Front-commerce vs. Optimizely Configured Commerce

Front-commerce offers an excellent digital storefront, which is ideal for shops in specialist markets with fierce competition. In comparison to other alternatives, the e-commerce software is natively related to mobile devices as well as SEO. However, it is preferable to have technical abilities in order to primarily utilize it (react, js, etc.) and the cost is more than other options.

Incentivized

I think that there are a lot of companies (us included) that are looking for a solution to fit into their current needs, versus looking for a solution that is going to solve all of their problems. For us, Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud fits into the former in that situation where we have specific ERP needs, specific data needs, usability and user management needs, etc. and Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud just happens to fit in there the most.

Incentivized

• Search Engine Optimized.
• Designed with mobile devices in mind.
• Support that is accurate and timely.

Incentivized

• Edit Pages - A visual editor with custom widgets allows a quick way to edit the website
• Manage users - in the back end editing and managing users is very easy
• Data - the whole system allows us to track users and collect data fairly easily

Incentivized

• Can be complex (need to have knowledge in react).
• More expensive than the competition.

Incentivized

• It deployed with a major bug in Guest checkout. It is now fixed, but we lost a lot of business because of it.
• The pricing API is not working.
• Support for multi-warehouse product availability would be helpful. If we have the product in stock in any warehouse, we should be able to book the order.

Incentivized

Quite flexible and easy to use for daily marketing user tasks, like updating page listings, promotions, and copy. More in-depth tasks like managing product attributes, rearranging product taxonomy placement, and CMS editing are not user-friendly and require a careful and detailed process to follow.

Incentivized

Yes the support team was quite helpful in the initial part of implementation.

Incentivized

It's a mixed bag. The team has been very nice, but there has been an underlying feeling of condescension because we have complained or "caused trouble" over the inadequacy of the CMS component. Also, support for modifications or UI changes has been terribly slow. Understandably, COVID has made life hard for everyone, but there is an expectation that we complete our work immediately, but their team will "put it in queue" when we have a request or find a bug. Further, we certainly feel that we were sold a list of capabilities that we have not seen come to fruition. Finally, the change of ownership 3 times (Insite -> Epi -> Opti) over our implementation period has been both confusing and disruptive.

Incentivized

Front-commerce is really optimized for SEO and mobile devices, and since I implement it, the conversion rate is higher. They are the 2 reasons why we decided to implement it.

Incentivized

We selected Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud (when it was Insite Commerce) as they were specifically focused on manufacturing clients and the storefront and data management were very robust. The business model and cost were more in our price range as well, so an overall better value for the solution. The ability for the product data to be updated once on the catalog side as well as on the CMS website side was the benefit we saw with a small team of resources to support the product. However, there are definite drawbacks to having not gone with a more turnkey website CMS.

Incentivized

• Setup is simple.
• Although it is a small group, it has a lot of support.
• SEO rating at the top.

Incentivized

• Higher AOV - online customers are buying more than they did before
• amount of pressure it's taken off branch employees who no longer have to give prices or inventory info for every customer request
• But we are spending a LOT of money on custom development to get exactly what we need / want

Incentivized