The hype surrounding Magento Commerce’s official release has lingered for about a year. For those of you who haven’t been privy to the news - Magento Commerce is an open source eCommerce shopping cart platform brought to you by a company called Verian. The shopping cart is quite feature rich out of the box, and is positioned to be the de-facto standard for open source eCommerce platforms. As it stands, this product is expected to oust Open Source frontrunner OSCommerce along with a handful of other open source, PHP based solutions. I won’t get into much detail about what Magento Commerce is and its history, there’s plenty of coverage the company has had over the past year in anticipation for it’s release - which by the way, was March 31st.

What I do want to discuss in this post is my first take at Magento Commerce. Now, I’ll preface this by stating that I’ve only gone so far as installing the software (well, actually the Magento Commerce host Crucial installed it all for me), playing around with it, setting up some products, and toying with its features. My goal is to setup a fully functional production eCommerce site in the near future. But, before we go jumping onto the Magento Commerce craze, let’s tackle a few things we like about it, and a few things we don’t. I’m sure there will be more added to both sides of the table (hopefully in favor of the software) as we get more involved with the application, but for now, here’s our first takes. (more…)

What is integrated eCommerce? In it’s most basic form, it is the integration between your eCommerce system and your back-office applications, namely ERP and CRM. The concept has been around for years, as businesses scrambled to automate their back office systems in an effort to increase the efficiency of their operations. Disconnected systems cost more time, money, and resources. But only within the last few years has this concept really become a reality for small businesses with a large portion of their operations stemming from online sales. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been a few players in this realm for years with limited success, one of which being Everest Software, but in this author’s perspective there hasn’t been any promising offers until recently.

For eCommerce merchants this means orders placed on the website come directly through to ERP, with customer information available for CRM functionality, and of course real-time inventory and product information coming directly from the warehouse, and accounting and sales information all running out of the same system. For years, eCommerce merchants have developed integrations between a number of systems (for example most shopping cart packages have an export/import feature for QuickBooks) in order to realize a taste the benefits of a connected system, but many of them fall short of full integration and are often consumed with maintenance issues and data redundancy.

Two products available today come from Netsuite, and Interprise Solutions.

Netsuite has actually been around for a number of years now, and has been a pioneer in integrated backoffice systems. Particularly focused towards small to medium sized businesses, Netsuite has received rave reviews both from a backoffice and corporate perspective. They compete in multiple software markets, in CRM with SalesForce.com and Microsoft CRM, as well as in the ERP and eCommerce space. They really have been on the forefront of the SaaS (Software as a Service) products which basically means that you don’t buy software in the traditional sense, it is offered to you as a service for a monthly fee. This usually means that the software is hosted in some datacenter, and you access it over the web. So one negative aspect of the platform is the lack of flexibility in deployment - it has to be hosted, and it has to be hosted by them. Netsuite’s entire set of functionality sits within their product, there is a somewhat large partner program for enhancements, web design, and the like, and they’ve seen tremendous growth over the years - both from online retailers and non-internet retailers.

Interprise Suite is a relative newcomer, introducing their product just in 2006. This product offers a similar functionality set as that of Netsuite, touting itself as an “all-in-one” eBusiness Application. However, there is a sharp distinction between Netsuite and Interprise Suite - namely, it’s flexibility. Interprise Suite is a smart client based application, I know, these client-server based models were popularized back in the 90s, in which SaaS has taken over since then, but Interprise Suite has seemed to have mastered this model. Let me explain why in one word - performance. First of all, you have an option of hosted this application, or managing it in house - big plus. Secondly, by leveraging a “thin client”, they’ve minimized the data transfer necessary for the application to run. Let me explain further, with typical SaaS applications, like Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce.com, etc. you are essentially loading a web-based application through the internet. Which means that not only data must be transferred for a page to load, but also all of the images, scripts, and html to render each page. This typically means that those applications take at least a good second (or 2 or 3 in some cases) for each page to lead. However, with Interprise Suite, all of the application specific files are installed locally, and only the data is transmitted between server and client. Which means a more responsive load time. It’s also built on a WebServices platform, which makes it extensible and allows for custom developed modules by 3rd party partners. Another major difference between the applications is actually it’s handling of the eCommerce component. Namely, Interprise Suite leverages well established ASPdotNetStorefront in the shopping cart layer of this package. The settings and such are all maintained in the IS application, but the interface is controlled by ASPDNSF. So for developers and eCommerce integrators already familiar with that platform, it will be an easy transition to this system.

While integrated solutions do provide a lot of business value, one thing that’s important especially for businesses where eCommerce represents a significant portion of their business: Performance. And this is something that needs to be addressed on a number of fronts:

• Hosted Solutions: The SaaS industry has had plagued for years with service outages. If your business relies on eCommerce, you’ll want to get references as well as research the performance of any hosted system. Also, because there is much more overhead involved in hosting these systems than say, a traditional eCommerce website, you will be better off looking at dedicated hosting for your system to dedicate the resources available. And, furthermore, bandwidth is something to consider. The data centers hosting these applications should have incredible bandwidth to handle the volumes of data coming through both from visitors to the website, but also users of the backoffice systems - remember, everyone’s using the same data, from the same servers.
• Speed: Database indexing will be paramount for any of these systems. Because of the volume of data stored, a simple search for a product by a customer on your website may take much longer than in a database with only eCommerce data. I actually see this as one of the biggest drawbacks, the bigger the system, the more overhead you’re going to have, and when it comes to the experience your shoppers are going to receive on your website, that, in my opinion, is the most important factor in choosing any eCommerce system. If the performance is slow for your users, sales will suffer.

All in all, the concept of an integrated system is something that most organizations are working towards, with customized solutions to tie in back office applications, special SQL queries scheduled to run constantly to sync data between apps, and other hodge podge hacks as businesses look to reap the benefits of an integrated solution. These two solutions offer promising alternatives, and as they grow, look for them to be major players in that space. I personally would love to see a combination of systems, a separate but integrated approach where the databases are separate, but only necessary data is synced real-time on the backend.

Major Players

I’ll go through what I consider a few of the major players in the shopping cart software world. There are way too many to list here individually, so I’ve done my best to narrow it down to a few. I’ve also organized this by technology, with the three major areas being PHP, .NET, and managed solutions - there are more options out there (ColdFusion, Java, etc.) but again, these are the more widely used among small to mid sized businesses. Something to think about when choosing any platform - if you’re the type of person that needs to ask a lot of questions and need the security of having some responsible for supporting the application (it is after all your most business critical application), then you may want to concentrate your efforts on some of the paid applications with a support option.

PHP

• osCommerce: osCommerce is one of the most powerful free open source shopping cart platforms and the most widely used of its kind. In the 7+ years its been around, they’ve built up a strong developer community and a bevy of plugins are available for the platform. On the downside, you need to be a little more on the technical side to implement these plugins and managing them can be a pain (you have to use a file comparison tool and manually copy-paste PHP code in some cases). If you have the technical expertise, it’s a flexible platform with a strong following and a lot of online help. However, if you’re not familiar with PHP - I wouldn’t recommend it.
• ZenCart: Another free Open Source platform and is actually based on the osCommerce platform, the team at ZenCart have actually created a simplified version of the osCommerce platform in an attempt to appeal to more store owners that don’t have a technical background. How do they succeed? Ok, you still need to have some knowledge of PHP to apply any plugins, but it isn’t as daunting a task as with osCommerce. The code seems a bit cleaner, but the admin interface a bit clunkier. In an osCommerce alternative the effort is there, but the end result is just another osCommerce version.
• Pinnacle Cart: For $597, this eCommerce platform is geared towards merchants who want to get up and running without a lot of tweaking and customizing. If you’re in the market for a product without the need to go much beyond the norm this is a viable option. Offered in both a hosted version and a stand-alone version - although the hosted option seems a bit expensive when you look at how long it would take to recoup the $597, you’re better off getting your own hosting and buying the license.

.NET (& traditional ASP)

• Storefront: Despite being one of the most prominent platforms in the industry, StoreFront has been riddled with poor customer satisfaction. It is setup as a design time eCommerce solution which means it integrates into Dreamweaver and Frontpage (which also means you need to own one of those products). With it’s hefty price tag, and knowing what else is out there we’d recommend to look elsewhere.
• ASPdotNetStorefront: Another popular option on the .NET platform, ASPdotNetStorefront is a strong solution with a lot of features, plugins, and a large customer base - that’s a good sign. They use a pretty unique XML Packages framework which is technically is an innovative solution, however, most traditional developers haven’t been exposed to this type of setup and makes for modifying the templates a bit of a challenge. Lots of features, lots of options, with competitive pricing make this a strong candidate. One of my gripes, no flexibility in the URL rewrite, URLs still look ugly.
• BV Commerce: Our personal favorite, and while it doesn’t come with the popularity as some of the other solutions, but we feel it’s one of the strongest. With a powerful featureset, lots of flexibility, and the ability for a pure (well, the purest of all these options) CSS based design we don’t feel bad pimpin’ this product. Some of the reasons we prefer BVCommerce over ASPdotNetStorefront, the flexibility on the design sode, cleaner leaner framework, plug and play add-ons, and best of all, customizable URL rewriting - you know what that means - you define the URL!

Managed Solutions

• Yahoo! Store: The Yahoo! Store is the most widely adopted managed shopping cart solution available. Starting at around $40 per month with a low 1.5% transaction fee, many newbies to Internet retailing find this solution to be the easiest method to selling onlne. This is typically followed shortly thereafter by outgrowing the solution. If you’re looking to get serious with online retailing, you may find it’s limited functionality and lack of flexibility an impediment to growth.
• Monster Commerce: We’ve seen some websites with great success running on the Monster Commerce platform. Like other managed providers you are limited in functionality and flexibility, but we’ve found Monster Commerce to be feature rich with helpful support. While it’s subscription costs are substantially higher than Yahoo!, we do feel this is a better product. Our biggest gripe is it utilizes an outdated platform of ASP (traditional), and SQL 2000 - not sure if they plan on updating their software but they are well behind current technologies available.
• Netsuite: Netsuite is its own brand of a managed solution. It is an all-in-one business system, combining eCommerce, ERP, accounting, and CRM information altogether in a hosted environment. We’re big advocates of having backend systems integrated together, and Netsuite is a pioneer in this arena, as well as SaaS (software as a service). We applaud their efforts, and they have a quality product to back it up. While I’m not here to do an entire review of the software, I’ll focus on the eCommerce piece alone. There are some great websites currently running on this platform, despite being one of the most limiting as far as out of the box features. We’ll be on the lookout for big things to come with Netsuite, but at this point, limited functionality, steep learning curve, and the lack of hosting flexibility (your eCommerce site must be hosted on their servers - and we’ve noticed slow performance on numerous sites) keep this product in the waiting for more category.

Honorable Mention

• Shopify: I had to mention a newcomer to the market in this post: Shopify. While it really doesn’t fit into the traditional categories above, Shopify entered the market one year ago as a hosted, free (as in no setup and no monthly fees) eCommerce platform dedicated to making selling online easy. And easy it is, we setup a sample site on there in literally one hour, used Paypal and Google checkout accounts, and all they ask for is a 3% rake. We love the CSS based designs, which is ideal for skinning your site with a custom template. In its current state, the functionality is quite limited, but for a reason. The product is intended to be eCommerce in its purest, simplest form, and is the first major step in making it beyond easy for anyone to sell online. Can I buy stock you guys?

Well, that about covers it for me, feel free to share your experiences with these platforms or any others.

The first major decision you’re going to make when it comes time to establishing an eCommerce website (assuming you’ve already made the decision to do it and what you’re selling) and probably the one that will have biggest long-term impact on your business - selecting a shopping cart platform.  Choosing the wrong shopping cart platform is something that can turn around to haunt you for years to come - and switching from one to another is costly and time-consuming (and usually a pain in the ass).

The problem is, shopping cart software is a dime a dozen, and doing a google search for “ecommerce shopping cart” doesn’t exactly guide people in the right direction. In this two part series, I’m going to outline some of the features to look for, some of the major players out there, as well as some resources to help you in navigating through the maze of options. All while trying to keep this article short enough to hold your attention.

Features

As I’ve mentioned in our eCommerce Consulting Services overview, the shopping cart market has matured enough where most of the platforms out there share the same set of basic features to accommodate most of the standard shopping cart needs. That’s not to say you shouldn’t review these features carefully - I wouldn’t even consider any shopping cart platform that does not have a feature matrix readily available. If you don’t know what features you’re going to need for your site just yet, just think about the products or services you’re selling and think about the properties of them. Do they have variants (colors, sizes, etc.), or kits, are they drop shipped? These types of questions will help identify what kind of features you will need. It might also be helpful to find other websites selling these same products and try to determine what they are using. Many times, it is listed in the footer of their site, or other times you can view the source of the page and it may be commented somewhere in the header what platform they’re using. If not, you can always revert to contacting the webmaster directly and straight out ask them what platform they use and if they’re happy with it (just don’t let them know you’re looking to enter the market as a competitor). Aside from what I’d consider the “normal” features, here’s a few other items we identified as high priority items for one of our last eCommerce sites.

• Integration with back-office systems: Something many merchants don’t consider until they reach a volume where manually recording your website sales into your accounting system become too time consuming. This is oftentimes a feature that is available with many carts through a third part add-on. If you will need your website to integrate with your accounting system - even if not at first, make sure it is scalable and a solution is available to accommodate this functionality. Also, some of the more recent developments with managed providers like NetSuite and Interprise Suite allow for a fully integrated back-office and front end system all in one! We’ll cover this topic a little more in depth in a future article.
• Extensibility: What we mean by extensible is that the solution allows for the integration of add-ons and third party tools. This allows for the platform to be more scalable and flexible to meet your needs. And you never know, at some point you may want to add some unique feature (for example like rotating product videos instead of photos) and although most shopping carts don’t support that today, you wouldn’t have to rely on them to develop it in a future release, you could have a developer modify the platform to allow for this new functionality.
• One-Page Checkout: It still amazes me that many of the shopping cart platforms out there still don’t have this feature. With all of the studies indicating the huge decrease in shopping cart abandonment rates just by having a simplified one-page checkout without requiring users to register, this is a must-have in my opinion.
• Design Flexibility: Maybe this is my personal priorities, but usability and accessibility should be important factors when it comes to the design of any website, including eCommerce sites. What exactly does this mean? I’ll refer you to Jakob Nielson’s site and the Website Accessibility Initiative to fill you in. At the end of the day though, CSS based website designs allow your site to be more compliant with both of these standards. Many shopping cart platforms today use hard-coded table based designs that are often difficult to modify or are even impossible to design around a complete CSS framework.
• Custom URL Rewriting: Most shopping cart platforms today tout their “SEO friendliness” and included in these features is usually URL rewriting. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend a platform that does not have URL rewriting. URL rewriting allows you to have “pretty” URLs, for example: instead of having a URL like www.mysite.com/details.asp?productid=12345&menuid=4&cat=3 you could have www.mysite.com/details/product-abc.html. Why does this even matter? Well, it has been noted that having keywords in your URL is an SEO factor. But, the real benefit lies in what a user sees as the URL, what link would you rather click on, some convoluted string of mumbo jumbo, or a nicely formatted URL with the product I’m looking for right in the URL? But like I said, most platforms already have this feature, but many times the structure of this URL is hard-coded and defined by them. So they may append product ids, other characters, etc. onto the URL. So they’ve added the keywords to the URL, but it still hasn’t done much to improve the “look” of the URL. Some platforms allow you to actually define, product by product, the URL that you’d like to use. While this seems like it could be a maintenance nightmare, the benefit of the feature outweigh any increase in workload for managing your products.
• Custom Meta Info: Having the ability to have custom title, and description tags for each page on your site is a must. I can’t count the number of eCommerce sites that every page has the same title on every page - that’s an SEO no no.

There’s obviously many other features you’re going to need, but these are a few of the not-so-standard features in today’s standards. In Part II of this article, we’ll cover some of the major players in the shopping cart platform arena, but first let’s direct you to a few of the resources out there to help you in making some of these decisions. And when I say a few, I mean it. There’s not a lot of unbiased information out there with candid reviews of shopping cart platforms - unfortunately. Mark Baartse makes a good attempt with shopping-cart-reviews.com but at this point the information available is limited. And if I could recommend a feature for the site, it’s the ability to search by or at least have the results come up with average rating. Pulling up PHP carts and having a list of 60 of them doesn’t exactly help me which ones to narrow down. The compare feature is nice, but again, out of that many options available how do I know which ones to compare? Otherwise, this someday could be a useful unbiased resource. Doing a Google search for “shopping cart reviews” comes up with a variety of affiliate sites and not very helpful resources with enough reviews. There’s some scattered comparison resources out there, Top Ten Reviews has a little bit, but other than scouring forums for feedback you’re on your own for the most part. At the end of the day, your best bet for honest feedback is to contact random sites that use the software (not the referrals they give you) and ask them about their experiences with the software, aside from perusing through the forums for the platforms you’re considering. But stay tuned for part 2, where we’ll point you out to a few of the big dogs out there with some of our experiences with them. To be continued…