Method and apparatus for facilitating construction of e-commerce web pages having featured products and the like

A method of building Web pages, said method comprising the steps of:

• (1) providing a plurality of display templates, each defining a scheme for presenting information about at least one featured item, said templates including variables as place holders for information content;
• (2) providing a database of information about featured items, said database including for each featured item at least a category for (1) an identity of a display template that is to be used for displaying information about said featured item, (2) an identity of a Web page within which said featured item should appear and (3) information about said item;
• (3) when a user requests a particular Web page, determining the template indicated in said database for displaying said featured items in said particular Web page;
• (4) finding in said database all featured items corresponding to said particular Web page;
• (5) for each featured item in said database corresponding to said particular Web page, substituting said information about said item from said database for corresponding variables in said template to form a populated template;
• and
• (6) inserting said populated template into said particular Web page.

A method of building a featured item database for use in creating Web pages for an electronic commerce Web site, said method comprising the steps of:

• (1) providing a database of information about featured items, said database including for each featured item a plurality of categories for a particular type of information about said featured items;
• (2) entering information about featured items into a spreadsheet, said spreadsheet including categories corresponding to said categories of said database;
• and
• (3) importing data from said spreadsheet into said database.

A computer program product embodied on a computer readable medium, for constructing Web pages, said product comprising computer executable instructions for:

• (1) providing a plurality of display templates, each defining a scheme for presenting information about at least one featured item, said templates including variables as place holders for information content;
• (2) providing a database of information about featured items;
• and
• (3) substituting information from said database for said variables to create a Web page.