Integrated shopping cart for sale of third party products and services via the internet
View Patent ↗The current invention includes an improved system for an e-commerce vendor to seamlessly incorporate products and services from a third party into its own e-commerce site. This system enables the e-commerce vendor to display the third party products and to accept orders and arrange fulfillment of these products through its own site in a manner that is seamless to the end user. When the e-commerce retailer requests product information from the supplier, the supplier provides the retailer with product information and URLs at which additional information can be located. The retailer uses this information to retrieve product images, descriptions and information and to display this information to its customer on its own site. Each of these items is tagged with a unique element identifier that contains a number of details about the product. This information tagged to the product image or description enables the product to be easily identified by both the retailer and the supplier. When the customer purchases the products from the retailer, the necessary information is tagged to the product information and, thus, is available for placement of the order with the supplier. This enables the product order to be routed to and fulfilled by the third party supplier in a manner that is transparent to the customer.
1. An improved method for an e-commerce retailer to display and sell items of a third party comprising:
identifying, by a processor, each item of a third party supplier with a unique identifier, wherein a particular third party supplier provides photo-finishing services;
associating, by a processor, the unique identifier of the item with an image for the item, said image residing on a computer maintained by the third party supplier, wherein the unique identifier is further associated with a user, at least one of the images corresponding to user photographic images;
in response to a product request from the user to the e-commerce retailer, the e-commerce retailer presenting at least some of the images of third party supplier items to the user for on-line commerce, said images being retrieved from said computer maintained by the third party supplier in response to the product request, the product request being a user-initiated request for at least one specific item of the third party; and
in response to an order request from the user to the e-commerce retailer, for one or more items,
identifying, by a processor, based at least in part on said unique identifier, each item requested, the user, and an appropriate third party supplier for each requested item,
automatically generating, by a processor, an order for each requested item to be transparently sent to the third party supplier, and
when the order includes items from the e-commerce retailer and user photographic images, splitting amongst the retailer and appropriate third party suppliers.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the items include products.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the items include services.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the images of items include graphic images.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the images of items include descriptive text.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein a given unique identifier references a corresponding product Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) numbers.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein a given unique identifier references pricing information from a third party.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein a given unique identifier references order fulfillment information.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein said step of presenting includes:
requesting images from a third party supplier;
receiving a list of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for said requested images; and
displaying an on-line page that displays images retrieved from said URLs.
10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the request for images includes background and formatting information of a particular third party supplier.
11. The method of claim 1 , wherein a given third party supplier provides Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for images in various sizes and formats, thereby enabling retrieval and display of images to the user in various sizes and formats.
12. The method of claim 1 , wherein a given third party supplier initially provides smaller thumbnail images of the items and provides larger images in response to user requests.
13. The method of claim 1 , wherein a given third party supplier evaluates the request for images or descriptions and automatically indicates whether corresponding items are available.
14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the unique identifier associated with a given item is stored in a user's shopping cart when the user selects the item.
15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the images are rendered on a Web page for display to the user.
16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the unique identifier of an item requested by the user is employed for placing a fulfillment request with a corresponding third party supplier.
17. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
automatically splitting an order including individual order items from more than one third party suppliers; and
assigning fulfillment of individual order items to the appropriate third party suppliers.
18. A system providing an improved method for an e-commerce retailer to display and sell items of a third party, said system comprising:
an e-commerce retailer to identify each item of a third party supplier with a unique identifier, wherein an item of a third party supplier includes at least one graphic image and corresponds to a photo finishing service offered to a user, the unique identifier associated, at least in part, with the user;
an image server configured to receive user information requests from the e-commerce retailer regarding certain third party supplier items including a user-initiated information request from the user for at least one specific item of the third party, and transparently provide images and descriptions of said items retrieved from a computer maintained by the third party supplier in response to user information requests at least some graphic images being based on photographs previously taken by the user; and
an order engine module, in communication with said image server module, for processing orders for third party supplier items, the order engine module further for splitting orders that include items from the e-commerce retailer and items corresponding to user photographs from one or more third party suppliers amongst the e-commerce retailer and appropriate third party suppliers.
19. The system of claim 18 , wherein the items include products.
20. The system of claim 18 , wherein the items include services.
21. The system of claim 18 , wherein the order engine module automatically determines an appropriate third party fulfiller for each item.
22. The system of claim 18 , wherein the order engine module:
automatically splits an order among more than one third party suppliers; and
automatically assigns fulfillment of individual order items to one or more appropriate third party suppliers.
23. A computer readable medium that provides instructions, which when executed on a processing system, cause said processing system to perform a method comprising:
identifying each item of a third party supplier with a unique identifier;
associating the unique identifier of the item with an image for the item, said image residing on a computer maintained by the third party supplier, wherein the unique identifier is further associated with a user;
transparently presenting, by an e-commerce system, third party supplier items to a user for on-line commerce;
receiving user information requests at the e-commerce system regarding certain graphic images from an item presentation program logic, and providing digital images for display wherein said digital images are retrieved from a computer system maintained by the third party supplier in response to the product request, the product request being a user-initiated request for at least one specific item of the third party;
splitting orders that include items from the e-commerce system and items from one or more third party suppliers amongst the e-commerce system and the appropriate third party suppliers, wherein a particular third party supplier provides photo-finishing services for the graphic images and at least some of the items include user photographic images; and
processing orders for graphic images to be transparently sent to the appropriate third party supplier.
24. The computer readable medium of claim 23 , wherein the processing orders further comprises:
automatically splitting an order including individual graphic images from more than one third party fulfiller, and assigning fulfillment of individual order items to one or more appropriate third party fulfillers.
25. The computer readable medium of claim 23 , wherein the processing orders further comprises:
automatically determining a source of fulfillment of each graphic image.
26. A computer readable medium that provides instructions, which when executed on a processing system, cause said processing system to perform a method comprising:
identifying, with a tagging logic, each item of a third party supplier with a unique identifier, each unique identifier associated with data about that item and a user wherein a particular third party supplier provides photo-finishing services;
transparently presenting, with an e-commerce logic, at least some of the items to the user for on-line commerce in response to a user-initiated information request for a third party supplier item;
retrieving the data, with an XML request logic, about the one or more items from a third party supplier website, and enabling the e-commerce logic to present the data to the user for the on-line commerce; and
splitting an order amongst the e-commerce retailer and appropriate third party suppliers when the order includes items from a retailer and user photographic images:
processing orders for items with an order engine.
27. The computer readable medium of claim 26 , wherein the data is image data.
28. The computer readable medium of claim 26 , wherein the items include products.
29. The computer readable medium of claim 26 , wherein the items include services.