What is Vesatile Virtual Vending (VVV)?

General Overview

The VVV virtual store software system was developed with the intent of providing a front end for a retail ordering system that is intuitive to use for the customer and secure. It is implemented around the http protocol. This decision was made because of the protocol's flexibility, the cross-platform compatibility that such a protocol ensures, and the rapidly growing number of users with access to http clients (also referred to as browsers). While it was originally developed for the retail grocery market, it has evolved into a generic server, easily adapted to any online ordering system.

How is VVV different from other online vendors?

There are online shops springing up all over the Internet, selling everything from condoms to hot sauce to jewelry. What we have found is that most of these online shops are selling novelty items and obscure gifts. Most of all, they have a very small inventory of items for sale.

VVV is different in that it was designed for large inventories. While the database is not in the public domain, we have set up a sample shop of over 20,000 items in 680 different categories. The VVV handles this as easily as it does the small inventory of the Wanes demo. The interface is designed to make it easy for the user to find what they are looking for quickly and to browse through the categories in an orderly manner.

Security:

Security is a major issue that any retailer who wishes to implement an online store must tackle. The VVV system was designed with security issues in mind. While ideally any user should be able to visit the store without preregistration, just as he can walk into any real retail store, in reality there is no way to make a retail server on the Internet secure and still allow this. It was concluded that there is no failsafe method of validating a user's identity (and hence the validity of any order he or she places) without first assigning that individual a customer id and password for accessing the system. Until such a method is in place, the VVV system has adopted the security measure that millions of computers on the Internet now use to validate users when they log in. A database of users with their id, password, full name, address, etc is maintained. The password is stored in encrypted form.

Since the http protocol has no inherent method of keeping track of who is logged in and validated as a customer, this part of the implementation is built into the VVV server. Upon being "logged in" to the system (by typing in a valid id and password pair), a user is assigned a code (herefore referred to as a "cookie"), that is used to identify the user as being valid. This code is valid for exactly one protocol request (herefore referred to as a "get"). With each get, the user is assigned a new cookie. The chances of guessing a valid cookie at any given time are so miniscule as to be unworthy of further analysis. A mechanism is in place to detect when the user has pressed the BACK or FORWARD buttons on his browser, and the user is given a chance to recover. Thus a balance between "user-friendliness" and security is maintained.

Another feature of the VVV system is to eject inactive users after a set time of inactivity has passed. In the current version this is 3 1/2 minutes. An ejected user who logs back into the system within two hours is given the option to continue where he left off. After the two hours has passed, all record of his order is erased. The automatic ejection feature is in place to prevent inactive customers from consuming system resources (memory) and also as a security measure.

It is said that "There is more chance of getting your Credit Card number stolen by giving it to a waiter in a restaurant, than sending it over the internet." We concur with this statement, so VVV is capable of accomodating "on the fly" credit card transactions. The virtual store "owner" is, of course, the responsible agent in this case and we encourage them to disclaim these so called "security problems", and offer the customer a phone number to call if they have concerns in this area. We are watching for the development of secure http (shttp) transaction development and will implement that protocol as soon as it is possible to do so.

VVV stores are now ECASH enabled. For information on ecash and how it enables secure monetary transactions, visit the DigiCash ECASH home page.

Setup and Maintenance of a Retail Store

VVV was designed to make it easy to set up a retail ordering system. The style of the menus that are presented for users to browse can be changed to suit the taste of the business which wishes to implement a vending system. For a base setup, all that is required are two databases of information. One contains information on the products being vended, including fields for item numbers (UPC code in the case of a Grocery Retailer), category codes, prices, and descriptions. The second database lays out the hierarchy of categories. The magic of VVV is that it takes these two simple databases and produces an attractive store. When prices or inventories change, an updated database is submitted and the store reflects the changes. To dress up a store, pictures in gif format can be added and will automatically be inserted into the proper locations.

To keep the cost of entry into the online market to a minimum we encourage retailers to create their own databases. Alternatively we can set them up for you. If you already have a computerized database of your products, as most businesses today do, contact us. It is very likely that we can use your existing data.

Order Submission

The means of order submission is not predetermined. That is, the semantics of submitting an order are not an integral part of the sytem. Some possibilites of actions upon order submission include printing the order on a line-printer, emailing the order to a particular branch, or appending the order to a text file. It is possible to have the order submitted to a particular location of a chain, such as a pizza delivery business with multiple stores. This part of the the system was not developed with any specific implementation in place so that an effective solution can be developed that fits the retailer's needs.

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Miscellaneous Features

As stated above, the VVV system was designed with ease-of-use as one of it's top priorities. If a customer does not find the system easy to use, he will not bother to learn it but continue shopping in more conventional ways. The target customer for this system is a computer user, but not neccessarily a computer expert. The following ideas and features were put into the implementation:

Navigation

Users must be able to easily navigate through the store to find they are looking for. For this reason, categories of the store are laid out into a logical hierarchy. For example a grocery store may have sections for dairy, meat, and bakery products. Under the dairy section there may be milk, cheese, and yogurt sections. These can be further subdivided to accommodate as large an inventory of saleable items as desired. This is all set up in the single category database as described above. The user is provided with simple icons that allow quick movement from point to point in the store. For those vendors that have an extremely large number of items to offer, we can implement search engines which will allow users to quickly find exactly what they are looking for.

Shopping Lists

Using a computer to shop affords the user a big advantage over going to the market. The VVV has a facility which allows users to browse the store and find items that they are interested in. If they don't want to make the purchase just then, they can store the order for retrieval on their next visit. In the case of a grocery store, people may want to save a list of the items they buy most of the time. Then when they visit the store they can simply add items to or remove items from their order. The customer saves a great deal of time by doing so.

Accommodating Slow Links

For those users who have a slow network connection, for example SLIP connections, VVV provides an option for the user to choose whether or not he would like to view the graphics. The intention here is to prevent customers from becoming discouraged if the loading of graphics slows things down too much. We've also accommodated those users who use the Lynx text-based WWW browser. These users will see buttons like this: [ Submit Your Order ], instead of the graphical icons.

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How Can I get MY Business Online?

VVV is distributed exclusively through BizNet Technologies whom you may contact directly from the VVV Demo Wanes Online Grocery, or from this form. Generally, VVV is a Client-server application which serves the httpd daemon the information it needs to bring your "Store" to your customers. You may lease space and the software from BizNet.

To the VVV Home Page

To the Demo, Wane's Online Grocery