5 replies to this topic

[Haystack]

I'm curious to know what kind of criteria folks on this forum have used when evaluating shopping cart software for their businesses. I ask this because I've had a few clients lately who's businesses have been hampered by underperforming shopping cart programs due to problems with indexability or optimization of their shopping carts.

I get the impression that search engine optimization isn't at the top of the list for many businesses evaluating shopping cart software. IMO, this is probably because people in that position probably don't have a lot of experience with online marketing.

I've decided to put together an article on the subject but thought I'd solicit some feedback from other shopping cart users before wrapping things up.

Some areas I'll touch on:
Hosting
Design Flexibility
Shipping Calculation Challenges
Tax Issues
SEO
Reporting
Admin Functionality
Merchant Account Flexibility
Customization

If you have any comments on any of the above or have some ideas on other things that should be considered (based on your success or failures) please share.

[Ron Carnell]

I spent a good part of 2002 helping a local community college design an A.A. and Certificate program for E-Commerce, which included helping them select the software to be used in the labs. To the tune of evaluating 171 shopping cart systems?

Most of those were eliminated early in the process, but I ended up installing, configuring, and testing something like twenty of the top contenders, eventually narrowing my recommendation down to three carts that operated at very different levels.

All of my research, and the first few sections of related E-Commerce content, is available on a very incomplete and mish-mashed site. The college, KCC, only implemented the first E-Commerce classes two weeks ago, and really won't go full-steam until January (when they're new building is finished). I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't touched the site since last year. Heck, there's at least three different designs in various places, as I "played" with different ideas. But the checklist I developed for evaluating the shopping carts is fairly comprehensive and might give you some ideas.

The navigation is a little raw, so the link I'm going to provide will take you directly to a specific and completed review. I suspect you'll be able to find your way to the complete list from there. I'm also going to provide a link to the KCC Specifications, which obviously was the foundation for my evaluation list.

KCC Specifications

Agora Review

Let me know if you have any questions (and please don't laugh too hard at the site design).

[compar]

We have played with a free e-commerce and shopping cart program know as Exchange. Has anybody any experience with this product?

[Haystack]

Thanks for the great resource, Ron. I'm going to have to get some rest before taking all of that information on. It looks like the bar for price was set fairly low. Was that due to cost constraints in the class?

Did any features really stand out as make or break features in your evaluations? It seems like Inventory Management and Membership Modules would vary as a requirement, but working on a secure server would be critical for every cart. I'd hope a database driven solution would also be a given for any site selling more than a handful of products.

[Ron Carnell]

KCC initially set a per-seat cost of $200, since they anticipated buying a copy for each student (and passing that cost along in Lab Fees). The upper-level applications, like Miva, cost substantially more than their ceiling, of course, and frankly, I felt the only difference between a $200 package and a free one was not features or quality, but rather support. Since the students wouldn't be calling a help line, that wasn't too important to KCC. I tended to put more of an emphasis on user-supported communities.

In truth, I tried to talk the powers that be out of the Inventory Mgmt requirements. I think that shopping carts should be able to talk to other modules, but not be integrated (i.e., locked in). The DB Interface was a high priority, but we weren't locked into a specific platform. I spent far more time looking at the DB design, especially normalization. We concentrated on Linux/Perl because that's what their Admin team knew best.

Security is obviously, I think, the number one concern, though one of the points I emphasized was that SSL is only the beginning of that concern. Beyond what the shopping could "do," I also thought it important to explore what the shopping shouldn't do. The full reviews, for example, talk about whether the cart is "Search Engine Friendly" and "Browser Friendly," obviously reflecting a bit of my own background.

[Haystack]

Very cool. Sounds like an interesting course. Evaluating software is a lot tougher than many people realize.