E-Commerce Products that Integrate Directly with FrontPage

Now that we have examined the different elements of e-commerce, we'll take a look at products that integrate directly with FrontPage.

NOTE

As mentioned previously, you are not limited to only e-commerce products that integrate directly with FrontPage. These options just make the process easier and have a better understanding of their audience.

bCentral Commerce Manager

bCentral is a popular Web portal for the small to medium business user. It is owned by Microsoft and sure to be and ongoing part of Microsoft's Web services strategies in the future. In addition to offering Web hosting (with FrontPage Extensions) and online sales and marketing products, the company also offers an option for online commerce that integrates tightly with FrontPage.

One of the many elements of bCentral is the Commerce Manager product (see Figure B.3). It provides the combined functionality of a Web-based sales engine with the ability to edit pages and layout from within FrontPage. Because many Web stores can suffer from the problem of everything looking the same, the ability to edit templates and content from a familiar interface is very attractive.

Figure B.3. The Commerce Manager product/service of Microsoft's bCentral Web site offers optional FrontPage integration.

In addition to providing e-commerce capabilities, the bCentral Commerce Manager also provides additional features and capabilities because it can help push product content to other Web sites, including eBay and the MSN Marketplace.

Fans of the product point to the low price, ease of integration, and capability to get up and running quickly. Criticism of the product includes lack of customization options in the ordering process and the need to run all product information through a Web interface instead of a custom database.

The bCentral Commerce Manager product can be found at http://commercemanager.frontpagelink.com. The current price for the product is $24.95 a month.

LaGarde's StoreFront

LaGarde has been a player in FrontPage integrated e-commerce since 1996. Its products have received great reviews from the user base, and the company has always worked closely with Microsoft to ensure as smooth an integration as possible.

In November 2002, LaGarde released version 6.0 of its StoreFront product. The product continued the tradition of tight integration with FrontPage but added the bonus of an ASP.NET backend that provided for the best Microsoft has to offer on the server end of things.

LaGarde has three different versions of its product providing the same core functionality but with more deluxe offerings based on user need (see Figure B.4).

Figure B.4. LaGarde's site offers a considerable resource for e-commerce options.

LaGarde can be found online at http://lagarde.frontpagelink.com. The pricing model for its product can be found at on the Web site.