Feature Pack 8: The Madisons store is deprecated. Most features demonstrated in the Madisons store are available in the Aurora store.

Madisons mobile starter store

The Madisons mobile starter store provides a simplified storefront for mobile devices such as smartphones. It contains subsets of functionality that is provided by the Madisons starter store, optimized for common mobile HTML web browsers.

The Madisons mobile starter store complements the Madisons starter store, where mobile access to the store's catalog and store locator features enables cross-channel customer interactions. It demonstrates best practices in mobile store development with WebSphere Commerce, and can act as a base for implementing mobile storefronts. Deploying the Madisons starter store and Madisons mobile starter store, and integrating SMS support ensures that your WebSphere Commerce implementation captures the current web and mobile technologies.

Customers can browse the storefront and create a wish list, or add items to their shopping cart and complete the mobile checkout process. Orders that are placed in the Madisons mobile starter store use the mobile store locator during checkout, enabling the customer to pick up their items in-store when their order is ready.

Feature Pack 4

Mobile web starter stores

The Madisons mobile starter store was provided in WebSphere Commerce Version 7 and enhanced in Feature Pack 1 to support mobile web applications.

The starter store is enhanced in Feature Pack 4 to provide additional functionality, with better layouts, and navigational flows. They are optimized for smartphone and tablet devices.

For more information, see Mobile Web starter stores.

Mobile device support

The Madisons mobile starter store is optimized for common mobile HTML web browsers, with a minimum display resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. That is, the mobile storefront targets smartphones that provide full HTML web browsing capabilities. The presentation elements of the Madisons mobile starter store are simplified to broaden support, consistency, and performance across multiple mobile platforms. This results in a robust mobile storefront that complements the Madisons starter store.

Feature Pack 1The Madisons mobile store contains device-specific support for determining the mobile platform that is being used by shoppers. For example, the storefront can differentiate between an iPhone shopper using its native browser, and an iPhone shopper using a mobile application. The store is then customized to match the behavior of the shopper's browser or mobile application.

Note: Mobile devices that do not meet the requirements must be supported by using alternative implementations. These devices include:
  • Mobile devices that do not meet the minimum display resolution. For example, 200 x 400 pixels.
  • WAP-enabled mobile devices.
  • Mobile devices that are i-mode phones.

Mobile devices that do not contain a browser or SMS capabilities are not supported.

Comparing the Madisons mobile starter store and the Madisons starter store assets

The Madisons mobile starter store shares a catalog as the Madisons starter store, however, does not share JSP and CSS file assets for the store pages. The publish process extracts the JSP files and JSP fragment files into the WC_eardir/Stores.war/storedir/mobile directory. The struts-config-ext.xml configuration file and access control policies are updated, and the access control policies are stored in the mobile.xml file. The Madisons mobile starter store e-Marketing Spots contain a mobile prefix to distinguish them from the Madisons starter store e-Marketing Spots of the same name.

The mobile pages are designed to function efficiently on mobile devices, and do not contain feature-rich Madisons starter store storefront logic. For example, the Madisons mobile starter store does not include the complexity of the Madisons starter store JSP files, and its use of Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies such as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) and Dojo widgets in the storefront.

Madisons mobile starter store feature set

The Madisons mobile starter store contains subsets of functionality that is provided by the Madisons starter store, optimized for common mobile HTML web browsers.

Feature comparison table between the Madisons mobile starter store and the Madisons starter store
Feature Madisons mobile starter store Madisons starter store
Catalog Management Center Catalogs tool
Master and sales catalogs
Categories, products, SKUs, bundles, and prebuilt kits
Support for multiple images per product
Pop-up windows that contain additional product details for store items Product Quick Info
Merchandising associations, defining and descriptive attributes, list prices, and offer prices
Simple and advanced search
Product fast finder, where customers can quickly filter products that are based on attributes such as brand or price range Housewares catalog data
Tiered pricing policy (offer price)
Attachment assets
Note: The store does not show attachment assets for a category.
Note: The store does not show attachment assets for a category.
Product ranking
Browsing history
Marketing Management Center Marketing tool
e-Marketing Spots containing scrollable items, products, categories, and merchandising associations.
Promotions Management Center Promotions tool
Promotion code entry
Product-level promotions
Order-level promotions
Shipping-level promotions
Support for personal coupon management by using a coupon wallet

Feature Pack 1

Registration Support for guest and registered customers
Support for persistent sessions (Remember Me)
My Account flows
Orders Quick order
Scheduled orders
Inventory availability
Shopping cart
Shopping cart pagination, providing paging controls for large shopping carts
Wish lists
Shipping charges and taxes
Checkout Checkout flow implementation Step-by-step checkout using multiple pages Step-by-step checkout using multiple pages
Payments Payments subsystem
  • Payments subsystem
  • Feature Pack 1Punch-out payment
Support for guest and registered checkout
Support for multiple shipping addresses
Quick checkout
Ship as complete or partial shipments
Shipping instructions
Multiple payments per order
Buy online, pick up in-store
Note: This is the only checkout flow for the Madisons mobile store. You can checkout, with the items being shipped to a store location for pickup. You can either pay by credit card, or pay in-store.
Note: This is one of the checkout flows for the Madisons starter store. You can checkout, with the items being shipped to an address, or in this scenario, to a store location for pickup.
Store locator Multiple entry points, with customizable integration points on the store locator page
Order status Order status and tracking
Technology Default Dojo toolkit version 1.3.1
Support for web 2.0 technologies, by using Ajax and Dojo widgets
Support for web 1.0 technologies
Drag-and-drop support for the mini shopping cart and compare zone
Support for changing product attributes directly on the shopping cart, such as color or fabric changes
Options to customize the storefront and shopping experience
Progress indicators on store pages, displayed while operations are in progress. For example, displayed when an Ajax request is triggered and removed when the request completes
Default double-click handling implemented using JavaScript on store pages that benefit from blocking multiple requests, such as adding items to the shopping cart or completing an order at the end of the checkout process
Support for IBM Digital Analytics, formerly known as Coremetrics Analytics
Support for SMS order status notifications and marketing messages
Search engine optimization
Globalization support for stores displaying bi-directional languages. The store uses a locale-specific common1_1iw_iL.css Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file where the directionality attribute can be specified
Fully translated into multiple languages to support globalization 13 languages 13 languages
Note: Full Arabic support (ar_EG) is also available for the Madisons starter store.
Support for accessibility standards, enabling those customers with disabilities to interact with web content by using assistive technologies
Note: Accessibility guidelines for mobile devices are not well-defined or well established. Therefore, accessibility standards are unsupported for the Madisons mobile starter store.