Patent Application
20240028495
The present disclosure relates to the use of benchmarking to determine, via a benchmarking platform, whether an executable program satisfies one or more criteria for execution on an execution platform.
Platforms for hosting e-commerce stores (e.g., the Shopify® platform) enable individual people and businesses to quickly and easily create, operate, and manage their own e-commerce stores. In this regard, there is a desire to enable such platforms to allow business owners and operators to provide customized functionality and features. However, due to the enormous number of businesses and types of businesses, providing such customized functionality and features is a challenging task from the perceptive of the operator of the hosting platform.
Systems and methods are disclosed that relate to the use of benchmarking to determine, via a benchmarking platform, whether an executable program satisfies one or more criteria for execution on an execution platform. In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method comprises executing one or more benchmarking programs in a benchmarking platform, wherein each of the one or more benchmarking programs is an executable program that corresponds to a respective performance level for execution of an executable program on an associated execution platform. The method further comprises obtaining one or more first values for one or more performance-related parameters during the execution of the one or more benchmarking programs on the benchmarking platform. The method further comprises executing an executable program on the benchmarking platform and obtaining one or more second values for the one or more performance-related parameters during the execution of the executable program on the benchmarking platform. The method further comprises determining whether the executable program satisfies one or more performance-related criteria for execution in the executable program based on the one or more first values and the one or more second values for the one or more performance-related parameters and performing one or more actions based on a result of the determining. In this manner, one can ensure that the executable program is, e.g., efficiently designed prior to execution of the executable program on the execution platform.
In one embodiment, the executable program comprises a serverless function, a WebAssembly serverless function, a WebAssembly program, a binary executable computer program, an Executable (EXE) program or an Application (APP) program, a script program, or a combination of any two or more thereof.
In one embodiment, the one or more performance-related parameters comprise one or more parameters related to resource usage and the one or more performance-related criteria comprise one or more resource usage limits. In one embodiment, the resource usage comprises: processor usage, memory usage, network input/output, or a combination of any two or more thereof.
In one embodiment, performing the one or more actions comprises notifying a developer of the executable program of the result of the determining, storing an indication that indicates the result of the determining, enabling, or disabling uploading of the executable program to the execution platform based on the result of the determining, or a combination of any two or more thereof.
In one embodiment, the one or more benchmarking programs comprise two or more benchmarking programs each related to a different performance level. In one embodiment, the one or more first values comprises one or more separate values for the one or more performance-related parameters for each benchmarking program of two or more benchmarking programs. In one embodiment, determining whether the executable program satisfies the one or more performance-related criteria for execution in the executable platform based on the one or more first values and the one or more second values for the one or more performance-related parameters comprises, for each benchmarking program of the two or more benchmarking programs, determining whether the executable program satisfies one or more performance-related criteria, defined for the benchmarking program, based on a comparison of the one or more values obtained for the one or more performance-related parameters for the benchmarking program and the one or more second values for the one or more performance-related parameters obtained for the executable program. In one embodiment, performing the one or more actions comprises notifying a developer of the executable program of a result of the determining for at least one of the two or more benchmarking programs, storing an indication that indicates the result of the determining for at least one of the two or more benchmarking programs, enabling or disabling uploading of the executable program to the execution platform based on the result of the determining for at least one of the two or more benchmarking programs, or any combination of two or more thereof.
In one embodiment, the execution platform is operated by a first entity and the executable program is developed by a second entity that is different than the first entity. In one embodiment, the first entity is a website hosting service provider, and the second entity is a third-party developer. In one embodiment, the website hosting service provider is an e-commerce store hosting service.
Corresponding embodiments of a computing system are also disclosed. In one embodiment, a computing system comprises processing circuitry configured to cause the computing system to execute one or more benchmarking programs in a benchmarking platform, wherein each of the one or more benchmarking programs is an executable program that corresponds to a respective performance level for execution of an executable program on an associated execution platform. The processing circuitry is further configured to cause the computing system to obtain one or more first values for one or more performance-related parameters during execution of the one or more benchmarking programs on the benchmarking platform. The processing circuitry is further configured to cause the computing system to execute an executable program on the benchmarking platform and obtain one or more second values for the one or more performance-related parameters during execution of the executable program on the benchmarking platform. The processing circuitry is further configured to cause the computing system to determine whether the executable program satisfies one or more performance-related criteria for execution in the executable program based on the one or more first values and the one or more second values for the one or more performance-related parameters and perform one or more actions based on a result of the determining.
Corresponding embodiments of a non-transitory computer readable medium are also disclosed. In one embodiment, a non-transitory computer readable medium comprises software instructions that, when executed by processing circuitry of a computing system, cause the computing system to execute one or more benchmarking programs in a benchmarking platform, wherein each of the one or more benchmarking programs is an executable program that corresponds to a respective performance level for execution of an executable program on an associated execution platform. When executed by the processing circuitry of the computing system, the software instructions further cause the computing system to obtain one or more first values for one or more performance-related parameters during execution of the one or more benchmarking programs on the benchmarking platform, execute an executable program on the benchmarking platform, obtain one or more second values for the one or more performance-related parameters during execution of the executable program on the benchmarking platform, determine whether the executable program satisfies one or more performance-related criteria for execution in the executable program based on the one or more first values and the one or more second values for the one or more performance-related parameters, and perform one or more actions based on a result of the determining.
The accompanying drawings figures incorporated in and forming a part of this specification illustrate several aspects of the disclosure, and together with the description server to explain the principles of the disclosure.
The embodiments set forth below represent information to enable those skilled in the art to practice the embodiments and illustrate the best mode of practicing the embodiments. Upon reading the following description in light of the accompanying drawing figures, those skilled in the art will understand the concepts of the disclosure and will recognize applications of these concepts not particularly addressed herein. It should be understood that these concepts and applications fall within the scope of the disclosure.
Note that, as used herein, the term “comprising” (and other forms of the word “comprise”) is which is synonymous with “including,” “containing,” or “characterized by,” and is inclusive or open-ended and does not exclude additional, unrecited elements or steps. Conversely, the term “consisting of” (and other related forms) is synonymous with “including,” “containing,” or “characterized by,” but is exclusive in that it excludes additional, unrecited elements or steps.
There is a desire to allow third-party developers to provide executable programs for execution on an operator's physical or virtual machine. For example, an e-commerce store may be hosted via an e-commerce store hosting platform such as the Shopify® platform, where the platform may desire to enable third parties (e.g., merchants) to develop their own executable programs (e.g., scripts or WebAssembly programs) to enable merchant-specific functionality. However, this may result in undesirable effects due to, e.g., inefficient design of the third-party programs or unwanted activity (e.g., mining bitcoins).
One naïve solution is to set hard resource limits (e.g., hard execution time and memory limits) for such third-party applications. However, such hard resource limits may result in one or more of the following problems. Hard resource limits may prevent legitimate third-party programs from being executed because these programs exceed the hard resource limits. Hard resource limits may also allow inefficient programs that do not exceed the hard limits to nevertheless execute, even though such inefficient programs are consuming more resources than needed. A large number of such programs (or executing such programs a large number of times) would result in a significant amount of resources being consumed unnecessarily. Lastly, hard resource limits may allow unwanted programs that do not exceed the hard resource limits to execute even though such programs may be performing unwanted activities.
Thus, there is a need for systems and methods for avoiding execution of programs that are inefficient and, as such, result in unwanted consumption of resources of the execution platform.
As used herein, an “executable program” is any computer program that can be executed by an execution platform, where an “execution platform” is a physical computing system or a virtualization platform including a virtual machine on which the executable program is to be run. A physical computing system is any system comprising processing circuitry and memory storing executable instructions (e.g., software) that, when executed by the processing circuitry, causes the system to provide the functionality of the execution platform described herein. Some examples of a physical computing system include a personal computer, a physical server computer, a tablet computer, a smartphone, or the like. Note, however, that in a preferred embodiment, the execution platform is a physical server computer or similar platform that executes third-party applications but is to be distinguished from a user's personal computer that executes an application (e.g., an application licensed from a third-party). The executable program may be any type of executable program such as, e.g., a stateful executable program, a stateless executable program, a read-only executable program, a read and write (read/write) executable program, an executable program that requires access to third-party data and/or third-party servers, or the like. For example, the executable program may be a binary executable computer program (e.g., a serverless function, a WebAssembly serverless function, a WebAssembly program for a stack-based virtual machine, an Executable (EXE) program for a physical or virtual Microsoft Windows machine, or an Application (APP) program for a physical or virtual MacOS machine), or a script program such as, e.g., a JavaScript program, a Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) script, a Ruby script, a Python script, or the like, or any combination thereof. However, in one preferred embodiment, the executable program is a WebAssembly program, a script program, a serverless function, or a WebAssembly serverless function. Further, while the executable program may be of one form (e.g., serverless function, WebAssembly serverless function, WebAssembly program, etc.), the executable program may alternatively be of a mixed formed (e.g., a binary executable program that also calls methods or functions implemented by or on top of a virtual machine).
As used herein, a “benchmarking platform” is a software-based execution platform that simulates, at least to a limited-degree, an execution platform on which an executable program is to be executed. For example, the execution platform may be a server(s) of an e-commerce store hosting service, and the benchmarking platform may be a software-based execution platform provided by the e-commerce store hosting service to third-party execution program developers to, e.g., enable the third-party execution program developers to determine whether third-party execution programs will satisfy one or more criteria (e.g., one or more resource usage related criteria) for execution of their executable programs on the server(s) of the e-commerce store hosting service. The benchmarking platform is run on a computing system (e.g., a physical computer or virtual machine or a container, e.g., of a third-party developer of the executable program or a physical computer or virtual machine or a container of a hosting service that hosts or executes the benchmarking platform, e.g., on behalf of a third-party developer of the executable program). It should be noted that the benchmarking platform is separate from the execution platform but may be operated by the same operator as that of the execution platform or by a different operator than that of the execution platform. For example, the benchmarking platform may be implemented on a computing system (e.g., comprising processing circuitry and memory storing software that, when executed by the processing circuitry, causes the computing system to provide the functionality of the benchmarking platform described herein), where this computing system is separate from the execution platform but operated either by the same operator as that of the execution platform or by a different operator than that of the execution platform.
Systems and methods are disclosed that relate to the use of benchmarking to determine whether an executable program (e.g., designed by a third-party developer) satisfies one or more criteria (e.g., one or more resource usage related criteria) for execution on an execution platform (e.g., an execution platform of an e-commerce store hosting service). In this regard,
The computing system 1000 runs the one or more benchmarking programs 1006 on the benchmarking platform 1002 (step 204) and obtains first values for one or more performance-related parameters during execution of the one or more benchmarking programs 1006 on the benchmarking platform 1002 (step 206). In other words, the computing system 1000 runs the one or more benchmarking programs 1006 on the benchmarking platform 1002 and, while the one or more benchmarking programs 1006 are running, monitors the one or more performance-related parameters (e.g., Central Processing Unit (CPU) resources, memory, etc.) to thereby obtain the first values for the one or more performance-related parameters (e.g., a value indicative of the amount of CPU resources consumed or used, a value indicative of the amount of memory used or a maximum amount of memory used during execution, etc.). Note that if there are multiple benchmarking programs 1006, the first values include separate values of the one or more performance-related parameters obtained for each of the benchmarking programs 1006. In one embodiment, multiple benchmarking programs 1006 are used, respectively, for different levels of performance (e.g., one benchmarking program for 1 millisecond (ms) execution, another benchmarking program for 2 ms execution, and another benchmarking program for 3 ms execution). In one embodiment, the one or more performance-related parameters are or include one or more resource usage related parameters such as, e.g., amount of processing resources consumed (e.g., number of CPU cycles, number of CPU instructions executed, or the like), amount of memory resources consumed, amount of network input/output (e.g., amount of network traffic in terms of, e.g., amount of data transmitted or received, and/or rate of data transmission and/or data reception), and/or the like.
The computing system 1000 also runs the executable program 1004 on the benchmarking platform 1002 (step 208) and obtains second values for the one or more performance-related parameters during execution of the executable program 1004 on the benchmarking platform 1002 (step 210). In other words, the computing system 1000 runs the executable program 1004 on the benchmarking platform 1002 and, while the executable program 1004 is running, monitors the one or more performance-related parameters (e.g., CPU resources, memory, etc.) to thereby obtain the second values for the one or more performance-related parameters (e.g., a value indicative of the amount of CPU resources consumed or used, a value indicative of the amount of memory used or a maximum amount of memory used during execution, etc.). Note that steps 208 and 210 may alternatively be performed prior to steps 204 and 206 or possibly run in parallel with steps 204 and 206.
The computing system 1000 (e.g., the benchmarking platform 1002) then determines whether the executable program 1004 will meet one or more criteria (e.g., one or more resource limits) for execution of the executable program 1004 on the associated execution platform (i.e., the execution platform simulated by the benchmarking platform 1002) based on a comparison of the first values of the one or more performance-related parameters obtained for the one or more benchmarking programs 1006 and the second values of the one or more performance-related parameters obtained for the executable program 1004 (step 212). For example, the first values of the one or more performance-related parameters may serve as thresholds for the respective performance-related parameters or the thresholds for the respective performance-related parameters may be defined as a function of the respective first values (e.g., CPU usage threshold is some predefined value “X” times the CPU usage value obtained while executing the benchmarking program 1006 on the benchmarking platform 1002, where “X” is a predefined positive integer value). In one embodiment, there are multiple benchmarking programs 1006, and the determination of step 212 includes a separate determination for each benchmarking program 1006. So, the executable program 1004 may, based on the comparisons, determine that the executable program 1004 meets the one or more criteria with respect to a first benchmarking program 1006 that corresponds to a lower performance level but does not meet the one or more criteria with respect to a second benchmarking program 1006 that corresponds to a higher performance level. In another embodiment where there are multiple benchmarking programs 1006, the determination of step 212 may include deriving one or more derived values from the first values of the one or more performance-related parameters obtained for the multiple benchmarking programs 1006 (e.g., using a linear regression or any other type of function to derive a desired value(s), where this function and the derived value(s) may vary depending on the particular implementation and the type of performance-related parameter(s) used).
The computing system 1000 then performs one or more actions based on a result of the determination in step 212 (step 214). The one or more actions may include any one or more of the following actions:
In one embodiment, when there are multiple benchmarking programs 1006 corresponding to different performance levels, the operator of the execution platform may offer different incentives for encouraging a developer of the executable program 1004 to meet the one or more criteria for different benchmarking programs 1006. For example, the operator may charge different prices for execution of the executable program 1004 depending on which performance level the executable program 1004 meets.
It should also be noted that, while in the example embodiments described above, the benchmarking program(s) 1006 and the executable program 1004 are executed on the benchmarking platform 1002 at the computing system 1000 of the developer of the executable program 1004, the present disclosure is not limited thereto. In another embodiment, the benchmarking platform 1002 is implemented on a computing system (e.g., a physical computing system or a virtual machine) of the operator of the execution platform, and the benchmarking program(s) 1006 and the executable program 1004 are executed on the benchmarking platform 1002 on the computing system 1000 of the operator of the execution platform.
In some embodiments, a computer program including instructions which, when executed by at least one processor, causes the at least one processor to carry out the functionality of the benchmarking platform 1002, the executable program 1004, and/or the benchmarking program(s) 1006, according to any of the embodiments described herein is provided. In some embodiments, a carrier comprising the aforementioned computer program product is provided. The carrier is one of an electronic signal, an optical signal, a radio signal, or a computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a non-transitory computer-readable medium such as memory).
Although integration with a commerce platform is not required, in some embodiments, the methods disclosed herein may be performed on or in association with a commerce platform such as an e-commerce platform. Therefore, an example of a commerce platform will be described.
While the disclosure throughout contemplates that a ‘merchant’ and a ‘customer’ may be more than individuals, for simplicity the description herein may generally refer to merchants and customers as such. All references to merchants and customers throughout this disclosure should also be understood to be references to groups of individuals, companies, corporations, computing entities, and the like, and may represent for-profit or not-for-profit exchange of products. Further, while the disclosure throughout refers to ‘merchants’ and ‘customers’, and describes their roles as such, the e-commerce platform 100 should be understood to more generally support users in an e-commerce environment, and all references to merchants and customers throughout this disclosure should also be understood to be references to users, such as where a user is a merchant-user (e.g., a seller, retailer, wholesaler, or provider of products), a customer-user (e.g., a buyer, purchase agent, consumer, or user of products), a prospective user (e.g., a user browsing and not yet committed to a purchase, a user evaluating the e-commerce platform 100 for potential use in marketing and selling products, and the like), a service provider user (e.g., a shipping provider 112, a financial provider, and the like), a company or corporate user (e.g., a company representative for purchase, sales, or use of products; an enterprise user; a customer relations or customer management agent, and the like), an information technology user, a computing entity user (e.g., a computing bot for purchase, sales, or use of products), and the like. Furthermore, it may be recognized that while a given user may act in a given role (e.g., as a merchant) and their associated device may be referred to accordingly (e.g., as a merchant device) in one context, that same individual may act in a different role in another context (e.g., as a customer) and that same or another associated device may be referred to accordingly (e.g., as a customer device). For example, an individual may be a merchant for one type of product (e.g., shoes), and a customer/consumer of other types of products (e.g., groceries). In another example, an individual may be both a consumer and a merchant of the same type of product. In a particular example, a merchant that trades in a particular category of goods may act as a customer for that same category of goods when they order from a wholesaler (the wholesaler acting as merchant).
The e-commerce platform 100 provides merchants with online services/facilities to manage their business. The facilities described herein are shown implemented as part of the platform 100 but could also be configured separately from the platform 100, in whole or in part, as stand-alone services. Furthermore, such facilities may, in some embodiments, may, additionally or alternatively, be provided by one or more providers/entities.
In the example of
The online store 138 may represent a multi-tenant facility comprising a plurality of virtual storefronts. In embodiments, merchants may configure and/or manage one or more storefronts in the online store 138, such as, for example, through a merchant device 102 (e.g., computer, laptop computer, mobile computing device, and the like), and offer products to customers through a number of different channels 110A-B (e.g., an online store 138; an application 142A-B; a physical storefront through a POS device 152; an electronic marketplace, such, for example, through an electronic buy button integrated into a website or social media channel such as on a social network, social media page, social media messaging system; and/or the like). A merchant may sell across channels 110A-B and then manage their sales through the e-commerce platform 100, where channels 110A may be provided as a facility or service internal or external to the e-commerce platform 100. A merchant may, additionally or alternatively, sell in their physical retail store, at pop ups, through wholesale, over the phone, and the like, and then manage their sales through the e-commerce platform 100. A merchant may employ all or any combination of these operational modalities. Notably, it may be that by employing a variety of and/or a particular combination of modalities, a merchant may improve the probability and/or volume of sales. Throughout this disclosure the terms online store 138 and storefront may be used synonymously to refer to a merchant's online e-commerce service offering through the e-commerce platform 100, where an online store 138 may refer either to a collection of storefronts supported by the e-commerce platform 100 (e.g., for one or a plurality of merchants) or to an individual merchant's storefront (e.g., a merchant's online store).
In some embodiments, a customer may interact with the platform 100 through a customer device 150 (e.g., computer, laptop computer, mobile computing device, or the like), a POS device 152 (e.g., retail device, kiosk, automated (self-service) checkout system, or the like), and/or any other commerce interface device known in the art. The e-commerce platform 100 may enable merchants to reach customers through the online store 138, through applications 142A-B, through POS devices 152 in physical locations (e.g., a merchant's storefront or elsewhere), to communicate with customers via electronic communication facility 129, and/or the like so as to provide a system for reaching customers and facilitating merchant services for the real or virtual pathways available for reaching and interacting with customers.
In some embodiments, and as described further herein, the e-commerce platform 100 may be implemented through a processing facility. Such a processing facility may include a processor and a memory. The processor may be a hardware processor. The memory may be and/or may include a non-transitory computer-readable medium. The memory may be and/or may include random access memory (RAM) and/or persisted storage (e.g., magnetic storage). The processing facility may store a set of instructions (e.g., in the memory) that, when executed, cause the e-commerce platform 100 to perform the e-commerce and support functions as described herein. The processing facility may be or may be a part of one or more of a server, client, network infrastructure, mobile computing platform, cloud computing platform, stationary computing platform, and/or some other computing platform, and may provide electronic connectivity and communications between and amongst the components of the e-commerce platform 100, merchant devices 102, payment gateways 106, applications 142A-B , channels 110A-B, shipping providers 112, customer devices 150, point of sale devices 152, etc.. In some implementations, the processing facility may be or may include one or more such computing devices acting in concert. For example, it may be that a plurality of co-operating computing devices serves as/to provide the processing facility. The e-commerce platform 100 may be implemented as or using one or more of a cloud computing service, software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), desktop as a service (DaaS), managed software as a service (MSaaS), mobile backend as a service (MBaaS), information technology management as a service (ITMaaS), and/or the like. For example, it may be that the underlying software implementing the facilities described herein (e.g., the online store 138) is provided as a service, and is centrally hosted (e.g., and then accessed by users via a web browser or other application, and/or through customer devices 150, POS devices 152, and/or the like). In some embodiments, elements of the e-commerce platform 100 may be implemented to operate and/or integrate with various other platforms and operating systems.
In some embodiments, the facilities of the e-commerce platform 100 (e.g., the online store 138) may serve content to a customer device 150 (using data 134) such as, for example, through a network connected to the e-commerce platform 100. For example, the online store 138 may serve or send content in response to requests for data 134 from the customer device 150, where a browser (or other application) connects to the online store 138 through a network using a network communication protocol (e.g., an internet protocol). The content may be written in machine readable language and may include Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), template language, JavaScript, and the like, and/or any combination thereof.
In some embodiments, online store 138 may be or may include service instances that serve content to customer devices and allow customers to browse and purchase the various products available (e.g., add them to a cart, purchase through a buy-button, and the like). Merchants may also customize the look and feel of their website through a theme system, such as, for example, a theme system where merchants can select and change the look and feel of their online store 138 by changing their theme while having the same underlying product and business data shown within the online store's product information. It may be that themes can be further customized through a theme editor, a design interface that enables users to customize their website's design with flexibility. Additionally or alternatively, it may be that themes can, additionally or alternatively, be customized using theme-specific settings such as, for example, settings as may change aspects of a given theme, such as, for example, specific colors, fonts, and pre-built layout schemes. In some implementations, the online store may implement a content management system for website content. Merchants may employ such a content management system in authoring blog posts or static pages and publish them to their online store 138, such as through blogs, articles, landing pages, and the like, as well as configure navigation menus. Merchants may upload images (e.g., for products), video, content, data, and the like to the e-commerce platform 100, such as for storage by the system (e.g., as data 134). In some embodiments, the e-commerce platform 100 may provide functions for manipulating such images and content such as, for example, functions for resizing images, associating an image with a product, adding and associating text with an image, adding an image for a new product variant, protecting images, and the like.
As described herein, the e-commerce platform 100 may provide merchants with sales and marketing services for products through a number of different channels 110A-B, including, for example, the online store 138, applications 142A-B, as well as through physical POS devices 152 as described herein. The e-commerce platform 100 may, additionally or alternatively, include business support services 116, an administrator 114, a warehouse management system, and the like associated with running an on-line business, such as, for example, one or more of providing a domain registration service 118 associated with their online store, payment services 120 for facilitating transactions with a customer, shipping services 122 for providing customer shipping options for purchased products, fulfillment services for managing inventory, risk and insurance services 124 associated with product protection and liability, merchant billing, and the like. Services 116 may be provided via the e-commerce platform 100 or in association with external facilities, such as through a payment gateway 106 for payment processing, shipping providers 112 for expediting the shipment of products, and the like.
In some embodiments, the e-commerce platform 100 may be configured with shipping services 122 (e.g., through an e-commerce platform shipping facility or through a third-party shipping carrier), to provide various shipping-related information to merchants and/or their customers such as, for example, shipping label or rate information, real-time delivery updates, tracking, and/or the like.
More detailed information about commerce and visitors to a merchant's online store 138 may be viewed through reports or metrics. Reports may include, for example, acquisition reports, behavior reports, customer reports, finance reports, marketing reports, sales reports, product reports, and custom reports. The merchant may be able to view sales data for different channels 110A-B from different periods of time (e.g., days, weeks, months, and the like), such as by using drop-down menus. An overview dashboard may also be provided for a merchant who wants a more detailed view of the store's sales and engagement data. An activity feed in the home metrics section may be provided to illustrate an overview of the activity on the merchant's account. For example, by clicking on a ‘view all recent activity’ dashboard button, the merchant may be able to see a longer feed of recent activity on their account. A home page may show notifications about the merchant's online store 138, such as based on account status, growth, recent customer activity, order updates, and the like. Notifications may be provided to assist a merchant with navigating through workflows configured for the online store 138, such as, for example, a payment workflow, an order fulfillment workflow, an order archiving workflow, a return workflow, and the like.
The e-commerce platform 100 may provide for a communications facility 129 and associated merchant interface for providing electronic communications and marketing, such as utilizing an electronic messaging facility for collecting and analyzing communication interactions between merchants, customers, merchant devices 102, customer devices 150, POS devices 152, and the like, to aggregate and analyze the communications, such as for increasing sale conversions, and the like. For instance, a customer may have a question related to a product, which may produce a dialog between the customer and the merchant (or an automated processor-based agent/chatbot representing the merchant), where the communications facility 129 is configured to provide automated responses to customer requests and/or provide recommendations to the merchant on how to respond such as, for example, to improve the probability of a sale.
The e-commerce platform 100 may provide a financial facility 120 for secure financial transactions with customers, such as through a secure card server environment. The e-commerce platform 100 may store credit card information, such as in payment card industry data (PCI) environments (e.g., a card server), to reconcile financials, bill merchants, perform automated clearing house (ACH) transfers between the e-commerce platform 100 and a merchant's bank account, and the like. The financial facility 120 may also provide merchants and buyers with financial support, such as through the lending of capital (e.g., lending funds, cash advances, and the like) and provision of insurance. In some embodiments, online store 138 may support a number of independently administered storefronts and process a large volume of transactional data on a daily basis for a variety of products and services. Transactional data may include any customer information indicative of a customer, a customer account or transactions carried out by a customer such as. for example, contact information, billing information, shipping information, returns/refund information, discount/offer information, payment information, or online store events or information such as page views, product search information (search keywords, click-through events), product reviews, abandoned carts, and/or other transactional information associated with business through the e-commerce platform 100. In some embodiments, the e-commerce platform 100 may store this data in a data facility 134. Referring again to
Implementing functions as applications 142A-B may enable the commerce management engine 136 to remain responsive and reduce or avoid service degradation or more serious infrastructure failures, and the like.
Although isolating online store data can be important to maintaining data privacy between online stores 138 and merchants, there may be reasons for collecting and using cross-store data, such as for example, with an order risk assessment system or a platform payment facility, both of which require information from multiple online stores 138 to perform well. In some embodiments, it may be preferable to move these components out of the commerce management engine 136 and into their own infrastructure within the e-commerce platform 100.
Platform payment facility 120 is an example of a component that utilizes data from the commerce management engine 136 but is implemented as a separate component or service. The platform payment facility 120 may allow customers interacting with online stores 138 to have their payment information stored safely by the commerce management engine 136 such that they only have to enter it once. When a customer visits a different online store 138, even if they have never been there before, the platform payment facility 120 may recall their information to enable a more rapid and/or potentially less-error prone (e.g., through avoidance of possible mis-keying of their information if they needed to instead re-enter it) checkout. This may provide a cross-platform network effect, where the e-commerce platform 100 becomes more useful to its merchants and buyers as more merchants and buyers join, such as because there are more customers who checkout more often because of the ease of use with respect to customer purchases. To maximize the effect of this network, payment information for a given customer may be retrievable and made available globally across multiple online stores 138.
For functions that are not included within the commerce management engine 136, applications 142A-B provide a way to add features to the e-commerce platform 100 or individual online stores 138. For example, applications 142A-B may be able to access and modify data on a merchant's online store 138, perform tasks through the administrator 114, implement new flows for a merchant through a user interface (e.g., that is surfaced through extensions/API), and the like. Merchants may be enabled to discover and install applications 142A-B through application search, recommendations, and support 128. In some embodiments, the commerce management engine 136, applications 142A-B, and the administrator 114 may be developed to work together. For instance, application extension points may be built inside the commerce management engine 136, accessed by applications 142A and 142B through the interfaces 140B and 140A to deliver additional functionality, and surfaced to the merchant in the user interface of the administrator 114.
In some embodiments, applications 142A-B may deliver functionality to a merchant through the interface 140A-B, such as where an application 142A-B is able to surface transaction data to a merchant (e.g., App: “Engine, surface my app data in the Mobile App or administrator 114”), and/or where the commerce management engine 136 is able to ask the application to perform work on demand (Engine: “App, give me a local tax calculation for this checkout”).
Applications 142A-B may be connected to the commerce management engine 136 through an interface 140A-B (e.g., through REST (REpresentational State Transfer) and/or GraphQL APIs) to expose the functionality and/or data available through and within the commerce management engine 136 to the functionality of applications. For instance, the e-commerce platform 100 may provide API interfaces 140A-B to applications 142A-B which may connect to products and services external to the platform 100. The flexibility offered through use of applications and APIs (e.g., as offered for application development) enable the e-commerce platform 100 to better accommodate new and unique needs of merchants or to address specific use cases without requiring constant change to the commerce management engine 136. For instance, shipping services 122 may be integrated with the commerce management engine 136 through a shipping or carrier service API, thus enabling the e-commerce platform 100 to provide shipping service functionality without directly impacting code running in the commerce management engine 136.
Depending on the implementation, applications 142A-B may utilize APIs to pull data on demand (e.g., customer creation events, product change events, or order cancelation events, etc.) or have the data pushed when updates occur. A subscription model may be used to provide applications 142A-B with events as they occur or to provide updates with respect to a changed state of the commerce management engine 136. In some embodiments, when a change related to an update event subscription occurs, the commerce management engine 136 may post a request, such as to a predefined callback URL. The body of this request may contain a new state of the object and a description of the action or event. Update event subscriptions may be created manually, in the administrator facility 114, or automatically (e.g., via the API 140A-B). In some embodiments, update events may be queued and processed asynchronously from a state change that triggered them, which may produce an update event notification that is not distributed in real-time or near-real time.
In some embodiments, the e-commerce platform 100 may provide one or more of application search, recommendation, and support 128. Application search, recommendation and support 128 may include developer products and tools to aid in the development of applications, an application dashboard (e.g., to provide developers with a development interface, to administrators for management of applications, to merchants for customization of applications, and the like), facilities for installing and providing permissions with respect to providing access to an application 142A-B (e.g., for public access, such as where criteria must be met before being installed, or for private use by a merchant), application searching to make it easy for a merchant to search for applications 142A-B that satisfy a need for their online store 138, application recommendations to provide merchants with suggestions on how they can improve the user experience through their online store 138, and the like. In some embodiments, applications 142A-B may be assigned an application identifier (ID), such as for linking to an application (e.g., through an API), searching for an application, making application recommendations, and the like.
Applications 142A-B may be grouped roughly into three categories: customer-facing applications, merchant-facing applications, integration applications, and the like. Customer-facing applications 142A-B may include an online store 138 or channels 110A-B that are places where merchants can list products and have them purchased (e.g., the online store, applications for flash sales (e.g., merchant products or from opportunistic sales opportunities from third-party sources), a mobile store application, a social media channel, an application for providing wholesale purchasing, and the like). Merchant-facing applications 142A-B may include applications that allow the merchant to administer their online store 138 (e.g., through applications related to the web or website or to mobile devices), run their business (e.g., through applications related to POS devices), to grow their business (e.g., through applications related to shipping (e.g., drop shipping), use of automated agents, use of process flow development and improvements), and the like. Integration applications may include applications that provide useful integrations that participate in the running of a business, such as shipping providers 112 and payment gateways 106.
As such, the e-commerce platform 100 can be configured to provide an online shopping experience through a flexible system architecture that enables merchants to connect with customers in a flexible and transparent manner. A typical customer experience may be better understood through an embodiment example purchase workflow, where the customer browses the merchant's products on a channel 110A-B, adds what they intend to buy to their cart, proceeds to checkout, and pays for the content of their cart resulting in the creation of an order for the merchant. The merchant may then review and fulfill (or cancel) the order. The product is then delivered to the customer. If the customer is not satisfied, they might return the products to the merchant.
In an example embodiment, a customer may browse a merchant's products through a number of different channels 110A-B such as, for example, the merchant's online store 138, a physical storefront through a POS device 152; an electronic marketplace, through an electronic buy button integrated into a website or a social media channel). In some cases, channels 110A-B may be modeled as applications 142A-B A merchandising component in the commerce management engine 136 may be configured for creating, and managing product listings (using product data objects or models for example) to allow merchants to describe what they want to sell and where they sell it. The association between a product listing and a channel may be modeled as a product publication and accessed by channel applications, such as via a product listing API. A product may have many attributes and/or characteristics, like size and color, and many variants that expand the available options into specific combinations of all the attributes, like a variant that is size extra-small and green, or a variant that is size large and blue. Products may have at least one variant (e.g., a “default variant”) created for a product without any options. To facilitate browsing and management, products may be grouped into collections, provided product identifiers (e.g., stock keeping unit (SKU)) and the like. Collections of products may be built by either manually categorizing products into one (e.g., a custom collection), by building rulesets for automatic classification (e.g., a smart collection), and the like. Product listings may include 2D images, 3D images or models, which may be viewed through a virtual or augmented reality interface, and the like.
In some embodiments, a shopping cart object is used to store or keep track of the products that the customer intends to buy. The shopping cart object may be channel specific and can be composed of multiple cart line items, where each cart line item tracks the quantity for a particular product variant. Since adding a product to a cart does not imply any commitment from the customer or the merchant, and the expected lifespan of a cart may be in the order of minutes (not days), cart objects/data representing a cart may be persisted to an ephemeral data store.
The customer then proceeds to checkout. A checkout object or page generated by the commerce management engine 136 may be configured to receive customer information to complete the order such as the customer's contact information, billing information and/or shipping details. If the customer inputs their contact information but does not proceed to payment, the e-commerce platform 100 may (e.g., via an abandoned checkout component) to transmit a message to the customer device 150 to encourage the customer to complete the checkout. For those reasons, checkout objects can have much longer lifespans than cart objects (hours or even days) and may therefore be persisted. Customers then pay for the content of their cart resulting in the creation of an order for the merchant. In some embodiments, the commerce management engine 136 may be configured to communicate with various payment gateways and services 106 (e.g., online payment systems, mobile payment systems, digital wallets, credit card gateways) via a payment processing component. The actual interactions with the payment gateways 106 may be provided through a card server environment. At the end of the checkout process, an order is created. An order is a contract of sale between the merchant and the customer where the merchant agrees to provide the goods and services listed on the order (e.g., order line items, shipping line items, and the like) and the customer agrees to provide payment (including taxes). Once an order is created, an order confirmation notification may be sent to the customer and an order placed notification sent to the merchant via a notification component. Inventory may be reserved when a payment processing job starts to avoid over-selling (e.g., merchants may control this behavior using an inventory policy or configuration for each variant). Inventory reservation may have a short time span (minutes) and may need to be fast and scalable to support flash sales or “drops”, which are events during which a discount, promotion or limited inventory of a product may be offered for sale for buyers in a particular location and/or for a particular (usually short) time. The reservation is released if the payment fails. When the payment succeeds, and an order is created, the reservation is converted into a permanent (long-term) inventory commitment allocated to a specific location. An inventory component of the commerce management engine 136 may record where variants are stocked, and tracks quantities for variants that have inventory tracking enabled. It may decouple product variants (a customer-facing concept representing the template of a product listing) from inventory items (a merchant-facing concept that represents an item whose quantity and location is managed). An inventory level component may keep track of quantities that are available for sale, committed to an order or incoming from an inventory transfer component (e.g., from a vendor).
The merchant may then review and fulfill (or cancel) the order. A review component of the commerce management engine 136 may implement a business process merchant's use to ensure orders are suitable for fulfillment before actually fulfilling them. Orders may be fraudulent, require verification (e.g., ID checking), have a payment method which requires the merchant to wait to make sure they will receive their funds, and the like. Risks and recommendations may be persisted in an order risk model. Order risks may be generated from a fraud detection tool, submitted by a third-party through an order risk API, and the like. Before proceeding to fulfillment, the merchant may need to capture the payment information (e.g., credit card information) or wait to receive it (e.g., via a bank transfer, check, and the like) before it marks the order as paid. The merchant may now prepare the products for delivery. In some embodiments, this business process may be implemented by a fulfillment component of the commerce management engine 136. The fulfillment component may group the line items of the order into a logical fulfillment unit of work based on an inventory location and fulfillment service. The merchant may review, adjust the unit of work, and trigger the relevant fulfillment services, such as through a manual fulfillment service (e.g., at merchant managed locations) used when the merchant picks and packs the products in a box, purchase a shipping label and input its tracking number, or just mark the item as fulfilled. Alternatively, an API fulfillment service may trigger a third-party application or service to create a fulfillment record for a third-party fulfillment service. Other possibilities exist for fulfilling an order. If the customer is not satisfied, they may be able to return the product(s) to the merchant. The business process merchants may go through to “un-sell” an item may be implemented by a return component. Returns may consist of a variety of different actions, such as a restock, where the product that was sold actually comes back into the business and is sellable again; a refund, where the money that was collected from the customer is partially or fully returned; an accounting adjustment noting how much money was refunded (e.g., including if there was any restocking fees or goods that weren't returned and remain in the customer's hands); and the like. A return may represent a change to the contract of sale (e.g., the order), and where the e-commerce platform 100 may make the merchant aware of compliance issues with respect to legal obligations (e.g., with respect to taxes). In some embodiments, the e-commerce platform 100 may enable merchants to keep track of changes to the contract of sales over time, such as implemented through a sales model component (e.g., an append-only date-based ledger that records sale-related events that happened to an item).
It should be noted that, in one example embodiment, the computing system 1000 including the benchmarking platform 1002, executable program 1004, and benchmarking program(s) 1006 are implemented in, e.g., the merchant device 102. Further, the corresponding execution platform may be, e.g., the e-commerce platform 100. In this manner, the merchant may use the process of
Those skilled in the art will recognize improvements and modifications to the embodiments of the present disclosure. All such improvements and modifications are considered within the scope of the concepts disclosed herein.
