Thread

I have not used either, but I’m curious as to how both handle the following scenarios, which are the scenarios that I’ve encountered in nearly every ecomm site I’ve been a part of and taken up the majority of development time.

Ok - well as I said, my experience of CT is limited to older versions, so I can’t comment on that, but I’m happy to advise on BrilliantRetail.

Shipping

How do each handle bundled items, or special items that have to be shipped in their own containers and separate from other products of the same order?

Not quite sure what you mean by this - but BR allows for product ‘bundles’ (one of the product types). So you can have product X, Y and Z bundled together for an A price. In terms of fulfilment of that order, it would be down to the clients system to deal with it?

Can they handle multiple shipping carriers to let the customer choose which to use for a particular order?

Yes- you can supply as many shipping carriers as you want within the system support and then it will present user choice.

Do either contact the, lets say, FedEx or USPS APIs to validate shipping addresses and pull back accurate shipping rates? If so, how do they handle international addresses?

Yes - although I’ve not used them, BR does integrate with the FedEx and USPS API to validate shipping costs.

Cataglog/Cart pricing rules

Do they have shopping cart price rules? E.g. if my total is over $100, can I set it up for free shipping? What if there is an item that never gets free shipping, will that be taken out of the equation for the free shipping rule?

Yes you can define multiple shipping rules - I’ve infact written a couple of custom shipping modules to support this. However, from memory, you cannot ‘exclude’ an item from free shipping, it’s an all or nothing implementation.

Can you discount all items, or a select group of items based on the user group? E.g. group 1 gets 10% off all items, group 2 gets 20% off etc.

Yes you can - discounts can be applied to a single product, a product category or *all* products. You can also define how long the discount is valid for and how many times it can be used (i.e. the first 10 people to enter ‘xxxx’ on the website will get 10% off).

Fulfillment

I have a client on Magento right now and would love to move them to BR or CartThrob b/c the main site is in EE already. They can get 500 orders a day and have 1 or 2 people fulfilling them. They print off a PDF invoice which they use for collecting items to prep for packaging, then include the invoice in the package itself. How does BR or CartThrob handle the whole fulfillment process?

Orders are listed in the system and a user can go in and update notes on the order (e.g. to say order printed) and they can then ‘print’ the order, which gives the full details of the order, line items, payment reference numbers, client details etc etc. Whilst it’s not a PDF - it’s simply a HTML generated page specifically formatted to fit on a page.

e.g., a new order comes in, is the CC charged immediately, or does someone have to initiate that CC charge? If so, can they do it in batch mode? After that, can they batch print invoices, then batch update an order as “complete”, “closed”, “shipped” etc. Magento SUCKS at this and I’ve spent hours upon hours hacking the CP to make the process somewhat easier for the client.

Depending on which payment gateway you use, order payment is usually taken when its placed via the built-in API. I’ve spent quite some time building up a list of gateways that we can support, but we’re constantly looking at adding more. Batch printing of invoices, I don’t think is possible at the moment, but it’s certainly something I’d look into if it’s a big deal as is batch updating or orders. The system is very extensible and I can tell you now, I spend a lot of time reviewing the Roadmap with David and the guys at BR - so I’d recommend you put your ‘feature requests’ in to them for consideration!

Regards,

Carl.

Hi Carl,

Does Brilliant Retail support third party channel field types?  Most notably, does it support P&T’s Matrix and Playa?

Thanks in advance!

Hi Carl,

Does Brilliant Retail support third party channel field types?  Most notably, does it support P&T’s Matrix and Playa?

Thanks in advance!

Hi Stephen,

No - it doesn’t support field types in that sense, however if you’d like to give me a scenario where you would need something like that I’ll try to give an explanation of how you would accomplish it in BR?

Regards,

Carl.

We’re working on an ecom site (we’re new to EE). One of the things that I never particularly liked about Interspire or Magento or most of the other ecom solutions was that the cart software was the web site instead of the other way around. We love EE so far just because it allows us to control the flow.

Either system will help break this pattern. The BR templates are still just templates and can go wherever you want, in the forefront, background, or even stuck at the end of a blog page.

It (BR) also has an excellent layered navigation similar to Magento, and a reasonable promotions/discount system…

Is it easy to separate the store from the navigation? We’d like to plug a product matrix right into a page on the site, that links up to product pages. No navigation, just let the standard navigation, not necessarily controlled by a product catalog, get you to the right place.

Yep, both systems will do that, just ignore BR’s nav tags and build your own navigation

I’d have no qualms using either for a store turning over anything up to about £20 orders a day. After that much bigger issues come into play which are probably beyond the scope of a $99 add-on.

That got a little lost in the translation. Is it a concern over the volume of orders or the total revenue per day. If it is volume, I’d love to hear why you have a concern about the limits and what those limits are.

Typo, I meant 20 orders a day. The limits then become more about humans than the system, but have an impact. Processing orders, managing returns, managing customer service issues, keeping stock up to date. All these are beyond the scope of product catalog + basket + checkout. If you look at what the systems with the $1m price tags on can do you’ll see what I mean.

The product you are selling plays a huge role in the features you need so some idea of that might help the discussion?

This site will sell software (some downloadable) and accessories. Typically priced between $15-$200 per order. Order volume is in the hundreds per day.

In which case most of what I said above is irrelevant 😊 If you’re not dealing with physical products the process is far more scaleable.

Devot-ee is built on CT and I’ve started building a downloads section using BR which works nicely out of the box with download controls and obfuscation in place as standard.

Thanks!

No problem

One last point. Ecommerce is incredibly complex with lots of relationships to other systems and business processes. Far more so than most projects. If the project you’re faced with doesn’t justify $250 and a week of R&D to find the best solution you should really question whether it’s right to get involved in it. If the client budget is driving that decision than there are hosted solutions that will get them started until they have the funds to do it properly.

Our own pricing on ecommerce jobs is usually more than 5 figures, but we’re selling handholding by a team who have run significant ecommerce projects over more than a decade, it’s not about software, it’s about avoiding all the mistakes we already made ourselves 10 years ago.

From your opening comments it sounds like you have some good experience already so this is more for the benefit of others reading this thread. The software may be easy to use, but so is a knife. That doesn’t make you a chef!

I hope this is helpful and doesn’t do a disservice to either product. I guess the short answer is to get the client requirements together and use the pre-sales forums that both sites have to help make a decision. You may find that neither is appropriate and that you need the client to go 100% bespoke.

Thank Carl…

Let’s say I was selling digital prints.  Each print comes in black & white or color with a variety of dimensions.  I imagine setting it up as a matrix with four columns (Upload thumbnail, Description, Dimensions and Price).  On the front end, I envision a column for checkboxes with corresponding Thumbnails, Description, Dimensions and Price columns.

As for using P&T’s Playa fieldtype, I imagine relating these prints to artists, sales promotions, regions or whatever else my client’s heart desires.

I haven’t used CT or BR, but I’ve been reading the documentation on both and fall into the camp that doesn’t understand how BR is as flexible since it doesn’t take advantage of out-of-the-box channels and all their third party power.

Thanks for your input.

Batch printing of invoices, I don’t think is possible at the moment, but it’s certainly something I’d look into if it’s a big deal as is batch updating or orders.

That is a fairly big deal. Especially when the number of orders per day reaches the hundreds (really, much sooner) it becomes rather tedious to open each order and print it out.

How about end of day processing? Does it batch fulfilled orders to be settled through the payment gateway? Is there a facility to export the day’s orders in a way that can be massaged so they can imported into an accounting system?

Thanks!

I hope this is helpful and doesn’t do a disservice to either product.

Your comments have been enormously helpful. It takes a while for an ecomm package to mature, but it is exciting to see a couple of promising up and coming solutions for EE.

Thanks again!

Typo, I meant 20 orders a day. The limits then become more about humans than the system, but have an impact. Processing orders, managing returns, managing customer service issues, keeping stock up to date. All these are beyond the scope of product catalog + basket + checkout. If you look at what the systems with the $1m price tags on can do you’ll see what I mean.

I have looked and demoed several high-end, “enterprise” level systems.  I’m unimpressed to say the least.  I’m currently under the belief that anything you mention (processing, returns, stock) with the exception of Customer Service, can be managed with EE.  I do not want to be naive, but I truly see a more elegant way of managing enterprise level sites with EE plus CT or BR than anything I’ve seen (+1mil or not).  Because I work in this space, and am always looking for a better system than what we currently use, I’d like to hear your suggestions on systems that can handle all of this better as a whole?

Let’s say I was selling digital prints.  Each print comes in black & white or color with a variety of dimensions.  I imagine setting it up as a matrix with four columns (Upload thumbnail, Description, Dimensions and Price).  On the front end, I envision a column for checkboxes with corresponding Thumbnails, Description, Dimensions and Price columns.

In this example, you would set up options/attributes for your product which allow for various size/dimension etc - you can even set up price variations for the attributes (for example a large dimension could be +$25.00 on the base cost). In terms of the output, from my recollection the data would be output as a series of dropdowns, but I’m sure I saw an undocumented feature that would allow you to display it as a matrix table if you wanted. However, don’t quote me on it at this stage.

As for using P&T’s Playa fieldtype, I imagine relating these prints to artists, sales promotions, regions or whatever else my client’s heart desires.

With the BrilliantRetail fieldtype, you could associate products to an artist or in fact *any* channel entry that you see fit.

Many Thanks,

Carl.

That is a fairly big deal. Especially when the number of orders per day reaches the hundreds (really, much sooner) it becomes rather tedious to open each order and print it out.

How about end of day processing? Does it batch fulfilled orders to be settled through the payment gateway? Is there a facility to export the day’s orders in a way that can be massaged so they can imported into an accounting system?

I agree that this kind of functionality would be a good addition to the system and thinking about it - It would be a great thing to add to the roadmap.

I’d certainly recommend putting these into a feature request on http://www.brilliantretail.com/support/contact - There are certainly sales reports that you can use and export as CSV format for import into accounts system, but batch updating, would be something we could implement in a future release.

Regards,

Carl.

Hey everyone,

I’d like to chime in on our experience with both of these wonderful eCommerce solutions for EE2. First, I’m not meaning to step on anyone’e toes, just wanted to make that clear. I’ve had great conversations with both Chris from CT and David from BR - they’re both great developers and very helpful!

We’ve made lots of sites using EE2 but just getting into the realm of eCommerce for our clients, some larger than others. We first looked at BR only because CR2 wasn’t available - the project was for a client that needed an eCommerce store along with a custom auction module - something like a light version of eBay you could say. We developed the auction module which acted like an extension to BR. Customers would be able to add products through BR’s interface along with all the options, etc… and then in the Auction module they would be able to click on the row to active it as an auction. The auction would have a timer, users would be able to bid on the items, and once the timer ran down the auction would end.

Fast forward about 2 months, I saw CT2 was in beta and available for sale - I was like okay let’s see how this compares to BR. We currently have a client in the development stage that needed a really really custom solution, more than anything we’ve ever done for anyone. This project has been going on for 3 months and will launch in July.

Let me give you a quick summary of what type of client this is, and what they do. The client offers a “greener” way of moving, instead of using cardboard boxes they provide plastic bins as an alternative lower-cost solution for customers. They’re currently selling Franchises all over the US, and have already expanded to Canada.

The bins are also setup as combos, which would look something like: 2 Rooms = 20 large bins, 5 XL bins and 100 zip ties - as an example. They are also able to be rented between 1-4 weeks. If they choose 2 or more weeks for duration, they’re entitled to a 50% discount. Customer is able to choose delivery date (which a pickup order is automatically created based on delivery date & rental duration period) and 2 time blocks for delivery & pickup.

The client needed the ability to do some of the following:

Integration with QuickBooks
- Track Franchises inventory, sales, reports, customers, etc…
- Be able to have “company” customers have multiple open orders (right now any eCommerce solution allows only 1 open order at a time, obviously to create another order you have to checkout before starting a new one)
- Create “net 30/60 day” accounts for those that won’t be paying upon checkout
- Hierarchy which includes parent & child accounts… for example: Company “X” creates an order (they’re the parent account which has the login access) but creates the order for “Joe” (Joe is the child account)... when they look in the CRM they will be able to drill down to joe’s account and see all his orders.
- Custom admin interface so headquarters can oversee ALL Franchises , sectioned by: Alerts, Invoicing, Orders, Scheduling, Inventory and CRM.
—Alerts: Would show triggers on certain actions that admin sets up, like low inventory on Franchises
—Invoicing: would show how much each Franchise made for the last week, this week, total and future expected amount next week
—Orders: Will show past 10, 20, etc.. orders which include Franchise name, order #, name, delivery date, delivery zip code, rental duration of items (1-4 weeks), total paid and status of order.
—Scheduling: This will show as a color block and a % of how much inventory is left for each franchise, each day for an entire week.
—Inventory: Inventory will show how many orders are pending pickup, pending delivery, in stock, missing/lost/damaged, pending restock, etc… for each date , each franchise
—CRM: Modified from EE’s default standard look, we gave it a more web 2.0 feel, shows all types of details that you can think of, including adding notes to customers account and setting up alerts.

There’s tons of more things, too much to think of and type out - but as you can see it’s pretty extensive setup.

To finish off and give a comparison, I feel that CR2 is a more native solution to EE than BR. I don’t think we were able to do what we needed on this particular project if we had gone with BR.

I’m sure BR is a great solution, but I think for our needs and what we’ve experienced creating modules and extensions with CR - we’re hooked, literally!

Thanks,
Danny

Aside from the ongoing discussions here - Stephen (Shine Marketing) has made some valid points. Personally, I’ve been building eCommerce websites for a long time and have used Magento, Shopify, CartThrob, BrilliantRetail plus many other closed source systems and I’ve yet to find a system which does everything.

What you need to look at is a solution which is works on most cases for you - there are going to be fringe cases where it wont work for you, but in a perfect situation, if you should have enough knowledge of your chosen system at this point to be able to extend functionality as and when required.

We’ve made a decision to focus on a BrilliantRetail based eCommerce offering - having worked with the guys at the Alpha and Beta stages of the product and since becoming UK Development partners for them, we intimately know how the system works and on top of the work on core development, we’re also building 4 eCommerce sites as well - all of which perform various functions and do things slightly differently. Each site needs something different - 99% of each site works out of the box for us, but this fringe case either means getting a bit dirty with PHP or getting someone to extend functionality.

The idea that you can simply ‘plug and play’ an eCommerce website is a very dangerous thing - there are extreme consequences in some cases and as with Stephen, most of our eCommerce projects are 4 to 5 figures - but clients are paying for our expertise in producing a quality product at the end of it which physically makes them money - however, one thing I don’t agree with Stephen on is the price point. Whether you pay $99 or $9000 for the software, it’s about the implementation of that software which will ultimately pay dividends. My experience of both CMS and eCommerce system at the high-end range ($5000+) usually results in 70% bloat, 10% redundant functionality and 20% of actual usage - versus a leaner solution which may lack functionality in some cases, but is built in such a way that it’s extensible to meet individual requirements.

I have to agree with you there Carl, as I made a point in my thread to state I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, and then ended BR just wasn’t for this particular project - you’re absolutely right.

NO 1 module, extension, addon, CMS app will be a “let me install, add content and call it a day”.

I personally hate Magento, but that’s me. I love CartThrob, and BR works for some types of projects, but that’s personal preference. You have to find a solution that will fit your needs, and you’re clients needs. Ultimately, they’re going to be using the final product so creating/developing something that’s easy to use is important.

Finding a solution that offers complete flexibility and is customzible is very important, you don’t want to be locked down on software or an addon that you can’t extend or integrate with.

Aside from the ongoing discussions here - Stephen (Shine Marketing) has made some valid points. Personally, I’ve been building eCommerce websites for a long time and have used Magento, Shopify, CartThrob, BrilliantRetail plus many other closed source systems and I’ve yet to find a system which does everything.

What you need to look at is a solution which is works on most cases for you - there are going to be fringe cases where it wont work for you, but in a perfect situation, if you should have enough knowledge of your chosen system at this point to be able to extend functionality as and when required.

We’ve made a decision to focus on a BrilliantRetail based eCommerce offering - having worked with the guys at the Alpha and Beta stages of the product and since becoming UK Development partners for them, we intimately know how the system works and on top of the work on core development, we’re also building 4 eCommerce sites as well - all of which perform various functions and do things slightly differently. Each site needs something different - 99% of each site works out of the box for us, but this fringe case either means getting a bit dirty with PHP or getting someone to extend functionality.

The idea that you can simply ‘plug and play’ an eCommerce website is a very dangerous thing - there are extreme consequences in some cases and as with Stephen, most of our eCommerce projects are 4 to 5 figures - but clients are paying for our expertise in producing a quality product at the end of it which physically makes them money - however, one thing I don’t agree with Stephen on is the price point. Whether you pay $99 or $9000 for the software, it’s about the implementation of that software which will ultimately pay dividends. My experience of both CMS and eCommerce system at the high-end range ($5000+) usually results in 70% bloat, 10% redundant functionality and 20% of actual usage - versus a leaner solution which may lack functionality in some cases, but is built in such a way that it’s extensible to meet individual requirements.

My 10c:

I purchased BR some time ago because EE2 was a requirement and at the time CT2 wasn’t available, I was tasked with integrating a commerce solution to an existing site. To me, it seemed BR was a ‘whole site’ package which made a lot of presumptions about the type of store I was wanting to make. I found the documentation lacking which was quite frustrating and generally didn’t have a good experience with the system. This however was some time ago in the months following launch of BR and I’m sure it’s improved now.

When CT beta came out I jumped on it and I ‘clicked’ with it right away. The fact that product data is stored as native entries and gives me direct access to the tools I know and love right away: channels, fields, categories, entry statuses - I don’t need to read docs or learn a new system to do that.

To me, staying native where possible is a must. When something extends and does something outside the realm of EE, I feel a lot more comfortable if functionality is derived from the tools I know. Hence CT is our choice for e-commerce.

Really finding this thread informative and will be coming back to it when I get my first eCommerce client.