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eCommerce Resources

Back in the late 1990s, at the dawn of the ecommerce era, I went around the world teaching two-day workshops on the topic and reviewing numerous products for IT publications. I compiled this page of links back then, and haven't really touched them since, so this is a window back in time. I have removed some of the obvious outdated links in March 2013.

 

If you know of any additional resources, let us know. 

 

Speeches and tutorials on eCommerce

Our most recent class was given at an MPA seminar in Atlanta. This course also has a page of links to other resources and various screen shots and movies. Finally, you can view a complete list of all of our speaking engagements here.

 

Recommended eCommerce books and resources

While there are many books on eCommerce, we recommend these:

o     Magdalena Yesil's Creating the Virtual Store : Taking Your Web Site from Browsing to Buying (1997) from Wiley goes into more technical detail about the storefront design itself, and is the recommended text for my Interop classes.

o     Dave Kosiur's Understanding Electronic Commerce (1997) from Microsoft Press gives more of the basics and shows some case studies of innovative applications and sites.

o     Winfield Treese and Lawrence Stewart's Designing Systems for Internet Commerce (1998) from Addison Wesley is more of an overview of principles and practices, and a good explanation of crypto basics. I recommend it for people wanting to learn more about the many different fields of eCommerce (including payment systems, creating content, and transactions) but not necessarily about specific products.

o     Dan and Emma Minoli's Web Commerce Technology Handbook (1998) from McGraw Hill covers protocols such as SET, SSL, EDI, security, and encryption.

o     Anup Ghosh's eCommerce Security, good information on web security threats and strategies.

o     Phil Greenspun's Database Backed Web Sites. While not strictly an eCommerce book, this is full of good advice and examples on how to build web sites that work from databases, the core of any good web storefront.

o      

Other resources, sites, and articles of interest:

o     Your Customer isn't an Idiot, by Rick Levine on basics of site design

o     Good list and links to SSL credit card payment processors from iHTML folks Inline Internet Systems  

o     Glossary of zillions of various payment terms

o     Ten ways to protect your web site (from Networld, Winn Schwartau, 2/98)

o     Eight Steps to Minimize Credit Card Fraud for [Internet] Merchants and Don't Be Victimized by Online Credit Card Fraud, (both from Scambusters, 6/98)

o     Chase Paymentech Credit Card Processing offers wide range of tools and support for Ecommerce Solutions to help turn browsers into buyers, also a great section of free merchant resources.

 

Web Informant essays on related eCommerce topics

o     Why eWallets are still bad news (2/13)

o     Taking credit card payments via the Internet (2/10)

o     Ten Common ecommerce Mistakes  (3/05)

o     ecommerce Hosting options (5/00)

o     Are you a buyer or a seller? Confusion in the eCommerce marketplace.

o     There is no demand for messages, about misconceptions with respect to advertising on the net (5/98)

o     In Praise of Porn, how porn merchants have advanced technologies of payments and authentication (3/98)

o     Truth in Advertising (12/97)

o     All SET, With No Place To Go (1197)

o     Can you trust Microsoft to pay your bills? MSFDC issues and analysis (9/97)

o     What if they built a mall and no one cared? The demise of IBM's WorldAvenue (6/97)

o     The Makings of a Mediocre Web Site of Barnes and Noble (5/97)

o     Why Electronic Commerce isn't a cake walk (1/97)

 

Online eCommerce product demonstrations

 

This vendor has made their software available for anyone to try out over the web. You don't have to download anything, and you can get a feel for how these products work and how to administer various aspects of your storefront.

o     iHTML (WebSite)