Online Catalog

[Don Erickson]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Frank Wiles wrote:

>   I seriously doubt you'll find anything like this online as most people
>   wouldn't want to use a PDF as a data source for something like this.

Hi Frank, thanks for your input.  You are absolutely correct that most
people do not build an e-commerce site like this.  Certainly the
"traditional" build-from-database method has proven its value, and it has
certain advantages.  One advantage of this PDF method, however, is that it
utilizes the company's existing investment in their print catalog by using
it as the source of the online presentation of merchandise.  It also
groups related items together automatically, so that you don't have to say
"People who bought this also bought that" and have a program build the
relations for you.

Everybody understands and is familiar with how a catalog works.

>   It's typically easier to just have the data in the database and build
>   a normal e-commerce/catalog site from that data.

There are still mail order companies with a huge investment in their print
catalog production, and they still put out print catalogs with a look and
feel that their customers have come to expect.  In this particular case,
The Roadster Factory has 26,000 part numbers in their pricelist, which
they felt made the traditional "amazon database" online ecommerce format
prohibitively complicated and expensive.

>   I would also assume that the site and PDF would have to be heavily
>   configured to work correctly.

The site is typical LAMP.  I do have some non-standard php.ini settings,
but nothing particulary exotic, I'd say.  The company emails me a high-res
PDF of their catalog. I think that it differs from the one that they take
to their printer in the respect that mine is sized at 130% from the 8 1/2
by 11 page size, just to give me sharper raster images.  Also it doesn't
have embedded fonts, but I don't know why, particulary.  Most of their
graphics are vector, so the resolution on those doesn't matter.

This interface is produced using a real cocktail of UNIX utilities and
programming languages. The most specialized thing that I do is with a perl
program mangling the text, as it is separated from the graphics and each
page is generated on-the-fly as it is called.  PHP functions update the
prices real-time, and spit out the text.  Obviously there's a shopping
cart backend to handle the computation, ordering and notification, etc.

If you go to richFX.com, they have, in the last month or so, introduced a
macromedia flash process to serve print catalogs.  Their clients include
Spiegel, Eddie Bauer, JJill, JCPenney and 200 others.  LLBean is also
offering flash catalogs as of this month.  So, I think that there is some
interest in this type of presentation.


Regards,

-Don