By : Travis King
I have a dirty little secret. I hate ecommerce design.
In my history as a designer I’ve always found ecommerce design equivalent to trying to wrestle with a five-hundred-pound greased gorilla. At best it is a big hassle, and at its worst it is blood and carnage flowing down the streets.
My biggest complaint is usually how unwieldy and annoying it is to work with most ecommerce backends. Trying to force your design into some ridged code is often a recipe for disaster. So when I heard that I was going to review Adobe’s Business Catalyst, I braced myself for the worst.
Fortunately, there was very little grease and barely any gorilla required at all.
What is Business Catalyst?
At its core, Business Catalyst is a hosted application for building and managing online businesses. Its claim to fame is that it is more than just a website development tool; it’s an online business building tool. With a touch of marketing mumbo-jumbo it promises to deliver higher profits in less time.
That means that Business Catalyst comes with a whole lot of features built in, and since it’s hosted, you can access it and edit it from any browser anywhere. I don’t know how you feel about ecommerce in the cloud, but I found it pretty convenient for a person who is often on the move.
Features
* Code and style the site the way you want – HTML and CSS thankfully reign supreme in the backend. That means easy edits with a few Business Catalyst tags to plug in here and there.
* Client can make select edits to content without breaking the design– We all know how clients love to ruin a design. You control what text and content edits are allowed within your CSS framework.
* Drag & Drop web form builder – Here’s a nice little feature, a simple drag and drop area for custom building of your own contact forms.
* Automatically created customer information database – That sounds like a mouthful. What it basically boils down to is – when a visitor interacts with your site in any way (sends you an email, subscribes to a newsletter, purchases a product) they are automatically added to a customer database that collects information and helps you individually track and service them.
* Header/Content/Footer template construction using HTML + tags – Straight forward 3 part construction with your header and footer info applied across the entire site. If you are familiar with WordPress you’ll be right at home here.
* Dreamweaver extension allows you to easily work with all your files locally – It seems only logical that Business Catalyst would have a Dreamweaver extension. You don’t have to use it, but for those that do, it makes working with files locally a snap.
* Custom menu building – Ecommerce navigation can get out of control pretty quickly as more and more product lines are added to a site, so it’s nice to see a built in menu and navigation builder.
* Individual modules – Announcements, FAQ, Photo Galleries, Links etc – There are a wide variety of modules that you can add to the site with very little setup.
* Marketing section for sending out email campaigns – Remember that Business Catalyst was keeping all your customer information nicely tucked away for you? When it comes time to send out your first email campaign, simply use the built in campaign area that will draw from your customer database. Campaign performance and all the statistics are tracked for you.
* Customized system messages – You’re website visitor made a boo-boo? Tell them with your own customized system error messages.
* Weekly Email Report – Every week, information about how your site is running will be delivered to your inbox. I don’t know of many business owners who wouldn’t eat that stuff up.
Building Your Site
Whether you’re starting from scratch, using a pre-packaged template, or importing a current site, Business Catalyst has you up and running with a minimal amount of fuss. Since you’re working with a hosted application, you don’t have to worry about the fun of creating databases and setting permissions. All that backend stuff will be handled for you.
Once you have the core of your site running you can chose to edit and maintain the templates through Dreamweaver or any other HTML editing program. Or, should you prefer, you can make edits right from your browser by logging in and using Business Catalyst’s online editing tools.
All the modules and built in features are fairly easy to use. For example, if you want to create a dynamic menu – easy. Just assign your own CSS style names with a click or set your style, hover state, and selected state through the Business Catalyst editor.
Online Store
Here’s where my hair usually starts falling out. Setting up and adding products to an online store can take years off your life. Luckily, adding products in Business Catalyst boils down to adding a name, a small and large image, a description, and then the product catalogue you want it to go into. Creating individual catalogues is just a matter of clicking which products you want included and letting Business Catalyst build it for you.
Prices for different countries, shipping weight, choice of many popular payment gateways, and inventory control are all included as well.
Is Business Catalyst Right for Your Business?
While I don’t know if I’m ready to annul my no-ecommerce policy, Business Catalyst comes pretty close to getting me to reconsider it.
The service packs a lot of punch and there seems to be a minimal amount of gorilla wrestling required to get an online store to play nice within your design. And while a hosted offering may scare away a few clients, I can’t see many business owners having a problem once they see all the features Business Catalyst has built in for running their online business.
The monthly fee to the client can run anywhere from $16 – $39 per month per site. While $16/month gets you a basic starter website, most business will require the $39/month package as it comes with the online store and email campaign features.
What does it cost the designer? Well, to be honest, this was a little confusing at first. The site makes mention of a free plan, a $995 Standard Partnership and a $1995 Premium Partnership, which made me scratch my head for a bit. But the truth is, those partnership plans are for designers who want to put their own brand onto the program or earn a percentage from each client’s website that it hosted with Business Catalyst. Should that not interest you, there is no cost to the designer to use the service. Not a bad deal, really.
Business Catalyst can be tried out for free by signing up for a basic starter account. The training videos are well done, so even if you don’t feel like signing up for an account, watching the videos will give you a good idea of how the service works and it will help you decide if it’s worth looking into further.
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I have a dirty little secret. I hate ecommerce design.
In my history as a designer I’ve always found ecommerce design equivalent to trying to wrestle with a five-hundred-pound greased gorilla. At best it is a big hassle, and at its worst it is blood and carnage flowing down the streets.
My biggest complaint is usually how unwieldy and annoying it is to work with most ecommerce backends. Trying to force your design into some ridged code is often a recipe for disaster. So when I heard that I was going to review Adobe’s Business Catalyst, I braced myself for the worst.
Fortunately, there was very little grease and barely any gorilla required at all.
What is Business Catalyst?
At its core, Business Catalyst is a hosted application for building and managing online businesses. Its claim to fame is that it is more than just a website development tool; it’s an online business building tool. With a touch of marketing mumbo-jumbo it promises to deliver higher profits in less time.
That means that Business Catalyst comes with a whole lot of features built in, and since it’s hosted, you can access it and edit it from any browser anywhere. I don’t know how you feel about ecommerce in the cloud, but I found it pretty convenient for a person who is often on the move.
Features
* Code and style the site the way you want – HTML and CSS thankfully reign supreme in the backend. That means easy edits with a few Business Catalyst tags to plug in here and there.
* Client can make select edits to content without breaking the design– We all know how clients love to ruin a design. You control what text and content edits are allowed within your CSS framework.
* Drag & Drop web form builder – Here’s a nice little feature, a simple drag and drop area for custom building of your own contact forms.
* Automatically created customer information database – That sounds like a mouthful. What it basically boils down to is – when a visitor interacts with your site in any way (sends you an email, subscribes to a newsletter, purchases a product) they are automatically added to a customer database that collects information and helps you individually track and service them.
* Header/Content/Footer template construction using HTML + tags – Straight forward 3 part construction with your header and footer info applied across the entire site. If you are familiar with WordPress you’ll be right at home here.
* Dreamweaver extension allows you to easily work with all your files locally – It seems only logical that Business Catalyst would have a Dreamweaver extension. You don’t have to use it, but for those that do, it makes working with files locally a snap.
* Custom menu building – Ecommerce navigation can get out of control pretty quickly as more and more product lines are added to a site, so it’s nice to see a built in menu and navigation builder.
* Individual modules – Announcements, FAQ, Photo Galleries, Links etc – There are a wide variety of modules that you can add to the site with very little setup.
* Marketing section for sending out email campaigns – Remember that Business Catalyst was keeping all your customer information nicely tucked away for you? When it comes time to send out your first email campaign, simply use the built in campaign area that will draw from your customer database. Campaign performance and all the statistics are tracked for you.
* Customized system messages – You’re website visitor made a boo-boo? Tell them with your own customized system error messages.
* Weekly Email Report – Every week, information about how your site is running will be delivered to your inbox. I don’t know of many business owners who wouldn’t eat that stuff up.
Building Your Site
Whether you’re starting from scratch, using a pre-packaged template, or importing a current site, Business Catalyst has you up and running with a minimal amount of fuss. Since you’re working with a hosted application, you don’t have to worry about the fun of creating databases and setting permissions. All that backend stuff will be handled for you.
Once you have the core of your site running you can chose to edit and maintain the templates through Dreamweaver or any other HTML editing program. Or, should you prefer, you can make edits right from your browser by logging in and using Business Catalyst’s online editing tools.
All the modules and built in features are fairly easy to use. For example, if you want to create a dynamic menu – easy. Just assign your own CSS style names with a click or set your style, hover state, and selected state through the Business Catalyst editor.
Online Store
Here’s where my hair usually starts falling out. Setting up and adding products to an online store can take years off your life. Luckily, adding products in Business Catalyst boils down to adding a name, a small and large image, a description, and then the product catalogue you want it to go into. Creating individual catalogues is just a matter of clicking which products you want included and letting Business Catalyst build it for you.
Prices for different countries, shipping weight, choice of many popular payment gateways, and inventory control are all included as well.
Is Business Catalyst Right for Your Business?
While I don’t know if I’m ready to annul my no-ecommerce policy, Business Catalyst comes pretty close to getting me to reconsider it.
The service packs a lot of punch and there seems to be a minimal amount of gorilla wrestling required to get an online store to play nice within your design. And while a hosted offering may scare away a few clients, I can’t see many business owners having a problem once they see all the features Business Catalyst has built in for running their online business.
The monthly fee to the client can run anywhere from $16 – $39 per month per site. While $16/month gets you a basic starter website, most business will require the $39/month package as it comes with the online store and email campaign features.
What does it cost the designer? Well, to be honest, this was a little confusing at first. The site makes mention of a free plan, a $995 Standard Partnership and a $1995 Premium Partnership, which made me scratch my head for a bit. But the truth is, those partnership plans are for designers who want to put their own brand onto the program or earn a percentage from each client’s website that it hosted with Business Catalyst. Should that not interest you, there is no cost to the designer to use the service. Not a bad deal, really.
Business Catalyst can be tried out for free by signing up for a basic starter account. The training videos are well done, so even if you don’t feel like signing up for an account, watching the videos will give you a good idea of how the service works and it will help you decide if it’s worth looking into further.
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