Optimizely Commerce Connect vs. VARCommerce

Very strong fit for mid-sized organizations that need more flexibility and customization as compared to canned or template-based offerings, but also want the efficiency and externalization that comes with a pre-existing, cloud-hosted platform (as compared to a full custom offering). Works well with a PIM and more mature catalog data in order to fully leverage the dynamic data capabilities.

Incentivized

• Web content management -- the interface is drag and drop and makes it very easy for business users to create product pages.
• In site search with Episerver Find -- it is easy to promote attributes and make quick tweaks to fine-tune results.
• Integrate with other systems -- we have integrated with our ERP, our product information management system, our digital asset management system and our marketing automation system to take advantage of investments we have already made in content and customer data.

Incentivized

• Support. Episerver used to have direct support and access to the tech team to discuss and resolve issues. The new support portal is not enough for developer needs.
• Quality Assurance. We find issues in the Episerver code that should have been resolved in QA before release.
• Sales. Episervers sells the framework as a solution while showing Alloy. While it helps Episerver sell more, it puts the implementation partner into trouble as the client thinks they bought the solution. Episerver does not provide a solution. It provides a framework that you can build a solution on.

Incentivized

Really want to be able to spend more time and resources on rolling out new things with Episerver but at the moment we seem to be fixing alot of issues and pain points with the way our system was setup.

Incentivized

The job functionality is one of the strongest benefits Optimizely offers. It allows a savvy user to quickly go in to a given job, see the job history to find errors and then even take the steps of a job, copy the code and paste it back into your source to diagnose a potential issue.

Incentivized

We had an incredible team at Episerver Supporting us with the go live, reviewing our integration, and pushing our integration partner to deliver a quality product

Incentivized

Fully understand what is OOTB feature of the platform before proceeding to develop. Then implement a customization of key features once you can prove they are working as OOTB to make them more user friendly and productive for the business. Eg pre order and e gift card

Incentivized

Stibo STEP MDM was a powerhouse. It seems we could do anything we could dream up, but we also had an in-house IT dev team to support it. The cost was the reason we went with Optimizely Commerce Connect. We did not explore HubSpot for this project.

Incentivized

• Positive: We have a usable website - better than what we had before and we are seeing a constant increase in adoption.
• Positive: Counter associates are using the website to help customers.
• Negative: Too much time being spent QCing previous work.

Incentivized