Interchange is designed for businesses that need to use the Internet to interface with their customers. It can be used for either business-to-business or business-to-consumer sites.

There are two different sides to an ecommerce system. There is the "storefront" which is the part that the user sees and interacts with, and there is the "back end" where the administrators process orders and execute transactions. Interchange can be classified as "storefront building software" That means that it deals with the visible aspects of your store -- like your shopping cart, your site layout, etc. It also provides some transaction capabilities, and can integrate with other transaction systems to expand its capabilities. For example, Interchange interfaces with the Cybercash system (among others) to do real-time credit card processing.

Electronic catalogs are what Interchange is designed for. Because of the combination of site design and product management, it's easy to transfer your existing paper catalogs to the net. Your customers can browse online and order online. Then, once the orders have been captured, you can download them, and process them just like you would have if they had come in over the phone.

You can even use some of Interchange's features to implement a sophisticated content-management system. In fact, we've used Interchange itself to manage the developer resource site you're using right now. The way the page, group and item structure has been integrated with our template system lends itself to infinite variety and functionality. You can pretty much implement a system at whatever level of complexity your heart desires, with a minimum of effort.