Seven Stone eCommerce
The Seven Stone eCommerce Project was conceived as an idea in the Summer of 2008 as an answer to the sometimes clunky nature of most eCommerce applications when dealing with the marketing and operations needs of growing businesses. At its heart, Seven Stone was supposed to be an easy-to-launch and easy-to-modify shopping cart application with some very effective SEO functions built in. As the idea grew and took shape, we realized that the application really could set a new standard for eCommerce designers, everywhere.
For most of 2009, we had to set the project aside as other responsibilities and projects demanded out attention, but over the past several weeks, the original proposal has been dusted off and serious thought has gone into making this a reality, after all.
This section of the site introduces the project and we’ll be launching a web site to focus on the development very soon… hopefully to attract talented developers to share in the project.
Introduction to the Seven Stone eCommerce Project
Concept of the application and business model
The 7Stone project will be developed with three separate versions that share the same core code: (Free) Open Source, Premium, Enterprise. The intent is find a balance between the rich development community needed for any eCommerce application to survive and thrive, and in finding the economic motivation to support development and continued support of the application once it’s in use. Rasa Design Studio will be the initial incubator of Seven Stone with the intent that 7Stone as a company will be spun off on its own.
The mission is to create a versatile eCommerce application that’s easy to launch and design for, yet provides rich support for the operations, sales, marketing and other business needs of growing businesses.
The extensibility and usability of the application should be as easy as WordPress’s Plug-in architecture and should appeal to designers with little or no PHP experience. Interfaces should make dealing with large numbers of products, customers, orders and staff employees as easy as possible. The front (public) side of the site should adhere to the best in marketing practices with the understanding that those practices will change over time.
Support for the application should also extend to strong support for businesses, in general: 7Stone should be a hub for information on how best to use the application and how best to grow businesses that use 7Stone.
Specs and Technical Considerations:
- Programming Language: PHP 4+
- Server: Linux / Apache
- Database: mySQL
- Output: XHTML (Tableless Structure)
- Other Scripts and Markup: Javascript, Ajax, XML, XSL, CSS, DHTML
- Default Store Types: Retail Delivered Products
- Other Store Types by Module: Retail Downloaded Products, Reservation, Subscription
7Stone As A Business
The expected cost to develop the Seven Stone was calculated at around $80,000 – $120,000 when it was planned with only the “Enterprise” version in mind and the sale of each application was originally considered to be part of a bundled design and programming “service” that we’d be offering to our own clients. The open source and community version of the business plan changes the calculus quite a bit and the cost of R&D is going to depend quite a bit on the talent we’re able to attract to the project on a volunteer and “profit share” basis.
We’ll be releasing the public version of the plan in the weeks to come. Please feel free to contact us if you’re interested in any aspect of this or any other of our projects.
Tags: 7stone, application development, eCommerce, ecommerce applications, seven stone, web site applications