Showing posts 1 - 10 of 16
  1. Ashley Friedlein Staff

    CEO at Econsultancy

    05 July 2004 16:56pm

    Ashley Friedlein

    You’d think we’d all know our e-commerce engine market pretty well by now, but we are often asked about who / what is available in terms of e-commerce software solutions.

    This is particularly true as site owners start to ‘upgrade’ from their existing solution, which perhaps lacks the functionality or flexibility that they now require.

    Obviously you can do bespoke solutions, and you’re always going to need to customise any ‘off-the-shelf’ packaged solution, but I was wondering whether you could add to my short list of the usual suspects below (which I’ve tried to categorise) or whether you have experiences you can share using these or other solutions…?

    1. Enterprise Solutions (£100k+)(NB often based on the IBM Websphere or BEA Weblogic platforms)

    2. Mid-range (£5k-100K)3. Lower cost (<£5k)4. Free / Open Source(These can, and are, used at enterprise level as well)5. Fulfilment specialists (who also handle e-commerce)
  2. Obi Felten

    Product Marketing at Google UK

    05 July 2004 21:56pm

    Obi Felten

    Good list Ashley.

    I would add IBM Websphere Commerce Suite to Section 1. I would rate Websphere Commerce Suite and ATG Dynamo as the best enterprise solutions.

    Might be worth adding another category - ASP solutions for companies that don't want to develop their own bespoke site.

    6. ASPs:

    1) Venda - www.venda.com Low cost, decent function, based on the old boo platform. Used by Mothercare, BT Shop.

    2) Snow Valley - www.snowvalley.com - Microsoft-based. Used by White Company, Rohan

    3) Screenpages - www.screenpages.co.uk - Fatface, White Stuff

    Obi

  3. Bob Browning

    Retired at Retired

    07 July 2004 08:54am

    Bob Browning

    Don't forget the grand-daddy of them all - Shopsite (www.shopsite.com) (section 3) which was a total revelation in terms of what was possible back in - hmmm must have been 1996-7.  They got got bought out by Open market and then re-floated.  Still going strong I think.  God knows what version it is on, but it must be as stable as a brick outhouse by now.  I used it for years and (for what it was) it always did a great job.  Many of the concepts got re-used when we decided to roll our own a few years back. 

    I inherited an actrinic client a year ago (v3) and I was impressed that it was a neat system.  However the use of Java for security was (I predicted at the time) a huge mistake and the reason I never looked at it twice. Indeed they have seen the light and moved away from that now.  The fact that such an obviously flawed solution (then not now - in its current form it is pretty nice) could be so successful indicates something about our industry which I find deeply depressing.

  4. Will Gotley

    Director at Digivate

    09 July 2004 15:39pm

    Will Gotley

    I may be biased, but I’m very keen on the mid-range TurboShop from Digivate. Based on open source php and MySQL, we developed this software when we couldn’t get off-the-shelf solutions to do what we knew our clients needed. A background in traditional mail order gave us a head start on that.Now on version 4 and used by the likes of Artigiano, Sofa Workshop and Richer Sounds. Very stable, scalable and customisable, with built-in reporting, integration and editing modules.

    On 08:54:43 7 July 2004 textor wrote:

    Don’t forget the grand-daddy of them all - Shopsite (www.shopsite.com) (section 3) which was a total revelation in terms of what was possible back in - hmmm must have been 1996-7.  They got got bought out by Open market and then re-floated.  Still going strong I think.  God knows what version it is on, but it must be as stable as a brick outhouse by now.  I used it for years and (for what it was) it always did a great job.  Many of the concepts got re-used when we decided to roll our own a few years back. 

    I inherited an actrinic client a year ago (v3) and I was impressed that it was a neat system.  However the use of Java for security was (I predicted at the time) a huge mistake and the reason I never looked at it twice. Indeed they have seen the light and moved away from that now.  The fact that such an obviously flawed solution (then not now - in its current form it is pretty nice) could be so successful indicates something about our industry which I find deeply depressing.

  5. Jason billingsley

    VP, Marketing at Ekkon technologies

    29 July 2004 01:47am

    Jason billingsley

    I must admit I am somewhat dissapointed that our product did not make your list Ashley. So just in case you missed it by accident, people should know about ’The leading mid-market e-commerce solution for the J2EE platform’ - MerchantSpace Commerce. http://www.merchantspace.com

  6. Stephen Pratley

    Managing Director at Shine Marketing

    13 May 2005 15:43pm

    Stephen Pratley

    We're starting to look at redeveloping our ecommerce site in the next few months and I wanted to know if anyone had any other suppliers, or experiences of the ones listed here in the time since this thread started?

    I'm particularly looking at SME solutions which provide good functionality in terms of merchandising & promtions, as well as flexible back-end reporting.

    With little in-house IT support, ASP solutions, or low-cost managed software/hosting solutions are also of interest.

    Does anyone have experience of running large sites on any of the Open Source solutions such as phpShop, osCommerce or Zend Cart?

  7. Jason Woodford Platinum

    CEO at SiteVisibility

    13 May 2005 17:34pm

    Jason Woodford

    Well, it's almost a year since this useful analysis of e-commerce platforms was produced and I wondered if any update anlysis was available? Would e-consultancy be interested in hosting a "vendor shoot out"? Some benchmarking of features, usability, reliability, support, SEO capability would be very useful for us as we are currently re-evaluating whether our current partner ERol (which is a good mid market option for shop builders) is still the best solution to be building into our own offerings to our own clients. Anyone got any thoughts or comments?

    On 16:56:49 5 July 2004 Ashley wrote:

    You’d think we’d all know our e-commerce engine market pretty well by now, but we are often asked about who / what is available in terms of e-commerce software solutions.

    This is particularly true as site owners start to ‘upgrade’ from their existing solution, which perhaps lacks the functionality or flexibility that they now require.

    Obviously you can do bespoke solutions, and you’re always going to need to customise any ‘off-the-shelf’ packaged solution, but I was wondering whether you could add to my short list of the usual suspects below (which I’ve tried to categorise) or whether you have experiences you can share using these or other solutions…?

    1. Enterprise Solutions (£100k+)(NB often based on the IBM Websphere or BEA Weblogic platforms)

    2. Mid-range (£5k-100K) 3. Lower cost (<£5k) 4. Free / Open Source(These can, and are, used at enterprise level as well) 5. Fulfilment specialists (who also handle e-commerce)
  8. Stephen Pratley

    Managing Director at Shine Marketing

    13 May 2005 17:49pm

    Stephen Pratley

    To try to avoid this being too cumbersome, what I'd really like to see is a review of the various platforms rather than the providers.

    The popular ones such as MS Commerce, ePages, and Actinic all have hosts of resellers / solution providers to help clients without the IT support needed to manage them in-house. What I'd like is to pick the right platform, then move on to pick the right partners to provide it.

    If any of the solutions providers want to chip in with what to look for when picking providers of a similar technology, that would be useful though.

    There is an excellent review of the back-end systems for mail-order businesses done by Ernie Schnell, time to bring it up to date with something for the web world.

  9. Richard Condon Silver

    Chief Executive at Netalogue plc

    19 September 2006 16:17pm

    Richard Condon

    Netalogue - The Net Catalogue & E-Procurement Company

    If readers require a "business to business" specific web site solution. Netalogue provide a fast turn around highly recommended .NET / SQL development service for mid market companies.

    Particularly useful if there is a requirement for e-procurement controls to be incorporated into the e-business web site or if there is a demand for punchout or integration with a marketplace such as @UK, UNITY, IDeA, PECOS, Zanzibar, etc.. or a customers purchasing system such as ARIBA, SAP or Oracle.

    There are 3 points of solution entry, namely Online, Ascend and Plateu. 

    For more information see www.netalogue.com,

  10. Rizwan Chaudhary

    Recruitment Consultant at Darwin Recruitment

    12 July 2007 09:12am

    Rizwan Chaudhary

    Hello,

    I have been reading your this forum recently and come across your details from the message below. I am a recruitment consultant and currently have 2 urgent positions for j2ee and websphere commerce developers and was wondering whether you knew anyone who would be interested in this position. I am sorry to email you out of the blue but I have now run out of ideas as this niche skill is very limited with majoirty of the developers out there.

    Please let me know if possible. Many thanks.

    On 21:56:21 5 July 2004 Obi Felten wrote:

    Good list Ashley.

    I would add IBM Websphere Commerce Suite to Section 1. I would rate Websphere Commerce Suite and ATG Dynamo as the best enterprise solutions.

    Might be worth adding another category - ASP solutions for companies that don't want to develop their own bespoke site.

    6. ASPs:

    1) Venda - www.venda.com Low cost, decent function, based on the old boo platform. Used by Mothercare, BT Shop.

    2) Snow Valley - www.snowvalley.com - Microsoft-based. Used by White Company, Rohan

    3) Screenpages - www.screenpages.co.uk - Fatface, White Stuff

    Obi

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