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PHP Module for E-commerce

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 3:22 pm
by sevana
Hi,

I apologize that this question maybe half product promotion, but I really want to know what people think about the approach. I have got some positive feedback and potential sales cases for the module within track or ringtone online sales, but would very much appreciate opinion of this community.

The idea is that we analyze list of purchase transactions (what customers buy as a single purchase: track1, track23, track76, ..., track17) and search for associations within purchases finding similarities and patterns. Thus we have two results: 1. we can say f.e. that if somebody buys trac23, track67 and track 44 then he will also buy track 17, and furthermore one can predict that if he buys track23, track67, track44 then he would also like to listen to track86.

All of this comes from analyzing purchase transactions made by other customers. This can be done once a day f.e. or even live for a single customer while he makes his purchases on the site.

This leads to the following scenario: an online customer buys one track, the script checks what other tracks usually come with this one and displays links to these tracks f.e. on the right panel attracking customer's attention. When the customer buys second track (not necesserely from the right panel) the procedure repeats and so forthe till he stops buying or exceeds "the knowledge" hidden in the purchase transaction data.

This results to customers easier finding tracks of their interest and increasing purchases (they get links to tracks they are interested in, because the analysis is based on the purchases of the customers with the same taste).

This module is implemented both as an online service or as an integrated module returning analysis results in XML format.

What do you think about such module and its perspectives for online shopping? Thanks a lot in advance!

P.S. Direct link to online demo: http://www.sevana.fi/context_data_analysis.php
__________________
Sevana Oy
IT Solutions & Services
http://www.sevana.fi

Re: PHP Module for E-commerce

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:19 pm
by onion2k
What you're suggesting isn't very innovative. Product recommendation systems are very common. It's just basic cross-selling. Most e-commerce apps do it. If your database structure is designed well and indexed properly it doesn't take very much time to query either, so it can be done live rather than nightly on a low traffic site.

Re: PHP Module for E-commerce

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 1:15 am
by sevana
onion2k wrote:What you're suggesting isn't very innovative. Product recommendation systems are very common. It's just basic cross-selling. Most e-commerce apps do it. If your database structure is designed well and indexed properly it doesn't take very much time to query either, so it can be done live rather than nightly on a low traffic site.
We tend to differentiate cross-selling and what is called in data mining "market basket analysis". The reason we consider it innovative enough is that after understanding the idea people immediately ask, "is this something like what Amazon offers?", and our answer is yes, but it's of a low cost targeted at small and medium size shops. Concerning "night time" I would get back to what you wrote
onion2k wrote:so it can be done live rather than nightly on a low traffic site.
- ok, consider "night time" hight traffic time or site. Thanks for your reply anyway, it's important for us to collect different opinions!

Re: PHP Module for E-commerce

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 5:23 am
by onion2k
sevana wrote:We tend to differentiate cross-selling and what is called in data mining "market basket analysis". The reason we consider it innovative enough is that after understanding the idea people immediately ask, "is this something like what Amazon offers?", and our answer is yes, but it's of a low cost targeted at small and medium size shops.
You can call it what you like, it's still easy and relatively trivial to implement if you plan it properly from the start.

How do you propose to integrate this sort of thing as a 3rd party option anyway?

Re: PHP Module for E-commerce

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:03 am
by sevana
Well, whatever you say, data mining is not that trivial and easy, however, similar thing perhaps may be done by appropriate SQL search to "appropriately" designed database.

Integration is very easy: POST transaction data to the scrip in the following manner:

track3,track7,track34,track88
track99,track8,track7,track87,trac23
....

and as result you will get XML response for example, if we are talking about the data that is used in our demo on the web site:

<associations>
<entry>
<supplied_value>\"Umbrella\" by Rihanna</supplied_value>
<relation_value>\"Say It Right\" by Nelly Furtado</relation_value>
<relation_value>\"Misery Business\" by Paramore</relation_value>
<relation_value>\"If I Had Eyes\" Jack Johnson</relation_value>
<relation_value>\"Shut Up and Drive\" Rihanna</relation_value>
</entry>
.....
</associations>

Then if your buyer's shopping cart contains "Umbrella" by Rihanna then suggest him the following tracks as well:

"Say It Right" by Nelly Furtado
"Misery Business" by Paramore
"If I Had Eyes" Jack Johnson
"Shut Up and Drive" Rihanna

You can download PHP script from the same link and give it a try yourself. A friend of mine working in DRM for music industry is already testing it :)

Re: PHP Module for E-commerce

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 5:05 pm
by alex.barylski
Programmers are the wrong people to ask for advice when it comes to such matters, for two reasons:

1) Programmers have a DYI mentality so why would they buy anything? Especially true in open source circles.
2) We rarely have any sense of good business possibilities.

I think the idea is good...but my only concern would be in sending that data to a external script. A lot of funcitonality can be outsourced effectively but one thing most companies don't like to share is their business data. For that reason, I would personally never use a third party service.

The only way to find out is to try...I think the idea of selling the service to SOHO is a good idea - they are less likely to care about sharing data and their budgets probably don't allow for complex implementations

Re: PHP Module for E-commerce

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:19 pm
by sevana
Hi,

Thanks a lot for your comments and suggestions! This is something what I have posted the questions here for.

Yes, the service is not something companies would like to use as exactly - the don't like to share their data with somebody.

Concerning programmers I should say that one can give the script a try for 3 months with the current available license and if some of developers finds it useful I am ready to give out a 1 year license for free, and when/if it's implemented in any of their works then their customer will pay for the license (business, not developer) and the developer will get a bonus or a comission. I am a former developer myself that had to turn sales and business development rather than software development, so I have a lot of friends and former colleagues/employees among them and know that they may not be very good in sales, so... that's another opportunity we would like to offer.