International Business Machines Corporation

Ravesh Lala

Matthew B Trevathan

Dennis F Haynes

Stephen Eric Jaffe

Ralf Bull

A method and apparatus for facilitating the creation of e-commerce Web pages that include Featured Product areas. The invention includes a spreadsheet or similar user-friendly data entry mechanism which can be used to enter content pertaining to featured products. The content is imported from the spreadsheet into a Featured Product information database. The invention further provides one or more display templates, each defining a look and feel for a Featured Product area of a Web page. Each template has a corresponding HTML file defining the template, within which the actual content is represented by variables. Display engine software retrieves Featured product information from the Featured Product database as well as retrieves a selected template HTML file and replaces the variables with the selected feature product information from the database to create a Featured Product area of a Web page.

Method and apparatus for facilitating construction of e-commerce web pages having featured products and the like

An improved method for enabling an electronic commerce web server to provide commercial promotions. Modules of selectively executable compiled web server code are included within the web server's larger body of compiled code. A database contains the terms of each promotion and an association of each promotion with one of the modules. When a commercial transaction arrives at the server, the transaction is checked for a qualifying value that matches one of the qualifying values of the promotions in the database. When a match is found, the associated module of selectively executable compiled web server code is executed, thereby providing the promotion.

Method for conveniently enabling a web server to provide commercial promotions using compiled code

An improved method for purging abandoned shopping carts from an electronic commerce web server. Periodically, the number of shopping carts that belong to guest shoppers is determined and compared with a threshold. When the number shopping carts that belong to guest shoppers exceeds the threshold, a guest shopper garbage collection routine applies to the shopping carts that belong to guest shoppers, and an established shopper garbage collection routine applies to carts that belong to established shoppers. In one embodiment of the invention, the guest shopper garbage collection routine purges shopping carts that have been inactive for a first period of time, whereas the established shopper garbage collection routine purges shopping carts that have been inactive for a second period of time that is longer than the first.

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Roswell, GA, United States of America

Ravesh Lala