Hello Everyone!
I run my own ecommerce site, well, just custom e-commerce development using asp.net with a partner. We have other things as well of course but we really want to do more ecommerce work. However, we think people are doing this way too much, and normally people do not want to pay upfront cost to actually own their own store (some do, but require good sales techniques and better off being in their area to actually visit them in person).
It Seems like people rather "Rent" or "Lease". Now we are extremely decent developers and have done a lot of thinking, and we are thinking of developing our own hosted ecommerce service, like volusion, for example.
We have done comparisons of features and things like that, and we do see quite a few shortcomings.
One of which is easy page creation and complete control over the layout, for example. there is no good nice and simple AJAX type creator, they just seem like, "Choose one of our basic templates" or buy one from us, or "get us to make you one for $1500" kind of deal. What about also using your existing template? or for example, an existing one purchases elsewhere? without ANY coding, just an import button? What about a simple graphics creation as well? its really easy to dynamically create web 2.0 and normal buttons that some places would charge $1000 to do, like a simple NAV bar.
Also other simple things like the types of commerce you want to do... most places either can let you sell products, software, or memberships. What about a reservation system? or a Credit based system? or modules and options to do something more specific?
Also in terms of actual CRM and product management, we did not see any, or barely any we reviewed also extend management to mobile devices.
Also pricing we looked at, and most offer a 3-4 SET packages. Would anyone like the ability to just PAY for the features they wanted? For example, the small package is great, but there is just one feature in the most expensive you absolutely need, and would end up paying double the price. What is you could just check a box and add that feature and pay for what the feature is worth? like an extra xx per month, instead of having to buy other things you do not require? and if you did need them, its as simple as checking a box to add them to your existing system.
These are just a "few" things to mention, we actually have a large list, too big to list here, plus we don't want competition getting any bright ideas, haha....
So basically, we want to find out what people really need and want, and what you are looking for in an ecommerce system? What features do you want to see and where does your current provider fall short?
We don't want to assume what people want, we want to know!
So Please, if you can, let us know, you can post here, or drop us a e-mail at our site. We are pretty ambitious about this project, and want to do something that actually works out well for the customer and not for us.
We would be developing with ASP.NET, a lot of places seem to still use ASP and vb script (time for upgrade?) so things that could be considered is also allowing custom modules to be implemented, if you knew how to do them or your company for example, and could be shared with a community.
Thanks for your opinions and suggestions!
