Enterprise Ecommerce Software, B2B Software Development

For large B2B businesses, choosing the right enterprise eCommerce software is not a decision to make lightly. Companies can spend countless hours, effort, and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars implementing and integrating new software throughout their eCommerce platform and organization. We've discussed the top 5 things to know when selecting enterprise eCommerce software, now let's see how well the top 5 online commerce platforms deliver solutions for your B2B organization.

Magento eCommerce Platform

Magento currently enjoys the coveted status as one of the most popular enterprise eCommerce platforms. It also happens to be one of the most expensive, a point of pain for many B2B businesses looking for an eCommerce solution. However, you get what you pay for. Magento's online shopping cart solution has power, speed, and functionality.

Some things that Magento's software does exceedingly well are customer segmentation, loyalty programs, quick checkout, and convenient integrations. It also has advanced permissions and user roles for widespread use across an organization with each user having use restricted to their area of expertise. Another attractive feature of this online store software is its automatic upselling and cross-selling functions. This software is built to handle a lot of products and SKU's and includes a mobile-friendly version of your online shopping cart.

The biggest problem for most enterprise companies who do business online is the extremely high licensing and overall fees associated with using the Magento platform. Furthermore, the admin interface as well as the backend are unfriendly to users. If this software is to be used widely across an organization, this could be a huge limiting factor in speedy implementation across the different units of the company. This also makes future integrations very difficult, costly, and time-consuming. Lastly, while there is a plethora of built-in functionality, the enterprise eCommerce software assumes that its shoe will fit you. That is to say, there are not a lot of customized eCommerce solutions according to the unique needs of your company.

Volusion eCommerce Software

 

Volusion is one of the oldest and most established enterprise eCommerce software companies. Their base prices are comparatively standard when looking at the other platforms listed here. Volusion seems to take user experience very seriously and has designed its platform around increasing shopping cart conversions as a way of increasing a B2B company's bottom line. There are a lot of free templates and a user-friendly admin interface allows for aesthetic custom eCommerce solutions without a lot of web design knowledge.

A major weakness in the Volusion platform is the much-criticized, excessive hidden fees. Two that are sure to annoy any company using eCommerce software are bandwidth fees and storage limits (both of which are ridiculously low, to begin with). There are no outright or transaction fees and they even offer a 14-day free trial. However, this only serves to lock unwitting customers in as it takes so much time, effort, and money to switch software.

Online Shopping Software by Znode

Znode excels in its scalable eCommerce software, integrative capabilities, and flexible .NET structure. The fact that it is a relatively new platform gives it distinct advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that it was able to learn from the shortcomings of competitors listed above and design its product with a very clean, user-friendly interface. An attractive feature is the built-in SEO, yet the multi-front creates many directories with the exact same content, therefore incurring duplicate content penalties in the SEO score.

Some weaknesses lie in Znode's relative youth, with the product less mature than it seems on the outside. For large enterprise eCommerce companies, the lack of multi-store management, email marketing, online order entry, and customer returns are major deterrents. Some other complaints include hidden fees and a high cost of base code and PCI compliance.

Elastic Path eCommerce Software for Enterprise Businesses

Elastic Path differs from the rest of these enterprise eCommerce software solutions in that it was designed and built specifically for digital eCommerce. This differs from traditional retail eCommerce software in that digital eCommerce deals more with selling things like digital media and subscriptions. If you're not selling digital eCommerce products, this probably isn't the software for you. That being said, Elastic Path's code is based fairly open-sourced framework, allowing your developers a lot of base code to work with. Elastic Path's status as a newer company means that it is more customer-centric and implementation is easier.

For all its impressiveness as an eCommerce software solution, Elastic Path really doesn't compare to the system management, integrability, and flexibility that other solutions offer. Elastic Path is more of a niche software for digital B2B companies. While open-source code is fantastic, this means a lot of components aren't already built out, making more time and money spent on B2B eCommerce development a necessity.

 

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