Review: ShopSite TX 4.1
Web Commerce Today, Issue 28, November 15, 1999
ShopSite Manager and Pro 4.1 come in two versions, the stand-alone SC product (reviewed last month http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct3/shopsite-sc-41.cfm), and the TX product, that takes advantage of the a number of features of the powerful Open Market Transact commerce platform (http://www.openmarket.com/transact/) to provide order tracking capabilities that benefit both customers and merchants. I'll be commenting on features included in the TX version that aren't part of ShopSite SC. (Note: the Web version of this article has screen shots, just click on the thumbnails.)
From the standpoint of the customer, ShopSite TX provides a way to check on the progress of orders, whether they have been shipped, tracking number, etc. This makes ShopSite TX a very strong product for business-to-business transactions where there may be several order outstanding or partially shipped. The merchant gains the ability to track orders and customers, and do various kinds of analyses, including unshipped orders, etc.
Open Market Commerce Service Partners
The latter must be hosted by a ShopSite CSP (Commerce Service Partner). Two CSPs in the US include Comcation, Inc. of Doylestown, Pennsylvania (http://www.comcation.com) and Internet Commerce Services Corporation (iCOMS), of Nashua, New Hampshire (http://www.icoms.com/echristmas/). Another option (though more limited) is Lycos Stores (see review in this issue).
Monthly fees are priced for small businesses. For example, after hefty set-up fees, Comcation charges a reasonable hosting fee ($49 monthly for ShopSite Manager TX, $99 for ShopSite Pro TX) and a monthly Transact Processing fee of $65 plus 25 cents per order. iCOMS monthly charge is $59.95 hosting plus $1.95 flat rate per order. Note that Transact hooks directly to one or more credit card processing companies (such as First Data Corp.), so there is not additional "payment gateway" needed, such as Signio.com or CyberCash. With that in mind, these hosting prices are quite reasonable.
Others CSPs that either are hosting ShopSite TX, or are preparing to do so, are NGage in Canada (http://www.ngage.ca/), KLELine and Professo (Paris and New York, with partnerships in Germany, England, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Lebanon, Israel, Brazil, the US, http://www.professo.com), Cable & Wireless (UK and elsewhere, http://www.web-commerce.co.uk/), and others.
Shopping Cart
ShopSite TX works essentially the same as ShopSite SC until the shopper puts something in her shopping cart. At that point she is taken to the Transact platform hosted by the CSP. This is different from ShopSite SC in that the need to enter shopper information and the secure server are not invoked until the shopper is ready to check out. I don't like this as well as ShopSite SC, since placing something in the cart now requires more perceived "commitment" by the customer, and may significantly lower retail sales to end users.
Unlike ShopSite SC, the shopowner cannot configure the look and feel of the shopping cart page, the order page, or the thank you page. Therefore, instructions or shipping information cannot be placed on these pages. This is a significant drawback to a smooth and clear ordering process.
Missing Features
I was surprised to find that several handy features of ShopSite-SC Pro are missing from the "Merchandising" area of ShopSite-TX Pro's back office. These include the discount schedule (e.g. 10% off for orders over $100), affiliate program, and the Order API that can initiate further CGI programs to be activated after an order is made. I'm guessing that these were removed because all of them relate directly to the order handling function of Transact which allows no real merchant customization. But it's strange that the current ShopSite Feature List (http://www.openmarket.com/shopsite/products/table.cfm) doesn't mention their absence in the TX version. To be fair, for most businesses, neither the discount schedule or affiliate program features are essential.
E-Mail Notification
ShopSite TX provides clear advantages in keeping the customer up-to-date on order status. Customers can be notified by e-mail whenever the order is first entered ("captured"), backordered, shipped, credited, canceled, or charged back. In addition, Transact can optionally be configured to notify customers either daily or hourly about when physical or digital goods are shipped.
Tax and Shipping
Tax can be configured in a very sophisticated manner for the US and Canada using the real-time services of Taxware (http://www.taxware.com). This becomes especially helpful when the merchant has a corporate presence in a number of states. Since tax is figured on the basis of the state or province and postal code entered, even states where the tax rate changes for every county can be handled with ease. Transact is also capable of calculating the VAT tax used widely in Europe.
Shipping calculations, too, can be configured precisely. Transact allows the storeowner to set up zones within the US (US Pacific States, for example), and assign several states to each zone (in this case California, Oregon, and Washington). International zones and sub-zones can also be created and individual countries placed with in them. For each shipping can be calculated based on price, weight, or a flat rate. Then when a shopper enters a state or country, and type of shipping desired, the appropriate shipping costs are calculated and entered on the order. No direct interface is available at present with real-time UPS or FedEx shipping calculators.
Customer Information
The Transact platform allows the merchant to collect full contact and shipping information on customers, and to "register" customers so the customers have a username and password with which to check the progress of orders.
But the current version of Transact has a serious weakness for ShopSite TX user. While it is easy to access information for individual customers (searchable by e-mail address or name, or parts thereof), there is no easy way to see an online listing of ALL the customers. Nor is there a way to download a tab-delimited file of customers so you can market to them via e-mail or phone list.
Currently for the ShopSite TX storeowner to access this information, he would have to convince the CSP to program Open Market's Buyer Profile API into Transact so he could view this data. The other workaround would be to download the entire order file, select for the customer-specific fields, import into a database, and remove duplicates.
Order Tracking
ShopSite TX's strongest features, however, are in order tracking. Registered customers can search their order history, and highlight and cancel orders that have not been completely or partially fulfilled (if, for example, backorder is taking too long). They can also check for the UPS or FedEx tracking numbers and use those to determine the location of packages in transit.
We've included screen shots of several of these functions. Click on the small graphic to view the screen shot.
Merchants have a number of ways to sort data to determine new orders, back orders, shipped orders, etc. by invoice number (or range), date (or range), name, e-mail address, etc. (Click here to see screen shot). This feature is so well developed that some businesses could make this online database its primary product fulfillment software. It does not include inventory and warehouse information, however, so larger companies will need to supplement it with their own in-house systems. Order file data can be downloaded in tab-delimited format and then formatted for import into many legacy systems.
Conclusion
ShopSite TX enables a small merchant or business-to-business vendor to take advantage of many sophisticated order management features at a very manageable price. While the features are strong, I look forward to a new version that allows (1) the ability to download customer data, (2) configurable ordering system pages, and (3) the ability present an anonymous shopping cart before customer data must be entered.
