Whitepaper Smile E-commerce 2010_FINAL - Guide Open Source

E-CommerceOpen Source SolutionsAn overview of tools and the main

functional concepts of a trading site

Writers:Frédéric de GombertFlorent Sabourin

For further information: www.smile.frTel.: +33 (0)1 41 40 11 00 Mailto: [email protected]

E-Commerce, open source solutions

[1] [1] [1] [1] PPPPREAMBLEREAMBLEREAMBLEREAMBLE

[1.1] Smile

Smile is a company comprised of engineers specialising in the implementation ofopen source solutions and the integration of systems based on open source solutions.Smile is a member of APRIL, an association focused on the promotion and protectionof free software.

With over 350 employees in France, and 430 throughout the world, Smile is theleading French Open Source solution company.

Since around the year 2000, Smile has been actively monitoring the technologicalmarket, allowing us to identify, to test and assess the most promising open sourcesolutions. We can then present our clients with the strongest, most sustainable,most efficient products available.

This approach has given way to a whole range of white papers covering variousdifferent application sectors. Content management (2004); portals (2005); businessintelligence (2006); PHP frameworks (2007); virtualisation (2007); digital documentmanagement (2008); and ERPs (2008). Among the works published in 2009, the“Open Source VPNs”, and “Open Source flow controls and Firewalls” articles, withinthe “Systems and Infrastructures” collection are also of interest.

Each of these works offers a selection of the best open source solutions in therelevant domain, their respective qualities, and feedback on operational use.

As stable open source solutions slowly gain ground in new sectors, Smile will bepresent to offer customers the benefit of these solutions risk free. Smile appears inthe French I.T. market as the integration service provider of choice, to assist majorcompanies in adopting the best open source solutions.

Smile has also developed a range of service offers over the last few years. Aconsultancy department has assisted our clients since 2005, through preprojectphases, solution research, and project support. In 2000, Smile created a graphicsstudio which in 2007 became known as The Interactive Media Agency. This agencyoffers not only graphic design services, but also e-marketing, editorial, and richinterface expertise. Smile also has an agency specializing in Third-party ApplicationMaintenance, application support and application processing. Smile offices can befound in Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Bordeaux and Montpellier, with presence inNetherlands (BeNeLux office), Spain, Switzerland, the Ukraine and Morocco.

© Copyright – Smile - Open Source Solutions – All unauthorised reproduction is strictly forbidden


[1.1.1] Some Smile references

a) Web sites

Laboratoires Boiron, Foncia, Crédit Coopératif, EMI Music, Salon de l’Agriculture,Mazars, Areva, Société Générale, Gîtes de France, Patrice Pichet, Groupama, Eco-Emballage, CFnews, CEA, Prisma Pub, Véolia, NRJ, JCDecaux, Larousse, 01Informatique, Spie, PSA, Boiron, Dassault-Systèmes, Action Contre la Faim, BNPParibas, Air Pays de Loire, Forum des Images, IFP, BHV, ZeMedical, Gallimard,Cheval Mag, Afssaps, CNIL…

b) Portals and Intranets

Eurosport, HEC, Bouygues Telecom, Prisma, Veolia, Arjowiggins, INA, Primagaz,Croix Rouge, Invivo, Faceo, Château de Versailles, Ipsos, VSC Technologies, Sanef,Explorimmo, Bureau Veritas, Région Centre, Dassault Systèmes, Fondationd’Auteuil, Korian, PagesJaunes Annonces, Primagaz…

c) Electronic Document Management and ECM

Agefiph, Primagaz, UCFF, Apave, Géoservices, Renault F1 Team, INRIA, CIDJ,SNCD, Ecureuil Gestion, CS informatique, Serimax, Véolia Propreté, NetasQ,Corep, Packetis, Alstom Power Services, Mazars…

d) E-business

Furet du Nord, Camif Collectivité, La Halle, De Dietrich, Adenclassifieds, Macif,Gîtes de France, GPdis, Longchamp, Projectif, ETS, Bain & Spa, Yves Rocher,Bouygues Immobilier, Nestlé, Stanhome, AVF Périmédical, CCI, Pompiers deFrance, Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique…

e) Business Intelligence and ERP

Lafarge, Groupe Accueil, Anevia, Projectif, Xinek, Companeo, Advans, Point P,Mindscape, Loyalty Experts, Cecim, Espace Loggia, Nouvelles Frontières, France24,La Poste, HomeCineSolutions, Vocatis, Skyrock, France Domicile, Polyexpert,Cadremploi, Cmonjob, Meilleurmobile.com…

f) Infrastructure and Hosting

Kantar, Pierre Audoin Consultants, Rexel, Motor Presse, OSEO, Sport24, SETRAG,Canal-U, Institut Mutualiste Montsouris, ETS, Ionis, Osmoz, SIDEL, Atel Hotels,Cadremploi, Institut Français du Pétrole, Mutualité Française…



[1.2] This White Paper

E-commerce has literally exploded over the last few years: with a turnover of 20billion Euros in 2008 (25% more than 2007) the number of online shoppers is inconstant progression (over 65% of web users have already made an online purchase)with an ever-greater number of traders, both new and established, opening theirown online shop.

A recent Forrester1 study showed impressive projections, with growth of 68 billion inonline European retails sales in 2009 and up to 114 billion by 2014, representing anincrease in average yearly expenditure per household of from €483 to €601 for thissame period.

It is difficult, then, to ignore this new digital revolution and the associated OpenSource solutions which play an ever-more important role.

This White Paper proposes an overview of Open Source E-Commerce solutions. Wewill present a selection of the best tools, and then review the main functions,indicating how each tool performs.

In order to select the right tools on which to build an E-Commerce platform, it isimportant to understand the fundamental concepts of a trading site, we endeavourto explain these concepts in the first part of this White Paper.

E-commerce touches upon a wide variety of issues, such as Customer Relations,Business Management, Logistics, Web-marketing, etc. We will not go into each ofthese issues here, as they are far too vast and specific.

1 http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/western_european_online_retail_forecast%2C_2009_to/q/id/5543/t/2


E‐commerce turnover in billons of Euros

in 2008

Source: iOE Study – E‐commerce report 2008/Fevad/KPMG

E‐commerce turnover in billons of Euros

in 2008

Source: iOE Study – E‐commerce report 2008/Fevad/KPMG


[1.3] The benefits of an Open Source Solution

Open Source solutions are gaining new ground at an incredible rate year after yearin all areas of application. New key players are emerging and there is now a provenlogic to the Open Source business model. Solutions are ever-more mature and arenow seen as very real alternatives to proprietary solutions.

Before focusing on functionality, let’s take a look at the benefits that these OpenSource solutions provide.

The financial benefits are the most obvious reason for choosing an Open Sourcesolution. While implementing an Open Source solution is never free of all costs, it isa great deal cheaper than implementing a proprietary solution. An Open Sourcesolution can prove up to 5-10 times cheaper to integrate.

Services also generally cost less, as the very “open” nature of the product lends itselfto knowledge sharing.

As solutions reach maturity, however, the cost factor is no longer the most importantissue to consider.

The main arguments for Open Source solutions are:

• The non-dependence or limited dependence, on the editor. We know thatchanging tools can be very expensive, and editors can be tempted to profit fromthe ‘golden goose’ of clients who have become captives. This scenario is oftenreferred to as vendor lock-in.

• Durability is another strong criterion. Open Source solutions may not quitehave a guarantee of “eternal youth”, but the availability of their source code toa community of clients and partners guarantees widespread distribution of theknow-how associated with the implementation of these solutions, and as suchtheir development.

• The “Open” aspect is also a big issue. Open Source solutions are generallymore compliant with standards, and more open to the possibility of addingmodules.

As regards durability, the worst that can happen with an Open Source solution isthat the community can gradually lose interest in the solution, generally inpreference of a more promising solution. As such the product may one day need to bereplaced, but at least the winding-down process is slow allowing the client ampletime to migrate to another solution.

It is important to also point out that even if the editor one day winds down, thecommunity remains and can continue working on the product and its evolution, thisis the very principle of Open Source solutions.



As for the “Open” aspect, while in theory it is essential that the modifications can bemade to the source; in practise this can be risky. As such it is not in these terms thatthe “Open” aspect is of benefit, but in its capacity to accept extensions, and tointerface with other applications.

An editor with commercial objectives doesn’t always have purely the clients’ bestinterest at heart. The editor operates in a competitive market so it goes withoutsaying that they want their tool to be better than their competitor’s, but once well-established, the editor may come to the conclusion that:

• Their product must be efficient, but not overly-so, as more servers mean morelicenses.

• The product must be solid, but not too much so, as support services must besold as well.

• The product must be open, but not too much so, so as to maintain control of theclient.

We are not saying that editors are calculating to the point where they would lessenthe quality of their product; we are merely saying that the strategic priority is notnecessary given to these issues.



Content[1] PREAMBLE..........................................................................2

[1.1]SMILE...............................................................................................2

[1.2]THIS WHITE PAPER...............................................................................4

[1.3]THE BENEFITS OF AN OPEN SOURCE SOLUTION ..............................................5

[2] FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS .................................................8

[2.1]WHAT ARE E-COMMERCE TOOLS USED FOR? ..................................................8

[2.2]DIRECT, INFORM, TRANSFORM, ANALYSE .....................................................9

[2.3]THE TRADING SITE WITHIN THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS. ...................................15

[3] THE SELECTION OF TOOLS...............................................18

[3.1]PREAMBLE........................................................................................18

[3.2]OSCOMMERCE...................................................................................18

[3.3]MAGENTO........................................................................................20

[3.4]PRESTASHOP.....................................................................................21

[3.5]OFBIZ............................................................................................22

[3.6]UBERCART........................................................................................23

[3.7]OTHERS..........................................................................................24

[4] FUNCTIONALITY................................................................26

[4.1]CATALOGUE......................................................................................26

[4.2]SALES TUNNEL ..................................................................................47

[4.3]BACK OFFICE....................................................................................59

[4.4]EXTERNAL INTERFACES..........................................................................71

[5] SUMMARY.........................................................................75



[2] [2] [2] [2] FFFFUUUUNDAMENTALNDAMENTALNDAMENTALNDAMENTAL CONCEPTSCONCEPTSCONCEPTSCONCEPTS

[2.1] What are e-commerce tools used for?

[2.1.1] What is sold on a trading site?

One can find almost anything on the Internet, but not everything is sold in the sameway.

First, we must distinguish between:

• Physical products, which must be stored, handled, delivered

• Services, which are purchased online to be used at some point: hotel room,theatre tickets, etc.

• Digital products and services, which can be delivered by the web: the postingof a job offer, subscriptions to The Times online, iTunes music purchases, etc.

Each of these products has its own complications and limitations which all markettools are not necessarily capable of taking into consideration: e.g. the notion of areservation calendar for tourist services, stock management for physical products,content security for digital products, etc.

[2.1.2] Sell but not just that

An e-commerce solution is not a mere online sales solution.

Several trading sites use tools which do not manage the act of the online purchase.Certain products and services can be too complex, too specific or too expensive to bepurchased directly, by any method of electronic payment.

Even without online sales, traders sometimes just want to display a structuredcatalogue with prices that can be varied from one customer to another or from oneoption to another. Saint Maclou2, for example, presents its full catalogue on its site,but does not offer online purchasing; instead it includes a “request an estimate”option allowing the sales cycle to take place in a different manner.

2http://www.saint-maclou.com/



[2.2] Direct, Inform, Transform, Analyse

As we have already mentioned e-commerce is an area that is full bloom. Each day,new trading sites open on the net. In 2009, they numbered almost 50,000 in Francealone.

Any company that wishes to launch online activity is rapidly confronted with therecurring issues of the e-commerce world:

• Directing: How to draw potential customers to their site? How to direct themin the different product/service sections?

• Informing: How to present their products favourably? How to highlight theirleading products?

• Transforming: How to encourage the customer to place a product in theirbasket and to proceed with the purchase? How to improve sales?

• Analysing: How to monitor the commercial performance of their shop in orderto improve it?

While the responses to these questions may not be directly given by a softwaresolution, we will see that they must be taken into consideration when choosing asolution.

[2.2.1] Directing

There are two main axes in the process of directing potential customers, Attract andGuide:


Attract

Marketing strategiesMarketing strategies

Optimisation of naturalindexing


ReferencingReferencing

Guide

Clear namingClear naming

Good ergonomic practises (the capability of going Back, breadcrumb trail, etc.)


A powerful search engineA powerful search engine

Access to products according to different axes/criteria (price, product type, collection, etc)


Attract

Marketing strategiesMarketing strategies



ReferencingReferencing

Guide

Clear namingClear naming



A powerful search engineA powerful search engine




a) Attracting

Traffic is mainly generated via marketing strategies (brand recognition, thecompetitor context, communication campaigns, a buzz around a product, etc.);nevertheless, tools have a direct effect on traffic: natural indexing, affiliationservices, etc.

Manual indexing

Optimising natural indexing has become a matter of paramount importance for e-commerce sites. Certain aspects relate to the general design of the site and itsnavigation, others relate to the matrix or framework and formatting, but not all e-commerce solutions are equal in this respect.

Some key points:

• Ensure that all product pages, including complex ones, can be accessed bysearch engines. For example, if a product exists in several colours, a Googlesearch using the product name associated with any of these colours mustreturn a link to the site.

• Choose titles and keywords which make sense to the web-user. It can often bevery tempting to use technical terms in a catalogue lexicon, but these are notthe terms that the web-user thinks in. For example, we sometimes find theterm layette for baby clothes, a term which is not widely used by web-users.

• Enter metadata for each product sheet (some tools will do this automatically)

• Provide a logical site map. Most search engines do not analyse site maps withover 500 links. So watch out if you have a complicated tree-structure.

• Make sure that your URL’s can be understood by the web-user (for exampleavoid having a product sheet with an address like www.mysite.com/form.php?i d=32&brand=samsung use www.mysite.com/samsung/television-lcd-l32b450.html instead).

Please see our White Paper on indexing for further information on best practices.

Affiliation

Affiliation is common practice among e-traders; the objective of affiliation is to makeones site and products known by paying other sites to display your advert. Paymentoptions vary: pay-per-click i.e. per visit; or per purchase i.e. by turnover generated;or by action i.e. based on receipt of completed feedback forms.

This is the basis of the Ad Sense affiliation program: Google make the serviceavailable for both parties: the trader and the affiliate, and take a little commissionalong the way. On top of this service, Google also serves as affiliate by displaying



content on its own pages, notably on its search engine pages. Nevertheless, thedissemination of display notices throughout the display network is not entirelycontrolled by the trader.

We note that there exists an Open Source alternative, Open X, which is an affiliationplatform on which you can build your own network of affiliates and manage youradverts.

Loyalty

If the loyalty of your customers goes beyond CRM, you will see that some e-commerce tools offer a certain number of features which promote customer loyalty:

• Management of “refer a friend” programs

• Management of private sales

• Management of newsletters

• Management of customised promotional offers (based on purchasingbehaviour)

• Loyalty points based on purchase amounts and volumes

• Etc.

“Refer a friend”

The “refer a friend” concept is the simple application of an age-old principal i.e. thatof “recommendation”, via the channel of the web. Basically customers are invited torecommend the site to a friend, so that they may sign-up and place an order. Inorder to encourage this practice, both the initial customer and their friend receives areward, often in the form of points or a gift certificate. Certain “private sale” sitespush the concept even further by limiting access to the site to this basis, wherein aweb user can only access the site if they have been referred by a friend who isalready a member. This strategy reinforces the notion exclusivity, and as suchincreases the likelihood of purchase.

b) Guiding

The way in which a web-user is guided is, on the other hand, an affair of bestfunctional practices and ergonomics. Here are some pointers:

• Work on a clear and explicit nomenclature. Find the right ratio between thenumber of tree-structure levels and the number of products per category. Thenumber of clicks a web-user has to make to arrive at a given product must bereduced to the bare minimum – a tree-structure which is too complicated willoften seriously increase the number of abandoned purchases.



• Respect all best practices as regards “traditional” ergonomics: include abreadcrumb trail retracing the path the user has navigated so that they canreturn to the previous level at any stage; ensure that the navigator “back”button works with your site (some Flash sites, for example, are not compatiblewith this button).

• Implement a powerful search engine which gives pertinent results. We willtake a deeper look at this tool, which is central to any trading site, later in thisdocument.

• Multiply the paths which offer access to a product. All web-users do not thinkalike and so will not follow the same path. We will see that modern e-commerce tools offer several paths to the same product: multi-categorisation isthe capability of associating a product to several categories and tree-structurelevels. Facet navigation allows successive filtering of the catalogue based onseveral criteria such as price, brand, colour, etc. These are two commonpractices.

[2.2.2] Informing

Presenting products well is also something dealt with by the company’s web-marketing and conception strategy, we often talk of e-merchandising:

• Promoting the product with good images, a selection of views, a zoomcapability, or even a short video presentation

• Detailed information on the product (technical details), on the associatedservices (guarantees, maintenance, etc.), and more generally on anything thatdifferentiates you from your competitor

• Management of crossed sales and sales incentives

• “Intelligent” management of descriptions. As such, in the case where a givenproduct exists in several colours or sizes, we avoid creating a product sheet bydescription.



[2.2.3] Transforming

Transformation is, of course, the crucial act, managed by what is referred to as the“sales tunnel”, that is to say, the steps from the finalising the order to confirmationof payment. We refer to this as a “tunnel” because it is a process during which theclient must not be distracted from the act of purchasing.

Here again, there are a certain number of best practices which encourage thecustomer to enter the sales tunnel. Here are a few:

• Add to basket. The “Add to basket” button must be clearly visible andaccessible without having to scroll the page. Studies have shown that largebuttons promote the act of purchasing.

• Basket visibility. The basket and its content must remain visible on all pages;the web-user must be able to access a summary of their basket content at anytime.

• "Distance to promotion" information. If delivery is free on sales over a certainamount, it is a good idea to specify the amount the customer has leftseparating them from free delivery. Some sites even offer a selection ofproducts in this price range which can be added to the basket in one click.



• The order process. This must be as short and clear as possible: forms shouldonly include information this is absolutely necessary (this is not the place toask customers about their purchasing habits), all text should be there to helpthe customer understand the process. Services3 are also available which onlyask for the user’s telephone number and then use a directory to autofill fields.We can also promote “express” purchases on single articles.

• Identifiable purchase steps. All of the steps must be clearly identified andallow the web-user to return to the previous steps at any time (to change theircontact details or payment method, for example).

• The tunnel effect. This is not the time to propose other articles which maydistract the customer. A customer is just about to finalise the purchase, but isthen tempted by another product, he clicks, views the product, then askshimself if it would be cheaper elsewhere, he opens a new window to compareand… may never come back!

Here are the standard purchasing steps on a trading website:

[2.2.4] Analysing

An online shop is constantly subjected to numerous adjustments resulting fromimproved knowledge of their customers’ practices.

There are a number of techniques for obtaining key information and improvingperformance, these include:

3 www.reversoform.com



• Business Intelligence: which allows to build dynamic relations, to take astep back from statistics or on the contrary to take a deeper look at statistics inorder to understand the detail (referred to as drill-down). The data usedrelates to traffic, sales, customers, and catalogues. We will return to statisticalanalysis on page 59 4.3.6 Statistics / reporting.

• User tests: the figures given are essential but it is also absolutely crucial totest the site using real users. This allows to measure the ease with which theseusers carry out simple tasks, to analyse errors, to measure the ease with whichthe user remembers the site after a period of non-use and finally, to get an ideaof their “feeling” for the site. These axes of analysis lead to the enhancement ofthe layout, design or features of the site.

• A/B testing: while user tests are carried out using a sample group of people,A/B tests impact on all shop users. This involves proposing two versions of thesame page or the same element –button, banner, image, etc.), in order to findout which provides the best results (a click, a form completed, an order placed).

[2.3] The trading site within the Information Systems.

[2.3.1] The peripheral areas of an e-commercesolution

No e-commerce solution is capable of covering all of the e-trader’s logistical,accounting, and marketing needs.

As such, an e-commerce solution is not:

• A logistics management tool: a solution is rarely capable of efficiently steeringall of the logistical processes usually deployed by the ERP. As such weconclude that the management of suppliers, associated stock, re-provisioning,warehouses, and production scheduling, does not fall within the sphere of thee-commerce solution.

• CRM: While the E-Commerce tool may serve as a receptacle for a quantity ofinformation which allows to qualify and know your customers (contact details,areas of interest, frequency and volume of purchase, etc.), it will only supplyrough tools, which are insufficient to implement a real client relationshipstrategy. Pure-players aside, traders have other channels of sales apart fromthe web; it is usual practice to consolidate customer information in a globalCRM database.

• It is recommended that those who wish to use email campaigns (newsletters,targeted promotions, etc.) delegate these operations to “e-mail marketing”tools. A number of specialised service providers are present in the marketoffering infrastructure which has been specially designed to dispatch several



tens of thousands of mails in a just few hours, guaranteeing a deliverabilityrate, i.e. the assurance that your mails will not be identified as SPAM by thedifferent ISPs and will arrive at their destination. Tools that are specificallyfocused on e-mailing must also manage target segmentation, the identificationof erroneous email addresses, the monitoring of behaviour, etc. These featuresare never dealt with in such an in-depth manner by an e-commerce solution.

• An accounting management tool: While the e-commerce administrationinterface may allow small business e-traders to follow sales, this does notmake it an accounting management tool with the capability of creatingstandardized accounts and details on legislation compliance.

• A CMS: Current Open Source tools do not provide content managementfeatures anything like those offered by specialised tools (CMS). Specialisedcontent management tools manage news, management of content validationprocesses prior to publication, version monitoring, permissions etc.

We feel that it is pointless to take the afore-mentioned features into account whenchoosing an e-commerce solution and as such they will not figure in our study. Thereis no all-round solution, though a few do attempt to cover the areas mentionedabove, they only do so very roughly. To conclude we feel that one is better offselecting a solution which excels in its domain and using specialized tools to coverthe rest of the e-business chain.

[2.3.2] Interaction with the Information System

E-commerce solutions are rarely stand alone and are usually integrated into theInformation System (I.S.). The catalogue often comes from an external source suchas an ERP and we often transfer client information to a CRM system and salesinformation to an accounting management tool.



The main criterion to be taken into account when choosing a solution should not be itsoperational capacity in areas which are only partially related but its capacity tointerface with external multi-function systems.

We will see how each solution performs here, later in this document.



[3] [3] [3] [3] TTTTHEHEHEHE SELECTIONSELECTIONSELECTIONSELECTION OFOFOFOF TOOLSTOOLSTOOLSTOOLS

[3.1] Preamble

We will not attempt to put forward an exhaustive inventory of e-commerce solutions.New solutions appear quite regularly on the market, with the promise of newfeatures and ever-greater flexibility. In reality, most of these projects are non-starters for a number of reasons: no community develops around them, the choice oftechnologies is poor, there is functional weakness, etc.

As such, we have created a short-list of tools which we feel best represent thecurrent Open Source market. We have based our selection on three main criteria:

• The functional depth of the tool (is it a state-of-the art tool, does it provide web2.0 functionality, what is its capacity to interface with other solutions, etc.)

• The tools architecture and its technical qualities: the technical environment,how modular the tool is, the quality of development, load handling

• The durability of the tool (the size of the community, the number ofcontributions, editor presence, the network of professionals, etc.).

Most of the tools presented are specialised e-commerce solutions. We have, however,included the e-commerce extension of a well known Content Management tool:Drupal.

[3.2] OsCommerce

It is difficult not to mention OsCommerce when we are talking about Open Sourcesolutions. This tool, which first appeared in March 2000, has rapidly become the toolof reference in e-commerce solutions; its editor was a self-acclaimed Open Sourceadvocate at a time when Open Source was in its formative years.



Developed entirely in PHP/MySQL, OsCommerce owes a large part of its success tothe absence of an Open Source alternative and the explosion of e-business at thebeginning of the new millennium. Between 2000 and 2004 a great number ofcompanies, from sole-traders to large multinationals, created their site based onOsCommerce. It remains to this day the most widely deployed webshop in the world.

Distributed under GPL, OsCommerce is a tool based entirely on a once very largeand active community.

In recent years, this community has broken away from the development team toform various “forks”. A fork is a part of a community which detaches itself to build anew product based on the source code on the initial product. The most well knownfork of OsCommerce is ZenCart.

Development of the solution has seriously slowed down ever since 2006. The agingcode makes the application very difficult to maintain, the team attempted a totaloverhaul of the tool for version 3 (v3) which has been due to go on the market for anumber of years now…



The arrival of new players such as Prestashop and Magento has also contributed tothe scattering of the OsCommerce community.

[3.3] Magento

An Open Source solution has rarely taken off as rapidly and noisily as Magento. Thistool has generated a phenomenal buzz at international level right from the first betaversions in 2007, this allowed to federate an extremely active community in recordtime.

First distributed exclusively under OSL (Open Source Licence), Magento managed togain a large share of the market right from its product launch in March 2008,attacking leading editor solutions head-on (Intershop, Microsoft Commerce Server,Websphere Commerce, ATG).

Distributed by the American editor Magento Inc. (formerly Varien), an agencypreviously specialising in OsCommerce integration, the solution is based on theZend PHP framework and benefits from a large number of innovations in terms ofcollaborative functions.



Magento’s strength lies in its great modularity and its robustness. It was clearlyconceived to carry ambitious and large scale trading sites.

Magento Inc. announced the launch of its Enterprise edition in April 2009. Thisedition, which incurs an annual fee, includes a support contract, integrates a certainnumber of additional features and addresses the needs of large companies.

Magento Inc. is due to offer a SaaS (Software as a Service) service by the end of2010, wherein a trader can rent a Magento site, with modules that incur a fee, andan iPhone application.

[3.4] Prestashop

Released a few months after Magento (July 2008), Prestashop is a French productwhich rapidly won over a large number of users due to the simplicity of its set-upand its excellent responses to the needs of the French e-trader.

Published under OSL in the same manner as Magento, Prestashop is entirelydeveloped in PHP/MySQL. It has an API which allows to adapt the tool to newneeds.



This French editor solution (the fruit of what was initially a student project), hasquickly built a solid reputation among French and Spanish communities and seesitself, naturally enough, as the worthy successor of OsCommerce.

Prestashop has also launched PrestaBox, a service in SaaS (Software as a Service)mode which offers e-traders a turnkey product which includes updates,configuration, module installations, and solution hosting.

[3.5] OfBiz

The prestigious Apache Foundation offer Apache OFBiz (Open for Business), anextremely ambitious tool which offers what is, no doubt, the largest spectrum offunctionality in this study.

Distributed in 2001 under Apache 2.0 license (like all of the Foundations otherprojects), OFBiz is based on J2EE and several technical components developed bythe Foundation.



As opposed to other tools in this comparative study, OFBiz is not a tool whichspecialises entirely on e-commerce. It also offers a full ERP with several well-identified components:

• Online Sales (the E-Commerce part of the tool)

• Customer Relationship Management - CRM

• Supply Chain Management - SCM

• Sales Management

• Point-of-sale Management – POS

• Etc.

The other distinctive feature of OFBiz is that it offers a framework approach and notan “off-the-shelf” ready-to-use tool approach. For this reason implementation callsfor substantial investment, both to master the tool and to successfully create anoperational site.

The (relatively confidential) OFBiz community is mainly made up of those on officialdistribution lists. There is no French community, that we know of, around OFBiz.

We also note that, like all products from the Apache Foundation, OFBiz does notoffer editor support. Support is available from the community (using Apacheexchange or monitoring tools) or under contract from an integration service provider.

[3.6] Ubercart

Ubercart is the e-commerce component of the Drupal content management tool.Initially conceived as a simple extension allowing basket management withinDrupal, it has rapidly become a project in itself, perfectly interfaced with the CMS.

Available since June 2008 under Creative Commons "Share Alike" license, the toolhas the peculiarity of being an extension of a content management tool.

Ubercart has the same qualities and failings as Drupal:

• An extremely active, qualified community,

• A tool which has been well thought-out technically speaking and is entirelyinterfaced with the rest of Drupal,

• A tool which is easy to use, but also greatly dependant on the other Drupalextensions

Installation can be a little arduous and its functionality is a little more limited thanthat of specialised e-commerce solutions.



[3.7] Others

[3.7.1] Thelia, Plici

Thelia and Plici are two PHP Open Source solutions which have a small activecommunity and a number of important deployments.

The functional scope of these solutions is, nevertheless, more limited that that ofother solutions presented herein. As such these tools are of more interest to verysmall E-Traders.

Furthermore, their community is purely French-speaking-French which is a worryas regards to the durability of the solutions.

[3.7.2] Konakart

Konakart was conceived in an effort to provide a solution comparable toOsCommerce but in a J2EE environment.

Released in 2007 under EPL (Eclipse Public License), the tool uses OsCommercereasoning and adds the excellent integration possibilities offered by the J2EEenvironment.

Unfortunately the community is quite confidential. This is no doubt due to thesolution’s hazy economic model (one has to search to find the application’s source,which is not entirely Open Source) and a functionality which is, despite everything,still weak and not very ergonomic.

We must mention that Konkart has a Community edition, and an Enterprise editionwhich integrates a number of additional features such as multi-shop management &Lucene integration.

The editor offers two types of support contracts, one for each product edition,something which is rare in this sector.

[3.7.3] RBS Change

The Open Source model is very attractive to software editors. RBS is among thosewho turned to this model, delivering the Change CMS and E-Commerce applicationsunder Affero GPL v3 licence, in February 2010.



The fruit of almost 5 years of development and over 100 projects, this solution isvery promising both from a technical and functional point of view. Here are some ofthe aspects which differentiate this solution from its competitors:

• An entirely integrated and coupled CMS and e-commerce tool, with nofunctional compromises

• Back office management using XUL technology: the ergonomic and graphicrendering of all buttons and back office elements is carried out by Firefox andintegrates perfectly with the operating system (with drag-drop capabilities, auniform colour code, etc.), as opposed to other solutions presented which do nothave a 100% HTML back office.

• A PHP5 framework developed by the editor and an advanced developmentenvironment

• An enterprise edition offering advanced functions (site preview at a given date,automatic management of promotions, etc.).

As a result of its sudden turn to Open Source, the RBS Change community is small,and as such the solution does not yet benefit from this key advantage whichguarantees the durability of a solution.

[3.7.4] eZ Publish / Typo3 / Joomla

We decided to include Ubercart in our selection, because, of all the CMSs offering e-commerce modules this is the most accomplished.

However, most Open Source CMSs on the market offer e-commerce modules:

• eZ publish offers the eZ webshop module

• Typo3 offers the tt-products extension

• Joomla! offers the VirtueMart module

A first glance, the management of a product catalogue and its online presentationfalls within the area of content management. A good CMS tool could very well beused to present a catalogue, and allow satisfactory navigation. Webshop extensionscan be added to allow basket and payment management. But in actual fact, thecapabilities of this system fall very far short of those offered by a state-of-the-art e-commerce platform.

Overall, these extensions are of a similar standard. They may suit the needs ofcompanies which already have their company site on one of these CMS and wish tojust add a little online catalogue, without having any real E-Trading ambitions.



[4] [4] [4] [4] FFFFUNCTIONALITYUNCTIONALITYUNCTIONALITYUNCTIONALITY

[4.1] Catalogue

[4.1.1] Graphic and ergonomic customisation

A trading site obviously creates its identity through its "look & feel". Even if mosttools on the market offer an elegant appearance by default (some more than others),it is important to be able to control and modify the ergonomics and graphic layout ofyour shop pages in order to give your shop its own identity.

a) Configuration and templates

There are two main ways to customize a site: by configuration and templating.

Configuration

We talk of configuration when something can be customized visually, without havingto do anything with the source code. This is generally first level customization: theshop logo, title, and description, the layout of certain content blocks, the selection ofproduct details to be displayed etc.

This customization is carried out directly via the administration interface and doesnot require any technical expertise.

Templates

As with CMSs, most recent E-Commerce tools make a clear distinction betweenthe content and the structure.

This signifies that the content, i.e. mainly the products which make up thecatalogue, are managed without having to worry about the technical entries forthese products on source pages.

The tool is used to format this content via a set of templates. Templates define pagesettings, the layout of different elements, and the choice of the graphic charter(fonts, colours, aligning, frames, ...) etc. If tomorrow you whish to change theappearance of your shop, you just have to modify the templates, without having totouch the catalogue, which makes the process a lot less labour-intensive.

A set of templates is often broken into two main entities:



• Template files which define the structure of your pages and the composition ofdifferent content blocks. For example, determining a product page (the positionof the image, the area reserved for crossed sales, etc.).

• These templates are generally HTML files, in which specific tags are inserted;these can be basic to complex depending on the tool. These tags supplyindications as to the content that should be inserted in a given position on theHTML page.

• Style sheets (CSS files). These define the graphic presentation of the variousdifferent page content blocks.

The creation and modification of a set of templates requires certain technicalexpertise, at the very least knowledge of HTML and CSS.

An e-commerce tool allows you to associate a set of templates with your shop. Themost advanced tools allow you to go a little further:

• By planning template set changes based on configurable time periods (tomodify your graphics for the Christmas period, for example).

• By associating several sets of templates with the same boutique in order tooffer several different layouts depending on the customer profile or the mediaused (mobile access for example).

OsCommerce is particularly weak in this area: it simply does not offer any realtemplate mechanism. As soon as one attempts to move outside the standard “3 column”default layout, modifications must be made on the core PHP files directly. There is noneed to point out that this type of manipulation can be terribly damaging to themaintainability of the solution.

Magento offers a template mechanism which might seem a bit complicated at thebeginning, but allows excellent flexibility. It is based on the Zend Framework MVC modeland breaks down pages into functional blocks (main menu, search block, best-sellingblock, etc.) These blocks are then assembled using XML files. It is also worth mentioningthat Magento offers style change planning and the association of several template setswith a shop.

Prestashop & OFBiz each have a standardised template engine: Smarty for Prestashop(used by Joomla among others) and Freemarker for OFBiz. These allow great formattingflexibility and are easy enough to work with.

Ubercart does not offer any particular template language. Screen formatting is defineddirectly at PHP file level. As such good technical knowledge is required to use the tool,making changes more difficult.



b) Rich Interface Application (RIA)

Some sectors, such as the luxury sector, wish to offer customers a unique userexperience to further enhance the brand’s identity and as such propose a moreunusual system of navigation.

Rich Internet Application (RIA) can be put into place using technologies such asFlash, Flex or Silverlight.

Longchamp online shop

This is a real application which is executed on the customers system, within thenavigator, and which communicates with the web site, and so with the e-commercetool.

These technologies can be relatively complicated to implement, depending on thetool, and depending on the size of the site RIA. If it involves only occasional bannersor little configurators within existing templates, the operation is less complex than ifimplementing a frontal entirely in Flash or Flex.

As the template mechanism is short-circuited, the tool needs an interface (API)which allows the “customer” application to obtain information managed by the tool(catalogue, prices, etc).

Magento & OFBiz allow relatively easy RIA integration and do not require coreapplication intervention as their 3-tier architecture allows to separate the presentationfrom content. In the case of Magento, we can, for example, use the Zend framework tobuild Flex applications on AMF rather than PHP.

OsCommerce, Prestashop and Ubercart on the other hand, require more complexmodifications in order to allow to connect a rich interface over the applicative layer.While not impossible this does require a lot of work.



[4.1.2] Multi-shop

Multi-shop management refers to the e-commerce platform’s capacity to manageseveral shops which may or may not share the client repository, catalogue, pricingoffers and graphic layout.

Multi-shop management is an advanced feature not yet offered by all solutions. Thecomplexity of this management depends entirely on the scope of information sharedbetween shops.

Below we take a look at cases where a multi-shop function is most commonlyimplemented.

a) Cas e no. 1 – Multi-country sites

One of the most common needs is to be able to manage all of the different countryshops from the same platform. Managing a multi-language trading site does notconsist in merely translating the catalogue content. It also necessitates:

• Perfect management of multi-currency payments

• Managing the tax for each target country

• Connecting to the various local logistics solutions (transporters, localwarehouses, etc.)

• Being able to maintain the possibility of selling a limited selection of catalogueproducts in certain countries.

• Compliance with local regulations

• In a more general way, taking local e-commerce customs into account (forexample in Japan goods are generally delivered within 24hrs max.)

b) Cas e no. 2 – Site factories

Clients often wish to be able to generate a new shop on demand, via the platform,with its own catalogue, customers and graphic layout.

In this case, there is obviously no cross-over between the data generated by thedifferent shops, each with their own local administrator who has no knowledge of oraccess to the other shops.

This method is used by companies that wish to offer an online sales service in hostedmode, in Saas mode, as with PowerBoutique4.

4www.powerboutique.com/



c) Cas e no. 3 – Multi-target sites

Another scenario is when a trader wishes to use various sections of the catalogueand/or varied pricing on “private” sites.

This is particularly common in the B2B context where companies often negotiatepreferential prices and wish to make a private shop available to the other party.

Elements of the catalogue are selected for the new shop, the associated prices areentered and customer accounts are created.

d) Cas e 4 - Multi-brand sites

The final scenario is when a company has several brands and wishes to share acertain number of settings between the various different shops.

The catalogues and the graphic layouts of sites are different but the customerrepository can be shared in order to allow customers to benefit from the latestspecial offers applicable to all of the company shops irrespective of the brand.

No matter what the reason for implementing a multi-shop site, the tool must allowsufficient catalogue management granularity to allow to adapt the informationdisplayed and the sales processes implemented, based on the target, country, anduses.

Prestashop & Ubercart do not offer multi-shop management. They do, however, offerfunctional alternatives for the management of a multi-language shop (this does not allowmanagement of different catalogues for different languages).

OsCommerce has several community extensions of varying quality, to implement themanagement of cases 1 & 2 above.

Magento & OFBiz both perfectly manage all cases. However, Magento only offers the‘management of local administrators’ feature with its Enterprise edition.

[4.1.3] Categorisation

A catalogue is generally organized based on tree-structure which corresponds tological classifying of products: e.g. /photos/digitalscameras/under2megapixels. Sitenavigation reflects this product classification.

In their search, customers would not have all have the same logic, or the samepriorities. Some will search for a camera by the number of pixels, others by price,and others by brand, etc.



Therefore it is important to be able to define multiple organisations of productclassification. These are referred to as category trees, and a given product can bearranged in several kernels on different category trees.

This classification can be explicit: the administrator defines the category tree-structures and arranges a given product based on the different tree-structures.

Classification can also be automatic, based on certain product characteristics.Typically the “Under €200” category is a dynamic category, in which a product mayor may not appear depending on its current price. This is referred to as “Facetnavigation” (see pg 32) where in this example the facet is the price.

The example above presents the possible categorisation of products of a shop specialising in pet food.

The category break down does not necessarily have to correspond to the navigationmenu displayed to the web-user. Some categories may simply serve for internal use(to classify products which are not yet available for sale, for example). In general,categorisation is a form of metadata associated with “product” content, which can beused for management or navigation purposes or merely as search criteria,

All of the tools in this study offer deep unlimited category tree-structure managementwith multiple positioning.

Magento is the only solution to offer category permissions management (in itsEnterprise edition), this allows to give or withhold access to a specific category from agroup of customers.



[4.1.4] Types of products

a) Configurable and customisable products

Certain products can be configured, that is to say that they offer options which thecustomer can – and must – choose from when placing the order.

We talk of models and articles. For example, a t-shirt is a model, the article orderedis a t-shirt of a certain size and colour.

In general, we distinguish between a model and an article by asking the followingquestions:

• What is the product that I hold in stock? The answer corresponds to the article.This is also referred to as a SKU (Stock Keeping Unit).

• What is the commercial offer that I make to a customer? This is the model.

As such we can label a product “long-sleeved t-shirt, size L, blue” (in this case themodel=the article), or “long sleeved t-shirt”, (size and colour to be configured), oreven “t-shirt” (sleeve length, size and colour to be configured). In this case the SKUis the first one where sleeve length, size and colour are specified.

Here is an example of a configurable product

This notion of the distinction between model and article is vital, as while the modelmay carry information on the product’s basic features (description, place incategories), it is the article which carries stock information (for example a t-shirtmay well be available in Large but not Medium), images and price.

If our t-shirt exists in 3 different colours and 5 different sizes, then that gives us 15different catalogue articles or 15 SKU, (where each colour is available in each size).



In some cases, this configuration may have an impact on prices. For example, sizeXXL may incur a €2 surcharge.

In the case of customisable products (where the user can upload a photo to betransferred on to a t-shirt, for example), the principle vis-à-vis the customer remainsthe same, even though the underlying notion is not identical: as the client willpurchase the same article (SKU) which will have an impact on stock, irrespective ofthe customisation made.

OsCommerce offers management for this type of product but it is pretty labour-intensive. It does allow nonetheless, to define as many configurable attributes as we wishand we can also specify whether the choice of this attribute incurs a surcharge. Natively,the tool does not make a real distinction between model and article. It manages the levelof stock by model. Extensions do however allow to enhance this functionality.

Magento offers excellent management of configurable and customisable products.During the definition of product attributes, we specify whether or not each isconfigurable. When a product is configurable, Magento automatically generates as manyarticles (SKUs) as variations. Minor problem, Magento does not natively associate each ofthese variations with a separate image.

Prestashop & OFBiz closely manage configurable products. Each article has its ownSKU, level of stock, price and weight. It is also worth noting that it is possible toassociate a different image with each variation.

Ubercart offers a more concise management of configurable products. The new SKUmust be manually specified for each variation as must be the level of associated stock.There is no management of images associated with each variation.

b) Product packs

We talk of “bundles” or “product packs” hen we describe a number of articles groupedunder one price. There are two types of bundles:

• Fixed bundles: A bundle containing several different articles for a given price,the quantities and prices are fixed by the administrator.

• Dynamic bundles: The web-user can specify the desired quantity of eacharticle to make up the bundle. For example, in the case of living-roomfurniture, the web-user can indicate the number of armchairs, foot rests andsofas that they require. The price is then calculated dynamically based on thecomposition of the bundle.

The option is available to decide whether or not the articles which make up a bundlecan be sold separately.



OsCommerce does not natively offer bundle management. An extension does allow thisfunction, nonetheless. Remember that OsCommerce extensions sometimes have theannoying habit of being incompatible with each other. To be handled with care…

Magento offers the “dynamic” version of this function under the title of “groupedproducts” and the “fixed” version under the title of “bundles”. Only articles as opposed tomodels can be included in a pack, in other words configurable products cannot beincorporated into a bundle.

Prestashop offers the “fixed” version under the title of “packs”, with the samerestriction as Magento as regards configurable products.

Ubercart deserves a special mention here, as it offers both pack variations and supportsconfigurable products within its packs.

OFBiz offers full management of both fixed and dynamic packs.

The offer presented to the customer issometimes complicated and made upof a number of different articles whichhave to be selected in order to makeup the final product. This is the casefor example for the purchase of acomputer: it is made up of a motherboard, screen, memory, processor, etc.which the client can select from amongseveral models.

The point is to present all of thedifferent possible product associations,on one screen.

Controls can be set up to assist thecustomer, for example in verifying thecompatibility of the elements thatthey have selected.

OsCommerce, Ubercart & Prestashop do not offer this feature.

Magento & OFBiz offer this feature, without offering the compatibility control.



c) Immaterial products

More and more immaterial products are available online every day. In 2009, 47% ofweb-users5 had purchased one or more of the following types of products:

• Downloadable media files (films, music, books, reviews, photographs).

This raises the issue of distribution control, copyrights and protection laws. The useof techniques known as “DRM” (Digital Rights Management) puts a system of digitalwatermarking, functional locking (no search function in PDF), and restriction of thesoftware used to open the file.

• Services (bank account, insurance, etc.)

The conditions regarding services sold are often complex and require a lot ofinformation from the customer: for example, when signing up car insurance onemust enter their name, age, address, car brand, model, year of manufacture etc.

Payment is rarely one-off but more often demands a recurrence of operations, and assuch greater management. The purchase is therefore closer to the signing of acontract than a simple action of payment.

• Reservables (cinema tickets, train tickets, concert tickets, flights, etc.).

The main issue with these products concerns “stock”. With reservables, it is oftennumbered places which are sold, each with its own characteristics: for example,train tickets can be considered as 485 separate products, each corresponding to adifferent seat on the train.

Nonetheless, the common feature of these products is that they do not generallytrigger logistic flows.

None of the products studied offers simple management of reservable products.

UberCart, OsCommerce &Prestashop only deal with downloadable products.

OFBiz & Magento allow to model simple virtual products (services) and downloadableproducts. Magento also deals with the issue of limited and secure downloading of digitalresources.

5 Source : Baromètre Fevad – Médiamétrie/NetRatings mai 2009



[4.1.5] Product attributes and classification

a) Attribut es

A product is described by features, that are also referred to as attributes. There aredifferent types of attributes: text, images, numbers, etc. We put aside priceinformation, an attribute which is dealt with separately later in this White Paper.

The attributes which describe a product can be: a simple text field, enriched text (i.e.text which includes formatting: bold, italics, font size, etc.), an image, an attachment(e.g. PDF), a numeric value, date, etc.

It is often a good idea to allow the attribute value to be selected in a list, as thisfacilitates the use of data, searches, and internationalisation. For example: “hands-free function: yes/no”, or “dual-band/tri-band/quad-band frequency”.

For example, the following fields could be used to describe a television:

Field title Field type Value

Product name Text (100 characters) Sony KDL-32S5500

Brand Drop-down menu Sony

Product description Rich text Lorem ipsum…

Screen size Number (in cm) 81 cm

Contrast Text (100 characters) Dynamic 25000:1

HDMI entries Number 3

Frequency Drop-down list 100 Hz

HD compatibility Drop-down list Full HD

It can be tempting to put away with these attributes and just compile all of theproduct’s features in one large text field which will then be integrated into theproduct sheet. While this is sometimes unavoidable, for example because the dataemanates from an ERP that doesn’t offer this kind of data structuring, this should beavoided as much as possible.

Firstly, each attribute is a potential search criterion a customer might use. E.g.search by brand, processing power, memory capacity, etc. By aggregation all of thesecriteria in one single text field, it is no longer possible to target these searches.

Secondly, in the case of technical products, these criteria can be used in comparativecharts. Product comparative charts remain an advanced feature but one that the



customer expects to see. They allow the web-user to select several catalogue productsand create a matrix comparing product features. To go back to our televisionexample, this allows the customer to compare product features on one single page –rather than having to go over and over between different product pages.

Finally, correctly structured attributes can be presented on site screens in a uniformmanner (same place, same format), making it easier for the web-user, browsingsimilar products, to read and absorb information. This separation of content andstructure is another element which is essential for catalogue internationalisation.

OsCommerce offers relatively simple attribute management. A new attribute is definedin the back office to which we associate a list of possible values. The tool does not offerstandard types of attributes (number type, date type, free text type attributes etc.). Wenote nonetheless that a number of extensions allow to enrich the attribute manipulationmechanism. The “Option Type” extension is definitely the most stable and mostadvanced.

Prestashop, OFBiz & Ubercart offer more precise management of product features.While they may not provide standard types of attributes, they do allow to choose betweenattributes to be entered in freely (text fields) and list type attributes (a list of valuespredefined in the administration interface – for example the type of HD compatibility of ascreen: none/HDReady/FullHD).

Magento offers extensive, state-of-the-art attribute management. All attributes arecategorized (text field, rich text field, drop-down menu, date, image etc.). For eachattribute, one can define via the administration interface, whether data entry isobligatory or not, whether it should be taken into consideration be the search engine,whether if can be used as sort criteria, or whether it should appear in a productcomparison result.

b) Product families

Certain attributes may or may not be relevant, depending on the nature of theproduct. While the type of grape used is of interest when purchasing wine, it isobviously not an attribute one would use when describing an MP3 player.

When we manage a range of products, it is important to be able to define productfamilies which can be linked to the lists of attributes shared by these products.

So when we create a “bottle of wine” type product for example, the attributes to beentered are defined in relation to the product family i.e. “bottle of wine”: vineyard,year, grape type, alcohol strength, etc.



OsCommerce & Prestashop do not manage attribute families. As such, there is no wayto associate a combination of attributes with a family of products. The input mask is thesame for all products.

Magento, Ubercart & OFBiz do offer this categorisation. Magento uses the notion of“attribute groups”. The first step when creating a product is to select an “attribute group”which will then impact on the input mask.

c) Facet n avigation

Attributes can also be subject to possible automatic categorisation: instead ofallocating a product to a category tree-structure, we can decide to allocate a productto a category automatically, on the basis of a given attribute. This is called facetnavigation.

For example, in the television section of my shop, I will allow customers to filterproducts so that only Sony televisions with a frequency of over 100Hz are displayed.These filters can obviously be combined.

Here is an example of facet navigation in the television section of a sample shop



Magento is the only solution that offers real facet navigation. When defining newattributes, we specify if these can be used as facets of navigation. This filtering is done inan intelligent way: the tool will not allow to filter the catalogue using an attribute ifthere is no article which corresponds to this filter combination (for example if there is noarticle that costs between €50 and €100 then this price range will not appear as apossible search filter).

[4.1.6] Search

The search engine is a pivotal element of a commercial site. A large number of web-users will directly use this search engine to find the product they are looking for,rather than navigating the catalogue tree-structure. As such, the search tool must bepertinent, user-friendly and reliable. A neologism has even appeared to definethe art of making search and navigation a force to be reckoned with: searchandizing(i.e. a combination of search and merchandizing). This is basically the equivalent ofupselling or cross-selling.

a) Full-text or structured search?

There are two possible types of searches:

A structured search: A user must be able to search for a product directly using theproduct reference or by searching one of its attributes. Say for example, I am lookingfor The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (a science fiction bookpublished by Pan Macmillan). I will complete a search form selecting “sciencefiction” in the drop-down menu “genre”, “Pan Macmillan” in the drop-down menu“publisher”, and “paperback” in the drop-down menu “version”.

A full-text search: The search must also be able to be carried out on all fieldstogether with the associated content. If you attach technical notices in PDF formatto your product sheets, you may wish for this content to be searchable.

We feel that in today’s world one should no longer have to choose between a full-textand structured search: commercial sites should offer both!

OsCommerce natively offer a relatively basic full-text search feature. It is ill-adapted tolarge catalogues (with no indexing and search carried out directly on the database). Itsstructured search only deals with default fields and not the attributes added manually.

Magento, Ubercart & Prestashop good full-text and structured search features. We donote, however, that these searches do not deal with the content of attached productdocuments (PDF, Word etc.).

OFBiz & Magento Enterprise directly integrate the search and indexing engine,Lucene. Lucene is an extremely reliable solution, which is state-of-the-art in terms offull-text and structured searches, giving excellent results in both.



b) The relevance of results

Optimising the relevance of the results given by your search engine is an ongoing-jobwhich will evolve as your site does. Here we present a number of techniques andhints which help improve the relevance of results. Please note that only externalsearch engines integrate all of these functions:

Syntactic analysis:

The engine eliminates irrelevant words, often indefinite articles or prepositions suchas and, the, a, some, to etc.It can also find a word no matter what its declension(plural, conjugated, etc) or manage spelling corrections (like Google’s "Did you mean"feature).These mechanisms can be very simple (deletion of irrelevant words) or verycomplex (automatic correction based on algorithms cutting search terms intolemmas).

Statistical weighting:

Statistical weighting is the capacity of associating a score with each search result inorder to define the order that results are displayed in. This score is the weightedsum of a number of search criteria: does the search term appear in the product title?Is the corresponding product new? Is the corresponding product on my best-sellerslist?, etc. This group of criteria is not fixed and is unique to the profession of each E-Trader (for example a bookshop will emphasise the relevance of the search termwhich corresponds to the name of an Author).

Semantic analysis:

Semantic search is currently the most difficult to implement. We talk of semanticsearch when the operation is carried out from an analysis of the sense of the query,that is to say by searching words which have the same or a close meaning.Generally, this involves use of a semantic dictionary. Managing synonyms that areunique to the given business profession is relatively simple, but managing semanticsin general requires use of a special tool.

For example if we search the term “layette”, we can extend the search to “babyclothes”.

We must say that no solution natively offer semantics search. To find this type offunctionality, it is necessary to compliment an e-commerce tool with a proprietarysolution (we give some examples later).



OsCommerce, Magento, Prestashop & Ubercart offer minimalist syntactic search(deletion of irrelevant words). Neither search statistics nor spelling corrections (nativelyin any case). To obtain conclusive results, one must use an external solution, as Smile didfor the www.furet.com website using the SolR/Lucene engine to index over 1.4 millionproducts.

OFBiz, offers extremely efficient statistic searches thanks Lucene integration, and alsoincludes a “Did you mean” extension to manage spelling corrections.

c) Ergonomics

In terms of ergonomics, searches have been greatly modernised with the arrival ofnew technologies such as Ajax.

We are thinking of the auto-completion mechanism in particular, which suggestscommon search terms to the web-user as they are entering a word or phrase.

An example of auto-completion on the Amazon.fr site

Other practises also exist such as:

• The possibility of filtering results using a number of criteria (I want to removeall books which are not available in paperback format from my list).

• Modifying the order in which results are shown (sort by author, price, etc.).

• The "quick view" notion which allows the customer to temporarily view productdetails on the same page, rather than having to click and go to another page.

OsCommerce are happy once again to provide the minimum: one can sort results basedon fixed criteria: price and product name. Extensions enhance this functionality a little.

Prestashop & Ubercart offer auto-completion and sort by criteria, these criteria mayhave one or more attributes.

Magento natively manages auto-completion, sort by criteria, and the dynamic filtering ofresults. A “quick view” extension is also available.

OFBiz manages auto-completion but this necessitates a great deal of configuration anddevelopment work to allow the implementation of filters and relevant sorting.



d) Performances

Performance is obviously key, growing in importance with the size of the catalogue.It is often more difficult to ensure good response times for a catalogue which consistsof several hundreds of thousands of references (where a customer begins to find thesearch long if loading takes anything over 2 seconds).

OsCommerce rapidly reaches its limits in regards to catalogues with thousands ofreferences, by virtue of its search directly in the database.

Ubercart, Prestashop and Magento all give excellent results, (Prestashop inparticular), with efficient index management. We can well imagine these tools managingcatalogues consisting of tens of thousands of references, without any problem.

OFBiz is without doubt the best equipped to meet large solicitations, as Lucene, whenwell-configured, can deliver responses, on catalogues consisting of over a millionreferences, in under a second, without any problem.

e) I ntegrating an external engine

If your catalogue is quite large or if you have strong needs in terms of syntacticaland semantic searches, the possibilities offered natively by the tools presented willnot be sufficient.

As such, it is advisable to compliment your solution with an external search andindexing engine. All of the tools presented here, can be used in conjunction with anexternal engine, with varied configuration requirements or development, dependingon the tool.

If semantic search is not of vital importance, the best search solution on the marketis the Open Source solution, Lucene. We often use the product SolR, which is non-other than Lucene integrated in the form of a server, i.e. responding to queries, andnot to API calls.

Otherwise, one should take a look at commercial solutions such as Sinequa, Exalead,Antidot, or Celebros (this last is widely-used in area of e-commerce).

[4.1.7] Up-selling / cross-selling

a) Cross-selling

Cross-selling is associating one product with another complimentary product toencourage the customer to buy more. For example, one could cross-sell a camerawith a camera case.



The association is often done manually directly by the webmaster who selects theproducts that he wishes to associate.

b) Up-selling

Up-selling is based on the same concept as cross-selling, but with up-selling werecommend to the customer, a range of products which is one standard up from theproduct they are currently viewing.

Here again, the association is generally made manually by the webmaster.

c) Automatic deductions

Some sites also offer information such as "Customers who purchased this article alsopurchased…”. It turns out that this is often just a cross-sell manually selected by thewebmaster which does not have any relation to the number or type of purchasesother customers have made.

There exist, nonetheless, several practices which allow to give automatic and semi-automatic information on articles associated with your sales:

• Some modules really do base the information they give on sales. Theseprocesses necessitate extensive analysis of your catalogue and sales. Most ofthese modules are external and incur a fee.

• With some well-thought out algorithms, we can also automatically return arandom selection of products which belong to the same category as the selectedproduct or display the “best-sellers” in this category. There are many differentpossibilities.

OsCommerce does not natively offer any cross-selling or up-selling feature. Extensionscan be employed, nonetheless.

Ubercart, OFBiz & Prestashop offer one single level of association (called"Accessories" in Prestashop). As such it is possible to EITHER cross-sell OR up-sell.

Magento offer three levels of association: up-selling, cross-selling and similar products.Product which belong to the “similar products” category are presented not on the productpage but on the “my basket” page. In Magento Enterprise, product associations can bemade automatically using rules (for example: associate all of the red products of twogiven categories, with each other).

[4.1.8] SEO

SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation) is to optimise the natural indexing of a site.

In concrete terms, the tool can be used for SEO in different ways:



• Metadata management (presented in the HTML page header) associated witheach product or category.

• URL re-writing management for each product/category.

• Automatic generation of an intelligible site map for customers use and atechnical site map for use by indexers of Google, Yahoo and other searchengines.

• Generation of a page referencing the keywords the most frequently searchedon your site.

• Work must be carried out on the stability of URLs – in particular in the case ofplatform migration or a regrouping of all old URLs to enter your site, in orderto implement permanent redirection to new addresses.

• Finally, irrespective of the tool used, a large part of indexing involves HTMLorganisation i.e. templates.

OsCommerce offers practically no SEO functionality: no URL rewriting, no site mapgeneration. It does manage metadata, however and extensions can be used here again.We recommend the Ultimate SEO extension in particular, which greatly enhancesOsCommerce functionalities.

Ubercart, OFBiz, Prestashop & Magento all manage URL rewriting and site mapgeneration cleanly. All four are of a similar standard.

Magento offers, on top of URL rewriting, the capability of controlling all automaticallygenerated URLs. It also manages the features mentioned above (metadata, site maps,and key-word clouds).

[4.1.9] Collaborative functions

We include in the collaborative functions, all of the Web 2.0 tools which encourageinteraction with web-users. We often talk of UGC (User Generated Content), whichallows you to give your commercial site a more interactive dimension.

Here are the most common functions.

a) Rating / Comments

It is becoming more and more common for web-users to rate or comment on aproduct. The concept is simple: giving your customers the possibility of submittingfeedback which can be read by other web-users.

This feedback can be in the form of a comment or rating based on different criteria(price, quality, design, etc.).



These comments and ratings are generally moderated, i.e. subject to validation by amoderator before appearing on a site for general view.

Comment and rating management on the website www.fnac.com

While this practise may be appealing on paper, it does have a down-side:

• What image does a product give when it has no customer comment or rating?If it hasn’t been commented on then the assumption is that it has not proven tobe appealing to others, making it less attractive to the current customer…

• How do you generate enough traffic to provide a large volume of comments? Ingeneral, the “comments” feature is useful for traders who have a largeaudience and customer database.

• What do you do with negative comments? Do you publish them or filter them?

• Who are you going to delegate the job of moderator to? This can be animportant job.

On this final point, specialised service providers now offer services to “liven up” yourcatalogue by creating fictive customer comments to feed your site.

OsCommerce do not natively offer the rating mechanism.

Ubercart, Prestashop & Magento offer comment and rating managementfunctionality. In Magento you can even associate a family of products with a list of ratingcriteria, the solution will then calculate the average and add the result to the productsheet.



b) Wishlist

The “wishlist” notion was launched by Amazon. This allows the customer to create alist of products they like and to send this list to their friends and family, aroundChristmas or their birthday for example!

The wishlist can generally be transformed into a basket in one click.

Magento & OFBiz natively offer this feature. With Magento, customers are limited toone wishlist each.

Ubercart & Prestashop have an extension which enables wishlist management.

c) Keyword clouds

Another emerging notion in the e-commerce sector is that of clouds of keywordsgenerated by your customers. The idea is that, as you cannot anticipate all of theassociations that are possible between your products and the keywords that yourcustomers/potential customers will use to search your site, you ask your site-users tomake the associations themselves!

The concept uses the same moderator principle as comments, and allows tosignificantly improve your referencing, when the feature is activated, by creatinglists of products classified based on the needs of your customers.

Magento is the only solution to currently offer this feature. However, the keyword cloudis not contextualised to a category but common to the whole site.

d) Product comparison

When products have several different features (technical products, tourist trips,property, etc.), it is difficult for the web-user to compare them, having to go over andback between product pages.

The product comparison feature allows customers to simply select several products,which will then be displayed on a single page so that you can compare features.



Comparing three different televisions

Magento & OFBiz offers a product comparison feature. Magento allows to specify whichproduct attributes will appear in the comparative chart.

OsCommerce, Prestashop & Ubercart do not offer this feature. Prestashop hasincluded it in their roadmap, however.

[4.2] Sales tunnel

[4.2.1] Basket

The basket is the temporary warehouse which serves to store the customer’s selectedarticles before they proceed to pay.

The basket icon is visible on all pages and a click allows the customer to view fullcontent, to modify quantities, delete items, and place the order.

All of the E-Commerce tools obviously offer basket management.

There are, however, slight differences from one solution to another.



a) Configurable baskets and products

Several e-commerce products do not allow customers to modify the product once ithas been placed in the basket.

The difficulty with modification is entirely linked to the distinction that we madeearlier between the model and article. When you add a size large, long-sleeved, red,t-shirt to your basket, it is an article that you are adding and not a model. Eacharticle has a unique reference (SKU).

So, we have determined that the basket contains articles. If you decide that youwant your t-shirt in a different size, you will have to delete the article from yourbasket and add the new article in the correct size, even if the model is exactly thesame.

None of the solutions presented herein currently allow this management ofconfigurable baskets and products. Magento have included this feature in their roadmaphowever.

b) Sales incentives

In the same way as cross-selling and up-selling, some sites offer a new selection ofcomplimentary products directly on the “your basket” page.

This is the last place where you can offer your customers the possibility of adding totheir basket before they proceed to pay, it is basically the equivalent of the snackdisplay you find at the till in your local grocery shop.

The E-Trader will generally decide to use one of the following methods:

• Offer a fixed selection of leading or special offer products, irrespective of thecontent of your basket, or

• Offer a selection of products entirely based on the content of your basketwhere, as with cross-selling, the products proposed compliment the productsalready in the basket.

The French site LaRedoute.fr offers a “you may also like” feature encouraging customers to add extra productsto their basket.



Magento is the only solution to natively offer the implementation of an “intelligent”selection based on basket content. It is worth noting, that with a little templating, all ofthe solutions can incorporate the configurable “fixed-selection” option, using a CMSmodule for example.

c) Distance to promotion

As presented in fundamental concepts, the “distance to promotion” feature is anotherway of increasing the average amount spent in your shop. It basically consists inindicating, with each product they add to their basket, how much more the customerneeds to spend in order to avail of the promotional offer (often free delivery on allorder over €£$X for example.).

Some commercial sites even go as far as to directly suggest a selection of productswhich bring your basket total up to the amount needed to benefit from thepromotional offer.

Here is an example of this type of incentive (www.furet.com)

Prestashop is the only solution which natively offers “distance to promotion” display forfree delivery. The other tools require a little development in order to be able to offer thisfunction.

d) Basket conservation

What happens to the basket if the user doesn’t proceed to pay?

If a technical problem causes the navigator to close, you may want to retain basketcontent for the user’s next visit.



Some sites even send the customer email reminders when they haven’t completedtheir purchase.

OsCommerce only conserves the basket of identified users (i.e. those who have a siteaccount).

Magento, Prestashop, Ubercart & OfBiz conserve identified customer andanonymous user (using cookies) baskets for a configurable period of time. MagentoEnterprise can even be configured to send automatic email reminders.

e) Quick order

A ‘quick order’ form can be very useful for customers who know the article reference(where they have a paper catalogue, fro example). This allows the customer to entera list of references and then proceed to pay.

La Redoute offers quick order services

OFBiz is the only solution to natively offer this feature.

Magento offers this feature via a community extension.



[4.2.2] Delivery

a) Calculating delivery fees

Delivery fees are calculated based on a number of elements:

• The weight/size of the order

• The number of packages to be sent

• The destination

• The basket total (delivery is often free on orders over a certain amount)

• The type of delivery requested (same-day, express, regular, etc.)

There is no single rule for calculating delivery fees. The fee is generally linked to thetransporter (UPS, DHL, Royal mail, etc.) used.

The most common way of calculating delivery fees consists in presenting the fees foreach transporter in matrix format and associating a weight with a destination(country or region).

TRANSP 1 France Spain Italy UK

0 – 5kg €5,00 €6,50 €7,00 €8,00

5 – 10kg €7,00 €8,00 €9,00 €10,00

10 – 20kg €9,00 €10,00 €11,00 €12,50

>20kg €14,50 €17,00 €17,50 €19,00

In practice, the trader applies a fixed delivery charge to a given zone (the U.K. forexample), irrespective of the basket content and charges variable rates on deliveriesto areas outside of this region.

Some sites allow the customer to separate their order into different deliveries(mainly due to differences in the availability of items ordered). The trader must thenmake provision for the application of one/several delivery fee(s) for this type of order.



OsCommerce natively allows to set a fixed delivery amount which corresponds to amaximum weight. If the customer places an order that goes over this weight, then a ratiowhich is configured in the administration interface is applied. Community extensionsallow to extend this feature to take the order destination into consideration and interfacewith several transporters such as Chronopost or UPS.

Magento natively allow to interface with a number of transporters in the U.S. market(DHL, UPS, FedEx). It also allows to interface with other transporters: a communityextension allows to deal with all transporters in a generic manner by managing advancedweight/destination matrixes. These are not directly configurable from the administrationinterface however.

As Prestashop is a French solution, it natively interfaces with Chronopost & Colissimo.It also allows to graphically configure cost matrixes.

Ubercart natively manages fixed delivery fees alone. Community extensions can be usedto enrich this feature.

b) Standardisation of address es

Erroneous addresses are the plaque of any e-trader, coming a close second to themanagement of returns.

Customers frequently enter incomplete or erroneous addresses when creating theiraccounts. The consequences can be serious for the e-trader who may be unable tomake the delivery or attempt to deliver the order to an inexistent address.

Processes have been put into place to standardise postal addresses (in France this isreferred to as RNVP - Restructuring, Standardisation, and Postal Validation)around which commercial solutions are added which identify addresses that do notcomply with a given format, the solution can cross-reference the erroneous addresswith a postal directory to provide a corrected version of the address.

Due to specifics from one country to another, none of the solutions natively integrate thistype of feature. They are capable of interfacing with specialised tools (often available inSaaS mode), but this does entail adaptation work. QAS and Mediapost are among themost well-known of these tools.

c) Drop-off points

“Drop-off points” are being used more and more in France where the leader in thisservice area, Kiala, allows customers to pick-up their deliveries in non-specialiseddrop-off points such as the local newsagents, video store, etc.



This means of delivery is advantageous to the customer as orders generally arrivefaster than to home/work addresses and it means the customer does not have tomake themselves available to reception a delivery. It is beneficial to the E-Trader asit eliminates the problem of erroneous addresses, while reducing transport costs asdeliveries are not made more than once a day to each delivery point.

Here again, the specifics of each drop-off point mean that no solution natively managesthis feature.

OsCommerce does have a connector with the Kiala network.

Magento has a community extension for the Mondial Relai network.

d) In-store pick-up

In the case of a chain which already has a number of physical retail stores,customers can be offered the option of “in-store pick-up”. This is often the first stepin a multi-channel business approach.

Here is an example of a site which offers this option

This option can make your sales tunnel complicated and generate greaterintegration costs: there are two different management modes:

• The products sold come from the shop that the customer is going to pick themup. This will effect physical shop stock and not online shop stock, therefore thee-trader will need access to all retail shop stock in real time.

• The products come from a central warehouse and are delivered to the shop.Logistical costs may be greater but technical integration is easier.

In both cases the trader and his logistician have to manage package tracking as thisis not delegated to a transporter.



No tool in this study integrates this type of “in-store pick-up”. As such, modification ofthe sales tunnel is required which would be easier with modular tools such as Magento orOFBiz.

[4.2.3] Taxes

a) VAT

The European tax system is an absolute nightmare for e-traders.

The applicable tax rate can vary from one type of product to another (food product,technical product, luxury product), from one type of customer to another (individual,business), and from one destination to another (France, the U.K.).

We will use the example of the French market to illustrate the complexity of the taxsystem.

There are two taxes: standard V.A.T. and reduced V.A.T. The type of V.A.T. that isapplicable varies depending on type of product (reduced V.A.T. applies to cultural orfood products for example)

If product can be sold to professionals with an IntraEU VAT number, the totalexcluding V.A.T. must be displayed.

All sales from France to a country outside the E.U. must exclude V.A.T.

To complicate things further, the tax rates vary depending on the order destination.There are two main destination categories:

• France and the E.U.

• DOM TOM (French departments overseas)

The table gives a breakdown of rates based on destination:

Destination Standard V.A.T. Reduced V.A.T.

Within the E.U. 19,6% 5,5%

DOM TOM 8,5% 2,1%

Outside the E.U. No V.A.T. applies No V.A.T. applies



While all of the tools presented take these regulations into account (they all offer amechanism wherein different categories of taxes are defined for each destination andtype of customer), care must be taken as regards presentation as this no longer dependsdirectly on the choice of tool but rather on templates which are integrated. The relevantV.A.T. amount must always be displayed. If your product prices are inclusive of V.A.T.,this must include ecotax (see below) etc.

b) Ecotax

Ecotax is specific to Europe. It is a tax on products which function with the aid ofelectrical currents (via electrical sockets or batteries) or electromagnetic fields (forexample, electrical appliances, computer equipment etc.).

This tax aims to make the consumer more aware of the cost involved in the futuredisposal of the product they are purchasing. This is not a set tax, it varies dependingon the product, and how easy or difficult it is to recycle.

Beyond these display regulations that legislation has made provision for (the ecotaxamount must be systematically displayed and that separately to the sale price (onyour site, invoices or advertising material), it greatly complicates the calculation ofthe total amount owed by the customer as there is V.A.T on ecotax!!

Ecotax is calculated in the following manner:

End price = (price excl. V.A.T. + V.A.T.) + (Ecotax + V.A.T. at 19, 6%)

This calculation is made more complicated again if we apply a price reduction. Thisreduction must not be applied to the ecotax; as such the new price is calculated asfollows:

End price = ((price excl. V.A.T. – reduction) + V.A.T.) + (Ecotax +V.A.T. at 19, 6%)

We are highlighting this complexity as it is rarely understood by our friends on theother side of the Atlantic, and as such tools do not always correctly manage thisectotax (Americans have a hard time coming to terms with the notion of a taxapplied to another tax).

OsCommerce does not natively manage ecotax, but it can be managed using anextension.

Magento took some time before integrating ecotax management but it is now fullyoperational.

Prestashop has always managed ectotax.



Neither Ubercart nor OFBiz natively manage ecotax. Further developments arenecessary to make this feature fully operational.

[4.2.4] Payment methods

a) Online payment

Online payment does not directly depend on the solution. As extreme caution has tobe taken with online purchasing procedures, specialized providers provide paymentgateways directly linked with your banking services.

The first thing a trader does is to take out a distance selling online payment contractwith their bank. The bank will suggest or oblige you to use a given payment gateway(SIPS is used by the Société Générale, for example).

Three main technical solutions share the French market:

• SIPS from ATOS

• Ogone

• PayBox

These solutions generally offer the choice between payment in stand-alone orintegrated mode.

“Integrated” payment mode

Integrated mode is the natural choice: the customer enters their card details directlyinto a form which is perfectly integrated into your sales tunnel and continues thepayment process without having to leave your site.



The voyages-sncf.com website uses the integrated payment mode (based on the Atos Office Server solution)

The commercial site must obviously ensure customer confidentiality and MUSTNOT save banking details transmitted to secure servers managed by the third-partyservice provider.

This payment mode is more awkward for the trader for several reasons:

• This type of transparent integration necessitates direct dialogue with thepayment gateway. If the e-commerce solution does not integrate this functionnatively, it calls for advanced technical skills and a heavy workload toincorporate it.

• The entire sales tunnel must be secure and it is the trader’s responsibility toassure the security of data entries. PCI DSS (still optional in France) specify acertain number of pre-requisites to guarantee transaction security.

“Stand-alone” payment mode

The “stand-alone” payment mode consists in delegating the entire transaction to thepayment gateway. The customer is redirected to an external site (which can becustomised using the traders graphic charter) to enter their card details and finishthe payment process. When payment has been made the customer is then redirectedback to the trader’s site where they see a payment confirmation message.



The smartbox.com payment page

The URL indicates that we are no longer on the Smartbox site but rather on Ogone servers

While customers may find this operating mode a little disconcerting, it is mucheasier for the e-trader to implement as all security issues are passed over to thepayment gateway provider. As such, the trading site has no knowledge of customer’scard details and has no need to manage a http-S service.

Of course, there is a down-side to this operating mode. Despite ever-advancingscreen customization features, it remains difficult to keep all of your site’s contextualinformation visible on the screen (basket, sales conditions, etc.).

All of the tools in this comparative study can be interfaced with the leading paymentgateways in the French market (SIPS, Ogone & Paybox). The workload depends on whichoperating mode is selected (integrated or stand-alone) and whether or not there is aconnector between the tool and the gateway.

OsCommerce has fully operational connectors to these different gateways, due to itstime on the market

Magento, Ubercart & Prestashop also have extensions with these three leaders.

OFBiz only offer a SIPS connector.



b) Micro-pa yment

Still relatively uncommon in France, micro-payment solutions allow your customersto make payment without having to enter their card details.

Most of these solutions (PayPal, Google Checkout) operate on the electronic walletmodel: the web-user can add as much credit as they like to their account (which ismanaged completely independently to the e-traders site), this credit can then beused to make purchases on different sites.

This payment method is generally well-adapted to small payments (hence the termmicro-payment).

Some sites charge premium rates on phone calls and SMS which allow the customerto acquire a service or product, these too are referred to as micro-payments (forexample, ringtones, screensavers etc.).

As with bank card payment, the implementation of a micro-payment solutionrequires that the e-commerce tool be connected up to a payment solution via agateway. Integration is generally straightforward (HTML code or Javascript,supplied by the payment service provider, is integrated into site pages).

OsCommerce, Prestashop & Ubercart offer community extensions which allow tointerface with PayPal and Google Checkout.

Magento & OFBiz natively integrate PayPal & Google Checkout as payment modes thatcan be freely activated/deactivated using the administration interface.

c) Gift vouchers

Gift vouchers can be used to purchase items online in the same way that they areused in traditional shops. The concept is simple: the customer can purchase as manyitems as they like using the gift voucher towards payment or to cover the totalamount due, each voucher being worth a given amount. Gift vouchers can come inphysical or virtual format (i.e. either a paper certificate or an email voucher with aspecial code and details on using your voucher).

Gift vouchers are designed to be used once each, whether they have been purchaseddirectly in your shop (as a present for example) or have been issued to you as acommercial gesture. They are generally identified by a unique number or code.

Gift vouchers can be used in two ways:

As a method of payment: the customer enters their gift voucher code when theyarrive at the sales tunnel. The voucher amount will then be deducted from the totalamount owed.



As a means of crediting an account: here the customer transforms their giftvoucher into a credit note, and as such issues credit to their account. The mode ofuse requires that the e-commerce tool can manage credit notes.

OsCommerce does not natively manage gift vouchers. Extensions can be used, toimplement this function as a means of payment (credit notes associated with customeraccounts are not managed).

Magento natively integrates this management of gift voucher and credit notemanagement (but only in it’s Enterprise edition). A community extension can be addedallowing to manage gift vouchers with the Community edition of the solution.

Prestashop does not offer this feature. At the time of writing, no extension is availableto allow this function to be integrated.

Ubercart offers extensions to manage gift vouchers and credit notes.

OFBiz natively integrates full management of gift vouchers and credit notes.

[4.3] Back office

This chapter deals with operations that e-traders commonly carry out via themanagement interface. We do not deal with the operations outside of the scope of thee-commerce solution, e.g. general accounting, warehouse management etc.

[4.3.1] Ergonomics

While the site screens are designed to be customised by the customer and alwayspersonalised by an integrator or the application of a theme, the Back Office is oftenconsidered as a “ready to use” space.

The elements which are taken into account when judging the ergonomics of the backoffice are:

The breakdown into workspaces: we traditionally find a space for the catalogue,one for customers, one for statistics, and one for the management of editorialinformation.

Ease of access to information: the procedure for finding a customer, product, orderform etc. must be as efficient as possible so that users work as productively aspossible. Tools such as search engines, sortable tables, pagination systems etc. areprimordial.

Affordance (the capability of an object to suggest its own use): as with the frontoffice, the back office must present buttons which indicate use (e.g. a red cross to



indicate that an item can be deleted). Zones are also reserved to provide contextualassistance.

The quantity of information presented to the user must be balanced: thecapability must be available to mask information that is never/rarely used.

The internationalisation of the back office into several different languages.

OsCommerce has a clear interface (which is aging a little with graphics that aren’toverly impressive), offering translations in over 200 languages.

Prestashop & Magento offer well-developed user-friendly interfaces using Ajaxtechnology which improves the user experience. Magento pay extra attention to detail(for example, the inclusion of a disk icon which signifies that the current file has beenmodified but not saved). Prestashop currently covers 36 languages while Magento coversover 100.

Ubercart & OFBiz are difficult to get used to. Ubersoft as it includes too many moduleson interfaces, OFBiz as it displays overlay-technical screens and splits informationbetween several applications, each with their own rules of use.

[4.3.2] Orders

a) Sale

The sale or “receipt” is a central part of the order. Dispatch, invoices, credit notesand returns all emanate from the sale. An order confirmation receipt presents all ofthe information relating to the customer (delivery address, billing address, paymentmethod, etc.) together with details on the items ordered.

The E-Trader will often follow-up the sale by communicating directly with thecustomer regarding the order placed.

All of the solutions offer these features, though Magento does go the extra mileallowing to launch mass actions on several orders (block all selected orders, for example)and follow up orders in RSS flows.

Prestashop allows to define message models to homogenise and facilitatecommunications with the customers.

OFBiz is the only solution which natively distinguishes the currencies of closed orders.

Beyond issuing a simple receipt, a confirmed order launches a life cycle consisting ofseveral different processes that the e-trader must carry out:

Pending validation can indicate that the trader must accept the order (validity,check for fraud, etc.)



Order being prepared generally signifies that the logistician is retrieving yourarticles from stock and preparing the order for dispatch,

Order has been dispatched indicates that the order has been passed over to thetransporter for delivery,

Delivered/Complete indicates that the order has been delivered

There are lots of other possible order statuses such as pending payment, cancelled,rejected, returned, etc. not to mention those that may be specific to a given e-trader.As such it is interesting to analyse the flexibility of each of these tools regardingthese order follow-up processes.

OsCommerce has three “transparent” statuses; the administrator can change the statusof any given order without any controls. Likewise with Prestashop which offers ten“transparent” statuses that can be enhanced directly from the Back Office.

Magento & OFBiz natively offer ten statuses which can be enhanced. Beyond a simplestatus, Back Office actions such as invoicing and dispatch can trigger an automaticstatus change. For example, if an order “pending validation” is validated the status willautomatically change to “your order is being prepared”.

b) Dispatch

The various different delivery methods available to the customer are described onpage 44. Once the order has been placed, the E-Trader must honour delivery underthe conditions accepted by the customer in the sales tunnel. This involves:

Order preparation: a decision is made at this point as to how many packages will beneeded to dispatch the order, and as to which items will go in each package. Anotherpart of the preparation process is the issuing of picking vouchers for warehouseoperators, followed by picking.

The issuing of delivery notes indicating the breakdown of the package, or severaldelivery notes where the order has been split into more than one package. Thedelivery note is then placed in the package.

A docket is issued in transporter format: each transporter generally makes solutionsavailable to generate transport dockets. The E-Commerce solution manages docketissuing.



Here is an example of a Colissimo transport docket

The tracking number (displayed on the generated docket) is often communicated tothe customer so that they may use the transporters site to monitor delivery progress.

The pick-up/hand-off of the package by/to the transporter is purely logistic but maybe triggered by a back office action, which notifies the transporter by EDI.

Magento, OsCommerce & Prestashop have modules to present the tracking numberto the customer and natively allow to view delivery notes.

Surprisingly Ubercart is the only solution to distinguish packages from dispatches.

None of the tools selected natively manage docket printing, pick-up/hand-off requests,or picking voucher issuing, the last of which is often delegated to a warehousemanagement solution (WMS).

c) Billing

Invoices are generally generated and made available in PDF format.

These must be accessible to the customer via their customer area, with thepossibility of archiving.



All of the tools in this study include these features.

Magento & Prestashop are the only tools which allow to generate a PDF concatenatinga batch of invoices. Only Magento & OFBiz allow to associate several invoices with asingle order.

d) Taking an order

When an e-trader uses the telephone as a sales channel, the use of the web backoffice to take orders can allow I.T. resources to be shared and customer informationto be consolidated. The ordering back office will be used ad minima by the after salesservice.

The web solution must be suitably adapted to allow the management of back officeorders:

• The interface must be of a very high standard as regards ergonomics and loadspeed, in order to limit the customer’s telephone wait time as the operatoradds products to the order.

• The payment methods must be suitably adapted: for example the task ofentering bank card details is not always handled a telephone operator but issometimes delegated to an interactive voice server.

Promotional offers may differ from those available online.

Magento offers a highly complete interface to manage telephone orders with, notably, anarea which presents the articles recently consulted by the customer if they are registeredon the site. Magento does not manage the last two points mentioned above.

OFBiz intrinsically incorporates this feature as it is a real multichannel tool (it can alsomanage physical retail outlets).

Prestashop, OsCommerce & Ubercart offer very basic back office order features.

e) The management of returns

Merchandise can be returned for a number of reasons:

• Does not live at this address, or erroneous addresses, mentioned in“Standardisation of addresses” page 52, can lead to the return of merchandise bythe transporter. No automatic mechanism deals with this situation, apart fromthe prior rectifying erroneous addresses.

• Return at the initiative of the customer either because they wish to exercisetheir right to cancellation within a limited period (7 days for most products in



France), or because the trader’s policy permits returns under certain otherconditions.

It is this second instance which e-commerce tools will deal with, via what aregenerally called RMA (Return Material Authorization) functions.

The solution is required to provide the customer with the means to request thereturn of an article, specifying the reason for this return.

Example of a return request on the site VentePrivées.com

This request is then transmitted to customer services, where the decision is madewhether or not to accept the return request. If the request is accepted then a“reverse logistics” process is launched, where the customer must complete a returnform, transport docket and where the trader will follow return reception from theirback office.

When this process is complete the trader will accept the product or not and eitherplace it back in stock if it is in good condition (to increase the stock level), or retirethe asset.

The customer will receive one of the following in return:

• An exchange for a similar product or different size: the choice of product isgenerally handled manually by the after-sales service.

• A refund by means of bank card credit: this operation is once again managed bythe payment service provider who provides API services to this end (see Onlinepayments page 55).

• A credit note to the value of the returned product(s) (delivery fees may also beadded thus increasing the credit note amount; management fees may becharged thus reducing the credit note amount).



In all cases a receipt must be sent to the customer confirming the return andconditions, in the same way that an invoice is issued upon payment confirmation.

None of the solutions presented herein natively manage exchanges, the generation oftransport dockets, or credit reimbursement.

Magento has included a RMA module in it’s roadmap. Nonetheless, a communitymodule provides excellent refund and follow-up management. “Credit notes/refundreceipts can be created natively as can manually generated gift vouchers.

Prestashop natively manages return requests, return follow-up and credit notes.

An OsCommerce contribution offers a relatively complete RMA system.

[4.3.3] Customer relations

a) Customer accounts

Customers generally create an account on a commercial site. They can then use theiraccount login details access certain information:

• Customer profile

• Delivery/Billing Address(es)

• Order history: tracking, invoices, credit notes, order renewals, etc.

• Wishlist

• Password

The administrator can view this same information in the back office, together withinformation on to the last items viewed by the customer, items in their basket, thedate of their last connection, etc.

To divide up the customer database, the administrator may decide to place acustomer in a given category (to benefit from preferential offers, for example).

This segmentation can also be done dynamically in accordance with rules defined bythe administrator, e.g. V.I.P. customers are males who make purchases of over€1000 in my shop over a 2 month period. As such customer may belong to one ormore categories or “dynamic groups”. Personalisation’s or data extractions can thenbe carried out on each segment or category.

All of the solutions in this study provide a customer account feature.



Magento offers easy access to customer information allowing it to be qualified, by askingthe customer questions about their shopping habits for example. Dynamic segmentationis possible and very advanced in the Enterprise edition, allowing to closely manage thecategory rules.

Prestashop & OFBiz do manage customer groups, while Ubercart and OsCommercedo not natively offer this feature.

b) Communication

The web is considered as a “cold” means of communication, often formal or evenrobotic.

It is vital that the customers can express themselves. It is very important thereforeto include a contact form and/or customer service telephone number (obligatory bylaw), on your site. This is contact information is sometimes found both under the“Contact” and “Contact > Returns” part of the site.

Another option is to include an email feature. There are two types:

• In real time, this can be a nightmare to manage from a customer service taskmanagement point of view.

• In a sequential manner, in the form of a “ticket”, as with those sent to thetechnical hotline.

“Virtual agents” or “avatars” have also become more and more common over the lastfew years. This are virtual customer agents who respond to messages or questionsposed by the customer, responses can be generic (pulled from the FAQ), orcontextualised based on customer actions (by proposing a selection of products basedon the customer’s purchasing history, for example).



Here is an example of an Avator “Lea can help you” found on the Voyages-Sncf.com website.

While all of the tools offer a contact form, none of them emphasise communication withthe customer.

Magento has a community extension for “message threads” with some advanced optionssuch as the routing of customer queries to different internal services, or predefinedmessages.

[4.3.4] Commercial content

a) Highlig hting

A website includes two types of content: editorial content and commercial content.Commercial content involves:

• Highlighting any ongoing promotion,

• Creating “landing pages”: for a given promotion, the trader may launch anadvertising campaign by purchasing sponsored links, these links leads theweb-user to a “landing-page”. The objective is to encourage the web-user tocarry out a specific action (call to action), for example the completion of a form,placing an article in their basket, or some other action.

• Changing site design in order to relay the campaign details



• Changing product display, so that promotional products appear first, both atsite category and search engine level.

OFBiz, OsCommerce & Prestashop do not allow to carry out these actions withoutdevelopment.

Ubercart & Magento are more flexible. Ubercart, the fruit of a CMS, allows thecreation of advertising type content on top of web pages. Magento offers a CMS blockpublication system, landing pages made up of “widgets” (reusable modules used todisplay “new addition” lists for example), and banners.

Unfortunately none of the tools allow to configure the search engine in order forpromotional products to be taken into consideration.

b) Promotio nal offers

There are two types of discounts: those which relate to individual catalogue items,and those which are applied based on the articles a customer places in their basket.

Catalogue

Catalogue promotions are straightforward, they may involve:

• Crossing out a price to offer a cheaper rate

• Offering a percentage reduction

From an operational point of view, these types of promotions are frequently appliedto a whole range of products. The volume of the catalogue can have an impact on theusability of this type of promotion: certain tools create a new database entry for eachpromotion, on a catalogue of several hundreds of thousands of articles performancecan rapidly decline.

Prestashop & OsCommerce manage these promotions, implementation is madeproduct by product.

OFBiz & Magento also offer these capabilities, but more important, they have a verycomplete system of rules that allows to carefully define the conditions of application,based on product attributes (for example, we can define reductions on “sheets” or “duvetcovers” in the homeware category), on a given period and even for a customer category(see customer accounts pg. 65).

Ubercart does not offer any of these features.

Basket

A basket promotion is applied directly based on content.



These promotions can be presented in several different ways:

• The price may decrease based on the quantity ordered (e.g.: order over 3products and the unit price is reduced to €7).

• The price may decrease at certain quantity levels (e.g.: 1 for €7, 5 for €25, 10for €40, etc.)

• Buy-one-get-one-free (e.g.: buy 1 t-shirt get one free)

• A reduction on one article where you order another article (e.g. If you buy apairs of jeans you get a t-shirt for €10 instead of €20).

• A free gift (e.g. Get a free pair of sunglasses on all purchases over €35).

Here again, promotion conditions can be complicated to apply and vary depending onthe product, the basket total, the weight, the customer (country), etc.

Vouchers or coupons are used at basket level: one of the promotions outlinedabove may apply upon presentation of a voucher or coupon only. The e-commercesolution must then generate conditions of use:

• The number of uses per customer

• Is the voucher transferrable or not (can it be used be a different customer, e.g.a friend)

• The maximum cost to the trader

Prestashop & OsCommerce only manage regressive prices.

Magento & OFBiz come, once again, complete with advanced rule managementsystems. Nonetheless, Magento does not manage free gifts, and both tools are not capableof applying a promotion to “the cheapest article in the basket”.

Ubercart does not provide any of these features.

[4.3.5] Emailing

a) Alert s

The customer (or potential customer) of a commercial site is likely to receive severalmails emitted by the platform: account confirmation, password reminder, orderconfirmation, dispatch confirmation, etc. These types of mails are generally referredto as notification mails: the information contained in these mails is generallyavailable on the website and extracted from same.

A system of alerts, closer to marketing, is used more and more frequently:



• An email sent on the customers birthday

• A reminder email sent when a basket is abandoned, or referring to thecustomer’s wishlist

These mails are always automatically sent from the E-Commerce platform, andformulated on a model predefined by the trader.

b) Newsletters

Another widely-used form of marketing and communication is the use of newsletters.As regards online sales, these newsletters generally present more than mereeditorial information (news, etc.) by highlighting leading products and ongoingpromotions.

The following functions are needed:

• A subscribe/unsubscribe system,

• The edition of a newsletter: this can be either totally manual or partiallyautomated by defining dynamic zones which systematically present newproducts, for example,

• Creation of direct-mail areas: to personalise emails allowing the trader toinsert variables such as the customers name, address, etc.,

• The selection of a group of subscribers in order to target a relevant group e.g.customers who have young children,

• Email routing (the technical sending mechanism) from the platform to thecustomers email inbox,

• Follow-up indicators measuring campaign performance (erroneous addresses,invalid email addresses, the rate of newsletters opened, the number of“unsubscribe” requests following this campaign, etc.)

Specialised solutions exist and can be added to the e-commerce platform ifnecessary.

Prestashop & OsCommerce allow (by way of a community extension) management ofnewsletter subscriptions and exports in CSV format. Notification email can also beexchanged.

Magento covers all needs as regards alerts, notifications and email marketing. Acomponent also allows to manage all aspects of the newsletter except reporting.



[4.3.6] Statistics / reporting

As evoked in fundamental concepts, all good traders must analyse performance andidentify areas that can be further developed. This analysis is based mainly on thefollowing axes:

• Sales: the indicators used are often turnover based on time, types of customers(sex, geographic location, etc), products, special offers, etc. As opposed to thereal world, the web also allows to analyse what web-users are willing to buy byobserving the content of abandoned baskets.

• Visits: the analysis of traffic to a site is generally delegated to externalsolutions, in SaaS mode as with Google Analytics (GA) or Xiti, or in hostedmore via tools such as Piwik. These solutions allow to analyse thetransformation rate (visits to sales) by product type, most-viewed products, therate of abandons in the sales tunnel, etc.

• Customers: the web allows to gather information relating to the customer, thiscan be useful to improve the customer database and categorise it based onlocation, behaviour (e.g. Find customer who viewed a certain product sheet),purchases, etc. We can also look at how account creation has increased.

• Products: this is where the “best seller” notion derives from (the product whichhas been sold in the greatest quantity). From a management point of view thisalso allows to access information on stocks that are running low, or theincreased sale of a given product. While products in a physical shop are visibleto the manager, this is not the case with e-commerce: products that are notselling may remain in the catalogue for a long time, reports will disclose thisinformation allowing the manager to consider whether their visibility onlineneeds to be modified.

E-Commerce tools are not as advanced as specialised “business intelligence”solutions (see our White Paper on “Open Source Business Intelligence”) but they doprovide a certain amount of information nonetheless.

OsCommerce & Ubercart offer very concise statistics on best customers, and most-visited & best-selling products.

OFBiz, Prestashop & Magento display dynamic reports which reveal trends on theanalyses mentioned above, but unfortunately do not provide a great deal of decisiveinformation. They all include modules which allow Google Analytics to be easilyintegrated.

OFBiz goes a little further offering a “Business Intelligence” framework to developcustomised reports.

Smile has also developed a connector between Pentaho (an Open Source BusinessIntelligence solution) and Magento.



[4.4] External interfaces

As we presented in paragraph “2.3.2 – Interaction with the Information System”page 13, an e-commerce tool alone is rarely sufficient to provide full independentmanagement of an online shop. As such it is necessary to plan interaction with otherexternal systems as early as possible (an accounting tool, ERP, CRM etc.).

[4.4.1] Data exchange

a) Data

The data that has to be exchanged varies depending on the context, for examplesome traders prefer managing web customers in the online shop, other prefer tosynchronise this information with their ERP solution.

Exchange often involves:

• The catalogue

• The products and product features

• The shop layout (categories, etc.)

• Prices and promotions

• Customers

• General profile information (Address, email address, etc.)

• The preference as regards receiving emails (opt-in/opt-out)

• Orders

• The “receipt” summarizes order details

• Tracking information

• Returns

• Invoices and credit notes

b) Triggers

Depending on the data to be exchanged in different shop processes, the initiator maybe the E-Commerce solution or an external application. Irrespective of which is used,the triggers are either:

• Planned tasks: the E-Commerce platform launches actions periodically. It isgenerally the operating system that is in charge executing this task (CRON forUnix systems).

• Events: when an event occurs (a new customer account is created, an order isplaced, etc.), a specific section of code is executed, this code may call for a data



exchange action. This is data exchange in real time where an actionimmediately launches a query with an external service (querying warehousestock, for example).

• The navigator: while the user is browsing they may call on pages whichlaunch processes. This may indicate an exchange, as is the case with onlinepayment: the payment page leads to an external platform which collects thepayment information (order amount, the relevant shop, etc.).

[4.4.2] Methods

The connections to be carried out between the online shop and the rest of theinformation system are issues to be decided at I.S. architecture level. The objectivesare to maintain coherence between the different systems, and to guaranteeexhaustivity by ensuring that message can be delivered.

The two main methods are used are direct and indirect interfaces.

a) Direct

This is where systems exchange information directly, each playing a role in the useof resources made available by the other and in the validation or data sent orreceived.

The main drawback with this is the strong coupling between the systems: if one hasbeen changed or modified, the exchange mechanisms need to be recreated anddevelopment needs to be carried out on all systems (or in 2n cases where n representsthe number of systems connected to the e-commerce platform).

The advantage with this solution is that it is easy to implement and is flexible.

b) Indirect

Some architects may advise the use of a middle layer (a middleware), masking thespecifics of system from the other by carrying out data transformations andinformation mapping, itself. Middleware also provides a data delivery guarantee: ifthe system is unavailable it will store the information and try again. Reports canalso be generated to analyse flows exchanged and identify blocking points.

Please see our White Paper on “Middleware oriented messages”6 for furtherinformation.

6http://www.smile.fr/livres-blancs/systeme-et-infrastructure/middleware-orientes-messages



[4.4.3] Means / resources

There are several ways to set up exchanges between the software solution and theinformation system. From the easiest to implement to the most complicated, you willfind:

• Flat file exports: in CSV or XML format, data is made available in a fileplaced on a FTP server or sent by email,

• Web services: SOAP, XML-RPC & REST protocols allow a system to use thefunctions of another system, and this in real time. These exchanges arestandardized thus easier to implement. Furthermore, an application developedin Java or .NET can use web services made available by a software toolwritten in PHP. You will find, for example, a “GetOrderList” function whichsends back the list of orders.

• APIs: modern solutions are created on an “object” model. An object can be acustomer, order, or product. An API allows an external application tomanipulate these objects by opening limited access to a certain number ofbasic object operations to them: order creation, obtaining a product price,customer profile modifications, etc. An API generally supplies a better level ofaccess than webservices but requires more complex and less standardisedtechnical integration.

• Databases: this is, of course, where all the information is stored, using basicto complex data models. SQL queries can be launched, from an externalsystem, in read or write. We strongly advise that you avoid this type ofmethod, for a number of reasons: the data model can change from one versionof the software to another, making development obsolete, furthermore noverification is carried out during data manipulation which can lead tofunctional inconsistencies (an order without any articles, for example).

OsCommerce’s main drawback here is its age: only direct calls to the database allow toextract data. Contributions do allow CSV exports nonetheless. Ubercart has the samedrawback without having the community contribution to make up for it.

Prestashop has an API which allows to develop its own data imports/exports. Thecommunity has made order and product export modules available on Prestastore.

Magento supplies the entire range of means mentioned above: webservices, a “dataflow”module allowing the Back Office to directly configure and execute customerimports/exports, products, orders (via an extension) and more advanced capabilities withits excellent API (even though this is not yet very well documented).



[5] [5] [5] [5] SSSSUMMARYUMMARYUMMARYUMMARY

A quick look at this comparative study may lead the reader to think that Magento isthe clear winner as regards Open Source E-Commerce solutions.

While Magento currently offers best overall functionality, it is not adapted to allneeds and all markets. Its technical complexity makes it difficult to access and apretty high consumer of resources. It is ill-adapted to the needs of the small businesscompanies that are eager to join the world of online trading, but at minimal cost. Itis a very solid, modular, solution of an extremely high standard, capable ofsupporting the most ambitious sites that may be subject to a great deal of traffic.Another strength of Magento is it’s remarkable back office ergonomics. A real efforthas been made to fluidify common processes to a max, both in terms of cataloguemanagement and sales administration.

A solution like Prestashop is better adapted to medium-sized businesses: it islighter, easier to access, more user-friendly, offering a whole range of “out of the box”functions which are sufficient enough to accompany a shop as it grows, and all ofthis for a small initial investment.

The remaining solutions in this study are not without interest and should be closelymonitored: Ubercart benefits from an undeniable advantage regarding contentmanagement, thanks to its perfect integration with Drupal; while OFBiz remains agood alternative to Java, on condition that the necessary time is taken to master thecomplex and sometimes ill-documented framework.

While there may not be a clear winner, we do have a clear loser! OsCommerce,seriously losing pace over the last few years, has now been surpassed by thenewcomers and by Prestashop in particular, which is emerging as a serious potentialsuccessor. The only thing that could save this tool now is a rapid awakening of theOSC community to seriously overhaul of the entire solution. At present, we feel thatit would be extremely risky to launch a project using this tool.

Finally, we cannot emphasise enough the importance of selecting a tool based onreal needs and not on the buzz generated by the solution community or a clevereditor. Our study does not distinguish one product as being superior in all respects,but among the solutions you will find that which perfectly meets your specific needsand limitations.

Smile experts are at your service to help you with the selection and implementationof your e-commerce tool. The creation of an efficient e-commerce website is anexciting adventure, one we would be delighted to accompany you on!


Whitepaper Smile E-commerce 2010_FINAL - Guide Open Source

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