edition (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904151140
• ISBN-13: 978-1904151142
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,342,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a full treatment of an e-commerce application, January 1, 2005

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Constructing Usable Shopping Carts: Designing and Building Great E-Commerce Applications (Paperback)

The authors set forth an ambitious goal. In one book, they try to show you how to design and code a full e-commerce application. From laying out the user interface and connecting its interactions with a server running a relational database. For the latter, they spend some time with an extended example that involves constructing a set of interrelated tables, with primary and foreign keys.

Those of you already familiar with RDB and the various normal forms will be very comfortable here. For the actual database, they illustrate with Microsoft SQL and the free MySQL. The code to connect is given in fair detail. Quite aside from anything else, the differences and similarities between these databases can be very useful. You can see the pros and cons of going with either. Heck, if you are searching for a book that compares these 2 common and important databases, this book is a good choice.

The book is a little curious in one way. The authors are clearly skilled, but they don't seem to use the formal Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach. Though you might see that the various pieces and interconnections they give can amount to this. Nor do they explicitly use the idea of an n-tier architecture. Perhaps they chose to omit these ideas to simplify the narrative. Since if you successfully use their ideas to build your application, the MVC and n-tier ideas can then have far more substance to you, when you later encounter them.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical oriented and well-focused, January 19, 2003

By 

Foti Massimo (Vezia (Switzerland)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Usable Shopping Carts (Paperback)

Once again glasshaus delivered a practical oriented and well-focused book. The authors don't waste time, straight to the meat; the book is actually full of well-explained code listings. The sample applications use ASP/SQL server and PHP/MySQL, but a lot of material is still relevant for other technologies, especially the coverage of database design, but also usability, interfaces and workflow
BTW The book is actually 300+ pages long

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A full treatment of an e-commerce application, June 9, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Constructing Usable Shopping Carts: Designing and Building Great E-Commerce Applications (Paperback)

The authors set forth an ambitious goal. In one book, they try to show you how to design and code a full e-commerce application. From laying out the user interface and connecting its interactions with a server running a relational database. For the latter, they spend some time with an extended example that involves constructing a set of interrelated tables, with primary and foreign keys. Those of you already familiar with RDB and the various normal forms will be very comfortable here.

For the actual database, they illustrate with Microsoft SQL and the free MySQL. The code to connect is given in fair detail. Quite aside from anything else, the differences and similarities between these databases can be very useful. You can see the pros and cons of going with either. Heck, if you are searching for a book that compares these 2 common and important databases, this book is a good choice.

The book is a little curious in one way. The authors are clearly skilled, but they don't seem to use the formal Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach. Though you might see that the various pieces and interconnections they give can amount to this. Nor do they explicitly use the idea of an n-tier architecture. Perhaps they chose to omit these ideas to simplify the narrative. Since if you successfully use their ideas to build your application, the MVC and n-tier ideas can then have far more substance to you, when you later encounter them.