Electronic commerce transactions within a marketing system that may contain a membership buying opportunity

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a system and method for providing complete electronic commerce (“E-Commerce”) transactions and solutions for a marketing company's products via the World Wide Web, including facilities for signing up new customers and recruiting, training and supporting new Independent Business Owners through an interactive online process. In another aspect, the present invention relates to the combination of a marketing business with a membership buying opportunity using both electronic commerce and face-to-face transactions. The present invention is also directed to a system and method for combining a marketing business with a membership buying opportunity, so that Independent Business Owners participating in the marketing plan can introduce customers to a membership buying opportunity and earn bonuses or commissions based on the purchases by those members, while Members in the buying opportunity can consume products or, at their option, qualify to become Independent Business Owners.

We claim: 
     
         1 . A method for conducting electronic commerce comprising:
 receiving information through user input from a first web page;   storing the information at a server computer based on a field from the user input;   retrieving at least a portion of the information stored at the server computer; and   populating a second web page using the retrieved information and a template for the second web page to display the retrieved information.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the user input is through one or more dialog boxes. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the information comprises user profile information. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3  wherein the user profile information is pre-populated into a billing/shipping page, further wherein the billing/shipping page is one example of the template. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the information comprises product information. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 5  wherein the product information comprises a product name, quantity, and cost. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 5  wherein the product information is stored based on a name of the product information. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the information comprises reward points that are stored in a rewards database on the server computer. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 8  further comprising:
 assigning a value based on the reward points. 
 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the field comprises an identification of the information to be stored. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the field comprises an eXtensible Markup Language (“XML”) path and the storing at the server computer is based on the XML path. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 11  wherein the information stored at the server computer includes XML codes. 
     
     
         13 . A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for conducting electronic commerce over a network, the storage medium comprising instructions operative for:
 providing, over the network, a first web page that provides a form for inputting information;   receiving information from the form;   storing the information at a server computer in a location based on field names from the form;   retrieving at least a portion of the information stored at the server computer based on the location; and   providing a second web page using the retrieved information.   
     
     
         14 . The computer readable medium of  claim 13  wherein the second web page is generated based on a template that is populated with the retrieved information. 
     
     
         15 . The computer readable medium of  claim 13  wherein the location based on field names comprises eXtensible Markup Language (“XML”) code. 
     
     
         16 . The computer readable medium of  claim 15  wherein the location comprises path information. 
     
     
         17 . The computer readable medium of  claim 13  wherein the form for inputting information comprises one or more hypertext markup language (“HTML”) fields. 
     
     
         18 . A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for electronic commerce, the storage medium comprising instructions operative for:
 receiving a request for a web page;   transmitting the requested web page from a web server in response to the request;   providing an interface through the web page to receive information, wherein the interface comprises one or more fields for assigning the received information;   storing, in a database, the received information based on the one or more fields;   retrieving, from the database, the information based on the one or more fields; and   transmitting another web page with the retrieved information.   
     
     
         19 . The computer readable medium of  claim 18  wherein the one or more fields comprises eXtensible Markup Language (“XML”) code. 
     
     
         20 . The computer readable medium of  claim 19  wherein the one or more fields comprise path information for the storing of the received information.