This document outlines 10 technical considerations for evaluating e-commerce platforms: 1) scalability, 2) flexibility of the product catalog, 3) business user control, 4) search capabilities, 5) agility to implement new requests, 6) reporting and analytics, 7) use of standards, 8) integration with other systems, 9) support for a service-oriented architecture, and 10) support for business models beyond basic B2C e-commerce. The document provides questions to ask within each consideration to determine if a platform can meet current and future needs.
How to successfully onboard end-clients to a B2B Platform - Magento Imagine ...Divante
Magento Imagine 2018 Presentation
Developing eCommerce since 2004, I‘ve seen how successful B2B clients digitize their businesses and how they onboard users
Good Ecommerce - A Comprehensive Guide All about Good Ecommerce.Isabella
Inside this Free eBook, you will discover about the topics about accounting principles, ecommerce - the positive negative, ecommerce fundamentals, all about personal accounting, everyday accounting, fraud protection and e-commerce, improve conversion rates - effective content, managing an ecommerce business and shopping carts and online stores
As Head of eCommerce in 7-Eleven Thailand. Parin had establish the Omni Channel Strategy in his corporate. Empower the customer who buy online to be able to pay and pick up at the stores.
His slide crafted from the strategic 6 Omni channel excellences which have been implemented in 7-Eleven in 2012-2015. It's the result from the cooperation between Thailand and German consulting firm.
hi all my friends i uploaded this for your benefit .
i done my project with the help of my friend
my name is uzair haider
student of University of central punjab ,PAKISTAN
MY CONTACT NO IS +923089215800 :)
Mage Titans USA 2016 - Brendan Falkowski Designing the B2B ExperienceStacey Whitney
I spent the last four years advocating for responsive design as a scalable strategy to beat consumer’s expectations in a multi-device world. The B2C world shifted dramatically from designing for a screen to designing for users, which put tremendous pressure on B2B businesses to keep pace.
My last two years were focused on the B2B space and extending the considerations of RWD to customers that behave differently than a consumer but have the same critical eye.
This presentation details my thought process designing the user experience and services for the B2B customer and what it really takes to beat the curve.
How to successfully onboard end-clients to a B2B Platform - Magento Imagine ...Divante
Magento Imagine 2018 Presentation
Developing eCommerce since 2004, I‘ve seen how successful B2B clients digitize their businesses and how they onboard users
Good Ecommerce - A Comprehensive Guide All about Good Ecommerce.Isabella
Inside this Free eBook, you will discover about the topics about accounting principles, ecommerce - the positive negative, ecommerce fundamentals, all about personal accounting, everyday accounting, fraud protection and e-commerce, improve conversion rates - effective content, managing an ecommerce business and shopping carts and online stores
As Head of eCommerce in 7-Eleven Thailand. Parin had establish the Omni Channel Strategy in his corporate. Empower the customer who buy online to be able to pay and pick up at the stores.
His slide crafted from the strategic 6 Omni channel excellences which have been implemented in 7-Eleven in 2012-2015. It's the result from the cooperation between Thailand and German consulting firm.
hi all my friends i uploaded this for your benefit .
i done my project with the help of my friend
my name is uzair haider
student of University of central punjab ,PAKISTAN
MY CONTACT NO IS +923089215800 :)
Mage Titans USA 2016 - Brendan Falkowski Designing the B2B ExperienceStacey Whitney
I spent the last four years advocating for responsive design as a scalable strategy to beat consumer’s expectations in a multi-device world. The B2C world shifted dramatically from designing for a screen to designing for users, which put tremendous pressure on B2B businesses to keep pace.
My last two years were focused on the B2B space and extending the considerations of RWD to customers that behave differently than a consumer but have the same critical eye.
This presentation details my thought process designing the user experience and services for the B2B customer and what it really takes to beat the curve.
5 Key Features In A Multi Vendor eCommerce Website DevelopmentCSS Chopper
Do you want to create a multi-vendor eCommerce website? Know these must-have features before heading to the eCommerce website development service.
For more info: https://www.csschopper.com/blog/5-must-have-features-in-a-multi-vendor-ecommerce-website/
RSR ebook: Retail ecommerce in context: the next iterationLeigh Doyle
After years of steady ecommerce growth, there has been an unprecedented acceleration of the shift from physical stores to online shopping. Retailers are facing the limitations of their aging technology stack in allowing them to offer buy online pick up in store (BOPIS), social commerce, adding new payment methods, launching subscription programs and more. This study aims to understand how well retailers have been able to pivot to a digital-first world, the challenges they face, the opportunities nascent in the marketplace, and how their technology portfolios are able to support these shifts profitably.
How to reduce customer churn?
There are many ways to do that. First of all, customers should trust you. Sound easy but in the end, it’s extremely hard for a brand to gain trust. The market is very competitive and customers requirements are constantly growing. If you interesting about customer churn and how to stop it, we created a report about it.
Top eCommerce Trends 2021 | Online Retail & eCommerce Future TrendsMariya James
Know some of the exciting eCommerce trends that will rock in 2021. These retail and eCommerce future trends will decide the future of this industry. These eCommerce trends will definitely be a boom and provide a massive hit to the business owners.
Breaking the Mold: Embracing the Future with eCommercePrisyncCom
What if you don’t know much about eCommerce, though? How are you supposed to analyze new opportunities in order to find what may or may not be perfect for your business?
Looking for a free conference call service but not sure where to start? We've got you covered. In this presentaiton we compare 4 of the top free conference call providers and give you the top choice for small business owners.
Improve your omichannel strategy with better ecommerce☁Jake Weaver ☁
5 key success factors in this paper help guide development of big data apps optimized to support enterprise business opportunities — which often means turning to the cloud for scale and cost
effectiveness.
Laravel for e commerce build small store now and scale big laterKaty Slemon
Modern architecture of Laravel for eCommerce enables businesses to stay ahead of curve. Choose Laravel framework to build feature-rich eCommerce Store in 2022.
This is my presentation from April 15, 2015 to the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit.
The topic covers the six drivers of eCommerce for B2B, the use cases (with examples) of B2B eCommerce, and some of the applications of marketing automation in an eCommerce application
BetterCloud - A Customer Journey Deconstructed Putting Customers First to Dri...Nic Poulos
Presentation by Taylor Gould, VP of Marketing at BetterCloud, from the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit 2014. Taylor walks us through his approach to intelligent marketing automation and marketing-sales alignment in this presentation, "A Customer Journey Deconstructed Putting Customers First to Drive Revenue and Loyalty." BetterCloud provides insights, management, and security for cloud office platforms including Google Apps and Office 365.
Moving Beyond Mobile: Delivering a Seamless Digital Experience from Online to...Mozu
Learn how to deliver a seamless digital experience with this presentation from Jason Wallis, CTO of Mozu, featuring Adam Silverman, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.
Watch the webinar replay here: http://info.mozu.com/ecommerce-responsive-design-considerations-webinar.html
Grow Your Amazon Ebay Sales get eCommerce Business Solution Ali Afaq
• DIGITIXER Is an awesome hosted e-commerce services providing company that is empowering Manufactures/Retailers large and small with their easy-use, easy-to-manage, customizable online store and secure checkout. DIGITIXER manage your products; manage your inventory, track sales and more.
MauiService: B2B E-Commerce: Your Go-To Guide For A Successful B2B!Aya Sherif
Discover what you must know about B2B E-commerce, the 5 best ways for a suitable platform for your business needs and a bonus 13 specific B2B expectations.
Increase Mobile Conversions- Boost your business.Techugo
To increase mobile conversions, it's important to optimize your mobile website or app for user experience, making sure it's fast, responsive and easy to navigate. Additionally, providing clear and concise product information, as well as offering a secure and seamless checkout process, can help boost conversions.
5 Key Features In A Multi Vendor eCommerce Website DevelopmentCSS Chopper
Do you want to create a multi-vendor eCommerce website? Know these must-have features before heading to the eCommerce website development service.
For more info: https://www.csschopper.com/blog/5-must-have-features-in-a-multi-vendor-ecommerce-website/
RSR ebook: Retail ecommerce in context: the next iterationLeigh Doyle
After years of steady ecommerce growth, there has been an unprecedented acceleration of the shift from physical stores to online shopping. Retailers are facing the limitations of their aging technology stack in allowing them to offer buy online pick up in store (BOPIS), social commerce, adding new payment methods, launching subscription programs and more. This study aims to understand how well retailers have been able to pivot to a digital-first world, the challenges they face, the opportunities nascent in the marketplace, and how their technology portfolios are able to support these shifts profitably.
How to reduce customer churn?
There are many ways to do that. First of all, customers should trust you. Sound easy but in the end, it’s extremely hard for a brand to gain trust. The market is very competitive and customers requirements are constantly growing. If you interesting about customer churn and how to stop it, we created a report about it.
Top eCommerce Trends 2021 | Online Retail & eCommerce Future TrendsMariya James
Know some of the exciting eCommerce trends that will rock in 2021. These retail and eCommerce future trends will decide the future of this industry. These eCommerce trends will definitely be a boom and provide a massive hit to the business owners.
Breaking the Mold: Embracing the Future with eCommercePrisyncCom
What if you don’t know much about eCommerce, though? How are you supposed to analyze new opportunities in order to find what may or may not be perfect for your business?
Looking for a free conference call service but not sure where to start? We've got you covered. In this presentaiton we compare 4 of the top free conference call providers and give you the top choice for small business owners.
Improve your omichannel strategy with better ecommerce☁Jake Weaver ☁
5 key success factors in this paper help guide development of big data apps optimized to support enterprise business opportunities — which often means turning to the cloud for scale and cost
effectiveness.
Laravel for e commerce build small store now and scale big laterKaty Slemon
Modern architecture of Laravel for eCommerce enables businesses to stay ahead of curve. Choose Laravel framework to build feature-rich eCommerce Store in 2022.
This is my presentation from April 15, 2015 to the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit.
The topic covers the six drivers of eCommerce for B2B, the use cases (with examples) of B2B eCommerce, and some of the applications of marketing automation in an eCommerce application
BetterCloud - A Customer Journey Deconstructed Putting Customers First to Dri...Nic Poulos
Presentation by Taylor Gould, VP of Marketing at BetterCloud, from the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit 2014. Taylor walks us through his approach to intelligent marketing automation and marketing-sales alignment in this presentation, "A Customer Journey Deconstructed Putting Customers First to Drive Revenue and Loyalty." BetterCloud provides insights, management, and security for cloud office platforms including Google Apps and Office 365.
Moving Beyond Mobile: Delivering a Seamless Digital Experience from Online to...Mozu
Learn how to deliver a seamless digital experience with this presentation from Jason Wallis, CTO of Mozu, featuring Adam Silverman, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.
Watch the webinar replay here: http://info.mozu.com/ecommerce-responsive-design-considerations-webinar.html
Grow Your Amazon Ebay Sales get eCommerce Business Solution Ali Afaq
• DIGITIXER Is an awesome hosted e-commerce services providing company that is empowering Manufactures/Retailers large and small with their easy-use, easy-to-manage, customizable online store and secure checkout. DIGITIXER manage your products; manage your inventory, track sales and more.
MauiService: B2B E-Commerce: Your Go-To Guide For A Successful B2B!Aya Sherif
Discover what you must know about B2B E-commerce, the 5 best ways for a suitable platform for your business needs and a bonus 13 specific B2B expectations.
Increase Mobile Conversions- Boost your business.Techugo
To increase mobile conversions, it's important to optimize your mobile website or app for user experience, making sure it's fast, responsive and easy to navigate. Additionally, providing clear and concise product information, as well as offering a secure and seamless checkout process, can help boost conversions.
Whatever product or service your business offers, the Internet levels the playing field and lets you compete with bigger businesses, reaching customers around the world who can conveniently buy from you 24 hours a day.
And this presentation is your first step in doing just that…
By Trix Corp., a vibrant interactive agency based in Dubai.
E-commerce (also written as e-Commerce, eCommerce or similar variants), short for
electronic commerce, is trading in products or services using computer networks, such
as the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce,
electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online
transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management
systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce
typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle,
although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail.
A complete guide to developing a beautiful e commerce mobile application like...Bytes Technolab Inc.
Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, and Shopify the most trending eCommerce applications that people generally used for online shopping. Currently, the way do the business is different from traditional business methods. Most businesses create own shopping applications like Walmart, Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, Shopify and many more to sell stuff online. The trend of online shopping is increasing because no one wants to waste precious time standing in long queues at the market place and they don’t want to wait for their turn during payment. Well, with the eCommerce applications, all can be able to do shopping from home without wasting fuel and time.
Oracle Commerce Using ATG & Endeca - Do It Yourself SeriesKeyur Shah
After 2 years of marathon run I was able to complete the self-published book on Oracle Commerce (ATG & Endeca) which covers both the commerce product installation, configuration, concepts, architecture, and some of the open source tools that you can use such as Vagrant, Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, and Splunk.
This book is absolutely free as my contribution to the industry, colleagues, and the commerce community.
The motivation behind this book is “no books written on the subject” and “the goal to make the journey of beginners as painless as possible”.
Hope this will be useful to not just the beginners but also those who embrace open source tools and technologies along with branded products and services.
With the significant advancements in technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing many business aspects. This also includes the rapidly flourishing eCommerce industry. AI is helping businesses achieve more by providing relevant and accurate information to the business owners and marketers. With this emerging new technology of Artificial Intelligence, a lot can be done for eCommerce development.
To know more visit at https://www.thinktanker.io/blog/15-ways-artificial-intelligence-is-helping-ecommerce-marketers.html
How Much Time Does It Take to Build An E-commerce App?Inexture Solutions
Discover how easy it is to develop an e-commerce mobile app. More consumers are choosing to shop on their mobile devices, making it essential for businesses to have a mobile eCommerce app.
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We are going to cover the Analysis of Website and Web Application Development, and how to choose one for your requirements.
ultroNeous Technologies is a Top Web App Development Company in USA & India. We provide solutions for Mobile apps, Website & Software Development also Digital Marketing Services. ultroNeous is a concept - a concept of innovation, customer service, and exceptional creativity.
"We are going to define what is software development and web development, compare them with each other, what skills are required, and what kind of hardware and software requirements are there.
ultroNeous Technologies is Web and Mobile Application Development Company based in the USA and India. Serving it's clientele with their custom software requirements."
B2B Ecommerce through Magento and how integration will helpAPPSeCONNECT
It has been a great year for B2B E-commerce and it is important to keep an eye on the digital and technology trends to embrace the success you want for your business.
The purpose of this webinar was to bring forward the amazing B2B capabilities of Magento and how integration with back-office systems / ERP will help your business become more efficient.
We covered:
· B2B Digital Commerce Trends
· Assessing your needs / How to create a MoSCoW list
· InSync Magento / SAP Business Connector
· Featured Case Study
For more such webinars, please keep an eye on:
http://www.appseconnect.com/webinars
In this article, we give a brief overview of the most popular B2B e-commerce platforms and their must-have features.
#woocommerce #amazon #b2becommerce #bigcommerce #ecommerce #manufacturing #prestashop #shopify #mrpeasy #mrpsoftware
Model Attribute Check Company Auto PropertyCeline George
In Odoo, the multi-company feature allows you to manage multiple companies within a single Odoo database instance. Each company can have its own configurations while still sharing common resources such as products, customers, and suppliers.
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
Read| The latest issue of The Challenger is here! We are thrilled to announce that our school paper has qualified for the NATIONAL SCHOOLS PRESS CONFERENCE (NSPC) 2024. Thank you for your unwavering support and trust. Dive into the stories that made us stand out!
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
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1. An Oracle White Paper
March 2011
The Top 10 Technical Considerations for
Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
2. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
Introduction
As the e-commerce Websites of more and more businesses come into their own as significant
revenue drivers, major retailers are now recognizing their online stores as mission-critical
businesses. And as they pay more attention to the online channel, many e-tailers are finding
that the current e-commerce platform can no longer support their growth or evolving business
needs. E-commerce executives and their IT counterparts are starting to look for moresophisticated applications that can best meet their current and future needs.
Selecting the right e-commerce application for the long term can be a difficult exercise. It’s not
easy to base a decision on both current requirements and a vague, undetermined set of future
needs that have not yet even hit the planning stages. Plus, at first glance, e-commerce
Website functionality seems pretty straightforward and almost commoditized: all e-commerce
Websites have product catalogs and offer ways to search for and navigate to desired items,
they all have shopping carts, they all offer special promotions like free shipping, and they all
offer secure transactions.
But those common, expected features belie a complex set of capabilities required to keep
best-in-class Web stores appealing, responsive, and performing well at high transaction
volumes over the long term. The difference between e-commerce application capabilities can
spell the difference between an e-commerce site’s success and failure.
This white paper offers 10 considerations to help guide the selection criteria for your next
e- commerce platform—which should be the last e-commerce platform you ever need to buy.
1
3. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
Consideration 1: Scalability
Will the site perform efficiently through traffic peaks and valleys?
Scalability may be one of the most overused terms in IT marketing. Software makers would have you
believe that every application ever written was destined to be scalable from inception. But if any
application has to be scalable, it is certainly a major e-commerce Website. Sluggish internal applications
are annoying, but unresponsive customer-facing applications will frustrate your customers, drive them
to your competitors, and kill your online business.
An e-commerce Website is only as good as its ability to handle its peak traffic. As your Website
popularity increases, it needs to scale with minimal effort so you can avoid incurring disproportionate
infrastructure management costs.
When evaluating e-commerce applications, look for businesses that are similar in size and profile to
yours. Ask yourself the following questions:
•
What is the peak number of visits (or open sessions) the site has supported?
•
How many orders per day does the site take?
•
How many page views per visit does each visitor make on average?
•
How big or complex is the product catalog, and how many categories, products, and stock-keeping
units (SKUs) are in it?
•
What is the average response time of the home page and typical detail pages?
•
How much hardware, software, and infrastructure are required to handle these volumes?
Consideration 2: The Product Catalog
Will today’s catalog schema meet tomorrow’s demands?
Your product catalog is the online repository for every item you sell. It has to effectively promote the
items you most want to push, and simultaneously help your customers find the items they are looking
for. But poorly constructed product catalogs can be rigid and uncompromising, especially if the
product attributes you want to store don’t naturally align with the definitions set in your e-commerce
application. To make an inflexible product catalog accommodate business realities, companies end up
misusing data fields, filling irrelevant mandatory data fields with gibberish, duplicating data in multiple
places, and inventing esoteric codes to artificially accommodate information the catalog doesn’t
natively support.
It can be difficult to predict what kind of products you will be selling in the future, and what other
applications may need to populate your catalogs. You have to prepare for the unknown. The
combination of an inflexible application and short-sighted business planning results in potentially
2
4. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
catastrophic inflexibility. Companies lose the agility needed to quickly adjust offers and promotions
and to continually adapt to changing e-commerce business needs.
When evaluating e-commerce applications, understand how flexible the product catalog really is. Ask
yourself the following questions:
•
Can the catalog represent different types of products with different attributes, and what are
the limitations?
•
How many product categories and subcategories will the catalog support?
•
Can a single product or subcategory exist in multiple categories without data duplication?
•
Can different catalogs be defined for purposes other than a business-to-consumer (B2C) store?
•
How easy is it to relate accessories and create bundles?
Consideration 3: Business User Control
Will my application directly empower my merchandisers, marketing managers, and
other business owners?
Many IT managers long for a world where there are no demanding business users. They long for the
end of business requests that seemingly come from left field, or arrive urgently at the last minute. They
crave a way to offload day-to-day updates and edits back to the business. Many e-commerce
applications require IT resources for daily maintenance, let alone major projects. As a result, your
business users are totally disconnected from the daily workings of your e-commerce site. They send
their change requests to IT, and IT has no choice but to react. IT has difficulty planning and
prioritizing, as they deal with a continual barrage of urgent high-priority updates.
But business users like to take control, and every task that they can safely do themselves means one
less task that IT will have to do.
When evaluating e-commerce applications, you must make sure that the application you choose will be
technically and architecturally sound with proven capabilities. But also look for tools that your business
managers can use themselves. Ask yourself the following questions:
•
Can product and category managers control their parts of the catalog?
•
Can merchandisers define promotions and discounts on products, orders, and shipments without IT
involvement?
•
Can a targeted e-mail campaign be sent without IT extracting the customer lists?
•
Can executives pull their own standard reports, and even create their own new ones?
•
Can business users directly manage critical and constantly changing content such as the home page?
•
Can business users do all these activities with the confidence that they won’t “break” the Website?
3
5. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
Consideration 4: Search
How easily can customers find what they want, and how easily can I promote the
products I want to push based on customer searches?
The search box is often the first tool an e-commerce customer uses. There was a time when
expectations of search were pretty low. Today, users expect search to not only find but also guide them
to the products they’re looking for. A search experience that really works for your customers can
significantly increase online revenue. However, your own site search is just one piece of the puzzle.
External search engines such as Yahoo! and Google also need to find your products. This causes
headaches for site managers with dynamically generated e-commerce pages, because search engine
spiders are likely to misinterpret what they find on a dynamically generated page. As we all know from
our own online experiences, there is nothing more frustrating to customers than searching for but not
finding something that we know is on your site somewhere.
When evaluating e-commerce applications, look for business controls that support a compelling and
personal search experience. Ask yourself the following questions:
•
How easily can I integrate an e-commerce search experience into my online store?
•
What product attributes can customers search on?
•
What happens if customers search using terms that are similar to but not the exact words of my
product descriptions? What if they make spelling mistakes?
•
Can I learn about my customers based on their searches?
•
Is the search engine preintegrated and catalog aware?
•
Can I present relevant promotions as customers search my site?
•
What business control do I have in creating filtering and navigation paths?
•
How easily can external search spiders index my dynamic site?
Consideration 5: Agility
How easily can I implement business requests to monitor and respond to an individual
Web visitor’s behavior?
Imagine this scenario and see if it rings any bells: The marketing team of an electronics e-tailer wants to
push high-definition televisions (HDTVs) over the next two weeks. For every Web visitor who looks at
more than five HDTVs and for whom they have an e-mail address, they want to send an e-mail
presenting the special offers.
IT: Sounds doable with a little coding.
Marketing: Here’s a new wrinkle—we want to send the e-mail to anyone viewing the five HDTVs
within the two-week period, not in a single session.
4
6. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
IT: That’s trickier. We’ll need to store and increment a value, which means a database schema change.
Marketing: We don’t want a customer to receive more than one e-mail if they look at ten HDTVs.
IT: This is turning into a pretty big effort for a two-week promotion. I’m not sure I can even get the
changes complete and tested in two weeks.
Marketing: We want a report on results.
IT: You’ve got to be kidding me!
Similar dramas are played out in every online business. IT is frustrated that marketers don’t appreciate
the difficulty of implementing their requests, especially with their tight time frames. But this type of
business need is exactly what e-commerce platforms must support. In an ideal world, an e-commerce
application would implement these kinds of requests without any page, code, or database changes. A
manager would simply describe what to monitor and what should happen when the application finds
activity that fits the criteria. The application would take it from there.
When evaluating e-commerce applications, look for a solution that can monitor customer activity on
your site, and can then take action based on identified behavior. Ask yourself the following questions:
•
What Website behaviors can be easily monitored?
•
Is monitoring restricted to a single Web visit, or can it span multiple sessions?
•
What automatic actions can I take once I recognize a desired behavior?
•
How do I manage business rules and marketing scenarios?
•
Most importantly, how much time and resources will be required to implement these activities, and
can they be reused?
Consideration 6: Reporting and Analytics
Do I have all the features I need to understand my online business?
Your e-commerce Website stores a treasure trove of information about your customers, their behavior,
and their preferences. But businesses typically struggle to figure out how to leverage the business value
this data holds. Configuring your site to capture and log all the available information can be an arduous
job, especially when the data is coming from a large variety of sources. Furthermore, you may be using
the data in different ways over time, and you may need new information to drive specific campaigns.
Or, you may want to base campaigns on different behavior from what you’ve been tracking.
When evaluating e-commerce applications, remember that you can’t control what you can’t measure.
Having rich insight into the running of your online store is critical to your ongoing success. Ask
yourself the following questions:
•
How does the site capture and store both historic and behavioral data?
•
What insights can I get from customers’ searches?
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7. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
•
What preintegrated tools extract business intelligence from this data?
•
What reports and dashboards offer visibility into my business?
•
How easy is it to monitor business metrics like conversion rates and average order sizes?
•
Do the reports allow me to drill down to find the data behind the results?
•
How easily can I create ad hoc reports to get quick answers to specific questions?
•
Can I merge Web data with my non-Web data to see a multichannel view of my business?
Consideration 7: Standards
Is the application built on a standards-based platform?
You’ve probably seen some nice applications that solve all sorts of business problems, only to later
discover that they were coded in a language, database, or framework not supported by the skills of your
people. If you adopt the application and train your staff to support it, they’ll be concerned about career
limitations by tying themselves too closely to this esoteric solution.
E-commerce is no longer a renegade outpost of IT. It’s a fundamental, mission-critical organization
within a business’ systems portfolio. It must run on a standards-based platform that can be supported
by standard skill sets across the organization and in the wider marketplace. You’ll want the flexibility to
go to a broad selection of agencies and systems integrators for development. In today’s enterprise
applications, the technology playing field has narrowed to either a Java/J2EE or Microsoft .NET
architecture. Furthermore, industry analysts such as Gartner strongly recommend that businesses adopt
a “buy” rather than a “build” approach when looking for e-commerce applications.
Consideration 8: Integration
How easily can the application integrate with my other systems?
The e-commerce Website, once a standalone silo, is now a highly integrated application that touches
many other systems and processes. The team that develops and supports it contains a mix of technical
and business professionals who drive an important part of the corporate strategy. As businesses
become more imaginative about how they mix their Web channel with other customer touchpoints,
clean and easy integration is mandatory. Just about every element of an e-commerce application may be
either self-contained or driven by other systems.
When evaluating e-commerce applications, look for modularity, which will let you customize or tweak
each individual aspect of the application to meet your unique business requirements. In addition, with a
modular solution, you won’t compromise the integrity of the rest of your site in the process. Ask
yourself the following questions:
•
Where does the application store customer data?
•
Which system owns the master product catalog?
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8. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
•
Which application owns the current SKU inventory count?
•
Which application owns pricing?
•
Which application does the financial reporting?
•
How are orders communicated and fulfilled, and what happens when things go wrong? How are
credit card details authorized, and how is transaction settlement handled?
•
How is fraud detection handled?
•
How can promotions and discounts be synchronized with the other channels?
•
How can the Web application integrate with in-store systems for in-store pickup or returns
processing?
Consideration 9: Interoperability
Does the application function within a service-oriented architecture?
Many forward-thinking businesses want their different applications to be able to “play together” so
that new composite applications and businesses processes can be quickly assembled to increase market
competitiveness. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and the ability to wire applications together based
upon a Web services backbone will be important elements in improving a business’s ability to respond
to changing business conditions. Your e-commerce application may be an integral part of any such
architecture. This is true both for the data your e-commerce application stores (such as information on
customers, products, and pricing) and for the business processes it supports (such as order placement
and inventory updates).
When evaluating e-commerce applications, look for flexible enterprise architectures and think carefully
about how the application can interoperate with other systems. Ask yourself the following questions:
•
Can the application support business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-business-to-consumer
(B2B2C) business processes?
•
Can the application support other interactions beyond shopping, such as Web self-service or
customer care?
•
What information in the e-commerce application is presented through Web services, and how does
the application do this?
•
Which business processes are available as Web services, so that other applications can easily
invoke them?
•
How can the application connect to my enterprise SOA, to stay aware of important business events
happening elsewhere in my business?
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9. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms
Consideration 10: Synergy
Will the application support business models beyond B2C e-commerce?
IT organizations everywhere are looking for every opportunity to maximize their technology
investments across their enterprise. Some are recognizing similarities among the solutions for different
business channels, including B2C Websites, different brand sites, small business e-commerce sites,
enterprise accounts portals, and channel partner portals. They imagine that it might be easy to
consolidate these channels onto a single platform. Although initially your business probably selected an
e-commerce application based on its ability to meet the needs of one part of your business, it’s a good
idea to look at where and how that application could support your other business relationships.
Simple B2C e-commerce applications are built to support individual customers, orders, and credit
cards, but business relationships can get much more complicated than that. When your top-tier
business accounts buy in volume from you, they don’t want to enter a credit card number for every
order they place.
When evaluating e-commerce applications, expect that you will eventually want to leverage your ecommerce application investment in other parts of your business. Understand how the application can
support those requirements up front. Ask yourself the following questions:
•
Can the e-commerce application support customer profiles and organizational profiles such as an
“account” or a “business”?
•
Can hierarchical businesses structures be modeled?
•
Can different roles be defined, and permissions set against them?
•
Can different contract types, catalogs, price lists, and discounting structures be set up, perhaps for
every company I do business with?
•
Can the application support tiered and volume discounting structures?
•
Can purchase limits and approval processes be easily implemented?
•
Can purchases be made against cost centers and purchase orders, as well as be followed up with
invoicing?
Conclusion
When so many e-commerce applications appear to share the same set of functions and features at the
“checkbox level,” the real differences don’t become apparent until you examine the fine print. With a
heritage of powering the e-commerce sites of some of the largest businesses in the world, and with
best-in-class ratings from leading analysts, Oracle can expertly guide you through the key questions to
ask and criteria to consider as you prepare to invest in an e-commerce platform that will help your
business succeed in a competitive market.
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