Hot Metal Pro 4.0/Hot Metal Pro 4.0.iso/Special/text/pdo.txt

Text File | 1997-11-17 | 13.4 KB | 365 lines

13. Open Market Digital Offers



HoTMetaL PRO simplifies the creation of Web pages for
commercial transaction systems that run OM-Transact
software. OM-Transact is a suite of server utilities
offered by Open Market Inc. Web authors who have access
to Open Market software and Web services can easily
present Digital Offers (DOs) to their Web page readers.

Digital Offers turn your HTML file into a sales tool
by providing secure product offering and billing data.
Digital Offers contain the familiar information that
you might see on a sales offering or invoice: a name
and description of the product; a product ID code; tax,
shipping and refund terms--to name only a few. From
the reader's (or customer's) point of view, Digital
Offers are the first step in a series of actions that
offer, collect and record a commercial transactions.

Digital Offers are created (by OM-Transact utilities)
as the Web page is served. The `raw material' for the
creation of a Digital Offer is a Pre-Digital Offer (a
PDO), which you can create with the HoTMetaL PRO Editor
by choosing PDO... from the Insert menu.

13.1. Bringing commerce to your Web page

The Open Market model structures the sales process in
two parts. This discussion regarding Digital Offers,
and PDO that they are created from, is limited to the
first part of the sales process--providing secure information
about the product and its terms of sale. It does not
deal with the second part of the process--order forms,
credit card number input, etc., all of which takes place
under the control of other software on the Web server.
The assumption, in other words, is that you, the Web
page author, are in the up-front, representation part
of the sale, that is, the marketing: what's for sale?
for how much? what terms? what taxes apply? Someone
else, in your organization, or even in another company,
will be providing transaction services--the cashier
and back-office processing.

 A Digital Offer, embedded in an HTML page, will:

* Name and describe the product, including a unique
ID, price, and tax information.

* Specify shipping details, costs, and taxes.

* Specify URLs (for an online product), subscription
terms (where appropriate), and payment terms.

The following information deals with the insertion and
specification of Pre-Digital Offers into HTML for later
automatic conversion into Digital Offers by Open Market
Inc. utilities on the server.

NOTE: You can provide Digital Offers on your Web pages
only if your Web server is running software utilities
manufactured by Open Market Inc., and if your organization
has established processing support for commercial Web
transactions. See Open Market's Web site (www.openmarket.com)
for details.

13.2. Inserting a PDO

To enable PDO insertion:

* Choose Options... from the Tools menu.

* Click on the General tab.

* Turn on the Add PDO to Insert menu check box.

* Click on [OK].

This adds the PDO... command to the Insert menu.

Typically, you would insert a PDO after the text that
describes the product. The text inside the PDO will
appear as highlighted, linked text when your page is
displayed in a browser.

To insert a PDO:

* Select the text that you wish to have highlighted.

* Choose PDO... from the Insert menu. The PDO Properties
dialog appears.

In Tags On view, HoTMetaL PRO represents the PDO as
an [OM-PDO>start-tag and end-tag pair that can enclose text.
Typically, the text might say something like `Purchase Now', or
`only $49.95'. It will appear on the purchaser's browser
screen as highlighted, linked text. The OM-PDO element
can contain only text--you cannot insert elements or
formatting.

The PDO Properties dialog consists of four tabs or sub-dialogs--Product,
Tangible, Online, and Online Payment. These correspond
to the steps you would follow to write out a sales receipt
if you were working behind the counter in a retail store.
Note that `tangible' and `online' are mutually exclusive:
choosing one disables choices for the other.

A field-by-field description of the input decisions
you will want to make in order to create a PDO follows.

When all of the fields have been filled, click on [OK].

Two tags will appear on your screen--an [OM-PDO>
start-tag and an </OM-PDO]end-tag. If you have just
created a new PDO, there will be no text between the tags.
Place your insertion point inside the tags and type the
text that you want the purchaser to see as highlighted,
linked text.

If your insertion point is inside an OM-PDO element,
you cannot insert a second, nested OM-PDO tag. To edit
the properties of an existing PDO:

* Put the insertion point inside the OM-PDO element.

* Choose PDO... from the Insert menu, or right-click
and choose PDO Properties ... from the pop-up menu.



13.2.1. Entering product information

To enter product information:

* Click on the Product tab in the PDO Properties dialog.

The Product Name or description will appear in the client's
browser window on both order forms, statements, and
receipt forms. This information is required. It can
be any alphanumeric text.

A Unique ID is any product ID; model number, part number,
or any other 40-character alphanumeric text identifier.
It is required for any `tangible' or `subscription'
sale.

When the client is browsing (or filling out) an online
order form, or reading an online receipt, the Web server
can link back to the Web site from which the sale was
initiated to validate and coordinate transaction detail.
That location is entered here, in the Offer URL field.
This can be an absolute or partial URL, and is required.


The Details information can appear a statement that
the merchant sends to the purchaser.

Price (Prior to Tax and Shipping) allows you to specify
the price, in any currency. The Price, a required field,
is expressed without a currency symbol and without commas.
For example, `US$1,037.40' would be entered as 1037.40

The Currency Code can be any three-digit code (you can
type it in or select it from the list box), or a code
from the ISO4217:1995 currency code specification. Currency
codes cannot be automatically validated. The Tax Class
is a five-digit number that is used by OM-Transact to
calculate tax. The number should be available from your
transaction Web server administrator.

Products can be Online or Tangible. (The choice of None
is special: it allows the offering to be viewed but
disables transactions.) Choosing a Product Category
allows HoTMetaL PRO to permit or restrict choices in
subsequent dialogs.

13.2.2. Tangible products

If you selected the Tangible option button on the Product
tab, you will probably want to fill in the fields on
the Tangible tab. These are available, but not required.


* Click on the Tangible tab.

In the case of a tangible product, a buyer will want
to know whether or not shipping has been completed.
The seller, or a company appointed by the seller, may
be expected to provide a Web page to keep buyers up
to date. The Shipment Status URL is the location of
this page. In the absence of such a specific status
page, Open Market Inc. provides a page known as the
`OM-Transact status page'.

Tangible items may involve shipping charges and shipping
charge taxes. These are specified in the Shipping Cost
area of the Tangible tab. Option button selections indicate
whether shipping costs will be included in the gross
invoice or separately calculated and itemized (either
as a fixed charge, or adjusted by the shipping weight).
Note that the unit of weight is not specified here.

13.2.3. Online

If you selected the Online option button under Product
Category on the Product tab, you will be presented with
some additional choices on the Online tab. If not, these
choices will be disabled.

* Click on the Online tab.

An online product can be delivered immediately. The
Fulfillment URL is the location of the file or files
that will be delivered once the transaction is complete.

An online buyer may choose to download the product (or
read the file) immediately, or may choose to wait. The
Digital Receipt Expires After field will determine how
long (how many days) the buyer can wait before the online
transaction is cancelled.

Within the Online tab, there is a check box for Subscriptions
and, beside it, an area for Subscription Options. Clicking
in the check box will enable the fields in Subscription
Options.

Online subscriptions are a special case of an online
purchase. Subscriptions have a duration, entered here
in months. You can make the decision here whether or
not to consult the buyer again, as the expiration date
approaches, to secure a subscription renewal agreement.
If an Automatic Renewal is appropriate, click in the
check box.

Subscriptions transactions are often paid in advance--you
should specify a refunds policy in case the subscription
is cancelled by the buyer in mid-term. The Refunds area
allows three choices: None, Prorated, and Full. (A prorated
refund would return the value of the issues remaining
at the time of the cancellation.)

13.2.4. Online Payment

Whether the purchase is of a tangible or online product,
you can arrange payment data in the Online Payment tab.
When the item is tangible, a single, one-time payment
is assumed, whereas the purchase of online products
can be made by installment. Which fields are enabled
will depend on the choice that you made in the Product
Category area on the Product tab. If the product is
online, all of the fields in the Online Payment tab
will be enabled. Otherwise, if the product is tangible,
only the option button for Single, One-Time Payment
will be enabled.

Sellers of online products may want to give buyers the
option to download the product and assess it before
the charge is made. This trial period can be specified
as a number of days, using an integer of any number
of digits.

A permissible Grace Period, during which a client has
committed to the transaction but has not yet paid, is
similarly specified in days.

Within the Payment Scheme area of the Online Payment
tab, the choice depends on whether the product is online
or tangible.

If you select Single, One-Time Payment, the rest of
the fields are disabled. The price is displayed, though
it can't be changed on this tab. (If necessary, you
would change the price on the the Product tab.)

If the product is online, and you select Installments,
three choices become available: Total Number of Installments,
Months Between Installments, and Payment per Installment.
The first two are integers, and the third (the payment)
is a number with decimals, but no commas or currency
signs. A payment of $1,345.58 would be entered as 1345.58.
You may want to specify a currency in the Price area
of the Product tab.

13.3. The HTML behind the screen

If you were to examine the HTML in the HoTMetaL PRO
Editor HTML Source view, you would find a set of two
HTML comments, each containing instructions called Server
Side Includes (SSIs). When the final page is served,
the SSI in the first comment will begin the PDO-to-Digital
Offer conversion process, on the server, and the one
in the second comment one will end the conversion. Between
these two tags is the text that will appear on your
purchaser's browser screen.

The PDO begins like this:

<!--#execácmd="mdohref


This tells the server to execute the command mdohref
which converts the PDO to a Digital Offer. That comment
would be followed by, for example:

PurchaseáNow

The second HTML comment contains the SSI which `turns
off' the server side process. It begins like this:

<!--#execácmd="mdohrefendá

This tells the server to end execution of mdohref.

Of course, there's a lot more in that PDO besides the
two SSIs--all of the sales offering data regarding price,
terms, tax, currency, etc.

The Web server utility mdohref, as its name suggests,
converts the two HTML comments and their intervening
`Purchase Now' text into an HTML anchor (A) element.
Here's the beginning of a typical example as it would
appear if the browsing purchaser were to examine the
raw HTML file:

<aáhref=
"http://payment.openmarket.com:80/tms-ts/bin/payment.cgi?
96830b13cd490426d493cbba0e2b2a66:kid=300064.205007
&valid=844438671
&domain=hardgoods
&expire=2592000
&ss=env
&cc=US
&goodstyle=h
&amt=5.00
&fmt=get
&desc=Open%20Market%20Coffee%20Mug">
[PurchaseáNow]</a>


 To make this conversion, the mdohref utility needs
the name of of the Web site that will act as a transaction
service to carry out the sale. In this example, the
sales transaction service is provided at payment.openmarket.com.
You can see the URL in the example. This information
is not entered by the Web page author; rather, the mdohref
utility on the OM-Transact-equipped Web server gathers
this information from its configuration files, set up
by a Web administrator.

Once the anchored text is inserted into the purchaser's
HTML file and delivered, along with some encrypted information,
the second part of the sale, the transaction processing
itself, can begin.

13.4. Learning more about Web commerce

Open Market Inc. maintains a Web site offering many
documents, both technical and high-level, covering various
aspects of net commerce. You will also find there, detailed
technical information about OM-Transact software and
other related software and utilities. Browse http://www.openmarket.com.