Forum Moderators: buckworks
SO... I propose... let me back up. I ask you, the experienced membership who have been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and paid the price through upgrades, charge-backs, hacks attempts, customizations, customer complaints, and lousy conversions - what are some of the key items you would consider if you were to begin the selection process right now?
FYI - for the purposes of this discussion please make the distinction between catalog and cart with a catalog being the display of products for purchase and a cart being the place where products selected for purchase reside.
Here's my starter list.
- Flexibility of page layout. In some cases I want to customize the home page to include the categories or some of the categories I have in the catalog. In some cases I just want text on the home page with text links leading into deeper pages within the catalog. I want to choose what each page will look like or assign global settings if I choose.
- Multiple gateway support. Sometimes I want Authorize.net and other times I may want to go with PayPal. Goes without saying I suppose - like a steering wheel in a car.
- SEO ability. The details of what this means depends upon the individual but in general I want control over my META Data (titles, keywords, and description).
- Easy to change visual design. This simply means that I want to change the visual look and feel of the website without having to edit every single page. Template based setups are great but not if they are broken up into many different pieces that I have to chase down. I want to be able to change the visual design in a day or less. I don't want to worry about whether or not my changes will have an adverse affect on something I haven't considered like some obscure button on an error page.
- Intuitive architecture and coding. Each time I dig into an Off-the-shelf package I have to wrap my head around what another coder (or coders) was thinking. Each of us approaches problems slightly differently and it really shows in coding. osCommerce was a huge mess the last time I worked with it. X-Cart was a bit better but the core programming seemed flawed in that it was resource intensive. (I later learned the stats were largely responsible for this). When I dig into a package I want the coding to be intuitive and well documented so I can quickly get in step with the coder's approach and line of thinking.
- Documentation. I love how many catalog/cart providers say how they have a great solution with a community of users that will answer questions and provide support. Many do. Many provide documentation too. When it comes to the easy stuff like getting the install up and running on a shared server - they're great. But when I ask questions outside the box of their vision for the catalog/cart then I am often left waiting. When I've gone to use the online help documents or visited their websites, my experience has been that only 1 in 3 times am I able to find what I'm looking for. When I do find the answer I jump up and down with glee because I'm not your average Joe and my questions quite often do not involve the basics of how to change the config.php file to use my database username & password. So when a eCommerce catalog/cart company provides documents that answer deeper questions like "how to prioritize products on XX page" then I begin to take notice.
Well, those are a few items off the top of my head. How about you?
Please - no product/company names - thanks.
- Scalability ? I have seen many of the carts claim to hold a large number of catalog items. However I am concerned about how many transactions can the cart support? What if I need to scale out the cart to support more transactions? What is the best method does it support seperating databases like Catalog, Orders and Profiles? What about load balancing the web servers etc? For me I am not so worried about finding a product that can support a large number of items in the catalog as can the cart support high transactions and browse volumes etc.
[edited by: Tongol at 11:09 pm (utc) on June 2, 2008]
1.Reviews
2.User group and community involvement
3.Turn-around on issues, support
4.Documentation
5.Length of time in production, year of first release of production version (not beta)
6.Number of users, active eCommerce sites using it
7.Type of license
8.Cost per store
9.Setup fee
10.Support cost
11.Code used for application
12.Database used by application
13.Ease of install
14.CSS/page design separate from code, ability to easily customize store pages to our satisfaction
15.Product import (rather than hand-keying each item)
16.Order export (to current or future systems)
17.Store administration – ease of use, non-technical person should be able to administer
18.Customer account registration/login
19.Customer information export
20.Ability to sell and download soft goods
21.Email confirmation to customer, and to store administrator
22.SSL payment page (should be a given...)
23.Integration with our chosen payment gateway (and choices if we change our gateway in the future)
24.Overall feature set compatible with functional business requirements (hopefully anyone looking for cart software already has this thought through)
If running on your own system, obviously you want to look at software that will match the skills of whatever technical people you have in house or on call...
