3 Selecting a webshop solution

 

Scoring a provider

Scoring a providers e-commerce solution is about scoring the product, its price, and the service you can get.

The product

Technology

  • Underlying technology (Open source, proprietary, market share)
  • Uses HTML5, CSS3, JS standards ?
  • Responsive webdesign (adapts to small screens such as smartphone)
  • Database driven ?
  • Supports dynamic product/page creation ?
  • Template driven
  • Integration capabilities (API’s, XML, custom, of the shelve components)

 

Internet marketing

  • Level of  SEO en SEA support
  • Social media integration
  • Linking your own domain, linking into your existing website ?
  • Affiliate tracking (e.g. traffic coming from publicity on affiliate website to your webshop)
  • Coupon codes
  • E-mail marketing integration
  • Product reviews

 

International

  • Multi currency ?
  • Multiple payment processors – also the local ones !
  • Multi language (easy of running your webshop in multiple languages)

 

Back-end integration & modules

  • Role based backoffice
  • Order management & editing
  • Inventory tracking
  • Accounting
  • Transportation
  • Shipping integration

 

Functionality

  • Flexibility
  • User registration
  • Automated user interaction & follow up
  • Returns
  • Product options

 

Reporting capabilities

  • Sales reporting
  • Web Analytics


The price

  • Monthly fee ? (many have a free version, with more feature rich paid versions)
  • Transaction fee ? (some will charge a fee on each transaction
  • Data fee ? (some will charge if the amount of traffic to your website exceed data volume thresholds)
  • Support contract ?
  • Consultancy rate ?
  • Change management rate ?


The service

More important then functionality !
 

The Service:


SLA (service level agreement) = contractual  clause between the service provider and service recipient about the quality of the service
Contains formulations on response time in case of incidents & problems, downtime, backup quality, etc...

Examples:

  • <= 4 hours downtime / month
  • 4 hours response time for a priority 1 incident, 24x7
  • 8 hours response time for a priority 2 incident, 8x5
  • Max data loss <24 hours
  • Change request lead time: 3 working days
  • Escalation channels


Service capabilities

  1. Technical service desk ?
  2. Training & consultancy ?
  3. Project support ?
  4. Ongoing support & maintenance ?
  5. Local presence ?