Porcelain & More is located in historic Stone Mountain just outside Atlanta, Georgia. Porcelain & More specializes in porcelain from Hungary, Romania, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and France. Their collection also features Goebel’s Artis Orbis collection, French Limoges boxes, and Capodimonte porcelain flowers. In addition to the porcelain ware, the store also offers a variety of non-porcelain gift items, including limited edition artwork, pottery, ceramics, lace ware, and hand-carved wood items.

“Stone Mountain is a tourist destination and gets a number of visitors from other parts of the country,” says Danielle Balint, the owner of Porcelain & More. The visitors are impressed by the merchandise we carry and make purchases to take home. However there was no effective way for us to continue to serve them other than over the phone after they had returned home, which meant that we missed out on repeat sales opportunities."

"With FrontPage 2003 we have created an online store that has exceeded all our expectations and will continue to do so for many years to come."

Web Site Requirements

Porcelain & More wanted a Web site that could connect them with their current customers and generate new sales from people who had never visited their shop. They wanted full e-commerce capabilities without having to spend a fortune on Web development. They turned to David Cawrse of N-Sight Consulting, who demonstrated the e-commerce capabilities of FrontPage 2003 combined with Microsoft’s bCentral services.

The Web site also provides them with an easy-to-use interface. Employees can easily enter product information, track sales and shipments, and process payments

FrontPage Features

Using the bCentral Commerce Manager add-in, product information was uploaded using FrontPage and a bCentral account.

Cawrse also created Page Templates which could be used as product pages.

The Split view pane, a new feature in FrontPage 2003, made it easy to view and tweak code in Web pages while customizing the look and feel of the shopping cart.

They used the FrontPage Expedia Web component to link to a detailed map and provide directions to the store.

Finally, they used the Database Interface Wizard to create online forms for visitors to sign up for newsletters and promotional campaigns.

Porcelain and More is looking to expand their product line, which now is as simple as logging on and adding new items to their site catalog.

Additional Tools

In addition to using FrontPage 2003, the following software was used to create the Porcelain & More site:

• Microsoft Office XP
• Windows 2000
• bCentral