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Alex
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« on: September 01, 2007, 05:01:34 PM » |
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Amazon and OsCommerce: Is integration possible and is it required?
Who needs this?
This small article is devoted to those using OsCommerce as their primary engine for online store.
So, people using OsCommerce, do you need an integration solution with Amazon?
Discussion
Let us consider the case: you are selling your stuff through your multi-featured OsCommerce store, but also recently opened an account at Amazon, or are selling things and are satisfied with Amazon services for a long time. Thus, you have your tuned up order process in OsCommerce admin, and got used to it, but you also have now an Amazon seller central, and have to deal with those several (or a lot) orders from Amazon through their own order/products management web service.
At first glance, if you are not an owner of a high traffic store, the order process thing is not bothering you. However, if you are a store owner with at least 50+ orders each day, the separation between two order management systems will cause you a head ache. And, even for a small OsCommerce store, isn't it better to have all orders falling down to your OsCommerce order management system, so you could process them all at once?
Subject
Thus, the subject arises: Amazon and OsCommerce, is integration possible and is it required?
The answer is - yes. The integration of Amazon into OsCommerce is possible. Is it required? Its up to you.
Now, when we accepted the term that Amazon integration is possible, let us think on how to implement this. Not everybody knows that Amazon has the SOAP API for communicating with Amazon servers. The simpler API involving displaying products from Amazon is widely used, however, the API provided for integration of order processing is not a well known thing.
Thus, having an Amazon API for processing orders, posting new products to Amazon, update products availability, ship or cancel the order etc. we could integrate this all into an well know OsCommerce store engine.
What are the results?
Featuring Amazon OsCommerce integration...
As a result, you will have everything considering Amazon in your OsCommerce store engine.
Within a product edit page in admin, you will be able to post newly created product into Amazon catalog, without leaving your OsCommerce admin area. You will also be able to process the quantity available at Amazon, correct the price, description etc. at Amazon catalog. You will even be able to upload a picture of your product into Amazon catalog without leaving your store.
As for the order processing, you will be able to:
get new orders placed via Amazon into your OsCommerce admin area automatically;
process those orders into your usual way. Once the order is shipped or cancelled, the corresponding Amazon order will also be shipped or cancelled and the available quantity of the correspondent product will be updated on Amazon;
if the order placed on your online oscommerce store contains items that exists at your amazon catalog, the available quantity will be updated automatically.
When could I have this solution?
We have already launched the first store using this technique, and we have success.
However, as this was a unique solution, it is not available to everyone.
Thus, we now wish everybody who needs this to have it. We will soon release a downloadable solution, but first we want to gather up as much information as possible.
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