Feature
Sitecore (news, site), one of the players in the .NET Web CMS market, has added an e-commerce platform to its product portfolio.
From Web CMS to E-Commerce
The latest addition to the product list of Sitecore – Sitecore E-Commerce is not a surprising product. Actually, the e-commerce platform is built on top of their CMS.
The core functionality comes from the CMS, but it is enhanced with e-commerce specific features.
What's Inside the Sitecore E-Commerce Platform?
The basic online shop functionality includes the following features:
Product information and order management
Payment processing and shipping management
Integration with ERP, customer databases and other back office applications
Sitecore E-Commerce Order Management
In addition to these features, you also need marketing-related functionality, as well as tracking and statistics. Sitecore E-Commerce offers both groups of features, and if you can find the time to study the reports of your online shop's activity, you can get really valuable data about user behavior and the efficiency of your SEO/marketing efforts.
Sitecore E-Commerce Reporting
Here are some of the features related to metrics and statistics:
Account creation
Order completion
Customized checkout
Email campaigns
Visitor count
Average time on site
Best-selling products
Conversions (with referring URLs)
All these features make it easy for you to track if your efforts to sell give results or not. In addition to them, there are personalization tools, which allow you to create specific content for special groups.
Up-selling and cross-selling are also possible with Sitecore E-Commerce. The customized checkout allows to keep a detailed history of your customers' purchases.
Sitecore E-Commerce offers mobile functionality as well with Android, iPhone and BlackBerry support that allows you to create mobile-friendly versions of your pages.
