Integrated electronic shopping cart system and method

Abstract

Integrated shopping cart functionality is provided on a first website so that products / services from different affiliated websites can be integrated into the shopping cart at the first website and the e-commerce functionality of the first website can be utilized to purchase the selected products / services. A framework for integrating this functionality enables the first website to integrate with affiliated websites so that an increased number of users may access the first website since the proprietor of the first website may offer various products / services from a multitude of different affiliated websites, for example by providing URL links to the affiliated websites that a user may access in order to select items from the affiliated websites. These items can be integrated into the shopping cart at the first website and purchased with a single transaction. Increased user traffic is expected at the first website since a user's shopping interests can be fulfilled at a single website. Additionally, affiliated websites are benefited by this integrated shopping cart functionality since the e-commerce functionality of the integrated shopping cart is performed by a server that is associated with the first website. Therefore, affiliated websites need not include their own e-commerce functionality. Instead, they may take advantage of the e-commerce functionality of the first website and still receive the benefits of the sale of their offered products / services to the user. Maintenance costs and overhead costs with respect to including an e-commerce software engine are therefore reduced and often eliminated as a result.

Description

[0001] The present invention relates to an online shopping system for a user to order and purchase items and more particularly to a system and method for providing an electronic shopping system having an integrated shopping cart functionality. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] As the Internet is becoming more commercially oriented, product and service providers are exploring new ways to promote and sell a wide range of their products and services. Such efforts to date have generally taken the form of a vendor (or vendor company) establishing a website on a machine (computer or server) connected to the Internet. [0003] The websites generally have a product display and purchase functionality integrated therein. A website is, in general terms, a server application running on a computer which accepts connections from client programs. Client programs, such as browsers, allow a remote user to access the information stored on the website. The information can include a broad range of multi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The invention provides a way for multiple websites to work together and offer products and services to users through a single website. This integrated shopping cart allows users to access and purchase products from multiple websites through a single transaction. This increases user traffic to the main website and reduces maintenance and overhead costs for the affiliated websites."

Problems solved by technology

However, the forms were generally only suitable for indicating a few items of interest.

When more than a few items were indicated, the HTML forms became difficult to manage and inefficient, since the order form was separate (on a different HTML form page) from the item description.

However, while electronic shopping carts are useful and have resulted in increasing the simplicity of online retailing, conventional shopping cart software is limited as an electronic commerce tool.

This limitation resulted in the development of the third generation of online retailing software, “storefront” or “store building” software.

While highly desirable, integrated shopping carts have been difficult to implement.

Since BuyWiz's shopping bag is an independent software program that remains resident on a user's computer and the participating websites can support its functionality, the shopping bag is not integrated into the e-commerce functionality of those websites.

As such, BuyWiz's shopping bag software incorporates its own e-commerce functionality in order to process product and service orders thereby adding complexity and overhead to the software.

Thus, the universal shopping cart does not eliminate the need for e-commerce functionality to be a part of the websites.

Thus, while the '454 Patent provides an efficient “window shopping” aspect to e-commerce, it does not address the inefficiencies resulting from causing a user to conduct multiple purchases at different websites instead of allowing the user to select from multiple vendor items and aggregate the selected items into a single integrated shopping cart so that the selected items can be purchased in a single transaction.

Unfortunately, electronic shopping carts have been predominantly localized to distinct websites.

As such, electronic commerce is stifled, because the user cannot commonly gather all of the desired products and services across any website in an integrated shopping cart and purchase all of the selected items with a single transaction.

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