Diploma - Thesis - 1.0 - Analysis of Online Shop Systems

Fachhochschule Gießen-Friedberg
(University of applied Sciences)

Fachbereich 06 MNI
(Mathematik, Naturwissenschaften und Informatik)
Diploma thesis
for obtaining the academical degree Dipl. Informatiker (FH)
in the period of September the 1st 2007 till February the 1st 2008
Analysis of Online Shop Systems
by:
Sebastian Berg
Leipziger Str. 12
35463 Fernwald Steinbach
Matrikel-No.: 719948
Referee: Prof. Dr. Peter Kneisel

Co-Referee: Prof. Dr. Bodo Alexander Igler
2
Table of Contents
Abstract.....................................................................................................................5
1 Introduction............................................................................................................7
1.1 Motivation......................................................................................................................7
1.2 Task breakdown..............................................................................................................7
1.3 E-Commerce...................................................................................................................9
1.4 Why to use E-Commerce..............................................................................................10
1.5 Market situation............................................................................................................12
1.6 Advantages of online shops..........................................................................................13
1.7 Architectures.................................................................................................................15
1.8 Catalogs........................................................................................................................15
2 Eligibility criteria.................................................................................................17
2.1 Requirements................................................................................................................17
2.1.1 Setting/adapting objectives.................................................................................17
2.1.2 Accurate choice of the platform..........................................................................19
2.1.3 Clarity.................................................................................................................19
2.1.4 Usability..............................................................................................................21
2.1.5 Search functionality............................................................................................23
2.1.6 Security...............................................................................................................25
2.1.7 Service................................................................................................................28
2.1.8 Customizing........................................................................................................29
2.1.9 Conclusion..........................................................................................................30
2.2 Certification..................................................................................................................31
2.2.1 Trusted Shops......................................................................................................32
2.2.2 TÜV-Süd (www.safer-shopping.de) ...................................................................33
2.3 Ten rules of online selling............................................................................................35
2.4 Integration....................................................................................................................35
3 Evaluation.............................................................................................................38
3.1 Intershop.......................................................................................................................38
3.1.1 Working with Enfinity Suite 6............................................................................49
3.1.2 Conclusion..........................................................................................................53
3.2 xt:Commerce................................................................................................................53
3.2.1 Conclusion..........................................................................................................62
4 xt:Commerce in practice......................................................................................63
4.1 Installation....................................................................................................................63
4.2 Configuration................................................................................................................66
4.2.1 Other important preferences...............................................................................69
4.3 Customization...............................................................................................................70
4.3.1 Smarty (template engine)....................................................................................72
3
4.4 Administration..............................................................................................................72
4.4.1 Porting legacy systems........................................................................................73
4.4.2 Connection to Google Maps...............................................................................73
5 Summary and conclusion.....................................................................................76

5.1 Perspectives..................................................................................................................76
5.2 Final statement.............................................................................................................77
Illustration Index....................................................................................................79
Drawing Index........................................................................................................80
Bibliography...........................................................................................................81
6 Appendices............................................................................................................83
6.1 E-Mail correspondence with Florian Labitzke/Marc Seeliger.....................................83
6.2 Screen shot of conversation between S. Berg and M. Hinsche....................................84
6.3 Every-day work (photography)....................................................................................85
Vocabulary..............................................................................................................86
Statutory declaration.............................................................................................90
4
Abstract
Meanwhile customers have got used to online shopping. They expect a company to
offer their complete product line online as well as offline. Thus E-Commerce is a
must-have for companies that want to increase sales and develop new markets – maybe
all over the world. This thesis faces two extremely different online shop systems – one
open source and one high cost software. Basically both systems bring up the required
shop functionalities. Usability, clarity, security as well as a general adaptability and
structured presentation of information in the front end and in the backend qualify both
systems to be deployed in every-day online shopping. The most important thing to pay
attention to while figuring out pros and cons of the systems will be the companies
requirements. Setting up a small online shop from scratch, renewing an existing
internet appearance or integrating established business processes from suppliers to
partners and B2B customers – all these ways of using online shop software are
possible, depending on the readiness to invest in high costs for the software and
employee trainings on the one hand or deductions on functionality combined with a lot
of active work and – at the first sight – comparatively low costs on the other.
5
6
1 Introduction
1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation
I chose „Analysis of Online Shop Systems“ as the subject of my diploma thesis

because they offer a great chance to gain profit for a company. With a little work on
setting up and customizing you can offer an attractive and easy online shop. No matter
if you are a „global player“ like Amazon or if you store your products in your garage at
home, you can spread them all over the world. If you take time to think about what you
want to offer and how you want to offer it, you can respond to your customer´s
individual needs and wishes.
I think it has become important for every company to offer their products on the world
wide web because meanwhile people have got used to online shops. They expect a
company to offer their products on the internet and want to benefit from the
advantages of ordering their goods at home.
Finally a word on language: This thesis is written in English in order to make it
available for a bigger audience and, of course, to improve language skills. So the
greater efforts that had to be undergone during the creation are certainly worth the
endless lookups in online dictionaries and language discussing boards. Last but not
least I would like to thank Mr. Reiner Burger for reading this thesis besides his
everyday work and helping to make it sound proper and adequate to a scientific work.
1.2 Task breakdown
This thesis is about common online shop software, its features, „must-haves“ and
usability. In the last decade more and more online shops have been occurred.
Meanwhile some of them are already out of use whereas others have made their mark
in every day online shopping. There are commercial as well as free (open source)
online shops available. With this thesis I would like to
• introduce E-Commerce and give an overview over the current market situation
of online shops,
• create some eligibility criteria for online shops,
7
1 Introduction
• evaluate two popular online shop systems with these criteria and
• report on setting up and administrating the online shop for one customer of the
Sylphen company.
Chapter one is going to give the overview mentioned above. After some general
definitions and a short introduction on electronic Commerce (1.3 E-Commerce) I will
give a short overview over the current market situation of well established online shop
systems (commercial and open source). Furthermore I will introduce the advantages of
online shops in chapter 1.6, their architecture and machinery.
In chapter two I´m trying to create eligibility criteria for online shops. Usability,
security and integration are taking center stage in this section. Besides I am going to
report on renowned certification agencies and their basic requirements on online shops
as well as integrating the software into existing business processes.
Chapter three deals with the evaluation of two shop systems based on the developed
criteria. It tries to point out which system should be used under certain circumstances.
Finally the practical part of this thesis is handled in chapter four:
It uses chapters two and three as a groundwork and displays the steps of choosing,
setting up and „pre-administrating“ an online shop for the GGEW-net, a customer of
the Sylphen limited liability company. Problems and highlights during any of the
necessary steps handling an online shop system (installation, configuration,
customization and administration) will be pointed out in this chapter.
This thesis only reports on „out-of-the-box“ online shops which one can manage
completely on his1 own. In my opinion such systems offer multiple advantages on
customizing, administrating and designing one´s shop in opposite to completely
designed and configured hosted online shops. I will try to balance reasons for using a
high cost commercial shop system on the one hand and for using an open source shop
system on the other. Both systems surely offer pros and cons and this thesis will give
an overview and help choosing an adequate shop system for ones needs.
1 I chose to use the masculine form in this thesis whenever I write in 3 rd person. There are no discrimi-
nating intentions on the female gender but rather priority is given to the simplicity of writing this
thesis.
8
1 Introduction
1.3 E-Commerce
The following drawing shows the different sectors of E-Commerce, as Merz describes
them (cf. [Merz02], p. 24). He defines E-Commerce as
„assistance of trading activities via communication networks“.
B2C
business consumer
B2B C2C
B2
A/
C
A2
A2
B
administration
Drawing 1: E-Commerce by [Merz02]
My thesis deals with one specific section of E-Commerce – the eB2C2 sector. This
means that I would like to highlight legal E-Commerce via the internet using software
especially designed for online trading. The typical way of buying goods offline (and
eB2C respectively) brings up four different steps which have to be passed through
before a product or good is bought:
1. Negotiation
You cannot exactly call this step negotiation, because you do not really
negotiate. In fact you are just gathering information during this step via
descriptions or images of articles or by reading online discussion forums about
it. But the word negotiation in some way mirrors what you do before you buy
an article in „offline“ transactions.
2. Conclusion of the contract

In this step you typically accept the offerer´s general terms and conditions
before you send him your order- and payment information by clicking the
„order“-button in the online shop. After this the offerer gives his confirmation
of your order and informs you about the payment.
2 eB2C = electronic business to consumer. Of course there are more sections, namely business to busi-
ness, consumer to consumer (e.g. eBay), administration to business, business to administration and
administration to consumer.
9
1 Introduction
3. Transaction
During the transaction you usually pay your goods and the offerer ships them
when he receives the payment.3 At this point the contract is made because both
parties have agreed to it. The customer agrees by making the payment under
the general terms and conditions, the offerer by shipping the goods.
4. After sales management

A company has to take care about its customer relationships after a complete
transaction in case of reclamations or retours. Maybe the customer receives
newsletters about new products, product updates or products related to his last
order. A good customer relationships management (CRM) is necessary in any
kind of shops (online or offline).
1.4 Why to use E-Commerce
As per [TNS06], with 32 billion Euro Germany „[...]is the biggest online retail
market in Europe[.]“ and as per EITO4 the expected sales until 2008 are about 90
billion Euro and 50% of the German internet users buy products via the internet. So
Germany has got the second place in Europe. Thus the importance of the internet as a
distribution channel has gone up. Looking at the E-Commerce users in Germany
Illustration 1 shows, that germany is far above the average of E-Commerce users
concerning the country of reference.
Illustration 1: Position of Germany in an international contrast by [TNS07]
3 There are different payment procedures like PayPal, credit cards, invoice, electronic cash, etc.
4 European Information Technology Observatory
10
1 Introduction
Meanwhile customers simply expect to go shopping in an online store. The typical

ways of offline and online shopping are being merged more and more and the trends
are going to „multi-channel-shopping“. Very often information about the product is
drawn offline e.g. in a book store, followed by a price comparison in the different
online stores available. Finally the book is bought at an adequate (online) store with
best conditions.5 So the customers appreciate to be able to go shopping in an online
store additionally to the classic offline shopping. Looking at generation 50+ (called
„Silver Surfers“) as in [UM07] you can notice a behaviour just the other way round.
Customers of online travelling stores often abort the booking if any unexpected
mistakes or inconsistencies during the checkout process occur. It is also important to
mention that the cheapest online store does not imply to be the best. Again the Silver
Surfers have to be considered because they usually have sufficient funds and are not
impressed by slogans like „Geiz ist geil “ or „Es geht immer billiger [..]“.
Customers also take great care in choosing an online store and especially whom they
offer their personal data. So the company has got to be reliable and offer e.g. secure
connections (https://...) for submitting credit card information and other sensitive
personal data.
Considering the facts we can say that E-Commerce is a need nowadays but does not
always result in success. Online shops enable companies to develop foreign markets
and if they are set up properly they are a powerful utility to gain profit. In [WIKI_L_T]
Chris Anderson argues
„[...]that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can
collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few
current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large
enough.“
5 This is not about ripping off the vintage retail markets but rather about sorting out ones best conditi-
ons. According to this, customers can also use the different online stores for collecting their informa-
tion and finally buy their products in retail markets (cf. [TNS05], p. 339).
11
1 Introduction
Illustration 2: Long Tail by [WIKI_L_T]
This means, that there is few demand for niche products in restricted areas. The
internet is free6 of restrictions so you can reach quite a lot of people all over the world
and sell these niche products to everyone who demands them.
Furthermore you can evaluate your customer´s preferences and adapt your choice of
products, track users, send newsletters and check if they result in orders and a lot more.
The internet offers great chances to publish information about a company very easily
and quickly and enables customers to have an interactive contact which will hopefully
end up in good customer relationships.
1.5 Market situation
There is an abundance of online shop systems available. They are going from open
source products up to hundreds of thousands of Euro. Depending on the needs and
features one has to choose a suitable system. Table 1 shows a small overview of well-
established shop systems and their prices.
6 International ex-/import conditions, shipping costs or common laws may of course not be disregar-
ded.
12
1 Introduction
OS Commerce Solid webshop for small stores Open source

*
xt:Commerce 98,-€ optional support; easy template system Open source
*
1&1 Webshop Poor in proportion to the price < 100,- €
Omeco Webshop* Solid webshop; a little out of date ≥ 830,- €
Oxid Eshop PE* State of the art webshop; modular ≥ 950,- €
extensions
Aconon Professional webshop for high requirements ≥ 1.070,- €
Epages 5 Merchant* Great administration, easy customizing ≥ 2.380,- €
Smartstore.biz* Exemplary search engine; good usability 240,- to 1.500,- €
Mondo Shop* 500,- to 1.000,- €
*
Sage GS Shop Client-server architecture; ≥ 420,- €
7
Intershop Top dog of shop systems (Otto, T-Com,...) > 50.000,- €
Table 1: Overview shop systems (Data from [IWB08/07],[IWB14/07] and [IWB19/07])
All shop systems – except Intershop because8 of being the top-dog – have poor ways to
manage additional content caused by the intention of most manufacturers to offer
„stand alone“ online stores. They concentrate on shop features instead of wasting time
to implement a complete (W)CMS9. There are more or less suitable implementations
of simple (W)CMS in the different shops performing their tasks acceptably. Further
information about an integration in a WCMS will be given in chapter 2.4 Integration.
1.6 Advantages of online shops
You could say, when using E-Commerce there are several advantages in offering your
products in an online shop. The first ones which may come to one´s mind could be a
worldwide availability of your store. Other ones could be e.g. the lack of
• business premises (including their hires),
• employees and
• stocks.
* The shop software is already prepared best for a certification by Trusted Shops. (see chapter 2.2 Cer-
tification)
7 Intershop ensures high availability and high performance e.g. in the OTTO webshop that denotes
100 orders per second at peak loads.
8 Intershop clearly says: „We do not want to offer a CMS, but if our customers wish to manage addi-
tional content in their shop, we offer them different solutions for the integration.“ That is just becau-
se they have to do this to achieve (or increase) customer satisfaction.
9 (Web) Content Management System
13
1 Introduction
But if we look a little closer into the details we encounter that the things you cannot
renounce are the ones just mentioned above. In fact you do need stocks, employees and
mostly even business premises. Passing through your products from your suppliers
directly to the customers is nearly impossible. In addition to that you cannot disregard
a huge amount of employees that manage e.g. orders, newsletters, after sales, shipping
returns or a hotline. A lot of companies already have business premises in which they
have distributed their products before starting an online shop. And last but not least
you have to be aware of the fact that your online shop is not available for everyone in
the world. A worldwide selling of your products comes along with different taxes,
shipping costs, different export/import conditions and fees and a multilingual
appearance of your shop. Nevertheless online shops offer a great opportunity of
distributing any kind of hard and soft-goods10. One offers a direct comparability with
opponents, the shop is available „twenty-four-seven“ and dealers can „quick-response“
on their customers needs and wishes. Furthermore one can inform customers about
new products, updates, releases and special offers using an integrated newsletter
system of the shop. Statistics will inform about top sellers and flops and logged search
queries (created by e.g. a web analysis tool) can be hints on the customer´s
preferences. ECONDA Shop Monitor11 for instance is a monitoring tool that already
comes along with xt:Commerce 3.0.4 SP2 in a fourteen day trial version.
But the so called „web analysis“ basically aims on the understanding of customers´
movements through a website12. An aborted checkout process could be caused by
simply gathering shipping information or by a mistrust against the shop because of an
insecure connection during the checkout process. The latter is hard to find out and
becomes obvious not until this behaviour is discovered at multiple customers (cf.
[CT22/07]). Besides all those advantages the invention of a shop system comes along
with several costs. Maybe one has to employ additional staff to manage the more
comprehensive work or spend some funds to educate them.
10 Hard-goods are every kind of products you can touch. Soft-goods are products like software, music-
downloads, programs or even holiday trips.
11 http://www.econda.de (reviewed on 2007, December 31st)
12 More precisely it is about collecting movement data and aggregating these data to certain user
groups (and not a single user) that behave in a certain way.
14
1 Introduction
1.7 Architectures
Specializing in eB2C Merz gives following model of processing steps in an online shop:
login navigate in ordering

ordering download
catalog info
payment delivery
product info
page
conditions
tracking &
of use
add to tracing
cart
view
cart
Drawing 2: process steps of an online shop by Merz
Online shops usually consist of a collection of scripts, templates and server

components and their data are stored in a relational database management system
(RDBMS). The middleware displays the database contents on HTML pages. The
different shop systems differ in the script languages partly standardized partly
proprietary. Intershop for instance uses Hybrid-HTML whereas xt:Commerce uses
PHP. But in most cases the script language is embedded in the websites beside the
HTML tags. Proprietary variables, access control functions or scripts and „servlets“
can be defined as part of the HTML-document. Intershop calls it Template Language
Extension variables (TLE), the equivalent in xt:Commerce uses the „Smarty“ template
engine. These variables for instance can contain the current date, user name or the
number of products in the shopping cart (cf [Merz02], p. 410 – 411).
1.8 Catalogs
Catalogs are usually ordered by categories and offer shop operators some tools to
define the structure, product information pages or the graphical layout. Because of the
free definition of the different layers which are
• presentation (layout),
• data modelling ( structure of catalog and product attributes) and
• contents (product information),
15
1 Introduction
catalog pages are extremely dynamic web contents. Regarding their graphical
presentation and their administrating interface they are structured strongly.
Differentiation between products and attributes is very important.
A product consists of attributes as well as other information like illustrations, texts or
sales. The components themselves can be organised as well: Product attributes consist
of an attribute type and possibly an amount of predefined values. Products can be
categorised and finally they are assigned to certain types providing information about
the attribut types assigned to a product. Such a kind of catalog is highly reusable. On
the one hand you can adapt it for books and on the other hand for spare parts. No
matter which meta model you implement, the product is taking center stage in it. It can
be assigned to a category which can be structured hierarchically itself for creating sub-
categories of user-defined depth.
Finally the product is an instance of its type. The types consist of any information that
apply to each product of that specific type. Especially the defined attributes are
specified by their relation to the attribute types. Thus a product type usually consists of
several attribute types. Products can be combined with an arbitrary number of
attributes. Hence an attribute can be defined independently to reuse it in itemizing
several products(cf [Merz02], p. 414).
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2 Eligibility criteria
„It’s not just shoes that need to be comfortable – a company’s website must have the same kind of feel-
good factor. If customers don’t find what they are looking for right away, they soon go elsewhere.“
Michael Kraus, Deichmann,
Manager E-Commerce, 2006
2.1 Requirements
This chapter is going to light up the most important requirements on effective online
shops. As we have already considered in chapter 1 Introduction not every online shop
is as lucrative as the other. Not only the technical requirements need to attract one´s
interest but also the ones that lead to good customer relations/- satisfactions. Some of
the points below – namely clarity, usability and service – could be understood as
requirements on the online shop itself and not on its software. In fact the software is
meant to support administrators in achieving the requirements. The following criteria
shall be understood to be realizable with the deployed shop system. The rest of the
criteria – choice of the platform, search functionality, security and customizing –
definitely are directly connected to the software itself and should be basic features.
And most important: you have to specify the objectives and choose an accurate
platform for your store so I would like to go for this section now.
2.1.1 Setting/adapting objectives
In the beginning objectives should be set very clearly. Setting up an online shop
without knowing who you want to serve or what you want to offer will not lead to
success. If you are developing new businesses you should try to put yourself in the
customers position and ask yourself: What would I be searching for? If you have
already got an amount of customers you may want to increase the customers
satisfaction. If you have got business premises you may want to reduce your hires by
downsizing your sales floors without losing your „offline customers“, because your
sales floors could be used to exhibit e.g. your top sellers or attract attention for the
bigger offerings in your online shop.
You have to be aware of your target groups. Business partners, end customers, dealers
suppliers or B2B customers have different requirements on the E-Commerce solution.
17
These could for instance be:

• desired contents and applications
• usage patterns/frequency
• habits in buying or ordering behaviour
• acceptance of payment methods and modalities
• requirements on technical interfaces
Even here new customers should be included in all considerations, concerning an

online shop´s worldwide availability. In fact: You have to adapt your shop depending
on your objectives (cf. Sieben, Frank in [GORA01], p. 424).
Besides this you can take advantage of the „AIDA“-principle. AIDA stands for
„[...]a common list of events that are very often undergone when a person is
selling a product or service.“13.
The letters stand for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action and describe the four events
a customer passes through when buying a product. At first you have to attract the
customers attention which is indeed the most difficult point looking at the huge
number of online websites and stores available all over the world. „[...][B]y
demonstrating features, advantages, and benefits[.]“ his interest is being raised and
after his desire is aroused he finally buys the product (action).
Again the Silver Surfers offer a great potential of gaining profit as they posses 46% of
the complete spending power of the Germans (Illustration 2). So this class of
population has to be included when setting or adapting shop objectives.
22%
50 y ears +
15 - 39 y ears
46% 40 - 49 y ears
32%
Illustration 3: Spending power of German population
13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)
18
2.1.2 Accurate choice of the platform
An accurate choice of the platform is inevitable before setting up the shop. Different
platforms offer different work flows independent of the level of prices. For example
the low-cost version14 of 1&1 online shop offers at most ten categories with at most
one hundred products. Adaption of functionality and design are kept at a minimum.
Whereas xt:Commerce comes along with unlimited numbers of categories and
products as well as a template system for adjusting the look and feel of an online shop.
This can be of use if an online shop has to be adapted to existing websites. Different
payment modules and a simple CMS for additional pages in the shop make it for being
an allround shop system. Several other reasons for choosing xt:Commerce as the
adequate shop system for the GGEWnet will be described in chapter 3.2
xt:Commerce. Altogether the adequate shop system has to be chosen very carefully.
Questions of content management, product categories, discounts, groups, secure
connections as well as costs for support by the manufacturer or certifications have to
be discussed carefully. Depending on the number of visitors you have to ensure not to
outrun traffic restrictions of your provider or to overload database performance.
2.1.3 Clarity
Clarity begins with the frontpage of an online shop. Customers should be able to
identify the structure of the websites immediately. They should be enabled to navigate
through the different sections of a store by a clearly structured menu and find relevant
information about products with a modicum of effort. Important information about the
company, shipping costs, general terms and conditions and privacy should be directly
accessible from any page of the shop. Furthermore one can adapt so called „eye
tracking“15 studies to place relevant information on the websites. People will not go
shopping in an online store they do not trust in - and a lack of this information often
causes such a mistrust. Altogether it is most important to keep visitors on the websites
because current studies show, that a lack of clarity is an important reason for customers
to leave the website. Table 2 shows other reasons why customers leave websites
during their visit.
14 The low cost version of 1&1 online shop costs 14,99 € a month. Only the 70,-€-option offers oftenti-
mes inevitable features like product options, product references, sales discounts or customer groups.
15 Eye tracking of Google search results by [SEOCON05]
19
84 % damaged links or slow page reproduction

68 % bad usability and untraceable information
31 % untraceable company information
23 % limited search functions
Table 2: Why people leave websites (Jupiter Research 12/2005)
Web accessibility16 is closely related to clarity. If you enable any disabled people – no
matter if physically or technically – you can conquer several markets. Fulfilling
requirements of e.g. the „WCAG“-guidelines17 usually results in a highly increased
clarity of your online shop and certainly will not lead to a loss of functionality or
information. The guidelines also suggest to pay attention on an easy understanding of
your content, because the customers have different know-how18 and experiences in
using online shops. Different ways of developing content, e.g. a sitemap giving an
overview over huge categories and products or simple expressions can help people to
navigate through and understand the pages. An easy handling of the cartridge and a
fast and structured checkout process will support customers during their shopping trip.
In [UM07] none of the test persons were able to book a trip in the TUI online booking
store which was among other things caused by an extremely high page reproduction
time and mirrors the top result of Table 2. The reload of the result page took up to five
minutes oftentimes followed by an error message or a note that no matching results
could be found. Most of the test persons were visibly annoyed about the reproduction
time as they anyway do not exercise patience during the different booking steps. So the
handling of errors and the solving of problems vastly depends on the user´s age.
Huge online shops usually offer very numerous products. An easy product search with
fault-tolerant result pages and filters for these results are inevitable to ensure clarity of
the store.
Nevertheless one should have an eye on two other principles called „MAYA“ and
„KISS“. Maya stands for „Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable“ and describes how one
should design a new product. It has to be decided, if customers shall be confronted
with a completely new product or with a well-known one they might already be used
16 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)

17 http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)
18 Many users do not even have a mental representation of the structure of websites when they first vi-
sit an online shop.
20
to. This thesis can be copied on the usability of online shops used as an agreement
between state of the art web programming and a merely functional website. „Be as
innovative as possible without putting people off.“ (cp. [WIKI_MAYA])
Along with Maya comes Kiss, standing for „Keep It Simple and Stupid“. Kiss19 means
to solve a problem as simple and easy to understand as possible in order to maintain
simplicity. „[...]KISS is also one of the principles of system architecture.“ (cf.
[WIKI_KISS])
2.1.4 Usability
A successful online shop needs an easy handling. As we have already considered,

customers have different aims and know-how. This is why a shop construction should
enable every user to navigate through the shop intuitively - independent from his
know-how or the entry page.
At [TSHOPS] Trusted Shops offers a usability check for online shops, subdivided
into 5 parts:
• frontpage
Placing the search form prominently in the upper position of the frontpage as
well as displaying a maximum of 7/10 links/categories will achieve best results
in this section.
• product page
Presenting product details (price, shipping costs, delivery status, ratings and
comparisons with other products) with additional information and pictures will
achieve best results here.
• search functionality
This point has a very big importance in online shops and you will find a
detailed elaboration on search functionality in chapter 2.1.5 Search
functionality
• cart, ordering process and checkout
An available cart at any time with a clearly structured and adaptable overview,
e.g. „sorting by price/name/shipping time and an easy and secure (SSL)
ordering and checkout process will achieve best results here.
19 Other acronyms for KISS: "Keep It Sweet & Simple", "Keep It Short & Simple", "Keep it Simple,
Sweetheart", "Keep it Simple, Sherlock"
21
• miscellaneous
Nearly all design requirements and specifications of modern web design affect
the usability of online shops. Using acceptable contrasts of backgrounds and
text, foregoing images as menu links, the strict separation of content and design
and providing full functionality in the most commonly used web browsers (just
to mention a few) will surely increase usability to a great extent.
Depending on the answers you give, usability of your online shop is being rated and
you receive points for every answer. The more points you have received in the end the
better your shop usability is.
I would like to pick up the frontpage again as it is the main entry page of an online
shop. The first seconds of contact are the most important and so the frontpage not only
has to attract the user´s interest instantaneously but also has to enable him to get a
quick orientation. The harder an orientation on the frontpage is the earlier customers
abort their visit at this early point of time. Thus a pleasing design and clearly
structured product listings are highly recommended because online shoppers feel like
offline shoppers: The more they are pleased by the products displayed, the sooner they
are willing to enter the shop. Shop windows that are trimmed boring or confused will
frighten off the visitors. But even more importance is given to a quick location of
navigation and the whereabouts. The relevant elements like navigation, search and
login should be placed prominent as the customers are intended to spend most of the
time with shopping and dealing with the products respectively (cf. [PLA&ANA2], p.
2/3).
The booking form also is a central point of shop usability. It should be integrated in the
ordering process seamlessly and keep functionality of the „navigate back“ button of
the browser, which is most commonly used – not only by the Silver Surfers. A loss of
form data by clicking on the back button of the browser can cause frustration and lead
to aborting the order.
Meanwhile the use of mobile devices like cellphones or PDAs for surfing the web and,
according to this, online shopping is on the increase. Again complying with HTML and
22
CSS guidelines as they are invented by the W3C20 will result in a high accessibility of
the websites. They ensure a website to be completely accessible no matter what
displaying device is used. Complying with these guidelines requires the output HTML
code to be adaptable or on the other hand a software that creates clean (X)HTML and
CSS.
2.1.5 Search functionality
One of the most important functions in an online shop is the product search but it is
neglected by the majority of shop operators and manufacturers. Basic installations of
online shop systems come along with simple PHP-based searches and none of the
systems mentioned in chapter 1.5 Market situation offer an adequate fault-tolerant
product search. Fault tolerant searches can avoid search and navigation problems. It
leads to correct results regardless of typing or spelling mistakes. Furthermore many of
the shop operators are afraid of investing in a detailed parametric search (see below).
They are satisfied with a simple search not knowing about the sales damages resulting.
On the other hand most of the systems offer an additional product search for extra
charges between two hundred and four hundred Euro (cf. Dana Huber in [IWB87], p.
28).
Not only the product pages should be integrated in the search. More and more people
use the search form to find information on general terms and conditions or terms of
delivery. So the search results should not only concentrate on products (cf.
[COM_MAN1]). Additional CMS can blow up a webshop very fast and there is no
doubt that two different search forms will not come across great acceptance of the
customers.
As Merz describes, there are basically two ways of searching an online catalog. On the
one hand one can offer heterogeneous products which are structured very differently.
On the other hand one can deal with products that have similar characteristics usually
listed in associated categories. The first way is called „hierarchical search“. You
navigate to the categorie of interest or you search products by means of their attributes.
The second way is called „parametric search“. You could specify product
characteristics step by step and see what products are available fulfilling the given
20 World Wide Web Consortium
23
restrictions. High performance and efficiency while navigating an online shop are very
critical factors of success (cf. [Merz02], p. 414, 419).
Thus shop operators should take great care in displaying search results. Customers
should receive a clearly structured result list which they can modify/filter21 by the
product´s name, price or certain attributes. Displaying the best sellers on top of the
search results instead of showing the results in fixed ordering - or even an unsorted list
- will surely increase sales figures. Furthermore shop operators should offer a fault-
tolerant search like „Did you mean: ...“ that displays results even if there are typing or
spelling errors in the query. There is hardly anything more frustrating than enormous
or even wrong search results not to talk of search results completely out of the context
of one´s search criteria.
More and more shop operators analyze their customers´ shopping behaviour because
search log files will give hints on the users preferences. So they can gain a detailed
overview over highly enquired products, lacks in the product line or up to date trends
(cf. [COM_MAN1]).
Now these criteria aim at those users who exactly know what they want. Actual studies
show that the concrete buying intention is being displaced by a kind of virtual strolling
around in the internet. The surfers are led by sales offers but on the other hand can
definitely go over to a purposeful search. So dealers should definitely organize their
frontpage in a way that they appeal to those „strollers“ and catch their attention. In the
following I would like to sketch some general SEO22 and landing pages in a short
overview. This is a little off-topic but seems to fit in here best.
A little digression concerning SEO and landing pages

Search functionality does not only mean an internal search inside the shop websites but
also catching those strolling users which may come from external search engines like
Google and Co. Potential customers normally do not know of an existing online shop
and so they use search engines to discover interesting products. Thus a general
optimization for search engines should be performed in regular intervals. An adequate
21 The refining of search result is called after search navigation

22 Search Engine Optimization
24
keyword density should be applied to all pages and the website should be structured
very clearly concerning the used markup, CSS and tagging requirements. Reasonable
category names should be chosen and the navigation through categories should best be
realized as plain text – even image maps, Java/JavaScript or Flash should be
abandoned in case of an optimal preparation for search engines23.
Other very important objects are the landing pages. Landing pages are those pages 24, a
user „lands“ on after clicking for instance an advertising banner. On the landing page
an emotive design and a quick orientation are the most important things to pay
attention to. It has to be designed for common web surfers to become customers of the
online shop and best promote a single product – not a whole category full of products,
because it wants the user to make a quick decision to buy. Besides several information
on online advertising and user tracing in [PLA&ANA1]p. 7, one can find seven
recommendations25 on landing pages:
1. Integrating the landing page in the website
2. Optically harmonizing with banner
3. Name advantages of the product
4. Focus on a single or just a few products
5. Several views of the product combined with a rational inducement to buy
6. Highlight relevant navigation opportunities and do not ask too much of the
users
7. Achieve confidence by transparency and credibility before asking the user to
act (buy the product)
2.1.6 Security
A successful online shop has to be exempt from technical points of attack. Again
Trusted Shops offers a security check26 subdivided into five parts for free:
• registration form (secure passwords)
Even little password restrictions, e.g. a minimum number of eight characters
containing upper and lower case letters and special characters can provide the
23 Based loosely on the slides of Ralf Brinkman, Ebuisness Workshop (Sylphen LLC.);
http://www.sylphen.com/files/e-business-suchmaschinenoptimierung.pdf
24 Landing pages for instance can be micro sites, flash-animations or other campaign sites
25 More detailed information on the recommendations can be found in [PLA&ANA1] pg. 4-6
26 http://www.trustedshops.de/shopbetreiber/security-check.html (reviewed on 2008, January 12th)
25
danger of insecure user accounts. Though 50% of the users use passwords that
do justice to quite high security issues unfortunately nearly 30% of the
responded users in [EBAYTNS06] use insecure passwords.
• login form (brute force)
Possible brute force attacks also known as trial-and-error attacks can cause the
illegal use of accounts. The software should lock the user´s account and/or the
attacker´s IP adress after a certain number of failed login attempts.
• search function (cross site scripting)
Cross site scripting (XSS27) is one of the most popular attacks on websites. By
infiltrating dangerous lines of code via the search form the shop and even the
users are in danger because account data can be read out. A possible XSS attack
could for instance look like this:
01: ';alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))
02: //\';alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))
03: //";alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))
04: //\";alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))
05: //--</SCRIPT>">'>
06: <SCRIPT>alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))</SCRIPT>
Thus the shop should display a message about illegal characters that have been
used in the search query instead of opening a pop up window with the letters
„XSS“. Regular expressions that block illegal characters in search queries can
help to defend against XSS attacks.
• ordering form (SQL-Injection)
Without validating text boxes or areas attackers can infiltrate arbitrary lines of
code, manipulate prices, and alter database tables or execute dangerous
database queries. When entering the product quantity the software should only
accept numbers instead of a string like „ '--<next SQL query> “ and display an
error message while you cannot follow the executed query.
• Software (version)
You should always have the latest stable software release of your shop
installed. Professional shop manufacturers update their software regularly or
release patches and bug fixes for known security lacks.
27 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSS (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)
26
Depending on the answers you give, security of your online shop is being rated and
you receive points for every answer. The more points you have received in the end the
better your shop security is. This check is just an orientation but does already provide a
first overview on the security of an online shop. Meanwhile customers know better
about the different safety mechanisms as they have kept busy with using E-Commerce
and online shopping. As matter of principle the users have to be cleared up within the
topics of security. 56% of the respondents as per [EBAYTNS06] wish to gain security-
relevant information in a short, clearly structured and detailed way. So this clearing up
is another tightrope walk between the necessary depth of information and a well
arranged overview. Users are afraid of an insecure storage or transmission of their data
– especially with credit card and account information. In this connection it is a main
objective to alert the users to the huge amount of existing safety mechanisms. But still
shop operators also have to attend to their duty to contribute to a secure online
shopping and effective operation of safety mechanisms – even before low prices –
while choosing an online shop system.
An online shop basically should offer secure connections via https28 protocol – strictly
speaking:
„[...]the combination of a normal HTTP interaction over an encrypted Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) connection.“28
Alternatively shop operators can offer other transmissions of personal data via
telephone, fax or letter to increase the customer´s trust into the shop. Thus the
treatment of stored personal data should be laid open. The handling of personal data
should be transparent and if so, customers will award this transparency with a greater
confidence. Furthermore no more than the necessary data may be stored according to
the German laws of data protection.
But not only customers are sensitized for security issues. An increasing number of junk
registrations and junk orders respectively are the main problems for shop operators.
Meanwhile double-opt-in29 mechanisms have been established before a registration for
a newsletter subscription. Whereas effective protection mechanisms against junk
28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Https (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)

29 Double-opt-in sends a confirmation message to the corresponding e-Mail address. The owner of an
address can approve his identity by clicking a confirmation link or be protected against an abuse of
his e-Mail address by ignoring the message.
27
registrations are a little harder to implement. Automated junk registrations can be

avoided by using so called captchas – Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell
Computers and Humans Apart . They are small PHP scripts that create a blurred view
of a certain number of random letters and numbers as a small image. The user has to
enter them because he is still able to identify them whereas a computer cannot. Before
proceeding with a registration, the system compares the entered combination with the
one created and aborts the process if they do not match. A short introduction and a
programming example can be found in [IX1/08]. Captchas are an adequate safety
mechanism for averagely visited sites because they are easy to implement and offer
enough parameters for an individual implementation. Attackers have to engage an
OCR30-system to avoid captchas and this results in a significant additional expense.
Thus the software should offer those or at least comparable security mechanisms to
ensure a general security for dealers.
2.1.7 Service
Online shops naturally have to offer a lot more service than competitors of traditional
offline shopping. The customers expect an extremely quick response on their wishes so
shop operators have to react on E-Mail requests, complaints or returns very quickly as
online customers usually are bound less to an online shop. Most of the time, there is
not even a single personal contact between the two parties. Again, the website is the
major point of contact and therefore should represent the company´s philosophy,
particular objectives, as many information about products as possible31 and an easy
usability. Customers expect and claim for a direct access to information and an easy
ordering process as well as rapidly traceable contact information on the website as they
are taking center stage in an ordering process.
A personal and individual customer liaison and support become more and more
important. The „cold“ and impersonal nature of the internet should be counterbalanced
by for instance „warm“ and communicative customer relationships by e.g. confirming
an order and informing the customer via E-Mail after his order has been shipped. If
there are any claims or questions on a product, customers should not be put off with
some automatically generated E-Mail answer but rather with a personal answer fitting
30 Optical Character Recognition
31 e.g. visual information by several product pictures and written information on the product pages
28
to their request (cf. [GORA01], p. 426/427; [ZÖL01], p. 115).

Service also means to keep your online shop up to date. A newly last modified date
indicates a regular update of the pages which shows that a company takes great care of
an internet presence up to date. There is nothing worse than old information on a
website because nowadays the internet is very fast moving. From this it follows that
the variety of products offered online should not be shortened compared to the offline
assortment as customers expect both of them to be of the same size (cf. [GORA01], p.
426).
Basically you can say, that companies have to enable their customers to communicate
by as many channels as possible, which are: telephone, Fax, E-Mail and the web in
general. All of these channels have to be available and have to have an acceptable
response time. Employees in a call center need to have access to all of the different
systems like customer-, product- and stock-information. A single administrating
interface with fast access to all these systems should be the central point for
administrators (cf. [Merz02], p. 453).
The outcome of the things above is that you need to employ staff and consider the
follow-up costs for good service for your customers. But investing in the service will
surely recompense the costs by increased customer satisfactions and loyalties. The
customers loyalty is directly related to an online shops transaction volume. Satisfied
customers revisit an online shop and probably spend more money (cf. [Merz02], p.
444).
2.1.8 Customizing
The best online shop is worth nothing unless you can customize it. Several sections of
an online shop are of interest to customize. A company may already have a website
with a common corporate identity (CI) to which the look and feel of a shop system
should be adapted. The strict separation between contents and design conduces to an
easy adaption of this look and feel. The reuse of an already existing HTML template
– e.g. of a website that is managed by a WCMS – would best suit this purpose. All that
would be left to do is replace menus and the main navigation by the specific shop
elements like categories and additional information and the online shop comes along
29
with the existing CI. Modern template systems like YAML32 support web developers
in creating websites that are absolutely accessible for end users. Nevertheless most
templates systems cannot relieve of certain HTML and CSS programming skills
because the shop elements may have to be aligned and the template has to be tested
with common browsers anyway to ensure availability.
Besides changes on the design of the shop one may want to add some features
concerning functionality or maybe an additional feature during the ordering process.
The great advantage of open source online shop systems lies in the total availability of
the source code. Changes, features or modifications can be made at any position
provided of an adequate programming skill. Smallish commercial systems like the one
from 1&1 offer a bunch of functions and features that may be enough for minor
requirements. But usually they are extremely shortened in complexity and their
functionalities are not adaptable at all. Others like Oxid Eshop PE come along with
additional modular extensions and uncover their strengths with those.
Finally the global player intershop offers all-purpose extensions for enterprise
resource planning (ERP), modules for reuse of your suppliers catalogs on your
business clients, subsidiary companies and end users as well as the complete
connection to a company´s existing business processes.
The choice of the fitting shop system again depends on several decisions. You have to
determine the necessary shop features and compare them with the features of the
existing systems. Do the features match the requirements or will a more powerful one
also be more appropriate? Could you avoid the additional investment by using an open
source product and modify it with the in-house know-how or will you need to hire
freelancers or experts respectively to effect the necessary adaptions?
2.1.9 Conclusion
The requirements above do not assert one´s claim to be complete but give a description
of some important checkpoints on setting up an online store. Most attention has to be
put on the platform with its functionalities and possibly its extensibility as the proper
operating modes have to be ensured. After this there is another tightrope walk between
the customer´s privacy protection and a personalized shopping service with modern
32 YAML stands for Yet Another Multicolumn Layout and represents a framework for creating modern
and flexible floating web layouts. See http://www.yaml.de for further information.
30
features and state of the art web technologies. All things considered achieving
sustained success depends on customer´s loyalty. Customer´s loyalty comes along with
his satisfaction and he will be satisfied if he encounters a clearly structured online shop
with a quick ordering process, secure data transmissions and a good usability. Looking
at this bulk of important things it seems almost impossible to jump over all these
barriers, but there are (partly legislative) initiatives that help you protect against the
many traps and two of them will be mentioned in chapter 2.2 Certification. All that is
left to say is that the perfect shop system does not exist so far. Every software will
have advantages and disadvantages and an intensive dealing with the subject online
shop systems is unavoidable to bring out best results and great success.
2.2 Certification
Being online usually comes along with online shopping.

„[...] [M]erely 4% of 1.000 respondents specify they never bought anything in
online shops.“33
As consumers are acting with much more discretion concerning prospective online
shopping, inhibition thresholds appear. The greatest fear is – as already mentioned –
the misuse of personal data during communication or transaction processes. Customers
expect a seal and its representing organization to be well-known and want the
requirements to be adapted in practice.
„As a matter of fact seals of approval have an enormous significance for online
shoppers. For approximately 75% of the respondents seals of approval in online
as well as offline shops are 'very important' or [at least]'important'.[...]
Especially [..] the newcomers that have not gone shopping in the internet attach
importance to seals of approval.“31
So how can displaying of seals of approval effect on an online shop´s sales volume?
„Two-thirds of the german internet shoppers have already aborted an order
because of an apparently missing seriousness. Half of the aborters would have
continued the ordering process if a [... seal of approval] had been visible.“34
Displaying a seal of approval can result in a higher conversion rate35 which will in the
end result directly in higher sales volumes although there are some additional charges
33 [TNS_D21], freely adapted by Sebastian Berg

34 [TNS_CERT] (p. 2), freely adapted by Sebastian Berg
35 The conversion rate is the percentage rate of shop visitors that actually buy something in one´s store.
31
associated. Nevertheless there are two direct advantages. One on the short term (by the
direct purchasing (prepayment) of new customers) and an indirect one on the long term
(by those new customers becoming regular customers)(cf. [TNS_CERT], p. 2).
As a matter of fact, the topic trust has become a concrete business model. As
certification agencies sprang up like mushrooms in the middle of the nineties only few
of them have established and even less have been trustworthy before the year 2000.
In the following I am going to introduce two renowned certification agencies. I would
like to describe their highlights and give a short introduction on their operation
breakdowns. However, operating of those agencies agrees in principle: The customers
trust in the certification agency that after all could lose its good reputation. On the
other hand, the agency limits the customers´ risks, which are for instance: ruin of the
shop or a loss of the delivery. The agency trusts the shop because it assured itself of a
minor risk to assure the customer. This is what the shop operator pays for. Finally the
customer and the shop carry out business as usual (cf. [Merz02], p. 569).
2.2.1 Trusted Shops
Trusted Shops has been existing since 1999 and meanwhile they are market leader in
online shop certification in Europe. They focus on a unique combination of the
dealers´ certification, a seal of approval, a money-back guarantee and customer
services. Shop operators have to undergo more than one hundred criteria36 in the areas
of
• reliability
• security issues
• transparency of any kind of costs
• duty to furnish information
Illustration 4: Trusted Shops emblem
• customer services
• data protection
and the criteria are being adapted to the latest perceptions of laws and consumer
protection permanently. An online shop receives the seal of approval after passing all
of the requirements and is allowed to display the above sign on the websites.
36 A complete list of the criteria can be found at http://www.trustedshops.de/shopbetreiber/downloa-
d.html (reviewed 2007, December 8th)
32
Trusted shops is famous for their money-back guarantee free of any costs which
ensures customers to get their money returned in case of problems concerning an abuse
of credit card information, product returns, a fall through of delivery or a lack of
reimbursement. They have certified more than two thousand online shops and none of
the clashes so far have resulted in a hearing. The professional and multilingual
procurement could solve all clashes with a satisfactory result to both parties.
But not only customers benefit from a certification by Trusted Shops as dealers are
being ensured against dissuasions concerning
• incorrect general terms and conditions
• assigning incorrect taxes and shipping costs
• wrong phrases in general
As we can see, both parties – dealers as well as customers – benefit from this
certification. But there is no doubt that this certification does not come along without
any costs. There are three different memberships at Trusted Shops that go from 59,- €
over 79,- € up to 99,- € (depending on the annual sales) which offer different
services.37
Another two-sided advantage is the presentation of the certified online shop with its
products at www.trustedshops.de. New customers benefit from the guaranteed services
the online shop offers and the shops benefit from the customers´ trust in their shop.
Altogether a membership at Trusted Shops is an allround No-Worry package for
customers and dealers and the additional costs will surely result in higher sales as the
Trusted Shops seal is the most commonly used seal of online shop certification in
Europe. A complete list of the certified shops can be found at
http://www.trustedshops.de/profil/.
2.2.2 TÜV-Süd (www.safer-shopping.de)
The TÜV degree of popularity of 99% in the German-speaking areas makes it for being
another well-known certification agency. The criteria38 for online shop dealers are very
37 A complete list of features and services of the different memberships can be found at http://ww-
w.trustedshops.de/shopbetreiber/mitgliedschaft.html (reviewed on December, 10th 2007)
33
similar to the ones of Trusted Shops. Main differences39 lay in the guaranteed compliance
of the criteria. Furthermore s@fer-shopping offers additions to their general certification
which are in detail
• quality management
• ecological management
• IT security- and service-management
• certification of specific shop sections
Illustration 5: TÜV-Süd emblem
Unlike Trusted Shops TÜV has an international acceptance and therefore

professionalism is ensured. TÜV also takes great care in the secure transmission of
credit card information and personal data using SSL connections and has a money-
back guarantee. The general workflow of s@fer-shopping is subdivided into four parts.
During the online rating TÜV evaluates the shop pages concerning structure,
navigation und customer information. The security check uses port-scans and several
special tools and scripts not only on web-servers and web-applications but also on
systems that are reachable online, like firewalls, routers, mail- and name-servers. The
local audition verifies consistency of organisation and business processes according to
s@fershopping standards. Finally the report consists of possible deviations of those
standards and supports dealers to improve their shop´s efficiency (cf. [TÜV_SÜD]).
There is an initial payment of about 3.500 €40 - for the first certification – covering the
detailed online check, the security check and the audit in one´s company itself. After
this the follow-up costs covering the yearly inspection is only 80% of the initial costs.
With only two years less experience than the combatants of Trusted Shops TÜV harks
back on an international awareness level and also offers an allround No-Worry package
for both, customers as well as shop operators. In addition they also offer a bulk of
continuing certificates based on the latest perceptions of laws and consumer protection.
38 A complete list of the criteria can be found at https://www.safer-shopping.de/kriterien.html (review-

ed on December, 10th 2007)
39 As per https://www.safer-shopping.de/pruefsiegel.html (reviewed on December, 10th 2007)
40 The prices are taken from an e-Mail by Mr. Marc Seliger from TÜV SÜD, Vertriebsinnendienst
München, from December, 18th 2007. The complete e-Mail correspondence can be found in chapter
6.1 E-Mail correspondence with Florian Labitzke/Marc Seeliger
34
2.3 Ten rules of online selling
In [GORA01] Frank Sieben has worked out ten rules of successful online selling that
everyone should follow. They are in detail:41
1. Create a homepage that covers a clear and well-defined message about your
company and your services.
2. The structure of the shop has to be arranged clearly.
3. The buying process should be designed eventfully and fast (do not exceed three
clicks to navigate to the first product).
4. Offer your complete product range with up to date prices.
5. Clearly explain shipping conditions and the different opportunities.
6. Offer different payment methods/modules.
7. Create different customer groups with different shop areas (e.g. for dealers
etc.).
8. Look for niches and design them during an analysis of your customers data.
9. Offer an outstanding customer service that exceeds their expectations.
10. Try to get traffic on your site using online advertisement, banners, links, etc..
2.4 Integration
Whenever things like an ERP, a CMS or maybe a warehouse management come into
play, the shop software should provide integration to these existing systems/business
processes. The software should also provide an import of existing data. Maybe there
already is a customer database that needs to be inherited after the invention of the
software. Common exchange formats for the data can extremely simplify the transfer
between the two systems as customer databases are the most important parts of an
online shop and a manual transfer can never be accomplished without any errors and
massive personnel costs.
Orders sometimes get forwarded directly to suppliers and/or external servers for
further processing or at an imminent emptiness of stocks.. An adaptable forwarding
system for orders – via e-Mail, SQL-export, or even in plain text – can also simplify
these processes and help reducing personnel and/or administrative costs.
41 Freely translated from Frank Sieben
35
Finally shop operators wish for a centralized contact point that maybe covers
management of the shop websites as well as administration of the online store in one
go. There are several modules of well-established CMSs that embed the shop´s
backend in the CMS´s backend. But this decentralized solution has advantages as well
as disadvantages. Oftentimes the integration offers not a full functionality so that
administrators have to go back to the shop´s backend to cope with all necessary tasks.
On the other hand this solution offers a greater insurance against technical problems.
A technical malfunction in a webshop that offers additional content management will
paralyze the homepage as well as the online shop whereas separate web servers offer
more security and a higher availability.
Furthermore a unidimensional order processing like in Drawing 342 is not always
possible. Several business processes or customer interventions may influence a strict
eradication of the ordering process like in Drawing 442.
incoming notify
acknowledgement packing shipping
order customer
Drawing 3: unidimensional order processing
incoming notify
acknowledgement packing shipping
order customer
merge
merge with packages
additional order Notify via
collective service
partner
customer packing
company
Drawing 4: more-dimensional order processing
42 Based loosely on the slides of Ralph Bossler, E-Business Workshop (Sylphen LLC); http://www.syl-
phen.com/files/e-business-integration.pdf
36
The cooperation of the different applications of Drawing 4 is managed by a

centralized workflow logic. Enterprise Application Integration43 (EAI) and Service
Oriented Architectures44 (SOA) can support the different participants in the B2B
supply chain by a process oriented integration of their business processes loosely
coupled from any operating systems or programming languages.
43 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_application_integration#Purposes_of_EAI
(reviewed on 2007, December 10th)
44 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)
37
3 Evaluation
3 Evaluation
This chapter deals with an evaluation of two very different shop systems. On the one
hand it will take a look at the top dog intershop as being the market leader of online
shop systems. On the other hand xt:Commerce, an open source shop software will be
rated. The criteria of chapter two will be the groundwork of the evaluation. They will
be processed point by point.
The intershop software rating will be based on a trial account that was offered by the
company for this thesis. In addition several online shops45 working with this software
were tested according to the requirements of chapter two. Most importance was
attached to the general shop usability (with special attention on the ordering process),
its search functionalities and security.
The xt:Commerce rating will be based on the experiences with the software during a
project with the GGEW-net, subsidiary company of the GGEW corporation, customer
of Sylphen limited liability company. The results are based on a general installation of
xt:Commerce without any extensions or modifications on the sources.
3.1 Intershop
Clarity
Looking at the frontends in the shops of reference during this evaluation one can say
that they all are very clearly structured and easy to use. Intershop offers an exemplary
software to create easy-to-use websites and this is reflected in the online stores.
Unfortunately the page reproduction especially in the BMW shop is quite long.
If we take a closer look on the size of the companies using Intershop´s software they
expectedly offer online shops with a great clearness not only because of their brand
awareness and variety of products.
45 Namely the shops of

Club Bertelsmann (http://www.derclub.de)
Quelle Versandhaus (http://www.quelle.de)
Otto Versandhaus (www.otto.de)
BMW Online Shop (https://shop.bmwgroup.com)
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A digression concerning Intershop software

I would like to use this chapter now to introduce the Intershop software and its general
machinery as it is quite uncomfortable when getting in touch with it for the first time.
Nevertheless „Intershop helps its customers to achieve and maintain their
competitive advantages[.]46“ and offers special trainings for their customers to learn
about the usage of their software. Enfinity Suite 6, the completely modular intershop
software offers six different so called channels as you can see in Illustration 6.
„All six modules can be deployed as separate applications or combined to create
customized sell-side, buy-side or portal solutions. This enables enterprises to
consolidate and to centrally control all E-Commerce channels on one platform.
The outstanding internationalization features of Enfinity Suite 6 make it, in
addition, a solid base for implementing global E-Commerce strategies.46“
Illustration 6: Intershop: Enfinity Suite 6 technology (cf.[ENF6_Bro], p 11)
Further descriptions of the different channels can be found in [ENF6_Bro], pg. 6-7.
They will not be explained in here as it would go beyond the scope of this thesis. In
fact I would like to highlight a possible Intershop infrastructure combining all different
channels now. Though Intershops philosophy says that Intershop is just a shop – but it
is top class indeed – a general supplier integration and stock management is possible,
but not among the main objectives of the company. Nevertheless they do offer
solutions to completely integrate the whole enterprise resource planning from buy-side
channels to sell-side channels in the B2B as well as the B2C E-Commerce.
Illustration 7 shows a possible implementation based on the Enfinity Suite6 Multi Site
Technology.
46 cf. [ENF6_Bro], p. 2
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Illustration 7: Possible infrastructure in Enfinity Suite 6 (cf. [ENF6_Bro], p. 5)
The software consists of a visual programming logic nearly without Java. About 75%
of Enfinity´s business logic is implemented as visual programs47. Illustration 747
shows a programming example with the software. A business process is called
„pipeline“ that is being processed step by step after its invocation. It consists of
controlling structures (conditions and branches) and encapsulation of the business
logic. In turn pipelines also can invoke other pipelines. The blue boxes represent Java
classes that expect different input parameters and provide different output parameters.
The rhombuses represent the branches and finally the different steps of a pipeline are
symbolized by arrows.
Illustration 8: Visual programming in Enfinity Suite 6
47 (Freely translated from) [ENF6_Tech], p. 16
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Intershop comes along with a huge amount of predefined Java classes that can be used
inside the business processes. Of course new classes can be added by their customers
themselves and Intershop also offers extensions on their software as they surely have
to required know-how. Basically the software is subdivided into three layers (Drawing
5). On the bottom one can locate the Enfinity MultiSite Technology, above comes the
business logic mentioned above. And on top of the architecture the different channel
applications – usually realized as web sites – are resident (cp. [ENF6_Tech], p. 10).
Content Consumer Business Partner Supplier Procurement

Channel Channel Channel Channel Channel Channel
Application Application Application Application Application Application
Business components
Enfinity MultiSite Technology

Drawing 5: Enfinity Suite 6 Application
So much for the general machinery of Enfinity Suite 6. In chapter 3.1.1 Working with
Enfinity Suite 6 we will take a closer look into the every day work with the shop
system and I am going to highlight some administrating work based on the demo
accounts that were given to the Sylphen company to get in touch with the software and
learn about some general workflows.
All in all Intershop results in easy-tu-use online shops due to the know-how of
„[...]15-year expertise in E-Commerce consulting and software development [.]48“
for major enterprises as well as medium-sized businesses. The huge complexity of the
software naturally comes along with high costs on the software itself but also on
employee trainings and additional Oracle49 licences. Small projects can be realized
from about 50.000 Euro up to several hundreds of thousands of Euro for projects like
the T-Com or Otto Online Shops. Looking at these facts, clarity seems very far away in
an online shop using Intershop software but it will pay off if this first hurdle has been
jumped.
48 cf. [ENF6_Bro], p. 9
49 Intershop uses Oracle databases to ensure the highest availability [ENF6_Tech], pg. 24,25,28.
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Usability
All of the tested online shops offer an exemplary usability. The checkpoints as
specified by Trusted Shops in chapter 2.1.4 Usability are implemented nearly 100%.
So they receive top rankings in all categories. Customers discover different ways of
accessing the contents by browsing through the different categories, following sales
offers or making their way through recommendations connected to the products they
viewed. The shops of Quelle, Otto and Der Club Bertelsmann basically lack a sitemap
but it can be integrated as you can see at the online shop of BMW and Musicstore.de 50.
At least in the BMW shop a sitemap is integrated and also reasonable as it does not
offer such a variety of products like the online stores of Quelle.de or Otto.de. These
shops are recognized for their outstanding clearness and product presentation, with
modern web design techniques on the one hand, and a clear, plain and simple
presentation on the other.
There is no untraceable information as it seems in the tested online stores. All
necessary topics are presented at prominent positions at the top or the bottom of the
online store where customers expect for instance the product search or general terms
and conditions as well as contact information or the company´s presentation.
The shopping cart is available at any time during the visit and takes you to the
checkout form with a single click. The checkout process provides all necessary
functions namely the back and forth navigation with the browsers hot-keys combined
with a preservation of already entered form information. As the BMW shop shows, the
different checkout can be made directly accessible by clicking via a breadcrumb menu
surely without a loss of form data. Even unexpected errors do not cause the loss of
previously entered form information. The checkout process – regardless of being a
registered user or not – can be finished every time.
Additionally the software offers a navigation trail helping users not to lose orientation,
keep an overview of the whereabouts and move through categories in an easy way.
These navigation trails typically are located at the top of the page and offer another
possibility to navigate through the shop.
Unfortunately – and of course – there are some negative things that occurred during
50 http://www.musicstore.de/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/MusicStore-MusicStoreShop-
Site/de_DE/-/EUR/ViewSiteMap-Start;pgid=TOZgS6SfaObm0000000000000000OhZPPrzS
(reviewed on 2007, January 15th)
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the shopping tour: Every main menu just seems to work properly with Javascript
enabled in the visitor´s web browser. At least a general navigation through the shop is
possible in the shops of Quelle, Otto and Der Club Bertelsmann51, whereas the online
shop of BMW cannot be navigated unless Javascript is enabled and sometimes even
crashes with some non-fitting error pages. Thus a full accessibility of the main menu
should be implemented as it would make usability of the online shops more intuitive
and consistent.
Ordering products without enabled Javascript is possible in the Bertelsmann store only.
Despite the fact, that the shopping cart preview in the head of the website does not
show correct number and totals of articles, an order is at least possible. The other
reference shops do not work properly when putting articles into the shopping cart or –
like the Quelle store – display a notification on disabled Javascript informing the
customer that enabled Javascript is necessary to use the complete features of the
website. It is a pity that shopping itself – and putting products into the cart respectively
– seems to be a feature of the Quelle, BMW and Otto stores while Bertelsmann shows
that the software is able to output a working online shop independent from Javascript.
Another disadvantage: the page reloads sometimes take a bit too long to enable visitors
to have a light-hearted shopping tour. Being the top reason in Table 2: Why people
leave websites (Jupiter Research 12/2005) special attention should be paid on a
quick page reproduction. Nevertheless one surely can recognize that „something
happens“ during the page reload while images, menus, forms and banners are loaded –
sometimes it could just be a little faster.
Search functionality
The tested shops and thus the Intershop software respectively offer a brilliant search
functionality with with all the features customers may desire. Except the BMW shop –
caused by the relatively limited variety of products – all reference shops offer
combinations of parametric and hierarchical searches. After searching the online shop
for e.g. „trousers“ the engine displays an overview showing the number of matches
found. These results can be navigated hierarchically, sorted by price, color and size, or
refined with certain parameters due to a clearly structured overview of manufacturers
51 These shops offer multiple ways of navigating the store by a drop down menu in the head of the page
on the one hand and additionally a menu on the left side of the website depending on the correspon-
ding category. Thus visitors do not depend on a single java-script-based navigation.
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or any shop category – with the quantity of matching products in brackets – containing
the product of interest. Even while refining the results with certain parameters a
hierarchical navigation of the matching products is still available. Of course a direct
search for patrons via product ID is possible in all the shops.
The Quelle and Bertelsmann webshops combine the product search with modern
Web2.0 features like Google suggest52 and offer a quick overview over possible
products of interest while the user is typing. This enables the customers to recognize
whether a product can be found in the product line or not even before finishing his
proper search.
A fault tolerant search is possible in all the shops but unfortunately the Otto and
Bertelsmann shops are the only ones displaying results located in the shop´s additional
content. A search with the keyword „AGB“ for general terms and conditions for
instance just provides results of matching products or stays empty in the Quelle and
BMW shops.
Looking at the efforts on SEO

„[...]Enfinity Suite 6 provides several options for optimizing your online shop
pages for internet search engines.53“.
A search for instance with Google entering the keywords „privileg waschmaschine“
resulted in top rankings of the Quelle webshop – in an advertisement with search
engine friendly URL – as they have had a special offer on their frontpage on the date
of searching54. The landing page of this advertisement directly leads to the Quelle
section of washing machines.
All in all, Intershop offers great software concerning search functionality in the shop
frontend itself as well as in terms of search engine optimization and advertisement.
The predefined search modules attend to their duties according to the needs and
requirements of a comfortable and multi channel product search.
52 http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
53 cf. [ENF6_Bro], p. 6
54 This Google search was performed on 2008, January 17th
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Security
Protection against attacks with XSS and SQL injection seems to be realized in all of
the online shops due to an effectual validation of form data. HTML or Javascript code
respectively cannot be infiltrated by for instance the search form. One the one hand
one can discover a limited number of characters that can be entered in the form and on
the other characters like „<“ or complete HTML tags opening Javascript lines like
„<script type=“text/javascript“>...malicious code</script>“
are filtered probably by using regular expressions. The fact that a lacking validation of
user entries is the reason for the most attacks on websites (cf. [CT02/08], p. 135) is
paid great attention by the Intershop software. Especially the Quelle online shop –
because of using Ajax features in the shop – could be attacked as it is described in
[CT02/08] if XSS attacks were possible.
SQL injection via the product´s quantity fields also seems blocked by
• a dropdown menu with certain presets on the product´s quantity,
• restriction of at most three digits or
• a complete character replacement like in the Otto online shop.
The software provides SSL encrypted connections during the processes of data
transmission especially the checkout and login procedures. So a secure transmission of
personal data is warranted during these steps.
Furthermore the complete service features of e.g. the Otto store cannot be used before
activating the account with a PIN that is sent to the customers in a separate letter. So
another (secure) communication channel for submitting personal data is used before
completely being able to use the features of the store. One can open an account
exclusively by having a customer ID which is created after the first purchased order.
So at least a small protection against junk orders by nonexistent persons is provided.
Apart from the possibility of brute force attacks (accounts are not locked after a certain
amount of failed login attempts) and missing information on secure passwords during
the registration process security is paid a lot of attention. In spite of using modern web
techniques like Ajax and personal customer centers security has great importance for
Intershop and their customers in turn. Well known and popular attacks are nipped in
the bud and in addition to that software upgrades are made continuously.
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Service
Expectedly service plays a major role for the tested online shops working with
Intershop´s software. First of all I would like to mention that all requirements
discussed in 2.1.7 Service are realized extremely well. Shopping in those huge online
stores leaves nothing to be desired. Beyond the basic service accomplishments on
• comfortable browsing,
• multiple views of products and their variations like different colors and sizes,
• multiple views of e.g. big furniture or
• availability testing
(just to mention a few) there are several additional features that are worth mentioning
in here. The Otto, Bertelsmann and Quelle stores for instance offer product reviews
made by their customers that are to help people interested in buying them. Despite the
fact that online shops always make themselves vulnerable by offering that kind of
product reviews they can influence interested customers in a positive way. Furthermore
reviews create a kind of transparency and so they help both parties, customers and
dealers, to make decisions or maybe to improve the product line. In addition to that,
the companies lure their customers with special prices as the reviews themselves can
be reviewed. The most helpful review(er)s are rewarded with monthly gifts.
The „customer center“ of the Otto online shops comes along with individual order
information and a purchase order history, a comfortable and unlimited shipping
address management, as well as a personal notepad, previously viewed products and
the „Otto Cinema Card“55.
Communication also is paid a lot attention to. With at most 2 clicks customers can find
any contact information on every communication channel they desire. Mail forms,
phone and fax numbers, e-Mail and postal addresses are very easy to locate. The
employees in the Otto call center are very friendly indeed and have quick access to all
integrated systems because they can help giving information on orders, customer data,
withdrawal of an order or complaints of any kind.
55 The Otto Cinema Card enables Otto customers to visit participating cinemas with a reduced ticket
price during a certain period of time. It can be printed via the customer center.
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The quick response on any customer request and the aforementioned additional service
features surely call for a central administration of the online shop. Looking at the
complexity of that kind of services Intershop provides all that in a relatively easy way.
The employees at the hotline seem to have central access to all important databases
and backend areas that need to be available during any customer request.
Customizing
The Intershop software is not completely open source indeed, but surely can be
customized on a very high level. Looking back on the visual programming logic and
its Java-based machinery existing/new business processes can be manipulated/created.
Companies can create completely Javascript-based ordering processes on the one hand
or a „Javascript-less“ ordering process – like in the Bertelsmann store – on the other.
For instance a content channel is working with so called templates. The templates
determine how content is structured and presented and contain information about
content components and their stylesheets56. Rendering templates do the general
displaying of a page and structure templates manage the structure of the different
components on a page. All these templates can be adapted and manipulated – a very
high understanding of the internal structures assumed. Due to its MultiSite Technology
Enfinity Suite 6 covers a very high adaptability regarding the different channels for
end customers or business partners and subsidiary companies.
Even own developments can be integrated in the website as we can see at the
Bertelsmann webshop in a very amusing way. Der Club offers Pia (a Personal Internet
Assistant). Pia is a digitally represented woman who answers questions of customers
and offers to search the online catalog with the phrases entered by the user if she has
no fitting answer available. As Pia shows, own developments are also possible with the
software and she definitely contributes to a quite familiar shopping adventure. Due to
the flexibility in design and integration of the different steps in enterprise ressource
planning and last but not least by the know-how of the Intershop company very many
customizations partly in-house and partly by the company itself can be realized
56 Freely adapted from [ENF6_Help]
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Certification
As you would expect, a certified shopping is guaranteed in the Quelle, Otto and
Bertelsmann shops. A TÜV emblem can be located on each of the pages and in the
Otto store even the customer service via e-Mail is judged as very recommendable. A
certification of the so far quite sophisticated software seems obvious indeed. The claim
of Intershop to be a top level shop system surely pays off according to certificates and
with customer loyalties in turn as they are getting more carefully (but also more
willing to go online shopping) nowadays.
Integration
„Enfinity Suite is designed to[...] [e]asily integrate with the sell-side and/or ERP
systems of customers and partners[.]57“
Thus it can be of use for any kind of organization working with Enfinity Suite 6 which
are for instance:
• Sales Organizations
The sales organization represents the owner or root organization of a system that
implements a multi-channel sales business model. Typically, the sales
organization represents an organization which manages its demand chain,
publishes content and manages orders57.
• Partners
Partners represent selling organizations working within a partner channel. Hence,
partners always have a superordinate or parent organization. The parent
organization can be the sales organization, or another partner higher up in the
demand chain57.
• Customers
Customers (or customer organizations) represent the buying organizations of a
sales or partner organization. The users of a customer organization use the
business channel of Enfinity Suite57.
• Suppliers
Suppliers work in the supplier front end of the supplier channel. Depending on
the business model implemented by Enfinity Suite, suppliers collaborate with
different organizations, for example, with a sales organization in multi-channel
sales models57.
57 cf. [ENF6_Help]
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All in all integration also is paid a lot of attention to when using Intershop software.
Flexibility of the different channels, combined with the know-how of the Intershop
company they offer exemplary integration opportunities for all purposes.
3.1.1 Working with Enfinity Suite 6
I would like to restrict the demonstrations to a minimum because the possible

administrating tasks are too comprehensive to show them even in extractions. There
will be one example in „storefront editing“ (the comfortable way of editing content
directly in the online store), updating product information in the „backoffice“ and a
short preview of how employees of business partners order products via the business
channel.
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Storefront editing
Illustration 9: Intershop´s Storefront Editing
One way of updating content elements with the Intershop software is the so called
„Storefront Editing“. After logging in at the frontend of PrimeTech (the fictitious
online shopping organization in the Intershop demo account) the different elements can
be edited, deleted, moved up and down or new ones can be added by clicking the
corresponding yellow buttons. As you can see in Illustration 9 clicking the „edit“-
button in step 1 opens a new window and depending on the component you can edit
the pre-formatted article in a simple text area or directly write HTML sourcecode.
Furthermore the backend editing offers scheduled publications, sales or discount

campaigns with preview pages for each day. So you can for instance schedule daily
Christmas offers already in September and get previews of how the storefront will look
like each single day. Content version management is also possible with Enfinity Suite
6. It removes content older than a specified date and keeps a certain number of
versions that cannot be removed if desired.
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Updating product information
Illustration 10: Intershop´s product update
The product information for each channel can be edited quite simply. After navigating
to the particular channel´s products section and overview page products (or more
general: objects) are listed in a table. Most list views provide select checkboxes which
allow to select multiple objects and perform certain actions.
The overview pages can be filtered to restrict the views of objects and an easy
administrating of them is provided. Simply clicking on a product´s name in the list
opens a new page similar to the one in Illustration 10. Tabs located on top of this page
provide some general product options like categories, attributes or pricing and the
options themselves have several details. The illustration shows general product details
like multiple languages, product thumbnails or short and long descriptions. The
products have to be locked before editing and thus are protected against multiple
manipulations. Their online/offline status can be configured in general or for limited
periods and different steps in the product lifecycle like „last order date“ or an „end-of-
life date“ can be specified. Variations and product attributes can be managed very
easily and they are more clearly arranged than in the xt:Commerce backend where one
has to visit different sections of the backend to assign attributes to products.
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Business channel
Illustration 11: Intershop´s business channel
Being a business partner of PrimeTech the CapitalGroup uses Enfinity´s business

channel to order products. Orders for business partners are called requisitions and
Illustration 11 shows the business storefront of PrimeTech and a current requisition of
Patricia Miller, fictitious employee of the CapitalGroup. Similar to end customers
business partners add products to the current requisition and can review them in some
kind of shopping cart. Shipping methods, delivery times and payment methods can be
specified and the state of open and current requisitions can be reviewed.
Business channels also offer customer specific pricing rules and catalog views and a
budget control which
„[...]ensure[s] that [...] customers are notified when self-defined budget limits are
exceeded.58“
The catalogs can be embedded into the business partners procurement systems to
enable buyers to purchase in a familiar environment. And last but not least online
marketing campaigns like discounts or coupons can be integrated to increase sales (cp.
[ENF6_Bro], p. 6).
58 cf. [ENF6_Bro]
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3.1.2 Conclusion
Intershop definitely is the top-dog of online shop systems. Top ratings in each section
of the worked out criteria make the software applicable in huge online shops with
about
• ten million sessions,
• fifty seven million page refreshes and
• 100.000 orders
a day (cf. [ENF6_Tech], p. 27). A scaling rate of about 96,1% and availability of
almost 100% make it for being used in Germany´s biggest online shops. Due to the
flexible integration opportunities to all business processes, adaptions on templates,
easy handling of back- and frontends and the exemplary search engine this online shop
software leaves nothing to be desired.
All these advantages are worth the quite high prices and follow-up costs coming along
with running an online shop with Intershop software. But investing a
six-figure sum into an online shop surely seems impossible for small and middle-sized
companies. The huge backend features and all the different channels call for a long
training period but Intershop offers detailed trainings well adapted for their customers´
personal needs and requirements.
3.2 xt:Commerce
xt:Commerce is a powerful open source shop system for small to middle shops
providing an unlimited number of categories/products, cross selling, sales offers,
digital download products, different customer groups, a web interface for
administration, data export for several search engines an easy installation and many
things more. xt:Commerce also offers a small integrated CMS to manage additional
content und the online shop. It is based on PHP (Version 4.1.3 or later) and MySQL.
For 99,- € you can additionally buy a one-year support that grants access to the support
forum and team. A huge community supports beginners with useful tips and hints and
the core team handles support tickets of new questions in a separate forum.
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Clarity
The backend of xt:Commerce comes along very clearly arranged. The left menu bar
Illustration 12: xt:Commerce backend areas

(Admin modules) contains all necessary sections structured in groups beginning with
the most important and most used sections of the administration. The Module details
give information on currently the corresponding details and the Detail actions provide
for instance editing/creating/deleting categories or products. The self-explanatory
menu points help administrators finding the corresponding sections very quickly. New
products and categories can be created with just a few clicks and they are visible in the
frontend immediately. Generally the standard template of xt:Commerce contains
every necessary information in a three-column-layout with categories, menus,
customer/administrator login, top sellers, cart, special offers and company information
on the left and right59, shop contents, product overviews and contents in general in the
middle. The hierarchy of categories is displayed in a tree and may contain the number
of products in one category behind its name. A navigation trail for better orientation
can also be displayed.
On the one hand the clearly structured difference between additional information and
content of main interest during an ordering process definitely contributes to the clarity.
The mass of boxes that generally are displayed without being necessary unfortunately
contributes to a loss of clearness while first time visitors lose orientation more easily
59 These sections in the frontend of xt:Commerce are called boxes.
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because of the bulk of information on the frontpage60.

A standard template of xt:Commerce does not provide a reduced number of boxes in
the left and right areas of the website. HTML programming skills are necessary to
adapt the template towards an increased clearness. Furthermore there is no
straightforward way of adapting a template via the shop backend. An easy way of
adding or removing single boxes would be desirable. Also the arrangement of the
boxes cannot be adapted via the shop backend, so if you do not want to use any of the
free templates, good to excellent HTML and CSS skills are inevitable.
All the rest of the configuration can be done via the backend. Predefined forms offer
reasonable presets and can be extended or adapted arbitrarily. This central
administration point makes the handling very easy and with the given tools and
programming know-how a clearly structured and easy to use online shop can be build
with comparatively little efforts.
Customers also take advantages of the clearly structured design of xt:Commerce. The
checkout process for instance is subdivided into three parts which the user is led
through in a very uncomplicated way. Choosing the type of dispatch followed by
choosing the payment method and a final overview – every step providing back and
forth navigation of the web browser – are the only steps during the checkout
procedure.
The reasonable presets of xt:Commerce call administrator´s attention on required
pages for shipping information, general terms an conditions and any other important
information the customers might be looking for. All these pages are predefined after
the installation and therefore they should be memorized for administrators to create.
The exemplary clarity and the clearly structured output websites qualify xt:Commerce
as a deliberate shop system that is easy to use for customers as well as administrators.
Usability
Looking at the 5 parts of the online usability test of Trusted Shops, xt:Commerce
performs very well. It receives top rankings in all categories except the frontpage. The
60 A standard frontpage in xt:Commerce comes along with thirteen boxes containing different contents
what makes it hard to find the information of interest without great efforts. Boxes with information
about the users customer group, an empty cart or a quick buy area can be irritating on a first visit.
Furthermore there is no strict separation between products and additional shop information so an in-
tuitive navigation through the sites is not warranted right from the beginning.
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discussed deductions in clarity cause this result but nevertheless the exemplary
frontend usability of xt:Commerce makes it top rated. The reasonable xt:Commerce
presets on product pages, cart, ordering and checkout processes can nevertheless be
adapted to receive even better results. Unfortunately a well funded HTML and PHP
programming knowledge is necessary to extend the product page for instance. But if
one has this knowledge, xt:Commerce even features user-defined presentation pages
for each category or even each single product.
Options or variants61 of products can extremely simplify usability. They can be created
in the backend with just a few clicks. Each product can be assigned to as many
categories as you like, a cross selling of products is also possible and even information
about manufacturers can be stored in the database. Multiple images can be uploaded
and shown on the product detail pages and xt:Commerce even creates thumbnails from
these pictures automatically62.
Again with just a few clicks you can change order of the products on the overview
page or adjust the displaying of products on your frontpage. Sales campaigns, special
offers and several customer groups – which may again have different sights on your
products, depending on their group – can be created easily. New products can be
displayed on the frontpage for a certain time to inform customers about upgrades on
the product line. Even multiple shop administrators with different rights can work on
the shops backend. Simple check boxes grant/deny them acces to the corresponding
backend´s section.
The cache system of xt:Commerce is also worth mentioning.

„[...][D]atabase requests can be minimized which increases [...][speed] of the
whole system.“63
Once a product page has been displayed, the system stores the rendered page in a
cache folder which the site is being taken from at the next visit. So the sometimes quite
61 If you e.g. sell t-shirts you probably offer them as standard t-shirt and as girlie shirts with different
colours. You may not want to create a separate product for each t-shirt you offer so variants can be
assigned to a certain kind of product. Creating one product „T-Shirt“ and assigning the variants „re-
gular“ and „girlie“ with one option for each color and size you offer keeps your shop clear and avo-
ids too many clicks to reach the product page.
62 The image processing can be adapted/enabled/disabled in the backend of the shop system and featu-
res personal watermarks of e.g. the company logo.
63 http://www.xt-commerce.com/content/view/13/28/lang,en/ (reviewed on 2007, December 23rd)
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time-consuming database queries can be reduced to a minimum and all shop visitors
take advantage of the shorter loading time.
All in all the software offers an easy handling backend with reasonable features that
produces sites with exemplary usability. Common web design requirements can be
considered very well because of the strict separation of structure and design. The open
sources ensure an extensibility to personal needs and the growing community can
support newbies at any problem.
Search functionality
The product search of xt:Commerce unfortunately does not fulfill requirements. Only
two different ways of searching – a simple text search or an advanced text search with
price ranges and an optional sub category search – come with the software in general.
The result pages have no certain order, they cannot be rearranged and no filters for
further refinement are available. Best sellers do not appear on top of the result lists and
often the user is confronted with a huge crowd of fitting results.
By default only two ways of searching can be enabled in the backend of xt:Commerce.
Searching the products´ short and long descriptions or searching their attributes like
color or length can be enabled in the backend. An extended PHP search or a parametric
search would be desirable as shops with many products usually yield a huge result list
that mostly has to be refined.
There also is no fault tolerant search. Typing mistakes in the search phrases will lead to
an empty result and the phrase is not even displayed on the result page for checking
purposes. Thus first time visitors may be disappointed by empty search results and will
abort their online shopping with a higher probability as if they had been supported with
fault tolerant result pages or even some suggestions similar to their search phrase. The
search only stretches across the offered products and their descriptions. Additional
content cannot be searched with the standard search form.
But nevertheless, up to date search mechanisms á la Web2.0 like in the Quelle
webshop can be implemented on the search pages due to the available sources of
xt:Commerce. Also extended PHP searches can be implemented provided that they can
access all necessary data sources. As per the support forum of xt:Commerce64 a general
64 http://www.xt-commerce.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53085&highlight=landing+pages (reviewed
on 2007, December 27th)
57
3 Evaluation
implementation of landing pages by for instance using Google Analytics is available.

Integration of the required JavaScript code via Smarty (template engine) will lead to
a comparable result. xt:Commerce also comes along with several modules to export
product details to for instance billiger.de, froogle.de, golem.de or geizhals.at. These so
called price search engines receive a shop´s product data and display them on the
basis of all received transmittals and therefore make them easier to find and offer a
certain transparency.
Security
Looking at the security issues, xt:Commerce comes off moderately. A general
protection during the data transmission via HTTPS is possible after installing an
associated certificate. A basic protection from insecure password is implemented, but it
is confined to a minimum of five characters for the desired password. At least
customers get a notice about using a secure password, but checking the password
string with regular expressions to provide usage of at least one special character and a
capital letter would be a better solution. Nevertheless these features can be upgraded
manually. The usage of secure passwords comes along with a very popular brute force
attack. Another security hole in the standard software is the lack of temporarily
locking an account after a certain number of failed login attempts. Thus automated
attacks can be run an the online shop by simply trying to login with as many
passwords/user names as desired and cause the illegal use of accounts. In addition the
login is carried out by entering one´s e-Mail address instead of an individual user name
for identification. Hence knowing about an e-Mail address of a registered user is
enough to start a „quite safe attack“ on his account concerning a detection of the abuse.
However it is pleasing that XSS attacks and SQL-injection do not take effect on the
software. The software protects companies from such attacks and thus integrity of the
database, shop data and user account is ensured. Security relevant information can be
provided by the shop operators by creating information pages via the integrated CMS
or notifications during the registering process. Regular software updates are released
by the core team and they are taking care on enhancing their software continuously.
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3 Evaluation
Finally one can say, that xt:Commerce brings basic security mechanisms that surely
can be optimized at certain points. But oftentimes it is enough to sensitize users by a
simple information page or a box on how to create secure passwords before a
registration. The only persistent disqualification is the use of an e-Mail address instead
of a personal user name for customers to identify. Combined with insecure passwords
it enables attackers to do damage to the account and to the company respectively.
Service
It seems quite difficult to rate the service functionalities of a software because the
requirements highlighted in 2.1.7 Service are exclusively such that cannot be managed
automatically. Nevertheless the shop software can assist employees by simplifying
their individual production steps as much as possible.
First of all one can say, that the central administration point – the backend of
xt:Commerce – offers all necessary functions to manage any kind of unforeseen
occurrences, complaints or returns. Certain employees can have access to certain areas
and take care about the customer´s concerns in a quick and easy way. All information
on products can be entered in the backend while inserting a new product. One can
upload as many product pictures as desired, manufacturers information, a short and a
long description, several prices for different customer groups, discounts and tax classes
can be specified in a single form. General information around the online shop itself can
be created and maintained in the content manager, the above mentioned CMS
implemented in xt:Commerce. Orders can be entered, edited or deleted manually in the
backend and so a good customer service (for instance on a hotline) is ensured if there
are any problems occurring.
An up-to-date online shop is realizable very easily. The integrated CMS makes it quite
simple – even for technically unexperienced users – to create and edit content. Product
updates or renews can be made by a few clicks very easily and hence the main point of
contact between a company and their customers – the website – can be administered
quite simply and effectively.
So much about the techniques of the shop software. Let us now take a closer look at
how to serve the customer´s needs and wishes.
Information for customers (on state changes of their orders or confirmations of given
orders) are sent by the e-Mail system automatically. Customers can edit their profiles
59
3 Evaluation
after logging in at the point „Your Account“. Up to 5 shipping addresses can be

deposited in the profile and chosen during an order and a newsletter
subscription/cancelling is also available. In addition the registration is very
uncomplicated. After entering the personal information required for registration the
account is created and ready for usage immediately. A double-opt-in process or at least
the use of php-captchas for registration would be desirable because there is no
protection against junk orders or registrations. Once logged in customers always keep
an overview of their cart because it is available at any time and (optionally) displayed
after putting a product into it. Open purchase orders are displayed hierarchically and
can be reviewed with a single click. Quitting a shop membership is only possible by
sending an e-Mail to a shop operator who then has to delete the user manually via the
shop backend.
The other service aspects on communication channels and good customer relations,
such as fair dealings and a return management are to be realized by the company´s
staff anyway and do not receive consideration in here.
Customizing
The customizing opportunities of xt:Commerce are exemplary. Developing a
standalone online shop from scratch or integrating the shop into an existing website,
both extremes are possible due to the open sources and the flexible integration of the
software into existing business processes. You can definitely change everything in this
software what makes it very flexible. Structural adaptions on the database, addition of
payment modules, personal e-Mail notifications with predefined message texts in plain
text or HTML are very nice features that contribute to a personal appearance of the
online shop.
Product images are passing through the so called image processing which fits them on
the specified dimensions and adds a personal watermark on the images. If this is not
desired, simply switch the image processing off in the backend.
Due to the multilingual feature xt:Commerce can be run with several languages and
tax rates, zones, different currencies and shipping conditions can be added and
managed in the backend. Adjustments in design can easily be made because of the
60
3 Evaluation
clear separation between content and layout. Several templates can be deposited and so
the look and feel of the online shop can be changed with just two clicks.
The smarty template engine
„[...]can assign variables pulled from configuration files. Template designers can
maintain values common to several templates in one location without
intervention from the programmer, and config variables can easily be shared
between the programming and presentation portions of the application.“65
That is what makes it possible for instance to display the user name at any page in the
webshop and so a friendly atmosphere with a personal salutation can be created.
A module for SEO URLs is included in version 3.0.4 SP2.1 that displays the URLs in a
for search engines optimized way. It foregoes variables and cryptic characters in the
URL because of a better locating. Aside from this, so called speaking URLs are kept in
mind more easily for customers and have an increased recognition value.
Certification
xt:Commerce among other things promotes its software with an optimum preparation
for a certification by Trusted Shops. And as we have seen above it is prepared very
well indeed. Most of the certification requirements66 of Trusted Shops are already
fulfilled. The same is applicable on the criteria for a TÜV certification. The core
developers of xt:Commerce took great care in implementing all the requirements at
least on their software. Criteria concerning presentation of products or transparency of
all costs are dealers´ duties anyway but are very easy to arrange with the software.
Integration
According to the integration of xt:Commerce into an existing CMS one can say that it
is quite easy. Popular CMS like Typo3 or Joomla offer extensions which at least
integrate the shops backend in the CMSs backend. The template system assures a
seamless dressing of the shop to an existing web presence. Due to the different
payment methods, an automatic forwarding of incoming orders via e-Mail, automated
information of an administrator after falling below a certain number of products or the
banner and campaign manager an acceptable but limited integration into existing
business processes is possible. Newbies should definitely be satisfied with the features
65 http://www.smarty.net/rightforme.php (reviewed 2008, January 1st)
66 http://www.trustedshops.de/shopbetreiber/download.html (reviewed on 2008, January 1st)
61
3 Evaluation
whereas experienced shop operators with huge online shops and probably fully
developed business processes might choose a more powerful and flexible shop
solution.
3.2.1 Conclusion
xt:Commerce is a very powerful tool that unfolds its features and functionalities not
until a close engagement with the system itself. For newcomers and partially
experienced users it offers all necessary features of a well thought out online shop. The
installation and the following start-up configuration are a mere child´s play. The
clearly structured presentation of categories and products result in a productive online
shop after a very short set up time. The fine tuning of several steps in the checkout
process for instance surely needs a bit of engagement but with an additional support
ticket for one year these costs will surely be a reasonable investment and the support of
the community and the core team will help very quickly and capably.
Looking back at the Ten rules of online selling by [GORA01] they are easy to
implement due to the good assistance of the software. With a few cutbacks on security
issues – which mostly can be avoided by customers themselves – and the search
functionality it is an appropriate online shop system for shops with a moderate number
of products and visitors.
In the following chapter I am going to sketch the basic installation and configuration of
xt:Commerce as I realized it during the project. I will report on important things
during the steps of setting up the online shop system (4.1 Installation), give
information on special requirements (4.2 Configuration), sketch a few adaptions (4.3
Customization) and highlight difficulties that occurred during the administration
before the project´s delivery (4.4 Administration).
62
4 xt:Commerce in practice
During this thesis a project of the Sylphen limited liability company was realized. The
shop system of the GGEW-net,
subsidiary company of the GGEW
in Bensheim, Hessen, Germany, was
renewed. The former online shop
was running on an os:Commerce
system and according to this,
xt:Commerce was chosen to be the
new online shop system. It is a
further development of
os:Commerce and very similar to
work with. The basic structures are
Illustration 13: GGEW-net screen shot
the same, administration of
products, categories and customers are mostly the same. The higher clearness of the
backend and the template system as well as the resultant little adjustments for the
employees and the already established business processes of the GGEW-net made
xt:Commerce to be the adequate online shop system.
4.1 Installation
Installation and a general configuration of xt:Commerce are combined during the setup
process. The basic shop configuration ties in with a successful installation. The
extracted archive has to be uploaded on the webserver and after setting several file and
folder permissions the installation can start.
The basic installation comes up with just three steps. After checking the file and folder
permissions and choosing the language (Illustration 14) the database settings have to
be entered and xt:Commerce usually brings up the correct webserver settings right
from the beginning (Illustration 15). Afterwards xt:Commerce tries to connect to the
database with the entered information in step 2 and displays a message on successful
connection. In the next step the required database structure is being imported and on
63
success a message is being displayed again. Even newcomers should be able to go

through the basic installation and configuration without any difficulties.
Illustration 14: Step 1; permissions and language
64
Illustration 15: Step 2; database and webserver settings
65
4.2 Configuration
Step 5 deals with the basic configuration of the online shop. Again the webserver
configuration comes up with reasonable presets, common directories are inserted
automatically and the folder presets usually can stay at the default entries.
Illustration 16: Step 5; configure main files
66
Finally the administrator data (Illustration 17) and the guest and default customer
setup (Illustration 18) have to be created. Entering administrators data, choosing a
password and confirming the default guest and customer setup are the last required
steps before starting to work with xt:Commerce.
Illustration 17: Step 6; entering admin data
67
Illustration 18: Step 7; guest and customer setup
68
4.2.1 Other important preferences
At the first login in the backend xt:Commerce welcomes the administrator with some
warnings that should be managed. The first and most important one is to reset the file
permissions on the configuration files after finishing the configuration of xt:Commerce
because they are set to 77767. Before being able to work meaningfully with the shop
system some additional configurations have to be made. This chapter is going to sketch
the most important settings required as one might easily overlook them.
Payment and Shipping

Two main characteristics of an online shop are that the products usually have to be sent
via a shipping service and have to be paid with one of many different payment
methods. Thus the next 2 warnings of xt:Commerce instruct the administrator to
activate at least one payment and one shipping module. Activating modules is another
cakewalk. Under the point „Modules -> Payment Systems“ several payment systems
are available and they can be installed and activated with a single click. Same applies
to the shipping methods: „Modules -> Shipping Methods“ lists all available shipping
methods and they can be installed and activated with a single click.
Other information pages

Any information page in xt:Commerce can be adapted. At the first visit the software
displays an information text like:
Nice to see you again Mr. Sebastian Berg! Would you like to view our new products ?
This is a basic installation of xt:Commerce. All products displayed are just for demonstrating
the shop machinery. Ordered products will neither be shipped nor billed. All information
concerning the different products are fictive and do not assert one´s claim to be acquired.
If you´re interested to use the program being the groundwork of this shop please visit the
support page of xt:Commerce. This shop is based on xt:Commerce v3.0.4.
This text can be edited in the administration interface -> Content Manager - Index entry.
So administrators are guided to the Content Manager immediately where they can
create the most important information pages concerning shipping and returns, privacy
notice, conditions of use, and e.g. company contact. The content manager represents
the small CMS mentioned above and provides a multilingual representation of each
page, depending on the number of languages the online shop runs with.
67 cf. file permissions on UNIX based webservers
69
Fulfillment confirmations
Confirmations via e-Mail usually are sent when an online shop receives an order.
xt:Commerce automatically sends such confirmations to the customer´s e-Mail
address. Dealers may want to edit the text of the e-Mail to make it sound more familiar
or change the order of the different text elements. xt:Commerce basically sends e-
Mails in plain, HTML or both formats. The look and feel of an e-Mail is not globally
configured but can be adapted independently for each template that is running on
xt:Commerce. The folder „/templates/<current_Template>/mail/<language>/“
contains HTML and text templates the automatic e-Mails are created from. Those
templates for instance are a mix of HTML-Code, plain text and smarty variables, to get
necessary information about the order such as total price, each product´s single price
and maybe a shipping address. An example text mail can be found in chapter 4.3
Fulfillment confirmation (subpart).
Integrating any PHP/HTML files into the website

When creating a new page in the online shop one may want to reuse an already
existing one. Any PHP or HTML files can be chosen from a specific directory and will
be displayed inside the content area of the website. A drop down menu containing a list
of all files inside the „/media/content“ directory is available for each page created with
the content manager. Thus a maximum flexibility is warranted for displaying contents
and existing source code can be reused in a quick and easy way.
4.3 Customization
Fulfillment confirmation
Special requirements on the fulfillment confirmation are necessary at the GGEW-net
company because a copy of these confirmations is automatically sent to a so called
„radius server“ for further processing. Text elements have to be in a certain order to
ensure correct processing of the e-Mail. Below you can find an example text mail
template.
{$address_label_customer}
{if $PAYMENT_METHOD}Zahlungsmethode: {$PAYMENT_METHOD}{/if}

Bestellnummer: {$oID}
70
Datum: {$DATE}
{if $csID}Kundennummer :{$csID}{/if}
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hallo {$NAME},
Dies ist nur ein Standardtext
{$PAYMENT_INFO_TXT}
{if $COMMENTS}
Ihre Anmerkungen:
{$COMMENTS}{/if}
Ihre Bestellten Produkte zur Kontrollle

----------------------------------------------------------------------
{foreach name=aussen item=order_values from=$order_data}
{$order_values.PRODUCTS_QTY} x {$order_values.PRODUCTS_NAME}
{$order_values.PRODUCTS_PRICE}
{if $order_values.PRODUCTS_SHIPPING_TIME neq ''}Lieferzeit:
{$order_values.PRODUCTS_SHIPPING_TIME}{/if}
{if $order_values.PRODUCTS_ATTRIBUTES !=''}
{$order_values.PRODUCTS_ATTRIBUTES}{/if}{/foreach}
{foreach name=aussen item=order_total_values from=$order_total}

{$order_total_values.TITLE}{$order_total_values.TEXT}{/foreach}
{if $address_label_payment}
Rechnungsadresse
----------------------------------------------------------------------
{$address_label_payment}{/if}
Versandadresse
----------------------------------------------------------------------
{$address_label_shipping}
Presentation of products without shipping costs

The GGEW-net runs WLAN hotspots in the region of Bensheim, Hessen (Germany). A
lot of products therefore offer required login information called „Internet tickets“68 for
those hotspots and do not need to be shipped at all. Thus for these tickets no shipping
costs need to to be displayed. As aforementioned xt:Commerce features an individual
presentation of (each) product(s) if desired. Different HTML templates can be assigned
to the products and so a separate displaying of tickets apart from the rest of the
products commonly shipped is available. The templates are stored in a folder whose
files are selectable from a drop down menu in the backend´s products detail page. At
the moment the login information is sent to the customers by e-Mail, but under these
68 There are different tickets for one week, one month or one year in two different access modes availa-
ble.
71
circumstances a use of the digital download features of xt:Commerce would surely be

conceivable. When cashed a digital download page could be activated that is available
e.g. for a certain amount of days.
4.3.1 Smarty (template engine)
Smarty is a template engine, that provides a simple assignment of variables that can be
called at any position in HTML source code. For example on any pages user data or
any other information stored in a database can be displayed. Assignment of these
variables usually is being done in a global index PHP file which puts the website
together. Simple or nested if conditions combined with logical expressions as well as
simple loops are some of Smarty´s features69. The Smarty variables are available in the
whole online shop and can also be used in fulfillment confirmations or any other e-
Mail as we have already seen in chapter 4.3 Fulfillment confirmation .
Nevertheless there can be some difficulties with Smarty concerning special files in
xt:Commerce. The Smarty variables are usable in HTML files only. Most of the
xt:Commerce modules use HTML files to create the source code but some70 use PHP
files. Trying to insert a Smarty variable in a PHP file will result in a preprocessing by
PHP istead of a preprocessing by the Smarty template engine.
Considering the facts one encounters a restriction on the statement that the variables
are available in file of the store. Therefore the Smarty variables can be used in any
HTML page of the online shop.
4.4 Administration
I am going to report on some administrative duties now that had been necessary for a
proper working of the GGEW-net online shop. In this regard it is worth mentioning
that the shop – as it was implemented during this thesis – is still unproductive.
Nevertheless the setup has been finished so far, required functionalities are available
and have been tested on a proper operability. Caused by a revision of the GGEW´s
69 A Smarty introduction or documentation can be found at http://www.smarty.net/crashcourse.php or

http://www.smarty.net/docs.php (reviewed 2007, December 10th)
70 E.g. the box that creates the main navigation from categories stored in the database. This is necessary
because the main navigation structure is being put together by several elements of a database query
that is executed by a PHP file.
72
corporate identity the shop design – as it was created by a freelance designer working
for the Sylphen company for several years – doest not comply with the future look and
feel of the GGEW´s CI. Another template is going to be added when the GGEW´s CI
will be revised.
4.4.1 Porting legacy systems
As the old GGEW-net shop was running on OSCommerce and because of

xt:Commerce being the groundwork of OSCommerce, a general import of the old
product information would have been possible yet with some restrictions. The support
forum offers some PHP scripts that migrate the old shop data from an OSCommerce
shop into an xt:Commerce shop. Executing an export script71 via a browser creates a
MySQL database dump that simply can be imported with an appropriate tool like
phpMyAdmin or directly using the MySQL commands of a unix shell. In spite of
everything, the scripts are said to be working for an xt:Commerce in version 3.0.3.
Nevertheless the import of shop data was successful, except the old purchase orders. A
complete migration could be denoted indeed but these data unfortunately are not
completely visible in the corresponding section of the xt:Commerce backend. The
assignment of customer and order could not be accomplished – even a manual import
of the corresponding databes tables did not succeed. A support ticket was created for
the xt:Commerce core team that unfortunately could not help unless using the porting
service with additional costs72. Nevertheless the involved purchase orders are still
retrievable by the purchase order number and so this exception could neglected for the
GGEW-net employees. After the database import another update or rather a little
substitution of one PHP file – concerning the different encryption methods of OSC and
XTC – is necessary to ensure that customers can still log in with their old passwords.
4.4.2 Connection to Google Maps
To enable customers to find out where the GGEW-net´s so called hot spots are
available, the company offers a map giving an overview of currently installed and
prospective hotspots in the region of Bensheim. So it was obvious to integrate the free
71 The zipped archive is available at http://www.xt-commerce.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34811 (re-

viewed on 2007, December 10th)
72 A screen shot of the conversation with a support member can be found in the appendices.
73
maps of Google Maps73 into the websites. Due to the WYSIWYG 74 editor integrated in
the mini CMS of xt:Commerce and the opportunity to edit content directly as HTML
source code an integration of a Google Maps area was very easy. Creating an empty
<div>-element that contains and id-attribute is all you need to do when creating the
page that is going to contain the map. By means of the id-attribute a javascript file –
that for instance could be included in the head of the website – fills the <div>-element
with the deposited lines of code. Additionally a Google generated key75 is necessary to
display Google´s maps on a website. This key also can be integrated in the head of the
HTML document. Coordinates for the hotspots can simply be added/updated in the
javascript source file. An integration of the javascript code inside the WYSIWYG
editor would also be possible due to the opportunity of directly editing the website´s
source code with the editor.
73 http://maps.google.de (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)

74 What You See Is What You Get editors offer a direct formatting of web content inside an editing
form of a WCMS. Changes on font sizes, colors and paragraphs are visible immediately and give
editors a preview of how the content will look in the website during its creation.
75 A free Google key can be generated at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html (reviewed on
2007, December 10th) provided that a valid Google account to which the key can be connected to is
available.
74
Illustration 19: Google Maps in the GGEW-net store
75
5 Summary and conclusion
5.1 Perspectives
Meanwhile the so called „mobile commerce“ or M-Commerce is developing very fast.

As per [TNS07], p. 270 people do more and more accept the classic internet platforms
on which they can buy products and services. Mobile broadband internet connections
are spreading quickly and hence a mobile online shopping with cell phones, PDAs or
SmartCards will come across greater acceptance in the population. It is going to be
integrated in the every-day-life, supported by an already existing acceptance of mobile
devices. The online purchase of mobile music will be the biggest sector in the B2C E-
Commerce. The abdication of DRM76 will surely eliminate reservations of end
customers and this development could also copy on the amusement industry (cp.
[TNS07], p. 270). An up to date example is amazonmp3.com77. Launched in
September 2007 AmazonMP3 is going to offer
„[...]DRM-Free Downloads from SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT“,
emanating from an amazon press release78. Other benefits of M-Commerce are
experienced in an all-time-availability of the consumer´s device that keeps a
connection upright or the so called „ubiquitous computing“ - a permanent mobility of
the end device (cf. [Merz02], p. 381). Combined with biometric identification, mobile
payment developments, and optional secure connections these devices will offer a
secure authentication and payment regardless of the consumers current location.
76 Digital Rights Management

77 http://www.amazonmp3.com (reviewed on 2008, January 22nd)
78 http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1095117&highlight=
(reviewed on 2008, January 22nd)
76
5.2 Final statement
This thesis was written to introduce an open source shop system like xt:Commerce and
a high cost shop system based on Interhop´s Enfinity Suite 6 MulitSite Technology. On
the basis of some eligibility criteria developed in chapter 2 both shop systems were
rated. Finally the focus will be on a general recommendation of which online shop to
use. The answer is: it depends!
Due to the open sources and the resultant high adaptability of the xt:Commerce shop
system one can say that it is a contemporary shop system fulfilling most of the
common requirements on usability, security and clarity. The participating community
around xt:Commerce helps newcomers as well as „old stagers“ with any kind of
concerns. The price performance ratio of the 99,-€ support ticket is quite acceptable
due to a huge archive of already solved problems and the core team dealing with
support tickets and offering several services like data migration of legacy systems or
scripts to reuse old customer passwords that come from os:Commerce. Thus a stand-
alone management of an online shop can be accomplished beginning with the
installation over several customizations and product management to an integration in
ERP systems – a certain know-how and quite a big training period preconditioned.
With xt:Commerce small and medium-sized companies will definitely find a software
worth a try that brings up basic shop functionalities and some simple workflows in
shop management. Modern features like digital download products, coupons and sales
campaigns make it an allround software. The quick page reproductions based on an
SQL-caching mechanism, the good preparation for a Trusted Shops certification and
last but not least the template system will produce state of the art websites. Reasonable
presets and predefined information pages help dealers to provide a legally compliant
and structured online shop that – due to the multilingual features – is available all over
the world. The product export to several search engines enables companies to be
compared together with their competitors. Following the criteria on shop usability,
clarity and service, associated with a seal of approval success just seems to depend on
the customers – but they will award an online shop set up correctly and offering
additional services like availability via several communication channels.
77
Opposing Intershop to xt:Commerce we can encounter some differences. The shop

features in general are nearly the same. Just like its open source competitor Intershop
offers a well-thought-out online shop system. The output sites are clearly structured,
easy to use and offer a general protection from popular attacks.
The distinctive features show themselves in the details. The exemplary search
functions for instance contribute to a more comfortable product search – including
Ajax technologies like in the Quelle and Bertelsmann shops. Furthermore one can
create checkout procedures or menus free of Javascript or completely realized with
Javascript. The high adaptability results in differently realizable online shop systems
offering their strengths just where dealers want them to occur.
Concerning backend usability and clarity it definitely receives some penalties. The
system´s immense mightiness calls for a long training period for newbies before being
able to work with the software. But this is being balanced by Intershop´s special
employee trainings according to the company´s requirements.
Integration is the keyword that makes Intershop different from its competitor. If the
matter is about integrating different suppliers, partners and B2B customers altogether
on a single platform with different subgroups, different catalogs for each of the groups
that are build together dynamically depending on the visitor, Intershop is the software
of interest. Additionally there is the high scaling rate and the high availability of online
shops – even at peak loads – using the software that make Intershop the leading
company of online shop software.
Unfortunately the biggest disadvantage comes with the costs of an online shop realized
with Intershop. Small or medium-sized companies will have to think twice about
realizing a project with minimum costs of about 50.000 Euro. Nevertheless one should
definitely figure out the costs for another commercial shop system partly fulfilling the
requirements on e.g. an ERP or a complete system like Intershop that covers all needs
and wishes. Investing in a well-thought out online shop system might pay off by great
customer liabilities, reduced administrating costs and an exemplary integration of the
whole value-added chain.
78
Illustration Index
Illustration 1: Position of Germany in an international contrast by [TNS07]........10
Illustration 2: Long Tail by [WIKI_L_T].................................................................12
Illustration 3: Spending power of German population.........................................18
Illustration 4: Trusted Shops emblem..................................................................32
Illustration 5: TÜV-Süd emblem...........................................................................34
Illustration 6: Intershop: Enfinity Suite 6 technology (cf.[ENF6_Bro], p 11)........39
Illustration 7: Possible infrastructure in Enfinity Suite 6 (cf. [ENF6_Bro], p. 5)...40
Illustration 8: Visual programming in Enfinity Suite 6..........................................40
Illustration 9: Intershop´s Storefront Editing........................................................50
Illustration 10: Intershop´s product update..........................................................51
Illustration 11: Intershop´s business channel......................................................52
Illustration 12: xt:Commerce backend areas.......................................................54
Illustration 13: GGEW-net screen shot................................................................63
Illustration 14: Step 1; permissions and language...............................................64
Illustration 15: Step 2; database and webserver settings....................................65
Illustration 16: Step 5; configure main files..........................................................66
Illustration 17: Step 6; entering admin data.........................................................67
Illustration 18: Step 7; guest and customer setup...............................................68
Illustration 19: Google Maps in the GGEW-net store..........................................75
Illustration 20: Support ticket conversation screenshot S. Berg / M. Hinsche....84
79
Drawing Index
Drawing 1: E-Commerce by [Merz02]...................................................................9
Drawing 2: process steps of an online shop by Merz..........................................15
Drawing 3: unidimensional order processing......................................................36
Drawing 4: more-dimensional order processing..................................................36
Drawing 5: Enfinity Suite 6 Application................................................................41
80
Bibliography
[COM_MAN1] Nur so hilft die Produktsuche im Online-Shop wirklich...;
www.commercemanager.de, 2006;
http://www.commercemanager.de/magazin/artikel_1256_produktsuche_onli
ne_shop.html (reviewed on December, 25th 2007)
[CT02/08] Wartmann, Tim: Risiko 2.0 - Eine Analyse der Sicherheit von Ajax; c´t
02/2008 02/2008;
[CT22/07] Puscher, Frank: Fährtenleser - Webanalyse als Marketingwerkzeug; c´t
22/2007 22/2007;
[EBAYTNS06] eBay, TNS Infratest - eBay/TNS Infratest-Studie: Sicherheit im Online-
Handel 2006, 2006;
[ENF6_Bro] Intershop Communications AG: Enfinity Suite 6, 2007;
http://www.intershop.com/uploads/media/Enfinity_Brochure.pdf
[ENF6_Help] Enfinity Suite 6 - Online Help Center; , 2007; The URL´s are subject to
restrictions concerning the demo account for this thesis. ()
[ENF6_Tech] Intershop Communications AG: Enfinity Suite 6 - Technischer Überblick,
2005; PowerPoint Presentation
[GORA01] Gora, Walther; Mann, Erika: Handbuch Electronic Commerce: Kompendium
zum elektronischen Handel, Springer 2001;
[IWB08/07] Huber, Dana: Shopsysteme unter der Lupe; Internet World Business
08/2007;
[IWB14/07] Altmann, J.;Van der Wielen: Shoptest: Smartstore.biz; Internet World
Business 14/2007;
[IWB19/07] Dana Huber: Getestet: Sage GS Shop 2007; Internet World Business
19/2007;
[IWB87] Huber, Dana: Shopsysteme unter der Lupe; Internet World Business
08/2007;
[IX1/08] Ritzdorf, Hubert Benjamin: Captchas in PHP; iX 01/2008 1/2008;
[Merz02] Merz, Michael: E-Commerce und E-Business - Marktmodelle, Anwendungen
und Technologien, dpunkt.Verlag GmbH 2002;
[PLA&ANA1] Schmeißer, Daniel Reza; Oberg, Nicole; Behrendt, Catharina: Planung und
Analyse - Wie aus Nutzern Kunden werden; 1/2007;
http://www.phaydon.de/content/phaydon_Wie-aus-Nutzern-Kunden-
werden.pdf (reviewed on 2007, Dec. 27th)
[PLA&ANA2] Schmeißer, Daniel Reza; Sauer, Hans Michael: Planung und Analyse -
Usability-Forschung im E-Commerce; 1/2005;
http://www.phaydon.de/content/phaydon_usability.pdf (reviewed on 2007,
Dec. 27th)
[SEOCON05] Eye Tracking Studie zeigt Webseiten Blickfeld; seo-consulting.de, 2007;
http://www.seo-consulting.de/pages/news-380.php (reviewed on 2007, Nov.
1st)
[TNS_CERT] Hafenbradel, Ulrich - Was kann ein Gütesiegel im Shop bewirken? Fallstudie
und Umfrageergebnisse, 2007;
[TNS_D21] Sonnek, Peter - Zentrale Erkenntnisse: Online Gütesiegel für Initiative D21
e.V. (PDF), 2005;
[TNS05] Graumann, Dr. Sabine; Florian Neinert - Monitoring Informationswirtschaft
8. Faktenbericht 2005 - E-Commerce, 2005;
[TNS06] Graumann, Dr. Sabine; Florian Neinert - Monitoring Informationswirtschaft
9. Faktenbericht 2006, 2006;
[TNS07] Wolf, Malthe Dr.; Graumann, Sabine Dr. - Monitoring Informations- &
Kommunikationswirtschaft - 10.Faktenbericht 2007, 2007;
[TSHOPS] Trusted shops - The safe way to web shopping; trustedshops.de, 2007;
http://www.trustedshops.de/shopbetreiber (reviewed on November, 14th,
2007)
[TÜV_SÜD] TÜV SÜD - s@fer-shopping; www.safer-shopping.de, 2007;
http://www.safer-shopping.de (reviewed on December, 10th, 2007)
[UM07] Usability Monitor 2007 (PDF); Syzygy.net, 2007; http://www.syzygy.net
(reviewed on November, 21st, 2007)
[WIKI_KISS] KISS principle; wikipedia.org, 2007;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle (reviewed on November, 21st,
2007)
[WIKI_L_T] The Long Tail; wikipedia.org, 2007; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail
(reviewed on 2007, Oct. the 17th)
[WIKI_MAYA] MAYA-Prinzip; wikipedia.org, 2007; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAYA-
Prinzip (reviewed on November, 21st, 2007)
[ZÖL01] Zölzer, Henrik - Erfolgsfaktoren von Online-Shops, 2001;
82
6 Appendices
6 Appendices
6.1 E-Mail correspondence with Florian Labitzke/Marc Seeliger
E-Mail from 2007, December 17th

Sehr geehrter Herr Labitzke,
[...]
Ich würde Sie gerne noch etwas fragen. Auf Ihren Seiten ist leider keine Übersicht der
monatlichen Kosten bzw. der Zertifizierungskosten zu finden. Könnten sie mir darüber
vielleicht noch eine Auskunft geben bzw. mir ein paar typische Werte für einen kleinen
Shop mit ca. 15 Artikeln zwischen 5,- und 500,- €, etwa 20.000 - 30.000 €
Jahresumsatz nennen? Das würde mir noch fehlen um den Abschnitt zu
vervollständigen.
Vielen Dank für die Bearbeitung meines Anliegens,
MfG,
Sebastian Berg
E-Mail from 2007, December 18th

Sehr geehrter Herr Berg,
Unser Prüfverfahren für Ihre Website beinhaltet einen ausführlichen Online-Check,
einen Security-Check sowie ein Audit bei Ihnen vor Ort. Eine Zertifizierung kostet, je
nach Komplexität des Angebotes ab etwa 3.500 EUR (erstmalig). Der Folgepreis für
die jährliche Überwachung beträgt dann nur noch 80% der Erstzertifizierung. Gerade
Online-Shops profitieren von einer Investition in ein TÜV SÜD-Siegel, da dies oftmals
ein Allleinstellungsmerkmal gegenüber dem Wettbewerb darstellt. Dazu finden Sie
auch einige interessante Kundenaussagen auf unserer Website unter http://www.safer-
shopping.de/kundenaussagen.html.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind regards
Marc Seeliger
TÜV SÜD Management Service GmbH

Vertriebsinnendienst München (VL-MUC)
Ridlerstraße 65
83
6 Appendices
80339 München
Deutschland
Telefon: +49/ (0) 89 - 57 91 – 4611
Telefax: +49/ (0) 89 - 57 91 – 2197
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.tuev-sued.de
Sitz: München
Amtsgericht München HRB 105439
Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Peter Schaff
6.2 Screen shot of conversation between S. Berg and M. Hinsche
Illustration 20: Support ticket conversation screenshot S. Berg / M. Hinsche
84
6 Appendices
6.3 Every-day work (photography)
85
6 Appendices
Vocabulary
A
a mere child´s play -
das reinste Kinderspiel....................................................................................................................................63
abdication of sth. -
Verzicht auf etw. ..............................................................................................................................................77
abundance -
die Fülle............................................................................................................................................................13
additional expenses -
der Mehraufwand............................................................................................................................................29
arbitrary -
beliebig..............................................................................................................................................................17
as aforementioned -
wie oben erwähnt.............................................................................................................................................72
ask too much of so., (to) -

jmdn. überfordern...........................................................................................................................................26
attend to one´s duty, (to) -

seiner Pflicht nachkommen.............................................................................................................................28
B
brand awareness -
Bekanntheitsgrad einer Marke.......................................................................................................................39
business premises -
Geschäftsräume...............................................................................................................................................14
C
cakewalk -
Kinderspiel.......................................................................................................................................................70
clash -
Streitfall............................................................................................................................................................34
come off, (to) -

abschneiden......................................................................................................................................................59
comply with, (to) -

befolgen.............................................................................................................................................................23
conceivable -
denkbar.............................................................................................................................................................73
conduce to sth., (to) -

einer Sache dienen...........................................................................................................................................30
confined to sth. -
beschränkt auf etw...........................................................................................................................................59
D
deliberate -
wohl durchdacht..............................................................................................................................................56
86
6 Appendices
deviation -
Abweichung......................................................................................................................................................35
digression -
der Exkurs........................................................................................................................................................25
dissuasions -
Abmahnung......................................................................................................................................................34
E
effectual -
hinreichend.......................................................................................................................................................46
emanate from, (to) -

hervorgehen aus...............................................................................................................................................77
enquire, (to) -
nachfragen........................................................................................................................................................25
eradication -
Abarbeitung.....................................................................................................................................................37
exempt from -
frei von..............................................................................................................................................................26
F
fair dealing -
die Kulanz.........................................................................................................................................................61
fall through -
Ausfall...............................................................................................................................................................34
G
go beyond the scope of sth., (to) -
den Rahmen einer Sache sprengen.................................................................................................................40
I
imminent -
bevorstehend, drohend....................................................................................................................................36
inducement -
die Aufforderung..............................................................................................................................................26
inhibition threshold -
Hemmschwelle.................................................................................................................................................32
instantaneous -
unmittelbar.......................................................................................................................................................23
L
leaves nothing to be desired -
lässt nichts zu wünschen übrig.......................................................................................................................47
legacy system -
Altsystem..........................................................................................................................................................74
M
machinery -
der Aufbau..........................................................................................................................................................9
merely -
lediglich.............................................................................................................................................................22
87
6 Appendices
N
nip sth. in the bud, (to) -
etw. im Keim ersticken....................................................................................................................................46
O
old stager -
alter Hase..........................................................................................................................................................78
on the increase, (to be) -

zunehmen..........................................................................................................................................................23
P
put so. off, (to) -
jmd. abschrecken.............................................................................................................................................22
R
receive consideration -
beachtet werden...............................................................................................................................................61
recognized for sth., (to be) -

durch etw. bestechen........................................................................................................................................43
reimbursement -
Rückerstattung.................................................................................................................................................34
renounce sth., (to) -

auf etw. verzichten...........................................................................................................................................15
renowned -
renommiert.........................................................................................................................................................9
retail market -
Einzelhandel.....................................................................................................................................................12
S
sensitize, (to) -
sensibilisieren...................................................................................................................................................28
spare part -
das Ersatzteil....................................................................................................................................................17
stroll, (to) -
bummeln...........................................................................................................................................................25
T
the latter -
Letzteres............................................................................................................................................................15
tie in with sth., (to) -

an etw. anknüpfen............................................................................................................................................64
tightrope walk -
Gratwanderung................................................................................................................................................31
transmittal -
Einsendung.......................................................................................................................................................59
V
vastly -
erheblich...........................................................................................................................................................21
88
6 Appendices
vintage -
altmodisch.........................................................................................................................................................12
89
6 Appendices
Statutory declaration
I herewith formally declare that I have written the submitted thesis independently. I did
not use any outside support except for the quoted literature and other sources
mentioned in the paper.
I clearly marked and separately listed all of the literature and all of the other sources
which I employed when producing this academic work, either literally or in content.
I am aware that the violation of this regulation will lead to failure of the thesis.
.................................................... ..................................................
Location, date Student´s signature
90

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Fachhochschule Gießen-Friedberg

(University of applied Sciences)

Analysis of Online Shop Systems

Referee: Prof. Dr. Peter Kneisel

5 Summary and conclusion.....................................................................................76

I chose „Analysis of Online Shop Systems“ as the subject of my diploma thesis

1.2 Task breakdown

Drawing 1: E-Commerce by [Merz02]

2. Conclusion of the contract

4. After sales management

1.4 Why to use E-Commerce

Illustration 1: Position of Germany in an international contrast by [TNS07]

Meanwhile customers simply expect to go shopping in an online store. The typical

Illustration 2: Long Tail by [WIKI_L_T]

1.5 Market situation

OS Commerce Solid webshop for small stores Open source

1.6 Advantages of online shops

login navigate in ordering

Online shops usually consist of a collection of scripts, templates and server

2.1.1 Setting/adapting objectives

These could for instance be:

Even here new customers should be included in all considerations, concerning an

Illustration 3: Spending power of German population

13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)

2.1.2 Accurate choice of the platform

84 % damaged links or slow page reproduction

16 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)

A successful online shop needs an easy handling. As we have already considered,

2.1.5 Search functionality

20 World Wide Web Consortium

A little digression concerning SEO and landing pages

21 The refining of search result is called after search navigation

27 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSS (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)

28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Https (reviewed on 2007, December 10th)

registrations are a little harder to implement. Automated junk registrations can be

to their request (cf. [GORA01], p. 426/427; [ZÖL01], p. 115).

Being online usually comes along with online shopping.

33 [TNS_D21], freely adapted by Sebastian Berg

2.2.1 Trusted Shops

2.2.2 TÜV-Süd (www.safer-shopping.de)

Unlike Trusted Shops TÜV has an international acceptance and therefore

38 A complete list of the criteria can be found at https://www.safer-shopping.de/kriterien.html (review-

2.3 Ten rules of online selling

41 Freely translated from Frank Sieben

Drawing 3: unidimensional order processing

Drawing 4: more-dimensional order processing

The cooperation of the different applications of Drawing 4 is managed by a

45 Namely the shops of

A digression concerning Intershop software

Illustration 6: Intershop: Enfinity Suite 6 technology (cf.[ENF6_Bro], p 11)

Illustration 7: Possible infrastructure in Enfinity Suite 6 (cf. [ENF6_Bro], p. 5)

Illustration 8: Visual programming in Enfinity Suite 6

47 (Freely translated from) [ENF6_Tech], p. 16

Content Consumer Business Partner Supplier Procurement

Enfinity MultiSite Technology

Looking at the efforts on SEO

56 Freely adapted from [ENF6_Help]

3.1.1 Working with Enfinity Suite 6

I would like to restrict the demonstrations to a minimum because the possible