Apps App Design: in-app physical goods purchase

[boby2]

Good Evening Everybody,

So I am thinking about designing an android App for a small business. The app needs to serve two functions:

1) Integrate with the website
-->The website is flash based (I know such a pain)
2) Allow users to buy items(physical goods)
-->Goods are static, meaning that the types of items will not be decreasing or increasing over time.

My questions are:

1) Is it possible to achieve function #1 without having to redo the entire website as an Android app?
-->If so, are there any particular technologies that allow such migration?

2) For function #2, is this possible at all?
-->If not possible, how does Zappos or Office Depot do it?
-->If possible, what technologies/payment processing frameworks are available?

The reasons behind question #2 are that I've been reading about Google's enforcement of their in-app billing system but it says it is only for virtual items, and that every app must use this system, which rules out the paypal payment processing option.

 

[jonbonazza]

1) Is it possible? Yes. Should you do it that way? No. When working with mobile, it is almost always (and by almost I mean 99.9999% of the time) it is advisable to make a native app for the website and not a an app that simply opens a web page. If a mobile friendly version of your website is what you really, really want, then I recommend you just make a mobile version of the website and use it instead of the desktop version when it is accessed from a mobile device.

2) Yes, you can do this. There are various APIs out there that allow the developer to integrate a storefront into their app.