The document describes two projects evaluating e-commerce software packages and open source content management systems. For the first project, the document compares Shopify and BigCommerce across key factors, with Shopify receiving a slightly higher total score. For the second project, the document analyzes WordPress and Drupal, noting WordPress' advantages in ease of use, extensibility, and cost while Drupal has advantages for complex sites with custom content and user roles. The document recommends WordPress for most sites due to its lower costs and learning curve.
The document describes two projects evaluating e-commerce software packages and open source content management systems. For the first project, the document compares Shopify and BigCommerce across key factors, with Shopify receiving a slightly higher total score. For the second project, the document analyzes WordPress and Drupal, noting WordPress' advantages in ease of use, extensibility, and cost while Drupal has advantages for complex sites with custom content and user roles. The document recommends WordPress for most sites due to its lower costs and learning curve.
The document describes two projects evaluating e-commerce software packages and open source content management systems. For the first project, the document compares Shopify and BigCommerce across key factors, with Shopify receiving a slightly higher total score. For the second project, the document analyzes WordPress and Drupal, noting WordPress' advantages in ease of use, extensibility, and cost while Drupal has advantages for complex sites with custom content and user roles. The document recommends WordPress for most sites due to its lower costs and learning curve.
The document describes two projects evaluating e-commerce software packages and open source content management systems. For the first project, the document compares Shopify and BigCommerce across key factors, with Shopify receiving a slightly higher total score. For the second project, the document analyzes WordPress and Drupal, noting WordPress' advantages in ease of use, extensibility, and cost while Drupal has advantages for complex sites with custom content and user roles. The document recommends WordPress for most sites due to its lower costs and learning curve.
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PROJECT 1
Choose two e-commerce software packages and prepare an evaluation chart that rates the packages on the key factors discussed in the section “Choosing an E-commerce Software Platform.” Which package would you choose if you were developing a website of the type described in this chapter, and why? Choose one of the open source web content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal or another of your own choosing and prepare an evaluation chart similar to that required by Project 4. Which system would you choose and why?
SOLUTION:
What is an Ecommerce Platform?
An ecommerce platform is a software application that allows online businesses to manage their website, marketing, sales, and operations.
Why Use an Ecommerce Platform?
Whether you’re expanding a brick-and-mortar store, looking to find an enterprise-level
solution, or even starting a business from scratch, your choice of ecommerce software has a huge impact on the profitability and stability of your business.
The only real alternatives to using an ecommerce platform are:
Building one from scratch, which is out of the question for most businesses — and only justifiable for multimillion (or multi billion) dollar companies. Using a plugin, which isn’t an option if you’re looking to build and grow a legitimate business – even a small one.
How Will An Ecommerce Platform Benefit My Business?
In addition to scalability and protection of your data, ecommerce platforms, whether hosted on-premise or in the cloud, offer a handful of operational benefits and business tools.
These include:
A product management suite.
Merchandising. Pricing. Promotions. Search capabilities. The ability to personalize sales and services to your liking (e.g. payment options, marketing features, mobile app, add-ons, etc.). Ecommerce platforms offer business owners the ability to customize product information and how it’s solicited to best fit their own online retail needs, which can be a mutual benefit for both the business and its customers.
E-COMMERCE SOFTWARE PACKAGES
There are two selected E-Commerce software packages:
Shopify. BigCommerce.
EVALUTION CHART
Key Factors Shopify BigCommerce
Functionality 9 9 Business Model Support 10 9 Processing Model Tool 9 10 Site Management Tool & 8 9 Reporting Performance & Scalability 9 9 Connectivity Existing Systems 9 8 Compliance With Standards 9 9 Global/Multi-Culture Capability 8 7 Local Sales Tax/Shipping Rules 10 9 Total (90) 81 79 Advantages & Disadvantages
SOPIFY Advantages Disadvantages Number one for sales features Poor for international scalability – relies on third party apps for multi-currency support.
Brilliant inventory system Transactions fees applied unless
using Shopify Payments
Supports multi-channel Switching templates means
selling across platforms such as reformatting your site Facebook, Instagram, and Pinter.
BIGCOMMERCE Advantages Disadvantages Has the most built-in features of Complex terminology makes it any ecommerce platform. unsuitable for beginners.
Supports multi-channel selling. Small learning curve required for
the advanced features.
Fantastic SEO to boost search Editing interface is difficult to
rankings. navigate.
OPEN SOURCE WEB
Two selected open source web are:
WordPress Drupal
WORDPRESS DRUPAL Themes 5,000 2,500 Plugins 53,112 39,000 Ease to use Technical knowledge not Simple user interface, more necessary, UI minimal technical language. Upgrades/Customization Update alerts, updates Updates manuals, installed with one click, customizing only through customization of files in new plugins or offline application.
WordPress Advantages
Ease of use – WordPress is significantly more user-friendly, especially for non-
developers.
Extensibility – WordPress’ third-party theme and plugin communities make it
similarly easy to extend WordPress without the need for custom development. Some people even claim that, with the right extensions, WordPress can do anything that Drupal can do.
Ease of getting help – WordPress’ massive global community means that it’s easy to find support for any issues that you run into.
Lower development costs – WordPress offers more “out of the box” solutions and WordPress developers are usually more affordable than Drupal developers.
Drupal Advantages
Custom content types and views – while WordPress does offer custom post types, most people consider Drupal’s custom content types to be a bit more flexible. Access controls/user permissions – whereas WordPress single-site ships with 5 basic user roles, Drupal has a built-in access control system where you can create new roles with individual permissions.
Core support for multilingual sites – in Drupal 8, multilingual functional
is baked into the core, whereas WordPress sites need to turn to third-party plugins.
Taxonomies for handling lots of data – Drupal’s taxonomy system is more
flexible than WordPress, which can make it ideal for handling lots of content. Pricing for WordPress vs Drupal When it comes to building a professional website, WordPress is clearly the more cost-effective option. Whether you do it yourself or rely on a developer, you will invest far less both financially and in terms of time.
In addition, when it comes to upgrading your website, WordPress works out much cheaper. As a rule, rebuilding on WordPress costs around half the amount as on Drupal.
WordPress vs Drupal Themes
For its sheer variety and number of options, WordPress beats Drupal hands-down. Moreover, the ability to immediately implement “out of the box” designs and easily customize them makes your journey to a completed website far easier.
However, if you are working for a client with specific design requests and complex technical requirements then Drupal is the better option
Performance and Security
Security is still one area where Drupal enjoys an advantage over WordPress. While its core is secure, the problem for WordPress lies in some of its third party extensions.
Support for WordPress vs Drupal
Both WordPress and Drupal provide you with a high level of dedicated support for your website building needs. As is the case with both, you will have to spend a bit more for the best one-to-one service but it is generally worth it.
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