Commerce Engine Translates Requests Across E-Commerce Platforms
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems face inefficiencies in facilitating merchant transactions across different e-commerce platforms, as websites lack the ability to communicate seamlessly with various merchant servers, leading to resource-intensive implementations and inefficient use of server resources.
Innovation Solution
A commerce engine platform-agnostic system translates requests from non-merchant websites into platform-specific formats, enabling communication with merchant servers and facilitating transactions without requiring each website to store multiple APIs, allowing for efficient data exchange and transaction processing across different e-commerce platforms.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If each website stores multiple merchant APIs to support transactions with different merchants, then the website can communicate with various merchant servers, but the server resource usage increases and website development becomes time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a commerce engine as an intermediary component that sits between the website and multiple merchant servers. The commerce engine maintains a library of merchant-specific APIs and handles all platform-specific communication logic. The website only needs to implement a single, simplified API interface to the commerce engine, which then translates requests into the appropriate merchant-specific formats. This mediator approach allows the website to support multiple merchants without directly integrating with each merchant's platform, thereby reducing website complexity while maintaining adaptability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If developers store copies of each merchant API for each website, then transactions with multiple merchants are enabled, but server resources are used inefficiently
Solution Approach 1:
The patent consolidates multiple merchant API implementations into a single shared commerce engine that serves multiple websites. Instead of each website maintaining its own copies of merchant APIs, the commerce engine maintains a centralized library of merchant-specific API implementations that can be reused across different websites. This merging approach eliminates redundant code and memory usage, allowing the same merchant API logic to be shared across the entire system, thereby significantly improving server resource efficiency while maintaining full multi-merchant transaction capability.
3Ease of operation
If a non-merchant website implements full e-commerce functionality, then it can facilitate product purchases, but development becomes costly and inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the complex e-commerce functionality from the website itself and places it into a separate, specialized commerce engine component. The website only needs to implement minimal functionality to display products and capture customer orders, while the commerce engine handles all the complex transaction processing, merchant communication, payment processing, and inventory management. This extraction allows non-merchant websites to facilitate product purchases without bearing the full burden of implementing complete e-commerce functionality, thereby reducing development costs and time while maintaining full purchase facilitation capability.
Data Source
AI summary
The methods and apparatuses described herein generally relate to providing a platform for allowing a website user to select a product for purchase at a non-merchant website. For example, a commerce engine can receive a request to review product information from a non-merchant website, and can translate the request into a format that can be understood by at least one merchant server using at least one type of commerce platform. The commerce engine can send the translated requests to at least one merchant server, and the merchant servers that receive the requests can determine information about the product (e.g., remaining inventory at particular merchants, product price, and/or other product details). The merchant servers can provide this information to the commerce engine, which can send the product information to the non-merchant website. The commerce engine can also facilitate a transaction with the merchant server, based on the product information returned by the non-merchant website.