Cooking.com Case Study

November 30, 1998

The following article was originally published in the Site Builder Network Member Community area.

Cooking.com is an online retailer of all things for the kitchen. Committed to providing a secure and satisfying online shopping experience, Cooking.com and MCSP Partner Stellcom Technologies created a comprehensive Windows DNA application. And by drawing on its considerable expertise with Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition and Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, the site builder delivered this solution in just eight weeks.

Business Strategy

Cooking.com wanted its Web site to be a customized, multi-tiered Web application. One that would provide an electronic commerce pipeline, dynamic content, and back-end services to automatically send and receive Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transactions to a UNIX box at a product distribution facility. And Cooking.com needed the solution to go live in just eight weeks.

"We knew we wanted a Microsoft solution," Gerald Morgan, Cooking.com vice president of IT and operations, told Microsoft's Site Builder Network (SBN). "We turned to Microsoft for a recommendation for a top-notch commerce site developer. They introduced us to Stellcom Technologies, a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider less than two hours away. We liked their track record in commerce with site development and Internet business solutions," Morgan said.

In addition to having a proven track record in business-to-business, as well as business-to-customer commerce solutions, Stellcom has the unusual distinction of having helped to build Microsoft Site Server 3.0. Stellcom has also designed and delivered streaming media solutions that employ Windows Media Technologies, as well as embedded systems on WinCE devices.

Only the best ingredients

Stellcom Technologies created a complete Microsoft solution for the Cooking.com Web, choosing Microsoft Windows NT® Server 4.0 with Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0. Data is stored using Microsoft SQL Server 6.5. The Web-site software was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0.

The site profits from the foundation of Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition, the comprehensive Internet server that enables businesses to cost-effectively engage and transact with customers and partners online. Site Server Commerce Edition gives Cooking.com a powerful solution for building Web sites for business and consumer-oriented Web commerce, and furnishes the company with a flexible platform that enables it to expand and adapt the site easily in the future.

Site Server Commerce Edition enables development of cost-effective commerce sites and applications. It includes several key features:

Commerce Site Authoring Wizards and Sample Sites
Commerce Interchange Pipeline (CIP)
Order Processing Pipeline (OPP)
Corporate Purchasing Support
Ad Server
Buy Now
Dynamic Promotion

Site Server Commerce helps Cooking.com engage customers with targeted online advertising. And because it is strongly integrated with Windows NT Server, Site Server Commerce allows Cooking.com to transact online with secure and scalable order capture, management, and routing. Site Server Commerce also provides the tools and services to deliver targeted messages and to analyze usage patterns that help businesses improve content development and simplify site navigability.

'Buy Now' advertising

Cooking.com capitalizes on an innovative online marketing feature of Site Server Commerce Edition called Buy Now, a powerful solution that lets businesses embed product information and order forms in almost any context, including online ads. With Buy Now, Cooking.com extends its transactional reach beyond its Web site.

Stellcom Technologies has developed Buy Now advertisements that can be hosted on Cooking.com partner sites. The Buy Now ads facilitate quick and simple four-step consumer purchases.

Functional in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, the Buy Now ads facilitate a quick purchase but don't drive traffic away from the partner sites, because they open a new instance of the browser completely separate from the browser connected to the partner site.

Related business information

Learn more about Microsoft Site Server and Site Server Commerce Edition .

Level 2 members; check out SBN's E-commerce Online Special Interest Group (OSIG) .

Design Strategy

"We wanted the category killer," Gerald Morgan, vice president of operations and technology for Cooking.com, told Site Builder Network. Morgan feels the site Stellcom Technologies helped his company deliver is the most comprehensive and attractive Web site in the fine foods and cooking category of the Internet. The appealing layout and graphics and variety of continually updated recipes, meal planners, and general cooking advice attract customers to the site and keep them coming back.

But success didn't come without much planning and hard work. Before Cooking.com approached Stellcom, it had clearly put a lot of time into preparation. "Cooking.com had a complete design story-boarded and a staff of artists and marketing folks dedicated to making this one of the most beautiful and functional sites on the Internet," Tim Huckaby, development lead for Internet solutions at Stellcom, said.

Once Cooking.com had a clear idea of what it wanted, the company began searching for the right developer to pull off the project. That search led to Stellcom.

When it comes to Site Server, Stellcom is an undisputed expert. The site builder actually helped Microsoft build the product on the Microsoft corporate campus in Redmond, Washington. In fact, Huckaby spent almost six months working as the developer lead with eight of Stellcom's top software engineers in the Customizable Starter Sites Architecture Group of Olympus (Microsoft Site Server Version 3.0). So when Cooking.com needed help to accomplish their goals, Stellcom Technologies was a natural choice.

Racing against Internet time

Cooking.com faced two challenging business problems. First, "Internet time" demanded getting the product to market as quickly as possible. Second, it needed a Web site that would be dynamic, attractive, easy to use and maintain, and completely automated.

"The extremely aggressive goal of an eight-week software development effort could only be realized by harnessing the power of Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition and the Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 development tools," David W. Lynn, director of systems integration development at Stellcom Technologies, told SBN.

The Cooking.com project development team consisted of three developers and a project lead from Cooking.com, plus Tim Huckaby and another developer from Stellcom. The Cooking.com developers were already well versed on the final beta version of Visual Studio, and with Stellcom's experience in using Site Server, the development team was able to hit the ground running and ultimately bring the project home in just eight weeks.

Tooling around inside Cooking.com

The Cooking.com Web site is divided in three content areas: Shopping, Advice, and Recipes. In the Advice and Recipe sections, Stellcom Technologies used Active Server Pages (ASP) technology for content that is dynamically and automatically approved by content editors and administrators and is automatically staged for production. ASP technology provides an open, compile-free application environment in which Web developers can combine HTML, scripts, and reusable Active Server components.

In the Shopping section, consumers use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) electronic commerce technologies to purchase everything for their cooking needs. SSL is a standard for providing encrypted and authenticated service over the Internet. The Shopping area of the site provides each guest with a shopping cart to keep track of purchases. There is also a search to help guests find specific products, brands, and gift ideas. All the search categories can be filtered to return selections within a pre-defined price range. For guests who prefer to browse, products can be viewed by categories such as bakeware, cookware, housewares, and specialty foods.

The Shopping area also hosts seasonal features and special promotions. For Thanksgiving, the site offered suggestions for table settings, advice on preparing the bird, information about carving tools, and a section called "A Colorful Spread."

The Advice area of the Web site offers tips on how to select products. One of the goals of Cooking.com is to provide users with all of the information needed to ensure that their cooking equipment and ingredient selection is best suited to their cooking and gift-giving needs. Therefore, the site helps guests by making product recommendations. Using a pulldown menu, shoppers can select the product category they are interested in. Guests can also use pulldown menus to explore product characteristics. Cooking.com then explains the key features for the category to assist in making purchasing decisions.

Also featured in the Advice area are several glossaries. A glossary of ingredients covers everything from acorn squash to zucchini. Other glossaries cover equipment (from apple corers to wooden spoons) and various culinary techniques, such as how to make almond strips or prepare yeast breads.

The Recipes portion of Cooking.com provides a handy search that allows guests to find suggestions for specific courses (soups, salads, and so on) or create meals based on international cuisines. Menu suggestions help aspiring cooks create daily and weekly menus and find suggestions for festive occasions.

Technical Strategy

Cooking.com knew it would need a fully featured, multi-tier Web application to be successful in today's sophisticated Internet marketplace. So, for the Cooking.com Web site, site builder Stellcom Technologies followed the Microsoft Windows Distributed interNet Application architecture (Windows DNA), the application development model for the Windows Platform. Windows DNA is an architectural model for developing scalable, distributed applications. Windows DNA applications are divided into three separate logical tiers. Here's a look behind the scenes at Cooking.com:

On the first tier of Cooking.com -- the presentation tier -- Stellcom relies on Internet browser technology to reach the site's audience on the World Wide Web.
On the second tier -- the business logic tier -- the developer used Microsoft Windows NT® Server 4.0 to provide the Web and application services necessary to run the business logic and project the application to the Web.
On the third tier -- the data tier -- Stellcom housed site data using Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, which is tightly integrated with the Microsoft BackOffice family of servers to enable organizations to improve decision making and streamline business processes.

The Commerce Interchange Pipeline

Cooking.com is making the most of a new feature of Site Server Commerce Edition called the Commerce Interchange Pipeline (CIP), a simple system for enabling application-to-application interchange of structured business information using the Internet or existing Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems. CIP enables customized transactions using Component Object Model (COM) components, software components that can be assembled into programs or add functionality to existing programs running on Microsoft Windows platforms. Like using snap-on tools, developers can "snap" COM components together to customize how a transaction is handled.

Stellcom Technologies has used the Commerce Interchange Pipeline to pass customer transactions from the Cooking.com "virtual" storefront to an independent distribution center that picks, packs, and then ships the products sold on the site. This allows Cooking.com to focus its attention on its customers -- and the unique experience shoppers can have when they visit the site -- instead of having to invest in a lot of inventory and people. The distribution center handles all that for a fee.

Stellcom wrote five custom Commerce Pipeline COM components to accommodate Cooking.com's business rules. The first component creates an EDI order transaction and stages it to be sent to the distribution center. The second component manages a gift-wrapping service that Cooking.com offers. The third COM component calculates shipping charges based on the type of shipping chosen and the total amount of the order. The last two components send e-mail: an order advisement e-mail is sent to the operations group at Cooking.com when an order is placed, and an order confirmation e-mail is sent to the consumer.

CIP gives Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition users the ability to tie into accounting systems, join together with other companies, work with larger companies who have EDI systems, and connect to various databases. Using CIP, companies can work with third parties who have written COM components that work with the CIP -- components such as tax rate software, shipping rate software, robust catalog software, and so on.

Using Visual Studio 6.0, any developer can easily construct CIP COM components. And CIP is data-format independent and transport-independent, allowing for support of native Web formats and transports such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), as well as those from numerous independent EDI software vendors.

Hosting and hardware

Cooking.com is hosted at an ISP in Irvine, California. Two Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Web servers are load balanced. The data is scaled and distributed between two Microsoft SQL Servers. Stellcom Technologies also designed, developed, and implemented an EDI Server and a serial transporter. Both pieces of software were written in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0.

The serial transporter sends EDI transactions to and from the Cooking.com servers and the UNIX host at the distribution center Cooking.com uses for fulfillment. The EDI server processes the EDI transactions and prints custom packing slips at the distribution center. The EDI Server and serial transport applications run on a Windows NT Workstation and a Windows NT primary domain controller ties the whole system together. The entire solution is hosted on Compaq hardware. All the network hardware and software is made by Cisco.

What'll they cook up next?

The recipe for Cooking.com's future calls for implementing Site Server personalization and membership capabilities, a set of services and tools to manage high volumes of users and to offer those users a custom personalized experience on the site. Using Site Server personalization and membership, Cooking.com will be able to automatically display Web pages promoting products targeted at specific groups of customers and partners.

The personalization and membership feature will also allow dynamic generation of personalized Web pages based on stored user preferences. "We have already encapsulated all the membership functionality in middle-tier components," Tim Huckaby, development lead for Internet solutions at Stellcom Technologies, told Site Builder Network. "I'm sure we'll sneak Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 in there too!"

Microsoft tools used

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