I’ve recently started working for LINLEY, and was excited to gain experience of the Venda ecommerce platform. Knowing that it powered some major ecommerce websites (Heals, Wickes, Laura Ashley, Tesco, Monsoon, TK Maxx… in fact £1 out of £50 of non-food online transactions in the UK), and having read about their sophisticated merchandising and Software as a Service solutions, I was looking forward to a leap forward from the Lynx Internet £50 a month solution (with £2k – 5k launch costs) I had used on previous ecommerce websites (viners.co.uk, oneida.co.uk).
How wrong was I.
Admittedly LINLEY had not managed their design phase particularly well two years ago, and their relationship with Venda had long been difficult, but I was expected great things from their £5k a month service. Instead, I find the platform extremely basic, and the customer service vastly inferior to the £50 a month solution. Some basics I had assumed would be fundamental in an ecommerce platform (being able to download the product catalogue, make bulk changes then upload; being able to report on which customers ordered which products, add meta keywords & descriptions) are just not possible without significant extra costs.
One thought on “The basics…”
Its strange how few options there are for good clean ecommerce software for SME’s that don’t cost the earth and are standards compliant.
I have tried Tradingeye (where we host http://www.logs-uk.co.uk amongst others) but the lack of good CS is a let down, as well as Presta shop, Magento and Evolve ecommerce. All have their own issues, but the most stable and trouble free has been Evolve from Lynx internet, though it does feel a bit dated to use.
It is alarming how many good small businesses are put off by ecommerce, as it can be a mine field with no clear way of starting out.