Support for Transactions

As a corollary to the need for an integration framework, the portal must provide support for transactions. This means the infrastructure allows online commerce, electronic payments, and other transactions.

The difference between the portal approach and standalone applications is that the portal provides common transactional functionality that can be shared across all applications, thereby reducing development time, testing, and support. For instance, there is no point in developing a web-based catalog and payment system for an association's bookstore and then building another, separate system for conference fees and a third system for membership dues.

Commerce Server is the element of the Microsoft .NET portal platform that provides prebuilt objects and tools for a full e-commerce implementation. It includes a catalog, a flexible and extensible payment process, marketing tools, usage statistics, and other utilities. With Commerce Server 2002 comes full integration with the .NET Framework, including web services and use of management of Commerce Server sites as Visual Studio .NET projects.

Catalogs

If you are trying to sell goods or services on the Internet, an online catalog is an obvious place to start. The catalog should be database driven and allow items to be browsed, searched, and viewed in many ways to suit the needs of shoppers. The catalog should be tied into the transactional engine by means of a shopping basket and a checkout process. As you would expect, Commerce Server provides this functionality out of the box and allows us to use .NET to extend the functionality as far as we need to go to meet the needs of our customers.

You may need marketing capabilities within your portal. For instance, users might opt to receive email notification of special promotions or email newsletters. Cross-selling related items can boost revenue and improve customer satisfaction. Customers who purchase winter tents may soon be looking for warm sleeping bags, thicker socks, and parkas. People who read reviews of camp stoves are likely to be shopping for them. By tracking these relationships among products and personalizing the experience of the user , you can enhance the utility of your portal and increase customer satisfaction.

Financial Transactions

Selling online provides one of the easiest cases for calculating return on investment. If you can double your online revenue by upgrading your web site to a portal, the financial return can provide solid justification for the required investment. The portal needs solid, trusted support for financial transactions, including interaction with other parties such as banks and credit card processing facilities. Commerce Server fits this bill nicely . Figure 2.9 shows a recommended environment for a commerce-enabled portal site.

Figure 2.9. Commerce-Enabled Portal Site (Source: Microsoft, Microsoft Solution for Internet Business, Services Guide, version 1, December 2001.)