An Intemet-based electronic commerce (EC) enabled shopping system comprising:an Internet information server connected to the infrastructure of the Internet and supporting the hypertext transmission protocol (http);a Web-enabled client subsystem connected to the infrastructure of the Internet;an EC-enabled WWW site comprising a plurality of interlinked HTML-encoded documents arranged and rendered to provide an electronic store environment for a consumer when served to said Web-enabled client subsystem,wherein said electronic store environment presenting a plurality of produces for purchase and sale by an EC-enabled payment method supported over the Internet,wherein a Java Applet tag, associated with each said product, is embedded within at least one of said HTML-encoded documents displayed on said Web-enabled client subsystem, and each said Java Applet tag being associated with a Java Applet encoded with the universal product number (UPN) assigned to one said product, andwhereby, when the consumer selects one said Java Applet tag, the associated Java Applet is automatically executed, enabling a search to be conducted against a product information database hosted on an Internet database server connected to the Internet, and the results from the search displayed in a GUI served to said Web-enabled client subsystem.
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