Comparison of e-commerce systems 2008
Published 2009-06-04 08:00 by Jimmy Wirsborg
E-commerce platforms are getting better at appearing in search engines. 11 out of 21 e-commerce platforms get the highest grade when seen from a search perspective while E-butik, the most commonly distributed platform in Sweden, gets a very low grade.
Search engines are normally the most important channel for e-retailers to acquire new customers. A large portion is about purchased traffic in the form of sponsored links, while online stores traditionally had a hard time ranking well in the organic search list. The search optimizing consultants Jajja have examined 20 e-commerce platforms based on how well they are at showing in the non-paid organic results. “We don’t have any of the largest systems such as ones from Microsoft and IBM since they did not want to collaborate with our testers”, says Jimmy Wirsborg whom has been responsible for the examination at Jajja.
More and more developers of e-commerce platforms have understood the importance of search engine visibility. 11 of the 21 tested e-commerce platforms got the highest grade* in the comparison performed by Jajja: Star Republic, Askås, Litium Studio E-Handel, DynamicWeb, easyWeb, Icommerce (Magento), Xelera E-handel NX2, SiteDirect, Intelligent Solutions (Interspire), Enfinity Suite 6 – Intershop and Nordisk E-handel all got the top-grade of 5.
- If you haven’t taken search engines into consideration from the start it’ll be cheaper to redo the entire web shop rather than trying to search optimize the current one, says Jimmy Wirsborg at Jajja.
Four additional e-commerce platforms clearly get a passing grade from a search engine perspective: Panagora, Wipcore eNOVA, Jetshop and HL Design WebShop.
Unfortunately the e-commerce platform with the largest customer base, E-Butik, got the failing grade 0.7. E-butik still use the deprecated “frames” technology, which is completely reprehensible from a search engine perspective.
- E-butik is stuck in its old platform with frames. That doesn’t work in 2009, says Jimmy Wirsborg.
Two platforms received zero points in consideration to visibility in Google and other search engines: Danaweb and Mamut Business Software 12.3.
* Some of the systems require a certain feature set level offered by the retailer, or avoidance of certain features which are bad for search engines. Askås wouu ld for example only get 2.5 points if their product tabs were used.
How the test was carried out
Choosing E-commerce platforms is a critical part of the comparison since there are hundreds of platforms on the market. We have chosen the systems which we have experience of in the company. We searched for more by using Google (“Search engine friendly shops should have a search engine friendly site”) and used recommendations we got when querying E-commerce developers. We also excluded the largest and smallest systems. The amount of small systems makes it practically impossible to test all of them. IBM and Microsoft (offering the largest systems) chose not to collaborate with our testers, which is why their platforms were excluded.
We also excluded platforms based on open source code, the exceptions being commercial solutions based on open source platforms, such as the Icommerce implementation of Magento. The reason for this is that the open source systems require a higher competence in programming and web technology and thus has a different target audience than commercial systems.
See the detailed examination here» (pdf)
Grades
| Company/System | Grade | Complexity |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligent Solutions eStore | 5 | 0% |
| Xelera E-handel NX2 | 5 | 0% |
| easyWeb | 5 | 6% |
| Icommerce (Magento) | 5 | 6% |
| Nordisk E-handel | 5 | 6% |
| Askås | 5 | 13% |
| DynamicWeb | 5 | 13% |
| SiteDirect | 5 | 13% |
| Star Republic | 5 | 13% |
| Litium Studio E-Handel | 5 | 19% |
| Enfinity Suite 6 – Intershop | 5 | 38% |
| Jetshop | 4.7 | 6% |
| Wipcore eNOVA | 4.7 | 19% |
| Panagora | 4.7 | 44% |
| HL Design WebShop | 4.5 | 19% |
| Textalk | 3.9 | 25% |
| Hybris | 3.7 | 13% |
| Starweb | 1.5 | 13% |
| E-Butik | 0.7 | 13% |
| Danaweb | 0 | 0% |
| Mamut Business Software 12.3 | 0 | 19% |
Complexity – The amount of features requiring technical understanding from the purchaser/user.
Grading
We set our grades by weighing a set of features that the systems support or lack. All systems emanate from grade five and then get points subtracted for each feature which is not developed in a search engine friendly way, based on our view of how important this particular feature is for search engines.
Points subtracted when feature lacks SEO-friendliness:
| Feature | Point reduction |
|---|---|
| Title | 0.4 – 1.9 |
| Description | 0.3 – 1.6 |
| Keywords | 0.1 |
| Frames | 3 |
| H1 | 1.6 |
| P | 0.2 |
| Alt-attribute | 1.2 |
| Title-attribute | 0.3 |
| W3C-validation | 0.5 |
| Search engine friendly address | 0.5 |
| Domain | 3 |
| Cookies | 2.5 |
| Javascript | 2.5 |
| Flash | 2.5 |
| Menus | 2 |
| Entry pages | 0.1 |
Contact
If you have any questions, contact Jimmy Wirsborg:
08-546 66 229 or 
