In Need of AJAX Info from Programmers

[geminizebra]

Hi, everyone!

 

I’m working on an entrepreneurship project at my university and my group needs your help in figuring out some of the financial and operations details.

 

To give you the basic rundown of our project, our idea is to develop a new experience when shopping online. Instead of using the traditional, linear online storefront, customers will use a very user-friendly online web application (programmed with Ajax) to shop. We want to simulate the experience of physically shopping by having a layout of the virtual store in front of them. The most important thing is that the application needs to sync up to retail databases to show inventory availability.

 

Since many of you are programmers, I need information regarding the set-up and operations of this project. Even your best rough estimate would be incredibly helpful. If you could answer just one of my questions, I would be extremely grateful.

 

1) It’ll take quite a bit of server space to store the information within the application, but how much server space, bandwidth, etc. will be necessary to maintain this kind of application?

 

2) How would graphics, usability features, customization, and anything that makes the application more complex affect customer’s ability to access the application, affect the cost to maintain, etc.?

 

3) How long would it take to program and set up this kind of application?

 

4) How much would it cost to set this up?

 

5) How much would it cost to maintain this?

 

6) Ajax looks like the best programming option, but is there another you think would work better?

 

7) How much would it cost to set up the actual website that would be hosting the application?

 

I know Google Maps uses something similar to this – would having the store in 3D be too much for it to handle?

 

9) If you have any extra information on cost, time, set-up, operations, etc., please let me know!

 

Thank you so much for your help! If you’re willing to talk to me a little more, explain how programming this would work or if you know anyone who I could contact to get more info, I would love the extra resource. Please just send me a PM and I’ll give you my contact info.

 

Thanks,

Ashley

[Tagg]

 

I only have a few minutes but;

 

5) How much would it cost to maintain this?

 

If you mean after everything is setup and just monetary wise to keep it running, there is just the hosting bill to pay (monthly, yearly, however you set it up) and of course is you bought a domain name for it that would another yearly fee.

 

But the bigger problem with a retail store following this design is there are different seasons..the inventory would have to change between like summer and winter so there would have to be someone to do that and that would be another fee..probably missed other points but it would be varied for sure.

 

6) Ajax looks like the best programming option, but is there another you think would work better?

 

Flash. It would probably cost more but the results can speak for themselves. As for the price on flash if you are wondering, that depends again on who you hire heh. I have never been good at pricing things..

 

 

[xtopolis]

These questions are too open; the best answer so far is "it depends".  As Tagg suggested, there are numerous ways of approaching this, Flash being one of them.

 

There are too many things to consider to give you a good estimate at this point.  It depends how accessible you want the site to be, what languages, how detailed, how realistic... etc. etc..  Using Flash/Silverlight would likely be very interactive, but could alienate customers that can't handle it (slow pc, disabled, disability, etc)...  Using normal webpages and images to represent all of the environment would be equally taxing on the server and client pc.  Consider that the reason this doesn't exist yet (or at least widespread) is because of all the considerations that need to be addressed to create what you are imagining.

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1) It’ll take quite a bit of server space to store the information within the application, but how much server space, bandwidth, etc. will be necessary to maintain this kind of application?

~  This depends on the number of images + pages + style sheets + scripts + video(?) + etc... that you decide to utilize.  Potential bandwidth used could be the a minimum of all that * the number of users * number of visits ... (though things would be cached, but not guaranteed to be cached.)  Plus there will be local bandwidth utilized for talking to the databases, let alone storing information in them....

 

2) How would graphics, usability features, customization, and anything that makes the application more complex affect customer’s ability to access the application, affect the cost to maintain, etc.?

~Depends how many people you want to realistically reach.  Flash could make the modeling of a real store environment easier, but would allow less users access to it.  Making a fallback site for users that can't access the flash version will create extra work for you to program and maintain.  Don't forget about potential smartphone customers which would prefer their own formatted version of the site.. etc etc.  It depends.

 

3) How long would it take to program and set up this kind of application?

~It depends.  I don't even want to ballpark this estimation.  It depends on the quality of the designers/developers, your needs, testing... etc.. primarily how much money you are willing to spend on it.

 

4) How much would it cost to set this up?

~It depends.  Hosting is cheap, but what you're envisioning would need several (if not more) servers working together to serve all the potential data/customers/etc...

 

 

5) How much would it cost to maintain this?

~It depends.  Bandwidth and storage is relatively cheap, cpu power not so much.

 

6) Ajax looks like the best programming option, but is there another you think would work better?

~Depends how you want to setup your application.  Ajax is useful, Flash/Silverlight seems well suited.... but what are you going to base it on?  Which server side language (PHP, ASP, JSP, CGI... etc), and what database (Oracle, MySQL, Access... etc)..  Ajax is more of a communication aspect in this regard... not really useful for the programming needed to make this application work.

 

7) How much would it cost to set up the actual website that would be hosting the application?

~See above, it depends.

 

I know Google Maps uses something similar to this – would having the store in 3D be too much for it to handle?

~Too much for what to handle?  Technically you can always throw more CPU ($) at the problem until it goes away.

 

9) If you have any extra information on cost, time, set-up, operations, etc., please let me know!

~You can look on many web host companies and see their prices once you get an idea of what you want to do.

 

 

I think what I envision and what you describe are two different things.  I gave a worst case scenario since you were saying things like "new shopping experience" and "virtual layout of the store"...  Like I said, this is too open of a question without more details.