Plotting a Path To Killer Open Source E-commerce and CMS tools
Posted on 03. Jul, 2009 by Fred in Freelancing, General Business, Web Development, e-commerce
Just yesterday I was engaged in a wonderful comment by commenter “Liz” regarding my post “The Next Step in Small-Business Web Tools – Open Source/E-commerce Hybrids“. She left me some great comments and one in particular seemed better suited to an actual post. Thanks, Liz!
…do you have other recommendations for a mid sized company like my clients that would enable us to grow into the potential we have as a direct to consumer player? A tall order, I know, but love your thoughts.
While I am not a marketing expert, I do feel comfortable speaking from the standpoint of tools and usability. There needs to be a new emphasis on lowering the operational footprint of the tools we provide for clients. After all, the building that a store resides in shouldn’t require the level of attention that marketing, products and customers demand. As a developer, I believe that is the philosophy that we need to emphasize moving forward – the tool needs to be built with a clear emphasis on fitting into existing business processes as much as possible instead of carelessly redefining them, and in the process creating more work on the operational side. In addition, the tools themselves need to serve marketing directives better, which means adding features in that allow marketing departments to test, gather and abstract data into something that can be employed in marketing and operational directives.
In the context of e-commerce, the problem lies in the fact that otherwise decent core e-commerce packages, make it cost prohibitive to make any sort of change to the system, and it doesn’t need to be like that. If designed right, the actual code framework should be able to handle most or all of the customization needs a client has. That way, if something does need to change, less time can be spent customizing and therefore reducing TCO (total cost of ownership) of the tool set.
Generally speaking I see the rising stars in direct to consumer as having expertise with and providing non-invasive, adaptable, (robust, portable) open source tools as well as being experts at converting raw data into real marketing and operational strategies for their clients. These are lofty goals to be sure, but it is time for us, the techies to listen to the marketers and to the users to create tools that work with and serve the clients better.
What do you think?
