Not all ecommerce projects fit into a nice little box. Some industries have very complex sales and require advanced features like product configurators, bundling of products, accessories and services that need heavy customization. The telecommunications industry is a perfect example.

For telcos with mobile service offerings, an ecommerce platform must have the ability to support a complex sale where the customer selects a phone, a rate plan, a term length, additional services such as text messaging and caller ID, product accessories like a case or Bluetooth headset and even options like “I want to keep my own phone number” or “I don’t want my number to appear on caller ID.” It’s possible that no two product configurations are exactly the same.

The ecommerce platform must also support special promotions and customer service like upgrading a plan, renewing a contract, adding services or purchasing an additional handset.

And because there are so many steps the customer has to take, a usable site is crucial to converting new customers and keeping existing ones. Because competition is fierce, having unique features is highly important to telcos to be competitive.

If you recall our webinar The New Ecommerce Dilemma: Buy, Build, or Leverage?, organizations where the ecommerce solution required is complex, unique, requires heavy integration with other systems and is of high strategic importance — chances are slim an out-of-the-box commerce platform is going to have features exactly as you want them nor the ability to extend them to set you apart from your competition. Such a project requires a completely in house build, or an ecommerce framework that gives you a jumpstart with the basic features you need (faster time to market than build from scratch) and the ability to customize the daylights out of them.

This was the case of Telus, a leading telco here in Canada. Telusmobility.com went live a couple weeks ago on the Elastic Path platform. Telus chose Elastic Path’s ecommerce framework to build its custom solution.

Here’s a little “Show and Telus” of what they built with our framework. A lot of these features I have never seen before on any other sites.

Email/RSS subscribers, can’t see video? View this post on Get Elastic.

Highlights

There’s many paths a customer might take to build a bundle, here I demonstrate starting with a plan. After you choose your plan, you’re notified that your cart is updated, and there’s a prompt to take the next step: add a phone.

If you don’t know where to start finding a phone, there’s a phone-finder tool that filters the available phones based on the features you want (about 1 minute into the video). You can view a gallery of product images by scrolling horizontally, which means less clicks to see multiple product views. You can also see 360 degree views.

Because handset prices depend on the length of your contract term, each handset requires a choice of terms and prices. Once you select your handset, the cart notification appears again with a summary of everything in your cart and links to next steps: add services or accessories.

If you select accessories, the system remembers which handset you selected and filters compatible accessories automatically.

You can edit your contract term right in the cart summary, and line items are separated into categories: Phone, Rate Plan, Services, Activation Fee and Accessories. Each category has its own return to shopping link.

How About Your Ecommerce Project Requirements?

Whether you’re enterprise, mid-market or a mom and pop shop, your ecommerce project is going to have certain requirements. It’s crucial to know your requirements before you go shopping for an ecommerce vendor. The framework isn’t a fit for everybody, and just as Software as a Service doesn’t serve all needs.

Need guidance sorting out your project requirements? Don’t miss our next webinar with Fit For Commerce’s Bernardine Wu: Requirements Diligence: The Cornerstone to an eCommerce Project’s Success. This webinar will discuss:

• How to build a comprehensive requirements set
• How to incorporate workflow design and best practices into your requirements
• How to use benchmarking and market data to justify your requirements
• How to distinguish between a must-have vs. should-have vs. nice-to-have

It’s happening Tuesday, June 30 at 9am PST, 12pm EST. We hope you’ll join us.

If you missed today’s webinar Multichannel 2.0: Are you ready for the next generation of commerce channels?, stay tuned for the blog recap and webinar replay coming Friday.

If you’re heading down to Orlando May 3-7 for the Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG)’s COLLABORATE 09 event, we’d love to connect with you!

COLLABORATE 09 is the premier event for Oracle database and technology professionals looking for best practices and real-world solutions. IOUG Forum session topics include database administration & warehousing, applications development, and business intelligence, and cover products including RAC, Fusion Middleware, Essbase, Stellent, BEA and many others.

• Drop by booth #4769 and say hi to the Elastic Path squad and check out our shiny new booth design. We’ll also have a draw for brand new Bose headphones.

• Elastic Path’s CTO Michael Vax will be speaking on Delivering Successful Enterprise Ecommerce Projects on Monday, May 4 at 1:15 pm.

• Party with Elastic Path and Oracle at the Peabody Hotel on Tuesday night from 7 to 10 pm! EP is bringing the DJ and some entertainment you won’t want to miss. There will also be a draw for some cool prizes. It’s free but space is limited to 150 guests, so drop by our booth to get on the list.

We’re getting closer to another exciting Elastic Path webinar — this month’s topic is Delivering Successful Ecommerce Projects. Our presenters Atul Jain, Associate General Manager of HCL Technologies and Gord Janzen, Chief Operating Officer of Elastic Path will present case studies of ecommerce projects spanning the last 10 years and discuss:

• How ecommerce projects are different from other IT and marketing projects
• What business and project management elements are especially important in ecommerce projects
• What technical elements predispose an ecommerce project for success
• The Top 10 things to do before project kickoff

In addition, we’re inviting the ecommerce community to share their own hits and misses. If you’d like to contribute your own experience, please contact me at linda.bustos @ elasticpath.com.

Webinar details:

Deliver Successful Ecommerce Projects

Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT

Register here

This year marks Elastic Path’s first mention in the Forrester Wave Report for B2C eCommerce Platforms as an emerging player to watch in the enterprise ecommerce space. The Forrester Wave is an annual evaluation of enterprise ecommerce platform vendors to help eBusiness executives determine the best fit as they grow, mature, and scale their online businesses.

Elastic Path (the company behind the Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog) has been doubling in revenue each year for the last three years and doubling in staff. We have several exciting enterprise customers who chose Elastic Path for its flexibility to build custom solutions in complex IT environments and to maintain internal control with full access to source code.

Next week we’ll be joined by Brian Walker, Senior Analyst for ecommerce technology at Forrester Research for a 1 hour webinar: The Ecommerce Platform of the Future. Brian presented this talk at the Shop.org Strategy and Innovation Forum in Orlando last week, and will be sharing with us:

• Key forces shaping ecommerce platforms today
• Key trends impacting ecommerce platforms in the future
• The shape ecommerce platforms may take
• What this means for the business decisions enterprises need to make today

Please join us as there will be time for your questions.

The Ecommerce Platform of the Future
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST

Sign up today!

We’re excited to welcome you to Grep, a new, interactive community that connects the Elastic Path development and support team with Elastic Path customers and partners.

Grep provides members with information and inspiration through:

• Developer Forums - Ask questions and receive answers about Elastic Path
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You can even subscribe for email or RSS notification of new content on any categories that interest you. Full access to the site is only available to Elastic Path customers and partners.

PS “Grep” is a Unix text search utility. We’ve adopted it to mean: “to search for and share information about Elastic Path.”