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We continue to write and speak extensively about eCommerce topics. This includes a one or one or two-day classes at various networking shows around the world, along with various reviews for computer trade publications. If you know of any additional resources, let us know. This page last changed November 5, 2001.
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.
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 Mark Hurst and Robert Seidman's In Search of eCommerce (6/98). While an expensive ($1200) private report, it contains such common sense information and helpful hints it is worth the price.
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.
Other resources, sites, and articles of interest:
o WebMonkey's eCommerce tutorial, covers lots of the basics and shows you how they set up a sample site with Cold Fusion
o Your Customer isn't an Idiot, by Rick Levine on basics of site design
o Shopping-Cart Software & Services Directory from Poor Richard's Web Site, a very extensive list (with prices!) of shopping cart and payment processing software, services, and products.
o Cryptography and Electronic Commerce, tons of links
o Good list and links to SSL credit card payment processors from iHTML folks Inline Internet Systems
o The truth about Internet Malls, from Paul Marshall, Thirteenth Floor Internet Services
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)
Here are our own articles written over the past several years. Note that versions come and go, and the older articles may not be as relevant given the progress of time.
o Domino Merchant v 2.0 (Infoworld, 5/4/98)
o Intershop v3.0 (Infoworld, 4/2/98 )
o IBM net.Commerce v3.1 (Infoworld, 4/2/98)
o Building your online storefront, a feature on the various choices for assembling your web storefront (Infoworld, 2/2/98)
o Suite Success: Choosing the right eCommerce Suite for your business, a look at six different eCommerce suites for NT and Macintosh servers (Web Review, 1/23/98)
o Setting up MS Merchant, iCat, and net.Commerce servers (Windows Sources, 6/97)
o iCat v3.0 (Infoworld, 3/24/97)
o WebSite v1.1 and 2.0 reviews in Infoworld
Other published reviews on a wide variety of other products and articles may be found here.
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)
Several vendors have 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 ShopSite (user name test8, password test8)