DEEP DIVE

COMPARATIVE
ANALYSIS OF
E-COMMERCE TOOLS

Kumar Mallampalli
Head Emerging Solutions and IT Services

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Deep Dive Comparative Analysis of E- Commerce Tools

Table of Contents
1

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2

The Challenges ........................................................................................................................................... 3

Solutions Options ........................................................................................................................................ 4

3.1

Open Source E-Commerce ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4

3.1.1Magento ....................................................................................................................................................... 4
3.1.2zencart: zen cart ..................................................................................................................................... 6
3.1.3virtuemart ..................................................................................................................................................... 7
3.1.4KONAKART ................................................................................................................................................. 9
3.2

Commercial E-Commerce ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10

3.2.1hybris ......................................................................................................................................................... 10
3.2.2microsoft commerce server ....................................................................................................................... 12
3.2.3ATG ........................................................................................................................................................... 13
4

Recommendation ...................................................................................................................................... 14

Annexure ................................................................................................................................................... 15

5.1

Overall Product Comparison Chart ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15

5.2

Commercial E-commerce Vendor Comparison Chart ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16

5.3

Open Source E-commerce Vendor Comparison Chart ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 17

References ................................................................................................................................................ 18

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1 Introduction
In today's saturated market where virtually everything can be found online, the balance of power has shifted
from the marketer to the well-connected and informed consumer. Brands across categories want to replace
their outdated e-commerce platforms and improve their online customer experience with Web 2.0 and
community capabilities. It has become imperative for brands to revamp their mundane e-commerce websites
and increase their online transactions. The objective of this white paper is to compare some of the leading ecommerce platforms that are available in the market today under various parameters and suggest a holistic
approach that organizations can follow during their e-commerce implementation process.

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2 The Challenges
As every other organization wants to increase its investment on e-commerce and significantly enhance its
direct trade, the key requirements for most organizations in implementing an end-to-end e-commerce include
the following:

Enhanced security while offering more products and flexibility in pricing

Integration with other systems and plug-ins
Search Engine Optimization
Intelligent web analytics
Customization to business requirements and local needs
Marketing integration for unified branding
Shorter time-to-implementation
Lower support cost for customer issues on products returns, rebates, coupon redemption and others

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3 Solutions Options
3.1

Open Source E-Commerce

3.1.1

MAGENTO

Magento Enterprise provides businesses with unprecedented flexibility and control over the look, content and
functionality of their online store. Fully supported by the Magento team of experts, Magento Enterprise is
scalable and easily tailored to meet every merchant's unique technical and business requirements. To help
ensure success of their online channel, Magento Enterprise customers can leverage best-in-class marketing
and merchandising tools.
Magento Enterprise Screenshots

Shopping Cart Screen

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Promotions Screen

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Gift card Screen

Dashboards

Administration Screen

Payment Options

Key Strengths:

Marketing and promotions management Marketing reminders, gift certificates etc

Secure strong data encryption, user access based on roles and permissions
Rich merchandise suite
Dynamic customer information management
Search with Solr
Order editing and Google checkouts
Content staging and merging
Multi-lingual and Multi-currency support
Tax rate support in WEEE/DEEE format in EU
Country specific customization Site registration, shipping destination address and billing address
with ability to specify pay per method
One click upgrades

Weakness:

Cart modification takes longer time

System requirements of Magento are quiet extensive Requires at least PHP 5.2.0 extended with
mcrypt, PDO_MySQL and simple xml
Platform hosting involves significant cost
Coding style requires steep learning curve

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Some of Magento Customers:

3.1.2

ZENCART: ZEN CART

Zencart: Zen Cart is a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The e-commerce web site
design program is being developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and
consultants that think e-commerce web design could be and should be done differently.
ZEN CART Screenshots

Product Catalog Screen

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Dashboard

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Product Features
Product Tools

Key Strengths:

Unlimited categories
Unlimited product options, gift certificates, discounts
Fully customizable and easily installable
Template system
Multi-lingual
Customer reporting tools
Permission system
Multiple currencies
Multi-tax
Multiple shipping and payment options
Multiple image per product
Built-in override protection system

Weakness:

3.1.3

Administration module requires extensive training

Add on non-compatibility

VIRTUEMART

VirtueMart is an Open Source e-commerce solution designed to be used with Joomla (But also works with
Mambo). Joomla and VirtueMart are written in PHP and made for easy to use in a PHP / MySQL environment.

VirtueMart Screenshots
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Shop Home Page

Product Details

Shopping cart with PayPal

Admin: Edit Product

Key Strengths:

Stock level control for products and item

Ajax-powered product overview that allows to quickly add products to the cart
Manage different currencies, countries and states
Product Availability: Shows how fast a customer could expect a delivery

Weakness:

Lacks lot of essential shopping cart features such as stock control, shipping, payment to vouchers
and user group discounts etc.
Lack of many add-on modules

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3.1.4

KONAKART

KonaKart is an affordable java based shopping cart software solution for online retailers.
Konakart Screenshots

Home Page

Shopping Cart

Login Screen
News Publishing

Key Strengths:

Rich shopping experience through fast indexed search, product filter and sorting, product review and
ratings display
Internationalization: Supports multi-currency and multi-language
Up-selling and cross-selling merchandise
Price, promotion and communication customizations based on customer groups
Supports recurrent billing in payment module
Google base integration and SEO
Sophisticated marketing functionalities for promotions and communications
Shipping module

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Multi store with reward point support

Google analytics

Weakness:

Lack of support to gift certificates and loyalty programs

Upper limit exists for product displays and customer listing (Example: limited number of products are
allowed to list and for additional products to be listed, cost adds up)

Some of KonaKart customers:

3.2 Commercial E-Commerce

3.2.1

HYBRIS

Hybris provides a complete multichannel e-commerce software solution that integrates product content,
commerce operations, and the extended channel to help retailers, manufacturers, and other businesses
create a unified and seamless cross-channel experience for their customers from online, to in-store, to
mobile and beyond.
Hybris Screenshots

Cockpit

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Appealing Content Management

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Multi-channel Campaign
Product Merchandise

Key Strengths:

Strong product content management tools

Catalogue management
Enterprise integration
Globalization and internationalization capabilities
PIM powered commerce
Light weight technology stack
Fast and flexible
Multi brand site
Problem free administration ability
Integrates functions such as payment solutions, customer loyalty elements, search and navigation
options and full marketing tools
Customer-specific visuals, catalogues, products and prices and pre-configured order lists
Mapping a wide range of distribution models, companies, business processes, administrators, user
groups and user rights, therefore facilitating hierarchical purchasing and approvals processes
Procurement integration and quotation module

Weakness:

Scores low in security (for cloud based offerings)

Poor support and lack of regional customer management

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Some of Hybris Customers:

3.2.2

MICROSOFT COMMERCE SERVER

Commerce Server 2009 is a new, production-ready, out-of-the-box, contemporary web site that allows
businesses to get their stores live and merchandise moving more quickly. New page templating features
mean organizations can change the look and feel of a site just by pointing and clicking.
Key Strengths:

Shopping cart management

Taxation
Personalization and templating options
Transaction management
Settlement and product visualization
Integration with SharePoint server 2010, FAST search and Biz Talk server
Customizable, live services for integrated B2C shopping experiences with web parts
Multi channel integrations with kiosks, mobile devices, POS systems, interactive TV and gaming
systems

Weakness:

Poor technical architecture

Requires additional product purchase to leverage web 2.0 services

Some of Commerce Server Customers:

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3.2.3

ATG

ATG Commerce is a comprehensive, highly scalable e-commerce platform and application solution that
automates and personalizes the online buying experience to increase conversions and order value, and
ensure customer loyalty. Its flexible, component-based e-commerce software architecture enables one to
easily implement best-in-class e-commerce sites.
Key Strengths:

Complete multi channel e-commerce suite with strong personalization

Shopping cart management
Product catalogue
Rich Internet Application (RIA) capabilities
Multi site, multi language and multi currency support
Search merchandise feature
Multiple deployment choice
Facebook and Twitter integrations
iPhone mobile store application
Online community for customer, partner and product support

Weakness:

High cost
Customer support outside north America is challenging

Some of ATG customers:

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4 Recommendation
Companies should select e-commerce platforms that are adaptable to specific business needs, flexible
enough to accommodate various legacy systems and also scalable enough to meet new requirements or
technology upgrades. Considering the above mentioned must-have features, the three existing e-commerce
platforms that win over the rest with their comprehensive functionalities are - Hybris, Magento and ATG.

Hybris: If you are looking for a strong product content management and multi-national e-commerce site that
can be established in a shorter time frame at a lower cost, then Hybris would be the best bet. This product will
allow one to localize the product content, pricing and promotions with its multi-currency, language, tax,
regulations and other features. This product will also enable you to analyze customer profiles based on target
segment or personalized behaviour pattern. However, some of the reference accounts have reported trouble
in integration and implementation.

Magento: If you want to quickly ramp up your multi-channel strategy with customizations, to meet growing
online demand for a wide product range, then Magento is the right choice. One can create user-friendly ecommerce websites using Magento and get around the site for adding things to cart, wish lists or improve
navigation. One can also integrate price, product and stock level information to the website. Magento allows
one to internationalize the product easily, send newsletters, include Google site integrations, RSS feeds and
also provides strong analytics support. However for future scalability, understanding of enterprise level
customization for business needs is required.

ATG: If you want to mainly focus on strong personalization, merchandizing, targeting and customer interaction
then ATG should be your choice of e-commerce platform. However, ATG is priced slightly higher. It is also not
easier to implement multi-language and multi-currency capabilities using ATG. It also doesnt have exhaustive
product content management features.

MS Commerce Server: MS Commerce Server is also a good product, provided it is implemented as a part of
the overall Microsoft suite. Extensive knowledge of MS product ecosystem including BizTalk and SharePoint
are required for the implementation. Overall, it is a big challenge to implement MS Commerce Server as
compared to other products both in terms of price and technical features. Also strong in-house Microsoft
expertise is required for both implementation as well as the periodic maintenance of the website.
It is not possible to consider any particular e-commerce platform as the best. Because each e-commerce
platform has its own advantages and disadvantages. A platform which may serve very well for a particular
organization may not be suitable for another organization. Open source e-Commerce platforms might work
well for many companies as it does not involve any buying or implementation cost. But it may not be the right
choice for organizations that are seeking advanced features like consumer profiling, targeted marketing etc.
On the whole, organizations have to evaluate many factors such as price, implementation time, scalability,
technology integration etc. and choose an e-commerce platform that will not only meet their current but also
their future business needs.

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5 Annexure
5.1 Overall Product Comparison Chart

Legend:

- Supported

- Partially Supported
- Not Supported

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5.2 Commercial E-commerce Vendor Comparison Chart

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5.3 Open Source E-commerce Vendor Comparison Chart

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6 References
http://www.fry.com/assets/category_files/pdf/wave_b2c_ecommerce_platforms_q4_2010.pdf
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/analystreports/enterprise-application/gartner-ecommerce-mq359306.pdf
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=214034&ref=g_sitelink
http://www.comentum.com/magento-vs-oscommerce-vs-zen-cart-comparison.html

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