EvolutionX vs. Optimizely Configured Commerce

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

The eCommerce catalog side has a lot of benefits to it and has been much easier to work with and customize than the CMS side. It is this integration and using both for a branded marketing website that has the user journey from browsing and leading into the eCommerce side that has been the bigger challenge, outside of the overall stability of the releases with the bugs we have encountered. I think the solution is well suited if you are mainly a catalog site. We, however, sell machinery and solutions that are not sold via the eCommerce site and we need to showcase them on the website. However, we have a core industrial catalog of consumable products that support the machine and solutions purchases which are very well suited for the eCommerce catalog. It is the CMS/Catalog integration that has caused a need for more customizations to the platform and as a result increased costs to maintain, lowering our overall ROI from the solution. We are also a bit hamstrung by having to rely on our development partner to make changes that our digital agency is better suited to do for us in the CMS. It is requiring extra cost and resources as a result. If more functionality could be surfaced, it would be much better.

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

• Integration Jobs/Connections - Providing a good out-of-the-box solution to hook into ERPs and common endpoints.
• Design and Development Partner Network to work with - If you have customizations in mind, the Optimizely partner network will give you the chance to find a suitable partner to meet your needs.
• Good layout/flow/settings breakdown - There are a lot of "redundant" settings, but the more management access, the better.

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

• Need the ability to look at more of our user data
• Need the ability to refresh our sandbox environment with production data in quicker, more efficient ways
• Classic CMS is very limited in ways end users like myself can edit widget content

Incentivized

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was not very involved with this process. It has been 3 years since we made a decision and I can't even remember the name of the other companies we were considering. I was in a different role then so I was less involved with the eCommerce department. I do remember really liking the people we were working with. That played a huge role in our selection since we would be working with them for years on the site.

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

• Automation of updates and integration with ERP has saved time and provides reliable data for the website in sync with ERP
• Integration with external PIM has saved time and provides reliable sync with content data for the website. Changes and improvements have been slow and difficult.

Incentivized