Oscommerce / Zencart Icecat
Project title: Oscommerce / Zen Cart / Magento distribution connector with ICEcat.biz ( i have attached the details in word doc)
We are electronics company e-commerce website. I would like to move our current store to zencart / oscommerce or Magento shopping cart. we already have hosting package and would like to know how we can integrate… we work with top distributors to download our products… and our main concern is we would like to download all products details from ICEcat.biz site, which offers FREE products content.
this is how we want…
from our supplier we will have our custom price feed which include, the followings:
* SKU#
* MPN#
* Manufacturer
* product title
* category
* short description
* Images
from ICEcat.biz we want the following:
* Product Specification
* Full descriptions
* UPC code
* Images
The Description from ICEcat will be presented in the description tab
The images from ICEcat will be presented in the description tab
The Specification from ICEcat will be presented in the Specification tab
The product reviews from ICEcat will be presented in the reviews Tab.
(if available on ICEcat)
I don’t want to download duplicate proudcts, meaning I want the same product from my supplier and then that product details, specification, images from ICEcat.
I would like to upload new products from a distributor data feed
At the end of the project I expect to receive a data feed in TXT or CSV format
Purposes
This Project is intended to automate product import from multiple distributors into a Magento / Oscommerce / Zencart environment.
Project planning
1. Distributor automated imports
1.1 Mapping interface (manufacturers/categories)
1.2 Import interfaces
1.2.1 Synnex
1.2.2 Ingram
1.3 Distri import dashboard
1.4 Distributor selector
1.4.1 Backoffice: setting up rules for distributor selection
1.4.2 Import system: finding the best match across distributors
2. Content import from ICEcat
2.1 XML import of product datasheet & Sync mechanism to update product data
2.2 Product comparison functionality
2.3 Product lookup functionality
3. End-user price calculation module
3.1 Price rules interface
3.2 Price calculation mechanism
4. Real-Time stock & price check
4.1 Distri interfaces for real-time P&A
4.1.1 Synnex
4.1.2 Ingram
4.2 FrontOffice P&A check integration (AJAX driven, no pop-ups)
4.3 BackOffice P&A check integration into Purchase Advice
5. Purchase Advice Module
5.1 Create & save purchase advices
5.2 Consolidated purchase advices
6. Electronic ordering at distributors
6.1 Generic ordering mechanism
6.1.1 Synnex
6.2.2.1 Order
6.2.2.2 Status feedback and shipping advice
6.1.2 Ingram
6.2.2.1 Order
6.2.2.2 Status feedback and shipping advice
7. Initial environment setup
7.1. Custom look&feel design
7.2. Implementation in Magento
8. SEO optimization
8.1 URL Rewrites
8.2 Titles, meta tags (incl description and keyword) optimization
Basic points
Offers automated import
The purpose is to fully automate product offers import from distributors. Further extension of imports with adding new distris should be simple enough.
Import will need to have some mapping capabilities, which should be interfaced in the backoffice of the Magento. ICEcat can provide a categorization advise in most cases, but you have to be compatible with ICEcat category structure, which is multilevel and derived from UNSPSC. The same stands for manufacturers list.
Interface/screens required:
– Map vendors (from distri data into standard vendor)
– Map categories (from distri data into standard category)
– Distri import status screen (import dashboard)
Distri selector module
In case of multiple distributors connected, this module will be needed to resolve ambiguities in product assortment and optimize product coverage in shop.
It will create a best products selection, based on distri selection rules. Rules can sounds like:
– Find the best price among [SELECTION] offers
Where [SELECTION] could be defined by parameters:
– Manufacturer / Any manufacturer
– Category / Any category
– Partnumber
Assortment in the environment will be refreshed after every successful import job and / or in the end of batch session timeframe. Batch session timeframe = time when assortment updates in shop isn’t significant, e.g. from 01:00 till 07:00. This is to lower the server load.
Interface required:
– Distri selector rules input
ICEcat content import module
Content import module will import content from ICEcat XML repository. It will put it into a local database, and data will be shown on product details page.
Data to be imported are:
– Product names / descriptions
– Images / gallery / multimedia
– Specification
– Related products (x-selling / up-selling data)
Currently no backoffice interface is supposed for this data management, existing data storage tables should be used as much as possible.
Data will be stored in local database in a well-structured form, suitable for lookup and product comparison.
In the frontoffice there should be a possibility to compare selected products (in one category) and to find products matching certain criterias.
As soon as no backoffice for data management is supposed, all search settings are to be re-used as they are setup in ICEcat (ICEcat provides certain defaults, as you can see in www.icecat.biz)
The search will be filter-based – a user will have possibility to create a product filter based on:
– manufacturer
– stock (yes/no)
– price breaks
– Specification (search breaks will be based on ICEcat searchable features)
End-User Pricing
End user price is calculated on “Purchase price + Margin” model.
Margin could be calculated by a rules, which are defined in a backoffice. Rules format is
– If [CONDITION] then marge = [MARGE DEFINED]
Where a [CONDITION] is a combination of:
– Purchase price condition ( purchase price between A and B)
– Vendor = [A | Any]
– Category = [ A | Any]
– Product code = [A | None]
“A” is a parameter, as defined in rules setup. Rules are to be managed from a backoffice.
Real-Time stock & price check
As distributors provide interface for real-time Price and Availability (P&A) check, it could be implemented in front-office and backoffice to provide the real-time info on request.
In frontoffice it will be integrated via a link, which will start AJAX request for an update. Server will perform the parallelized requests to distributors and return the result to user page. No popups here, only a stock quantity will be updated and during a check there will be an indicdation that the request is currently in progress.
Purchase advice module
Purchase advise module should give a best economically efficient advice on ordering, on following parameters:
– Product price
– Shipping costs
– Product availability
Formalization of the computational task is:
order amount with stock > 0 max
purchase amount + order costs min
This is an integer-valued multiple dimension multiple criteria task, which solution will cost a lot of CPU power(all possible combinations has to be checked to find the best alternative.
Before the purchase advice generation, stock / price information is validated at distributor.
a. Drop shipments
Dropshipments should have an individual advice (per-order)
b. Collection point orders
Module should create a shared consolidated purchase advice for all sales orders waiting for purchase
Purchase advice can be customized by shop manager & saved customized.
As soon as purchase advise is generated and accepted, orders status is changed so orders don’t get an advice more then once.
In the backoffice, the integration with real-time P&A is possible– to have the most up-to-date information, Purchase Advice module will automatically request P&A info on items which are to be purchased. This is to have the most up-to-date information for Purchase Advice creation.
Interface required:
– Sale orders list to PA
– PA preview
– PA management:
o Status flow
o Distri feedback
o View PA data (delivery info, order info)
Electronic ordering at distributors
As soon as purchase advice is verified by shopmanager, it could be automatically sent to distributor and purchased.
Each distributor have it’s own interface, so a “driver” for every distributor is required.
After order will be sent to distributor, it will be put on a status meaning “Purchased”. This is to avoid double orderings.
If during ordering an error happened, it will be put on special status “Error in upload”, which would indicate a problem in order upload.
Status feedback functionality will pickup data from distributor and import them into environment, so status handling data will be visible.
Initial environment setup
This involves creation of own look & feel design and customization of standard Magento templates to your own branded look & feel.
That includes custom look & feel graphical mockups creation. They will be approved by you, and then frontpage look and feel will be adjusted to match the mockups.
SEO optimization
Every category page and product detail page can be automatically optimized for a better SEO ranking:
• The page title and meta tags (description and keyword) will be customized
• URL will be adjusted in the following way: category.website.com/(subcategory)-mpn.html (or –productname.html)
There will be a possibility to optimize titles, meta tags (inc descriptions and keywords) for all category/product pages through BackOfficce.
Export to Google Shopping / Google Sitemaps
Export to google shopping / google sitemaps can be performed on a daily basis, automatically. The export file will contain information about all “in stock” products.
Efforts and costs estimation
Below are the rough costs & efforts estimation for the functionality as described above.
Item | Phase I
1. Distributor automated imports
1.1 Mapping interface (manufacturers/categories)
1.2 Import interfaces
1.2.1 Synnex
1.2.2 Ingram
1.3 Distri import dashboard
1.4 Distributor selector
1.4.1 Backoffice: setting up rules for distributor selection
1.4.2 Import system: finding the best match across distributors
2. Content import from ICEcat
2.1 XML import of product datasheet & Sync mechanism to update product data
2.2 Product comparison functionality
2.3 Product lookup functionality (filters)
3. End-user price calculation module
3.1 Price rules interface
3.2 Price calculation mechanism
4. Real-Time stock & price check
4.1 Distri interfaces for real-time P&A
4.1.1 Synnex
4.1.2 Ingram
4.2 FrontOffice P&A check integration (AJAX driven, no pop-ups)
4.3 BackOffice P&A check integration into Purchase Advice
5. Purchase Advice Module
5.3 Create & save purchase advices
5.4 Consolidated purchase advices
6. Electronic ordering at distributors
6.2 Generic ordering mechanism
6.2.1 Synnex
6.2.1.1 Order
6.2.1.2 Status feedback and shipping advice
6.2.2 Ingram
6.2.2.1 Order
6.2.2.2 Status feedback and shipping advice
7. Initial environment setup
7.1 Custom look&feel design and proofpaging
7.2 Implementation in Magento*
8. SEO optimization
8.1 URL Rewrites
8.2 Titles, meta tags (incl description and keyword) optimization
Export to Google Shopping / Google Sitemaps