Would you be interested in this app for e-commerce?

[Miskin IT]

We've developed an Android App that can monitor data and statistics from any website and receive updates on sales, traffic, uptime, trends, profits etc. and alert you when a sale is made, certain goals have been met or big order met etc.
We've already tested this in alpha stage using a loan affiliate who thinks it's incredible. The app polls their website, gathers information from the DB and displays all customers, their details and commission received plus totals for the day/week etc.

This app is designed to be totally scalable and uses HTML and CSS as its display method. This means all data can be gathered easily server side in any web solution, converted to html, compressed and sent to the app. The app displays data based on the CSS downloaded from a website just like a website does so the user can alter and style the app as they please, they can even style it to look lie their own site. This means it has the versatility/usability of a browser but contained within the power of an app (can run in the background and poll every 5min or so, notifiy user, store data etc.).

It also can include multiple pages in the downloaded file. So if you want to monitor 2 websites you simply side swipe the screen to show the next page of data. It also includes its own protocol which the app recognises as one of its own pages so for example if you includes <a href="example.myapp/joebloggs">Joe Bloggs</a> it will look for that page within the downloaded file and display it.
This can be used to display further information on customers if you click their name from within a list.

Even better, although not fully implemented yet, is that it can display SVG Vector images within the app. This means you can easily create an image server side based on product sales or traffic, add it to the download file and it will display on the page you require.

It also includes username and passwords so certain users can get more sensitive information than others etc.

So how will this work using an e-commerce solution?

A simple plugin/module is created for the e-commerce solution that can read information from the DB. The server can do the demanding work, collate and put the sale data into a html/css format. This can be easily viewed in any browser for testing purposes.

The app runs in the background on your phone and requests the file on a set time (5min, 60min etc.). Once the file is received it alerts you (beep or vibrate) new data has been received (can be customized). Because there can be several pages you can split up data on each page so the main page can display bar graphs showing hourly sales, pie graph showing product popularity and a summary of sales, total customers, abandoned carts etc.
Then the user side swipes to display the second page to show a list of all customers with product bought, amount spent and whether they're pending or product sent. The user then clicks/presses a name to display all the details for that customer (address, payment method etc.).

What we want to know if there’s anyone who would be interested in something like this and if they’d like to take part in the testing process for Magento or CS Cart? It’s designed more for business owners who want to instantly monitor their sales. We do realise that there are apps that do the same thing and integrate to stores but this app is incredibly versatile, it can be used on ALL solutions easily and users with simple html knowledge can easily customize the looks and what it can display.

 

[ashcroft_s]

Guess it all depends on things like the cost of the app, and what data would be available. A lot of shopping systems I've seen have options to do things like send an email notification out about new orders (as well as daily/weekly/monthly summaries), and in a some cases that might be enough for people if they want instant notification.

What about linking up with some payment gateways - so that you can use your app to track purchases for any of that payment providers merchants regardless of which shopping cart etc they use? You might not get to see things like actual line-item details and stock levels, but would be able to track the number of orders and order values.

I've no idea how these sort of apps work though. Would the merchant need to have this app running all the time on their phone to get the updates? Would that impact on their normal use of the phone?

EDIT:

Forgot to ask if you would also be doing an ios version, or even maybe windows phone 8?

 

[Miskin IT]

Guess it all depends on things like the cost of the app, and what data would be available. A lot of shopping systems I've seen have options to do things like send an email notification out about new orders (as well as daily/weekly/monthly summaries), and in a some cases that might be enough for people if they want instant notification.

What about linking up with some payment gateways - so that you can use your app to track purchases for any of that payment providers merchants regardless of which shopping cart etc they use? You might not get to see things like actual line-item details and stock levels, but would be able to track the number of orders and order values.

I've no idea how these sort of apps work though. Would the merchant need to have this app running all the time on their phone to get the updates? Would that impact on their normal use of the phone?

EDIT:

Forgot to ask if you would also be doing an ios version, or even maybe windows phone 8?

In theory all data is available, it just takes some simple PHP knowledge to convert it to a format that you can put into HTML so for example if you wanted to know how many customers you have that week you would put in your php file:

$customers = <sql statement to get customers between date and date>

$htmlDownload = "<p>".count($customers)."</p>";

Obviously the $htmlDownload would have a little more to it like the headers and css file but that's the basic principle. Although you can have an email notifications on ecommerce it's not interactive and there are limitations to what you can view. This system is a real-time monitoring service that can be easily customized in the hands of someone who knows some simple coding.

The app runs as a background service, so you'll see a little icon on the top notification bar if it's running. When a new file is downloaded it will vibrate or beep. You can then pull down the notification press the icon and it will open up the app. It doesn't interfere with the other services on the phone.

yes we are planning an iOS version but there are far more limitations with iOS and development time will be longer so may not be as good. Probasbly not Windows 8 at the moment.
Edit: We're undecided on the price, whether to sell it as a monthly service with support for various e-comm systems or as a stand alone one off fee.