Project Detail

Description

One of our clients has an online store with lots (10.000+) of products for sale using a custom .ASPX shopping cart. They need to launch a new, separately branded store with a subset of their products ASAP.

After reviewing the current state of the shopping cart software market, we are recommending that they use Magento for their new store and then use Magento’s APIs to synchronize product and order data between Magento and their existing system (which will still be used for internal order fulfillment and tracking). We are .Net experts but are not .PHP experts so there is a lot of opportunity for additional work for the winning bidder. (Plus, we regularly outsource .Net work too.)

For this project, we will advise of the domain names for the old site and the new site, provide a database of product data to be sold on the new site, and explain the vision / branding for the new site. (There will probably be 600-1000 products in ~100 categories, although your integration solution should be automated in such a way that the number of products does not affect the project price.) We will also provide you with an SSH login to a fresh openSUSE or Ubuntu LAMP server.

You are bidding on producing a complete, ready-for-public-launch, Magento store.

Requirements:
• Configuration of the server / installation of any packages needed to make the site work.

• Graphic design of the new site including logo. Expect at least 3 iterations as our client is particular (but reasonable).

• Write an import process in C# .Net / Mono to load existing product, category, and supplier data into Magento. This app should run on either Windows or Linux/Mono. We can provide LLBLGen 2.6 .Net .dlls for data access or simply provide you with a SQL Server 2005 .dbf for this data. This import process should be able to be run without user interaction so we can refresh the data on the new site periodically. We are unfamiliar with the Magento’s API and DB format, so you need to research those before bidding. There may or may not be significant work for you to map existing data (e.g. product dimensions, colors, links to product manuals, etc) to Magento.

• Configuration of the Magento product catalog system. This will include product search, comparisons, and filters based on standard information such as popular products, new products, price, brand, and categories. (We will provide all of the data from the existing site. You need to make it work and look good with Magento.) Included in the conversion will be links to our client’s blog from appropriate products. Also, we expect that you will configure Magento to support product reviews, wish lists, and comparisons.

• Implementation of the shopping cart and checkout process. Our client uses Authorize.Net, Google and PayPal. These will need to be re-implemented under Magento using developer keys. We will put in our client’s actual keys for launch.

• Shipping costs will be fixed per product, and will be provided as a separate file or MS-SQL query to support your integration. Because of this, no integration to USPS / UPS / FedEx will be required for the initial store. However, limited development may be required to apply the shipping costs. We can explain more by PMB.

• MaxMind fraud detection. (We use their Web Service API in .Net. We do not know if Magento has a plugin for this or if you will need to write it as part of your solution.)

• SEO URL rewriting for product and category section of the store

• Adding in snippets for Google analytics and conversion tracking code from several PPC engines.

• Through Magento, generate output files for upload to comparison shopping engines like Googlebase, Nextag, etc. (see http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/9401/P60/, http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/9401/)

• Copywriting of the About Us, Privacy Policies, Terms, Home page, etc. You will use the existing site as a base for the new site, but you cannot just copy the content for two reasons: a) the new site will be branded differently, but mention that it is a division of the other company. b) we’d like the new site to pass copyscape against the old site (exception: some of the product data will be the same). This content must be in Perfect U.S. English.

• Literally, we should be able to take the site you develop, switch Authorize.Net, Google, and PayPal keys, plug in our client’s merchant Id’s for the PPC tracking, and launch the site.

• Any code you write to implement this project (e.g. product data import code) will be 100% property of our client, and you will sign and honor our client’s standard non-disclosure agreement given that you will have access to our client’s proprietary product and supplier data.


What is *NOT* included in this project:
• Real time integration of *order* data into existing .aspx system. We will launch with only product data integration, but if you do a great job on the project above, the order data will be a natural next phase.

Additional thoughts:
• If possible, we’d like your bid to include a solution for how we can call existing .Net assemblies from the new site. (Examples: We can run Mono 2.0. Can Magento run under Phalanger? Or do you have experience of .Net / PHP interoperability under Linux? We have lots of .Net ‘helper’ methods and are a bit hesitant of losing ability to access those. However, we saw that Magento is strong enough that we are willing to leave the .Net code behind if needed).

• In your initial response, please state “I agree” to confirm that you read and accept the Requirements, include examples of one or more Magento sites that you have completed, and confirm that you have used LLBLGen 2.6.

• Please advise of your payment preferences. We are willing to put the project funds in escrow, but expect that all or most of the payments will be reserved until project completion.


Thank you for your consideration.