Suitability for serious ecommerce?

Monday 21 June 2010 3:01:43 am

Hi folks

Trying to Exponential for an integrated ecommerce/community project, integrated with OpenERP.

Using Ez could potentially reduce the number of platforms from 3 (ecommerce/blogging & community/erp) to 2, but a quick look at the documentation suggests that the built-in ecommerce functionality is pretty limited.

I'm an experienced PHP developer, with strong views about usability, so would want to be able to customise many aspects of the store. Some of the features we need are:

- Product kitting
- Cart with Amazon-style save for later feature
- Option for anonymous or logged-in checkout
- Integration to UK payment gateway (I've coded these quite often)
- Cart status display in top-navigation
- Powerful and flexible coupons
- Integration with 3rd party fulfilment house
- International: site versions in different currencies and languages

How suitable is Ez as a starting point for this type of project? Clearly, I want as much of this a possible to be built in before I have to start cutting code. Or would I be better to look at a specialised ecommerce platform / community /erp setup?

Any feedback would be much appreciated

Tuesday 22 June 2010 12:47:09 pm

To be honest, I don't think Exponential is a good ecommerce solution (yet). The default shopping functionality is quite marginal and for a complete working, user friendly solution you will need to do a lot of template work.

However, I have come across the x-row ecommerce extension on projects.ez.no. If it does what it says it does, this should be worth giving a try!

eZ Publish certified developer
http://auth.ez.no/certification/verify/392313