Developers
A webshop is more than just an online presentation of products on the Internet; it also displays a part of the identity of a webshop owner. It is how he or she wants the world to see him/her. However, a webshop should not be isolated; it is important that it is an integral part of the organization and that it integrates seamlessly into all business processes.
These two aspects, the identity of the company and its integration into business processes, are important principles in the development of myShop.com. The myShop.com development platform provides extensive options for creating your own designs, integrating the shop into your own business processes and the development and implementation of plug-ins (extensions).
Web design
We at myShop.com find it important that a storeowner is completely free in his or her choice of design for the website. The special high performance render engine of myShop.com lets any web designer create the layout of a store the way he/she wants it.
The engine works with pages (html pages) in which myShop.com extensions are included (see our technical help). By using the myShop.com extensions, system improvements are also applied to a webshop automatically. When the website is developed, it is no longer necessary to install updates with each new version; this is done completely automatically. Pages exist of several layers that can be shared between multiple pages. At the base of each page is a blueprint page that contains the overall layout of a site. Other pages can inherit the blueprint and add blocks to give the page further formatting and content. This way, one can simply create a website that is easy to manage. It is then up to the creativity of the designer and the wishes of the storeowner to enrich the design of the shop.
System integration
For proper integration of a webshop into the business processes of an organization, automated data processing is essential. myShop.com owns a comprehensive API (Application Programming Interface) that exchanges information between an external system and a myShop.com webshop. It is not just about product information or stock data, but also customer data, orders, store settings for example. See the detailed help system for more information.
However, an API alone is not enough; an external system needs to know when something needs to be done after all. For this purpose, the myShop engine owns a comprehensive set of events that can be communicated to the outside world (events). Events can directly give feedback to an external system, to which it can then react. These are for example the choice of shipping method or discount code, or showing a product list. Based on these events, it is then possible to determine a specific price at the time of showing (runtime/real-time). There is more: a remote system can even be informed when an order is placed or when a page cannot be found. Data can be communicated through different channels (email, https, sftp, etc.) directly (synchronous) or afterwards (asynchronous).
To promote the integration with external systems more, the data engine of myShop.com has the unique feature that it does not prescribe a specific data model. Every list consisting of rows and columns can be used to create a list of products. This requires no conversion of the data and it can be included 1 on 1 in the data engine of myShop.com.
Extentions
Partners are very important to myShop.com as it is impossible to be a specialist in all aspects involved in the operation of an online store. However, experience shows that extensions that partners make have the best chance of success when they are offered within the back office of the storeowner. This prevents a storeowner from having to switch between different applications endlessly.
In order to make this possible, myShop.com has a so-called plug-in framework. The framework enables the development of extensions for the myShop.com back office and offering them. The framework allows extensions to be offered integrated fully transparent and seamlessly in the myShop.com back office, even if the application runs entirely on a remote server. It is one setting for the storeowner. In an analogous way, blocks (building blocks of which pages are formatted) can even be coupled in the store itself, enabling a seamless integration of the extension within the webshop itself. myShop.com has unlimited opportunities to develop a contemporary webshop that meets the demands and requirements of storeowners. Safety and the exchange of knowledge are our top priority; we therefore welcome web designers, system integrators and plugin developers wanting to keep us focused and to push the borders of myShop.com continuously.
If you have more questions, please feel free to contact support@myshop.com.