EvolutionX vs. Optimizely Commerce Connect

EvolutionX is great at getting a large catalog online in a hurry. Though the editing may take some time, the pull is a great feature to get you started. EvolutionX will give you the most professional looking site right out of the gate vs the competitors we have viewed. The person assigned to your account is a nice benefit and are very helpful and efficient this is an even bigger plus for those with no coding experience. EvolutionX may not be the best option for a small business, though the website may make you look like the big dogs it doesn't function as well yet. The cost of the service is high compared to what the customer gets from it after the initial set up and is the main reason why this isnt the best solution for a small business. It would be nice to see the price to be able to scale down or up in price with how well the site is doing after a set amount of time.

Incentivized

Our experience may be unique because we opted for an Optimizely team to implement our website/console set-up and connection to our PIM and ERP. The experience may have been different with a 3rd party or it may not have. That said, we have been live with our primary website for almost 2 years and I still do not consider it was ever "done". We have been going back and forth on functionality issues and bugs since launch. I have low confidence that changes made the previous day will 100% be online the next - so my team rechecks the work they did the previous day to ensure everything is online. The addition of a second channel and enhancement requests have compounded the issues. I feel this product would work fine with singular or less complex market SKU offerings.

Incentivized

• Very easy to onboard products
• Pricing updates are easy due to bulk editing (export to excel -> import back to EvoX)
• It's easy to run promotions / sales with just a few clicks
• SEO options with ready to grab site map

Incentivized

• Episerver has a robust discount engine. This engine, combined with "visitor groups" allow our marketing department to categorize customers and offer a variety of discounts to targeted customers at specific times.
• Episerver has a full-featured, storefront experience that can handle everything you might want for an e-commerce website.
• Episerver offers A/B testing that can be helpful for trying out new content ideas and tracking the results.

Incentivized

• On the backend, it would be nice to be able to COPY a similar sku to edit and make its own - creating items takes too long
• The option for drop downs for different colors / sizes / etc. could be nice
• The ability to export pricing where you can see the cost too would be nice

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

It is a good platform with good customizable features for our customers.

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

EvoX is a very user friendly platform, both for admin and customers. On the admin side, there are lots of KBs and videos to watch to learn more on the site and features of it. On the customer side, the features provided make it very easy for our customers. Quicklists are a feature we push to customers to make their ordering experience as easy as possible. B2B has a priority to make ordering as easy as possible, our customers are busy and need to place their orders quickly. If the customer cannot do that with your company, they will find one that does do that for them

Incentivized

The administrative interface is largely intuitive and relatively easy to use. The complexity of business needs and ability to customize can affect this (i.e. you have to set up and develop with the user in mind), but the basic structure is largely solid. There are some areas of redundancy (such as Commerce Manager overlapping with other administrative areas) that can sometimes cause confusion or offer some functions in one place, whereas other related functions are managed on a completely different page.

Incentivized

I havnt come across an issue like this since we’ve started using it.

Incentivized

Havnt seen any slowdowns.

Incentivized

ECI has always provided good support for us on EvoX. Weather it is via monthly conversations to the intercom system, EvoX is quick to respond and look into the issue. Our sales reps are also a huge support for us to contact on any major issues that may come up

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

In-person training was not an option for us.

Incentivized

Hard to remember specifics, but I think it was executed at a level where we were satisfied.

Incentivized

This project took some time for us to complete. Some of it was on our end with data cleanup, but overall I thought it went well.

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

Evolution X feels better built specifically for our industry and helps to provide relevant supplier catalogues, it also opens us up to dialogue with new suppliers and partnerships to form around this. For instance our ACCO account has grown by x8 since we started adding their catalogue by Fusion Data via EVOX. PrestaShop is all added by spreadsheet and there is no pre-populated catalogue ready to add which means it relies on our in-house capabilities or the supplier to provide feeds to import which not many of them have

Incentivized

Optimizely Commerce Connect offers a very wide range of features for admin users. There is less a need for an IT specialist or programmer to be involved when changes need to be made.

Incentivized

10/10 is a hard rating for me to give, but I have been impressed with the scalability

Incentivized

• Massive time savings for our AR Department as customers can now self-generate account statements, see past invoices, pay balances, etc.
• Huge improvement for in-store customer service as our floor associates and reps can reference the website inventory to provide quick assistance to customers on their mobile devices.
• Increased sales & revenue thanks to broader reach- most of our walk-in customers now start their shopping journey on our website to identify product availability and pricing.

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