e-Commerce world analyzed
Posts tagged e-commerce
Open source enterprise level solution missing? here is a proposed solution
Jun 25th
I was reading this article about “Open-Source Making Significant Traction in the Enterprise“, and I started to analyze this from the E-commerce point of view. I’m not sure if I’m missing something but I can’t find an enterprise level open source solution that really makes me say “wow”. The most advanced and only enterprise level solution is Magento but the Enterprise Edition starts at $12,990 USD/year!
On the other side, usually the regular and even good solutions are not that good when talking about backoffice, stock management, deposits, I mean, the whole accounting, logistic and CRM every big e-commerce site needs. That’s why some time ago I started a reasearch in my company (Openpower) approaching to this from the other side, looking for a good ERP free open source solutions that can be expanded to create a full package. In this path I found solutions like Compiere and all its spin-off, ADempiere, OpenXpertya, and the great pre-configured Argentine OpenXpertya spin-off called Libertya -of which I’m certified dealer- and now the challenge is to create the web site front-end based on a world class ERP like Libertya. Are you interested? contact me and we can start a Source Forge project. I can get all the needed support from the Libertya Latin American community.
Powerful catalog, easy administration development plus E-commerce with Caspio
Mar 26th
Several month ago an e-Commerce site development came to my hands. A good friend of mine and his Canadian partner were thinking about to create an online vacation saver club. So it needed to have a good content management system, a flexible catalog, and a back-office to manage it. And finally an e-commerce solution for purchasing the discounted weeks. Oh, I almost forgot, a subscription plan was needed to have access to the database… but then the business changed and now it has a public search and a private one for members that can save 200 USD in each purchase. But, how to do this with a low budget and in a short period of time, without custom programming? (I lately hate custom programing due to the lack of speed+flexibility and the tie to programmers that use to switch projects very often)…. well… after some hours of research I found Caspio!, in a matter of minutes
my free account was up and running, and in a matter of hours I knew it would be the solution. But some days after I realized that one of Caspio weaknesses is the lack of real e-commerce features… so then a mixed solution came to life. We kept Caspio as the offers catalog and connected it to an e-commerce open source solution with a small custom programmed gateway. The final product: the best of both worlds, flexibility, easy database administration development, and a good checkout process.
So, then visit the site and see how it works: www.vacationsaverclub.com and if you like it leave a comment here!
After that I started two more Caspio implementations that I will blog about soon, but those are not pure e-Commerce
Zappos.com review part 1
Mar 14th
I have to say it, if Amazon spent 928 millon dollars to buy zappos.com something good should be there, and in fact it is!
Probably is the best e-Commerce interface I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to mention the many ups and a few downs in a short review. So first of all please open the site: click here.
The first impression is about a regular e-Commerce site, in fact nothing moves! which is quite rare nowadays, but you don’t need to scroll to have everything you need one click away, even a generous search box with tips and shortcuts. And what to say about the drop down menus! Awesome! but wait! don’t click anything… scroll down, and down, and you will see that the home page is huge… the antithesis of Google for sure, but it loaded pretty fast, right?
So now the magic begins… let’s go and search for a wallet, look at the criteria selector with those blocks to narrow your search! incredibly easy, informative, and user friendly… and most important of all, no need to reload again and again thanks to it’s ajax powered interface. Please raise, and clap, clap, clap, and keep claping. That’s the way aha aha I like it!
And now the creativity comes to the scene when you land in a product page…. what to say, the speed is awesome, the product images are great, the colors variations are always there for you to see at a simple mouse over. But even more: bookmarks, product subscription box, social tools (I love the Tell a Friend with subject selector), and a short url and badge for you to blog about it. But the star is the Larger Images interface with mouse over and 2 to 4 x zoom! Please rise again, and clap even louder!
Maybe you already noticed these people really takes products photos seriously. Again, that’s the way aha aha I like it!
The few downs: nothing new in the shopping cart, it would need to be interactive and visible in a layer onto the current page, and even informative (you get no information about your cart from the top button, not even when you mouse over). No wishlist concept available, just favorites. Drop down menus are not available in inner pages and no way to activate them. Nothing new in chat online concept.
So I hope Zappos staff can keep this great creativity and quality in the new Amazon era. Keep going!
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- Search narrower
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- Home Page
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- Product Page
