OXID eSales Blog

Hot Off the Press: Online Shops with OXID eShop

Jürgen Busch — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:46:17 +0100

On February 1, O’Reilly published the first book on OXID eShop, "Online Shops with OXID eShop" by Dr. Roman Zenner. I was pleased to support him in this effort. In this book, we describe how OXID eShop can be installed, how product items are entered, how shipping and payment methods can be adjusted, and how the shop can be adapted to one’s own requirements. We also highlight aspects like marketing and social media, as well as how to connect OXID eShop to our e-commerce intelligence platform, OXID eFire.

The book is intended for ambitious online merchants who want to gain a basic understanding of OXID eShop usage. It imparts the knowledge needed for building a successful online business using a fictional online store, "Theo’s Pet Paradise", as an example. Step by step, it leads users through the initial installation of OXID eShop and provides a crash course in using the standard front end and the admin area. In subsequent chapters, it builds up "Theo’s Pet Paradise" into a complete online store that makes full use of OXID eShop's features, together with the reader.

The book is available in German and can be purchased directly at O'Reilly's Web site. And if you can't wait until your order is delivered, we have prepared a downloadable PDF containing "Chapter 3: OXID crash course", the entire table of contents and the index of the book for you to check out in the meanwhile. Take a look and see what you think!

Preview of OXID eShop's New Downloadable Products Feature

Marco Steinhaeuser — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:22:20 +0100

OXID eShop 4.6.0 will come with a set of great new features, such as support for downloadable products. Using an early beta version, I produced a screencast about this new function and added it to the screencast section of OXIDforge. If you haven't seen it yet, why not take a look now? Note that some things might have changed since the screencast was produced, so you might find some differences to the present beta version.

You may also want to have a look at the roadmap for version 4.6.0 or at the changes on the download page - it documents, step by step, the new functions we plan to introduce. And while you're inspecting the beta version, please send us your feedback and any bugs that you might find.

By the way: the "downloadable products" feature was originally contributed by marmalade.de, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post. If you have coded a feature that could fit into the standard OXID eShop software, please take a look at the contribution page on OXIDforge. This explains how a contribution can be made, whom to contact and what are the surrounding conditions. If you think your new feature would be an interesting and useful contribution to OXID eShop, feel free to contact us and tell us all about it - we would love to hear from you!

Number of satisfied online retailers in Germany increases!

Caroline Helbing — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:17:07 +0100

The global financial crisis has no negative impact on Christmas
Sales 2011 for German online retailers. According to the 12/2011 OXID
market survey 90% of all retailers can increase or maintain their sales
on the level of the previous year.

In fact, only 10% of them report decreasing revenues in 2011. It is the lowest level since the last five years.

Overall, the number of German online retailers benefitting from
Christmas Sales increased and every tenth achieved almost half of this
year’s turnover in November and December.

According to 2010, almost 75% of the retailers surveyed are satisfied
with this year´s Christmas Sales and 40% can keep their revenues
constant (2010: 20%). Every second (50%) has reported increasing
revenues which is less than 2010 (60%).

Interview with the Contributor of the Downloadable Products Feature

Marco Steinhaeuser — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:46:55 +0100

Q: Joscha, please tell us about yourself and your company.
A: I’m 29 years old and I live in Germany. I started my company marmalade.de 12 years ago. In the beginning, I started specialising in TYPO3 and website. Later, I delved into OXID eShop and the ecommerce business.

Nowadays, I mostly work on projects based on OXID eShop. marmalade.de is well known in the community and I’m proud that we are one of the driving forces behind OXID eShop’s Open Source efforts. We are a team of four at the moment; we also work with two designers and a few freelancers depending on the amount of work.

Q: Why did you decide to contribute the feature for downloading digital products to the OXID eShop core?
A: We needed that feature for a project (our own shop), and we were not happy with the existing options. So we decided to program that feature to match our own requirements. At the same time, we don’t see ourselves as a company that writes modules on a commercial basis. Our goal is to offer solutions to our costumers and modules are “by-products”, as 37signals calls them. So we contributed the feature to the community because we thought that it made sense in the OXID eShop core. Of course, we would be happy to help new customers that need a similar solution as well.

Q: Will you keep enhancing this feature? What additional functionality is in the pipeline?
A: It depends. Our contribution covers the features which are helpful for the entire community and make sense in the core system. But special requirements, that are only useful to a single customer, are not suitable in a generic system. That said, if there is generic functionality that we build for one of our customers, we might contribute that and enhance the feature. As Roland Fesenmayer (CEO, OXID eSales AG) said, we see OXID eShop as a “ecommerce operating system” on which users can build great shops.

Q: How long have you been using OXID eShop and what do you like most about it?
A: We have been using OXID eShop since it went Open Source in 2008. We had our kick-off meeting at the first “OXID Commons” conference where we met our first client. Since 2010, marmalade.de has been an OXID-certified solution partner and we also undertake projects with the OXID PE and EE editions.

I also started my own shop based on OXID eShop and gained a lot of experiences as a shop owner. I’m a big fan of the aquatic world and I have a big aquarium at home. There is a huge community and, of course, a market for it, so I was selling plankton and other products to breed fish. It might sound a bit strange, but everybody has a secret passion, right?

What i like most is about OXID eShop is its flexibility: It can be used for small shops as well as highly scalable huge portals with high traffic.

Q: What is your overall impression of the OXID eShop community?
A: The OXID eShop open source community offers fantastic, free support. And it is made up of not only developers but also shop owners who give advice and support. I really hope that it will keep growing.

Q: Is Open Source an important aspect for your customers in eCommerce and why so?
A: I love the idea of Open Source but I must say that, for shop owners, what’s even more important than Open Source are enterprise-grade solutions. Most of them want access to a company that they can pay in return for a guarantee, as OXID eSales does with the Professional and Enterprise Edition. But Open Source is also essential to share knowledge and find better solutions and this allows everyone, including the shop owners, to benefit in the long run.

Q: Any tips and tricks for aspiring contributors on how to best approach/work with the OXID eSales dev team?
A: Think twice about your solution. Does the solution you have conceived make sense for everyone? Is it generic enough? Talk to others, especially the OXID guys. There was very good feedback from the OXID development and management team. They educated us about things we hadn’t thought about because they didn’t affect our solution. They are in general very kind and have lots of good ideas, so don’t hesitate to contact them!

Q: What is your impression of the collaboration with the OXID eSales dev team?
A: We had a few areas of friction. For example, marmalade.de worked on a patch and sent it to the OXID eSales team, who then did their part. It didn’t feel like a joint development effort, so I think we could do it better next time. As it was one of our first contributions, it was fine, but some enhancements will be needed for the longer term, on both sides.Together, I’m sure we can build the best e-commerce software around!

What to Expect in OXID eShop 4.6.0

Marco Steinhaeuser — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:46:58 +0100

It's that time again: the beta version of OXID eShop 4.6.0 will be published soon and it will have a number of interesting new features. Some of the most exciting features in this release have been developed by the community. For example, Downloadable Virtual Products was contributed by marmalade.de and the RDFa extension (+ GoodRelations), which offers interesting SEO opportunities, was contributed by Prof. Dr. Martin Hepp and Daniel Bingel of the Bundeswehr Academy Munich. In the new version, you will also find French included as one of the standard languages in OXID eShop.

We have also made some performance optimizations, especially for high load scenarios in the Enterprise Edition, and some architectural changes in the admin panel with the module concept. As a result, there'll now be no need to change admin templates for configurations; simply upload an additional configuration file and you're good to go! We also took special care to not impose requirements on shop owners and developers for massive template changes for this release; only a few minor modifications are needed to unlock the potential of the new features.

You'll find more information in the roadmap for OXID eShop 4.6.0. Of course, documentations, screencasts (where applicable) and detailed descriptions of the changes and new features will follow as soon as possible during the beta phase. Please send us your feedback via the bugtracker and forums. Thanks in advance!

OXID Partner Day 2011

Marco Steinhaeuser — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:12:56 +0100

On October 25th, we celebrated our annual OXID Partner Day. More than 150 sales and technically-oriented people working at our partner agencies attended and took part in the speeches and workshops where OXID announced important strategic initiatives as well as the roadmap for upcoming versions of the OXID platform. This roadmap will be published soon... stay tuned.

Presenting awards for the most interesting and challenging online stores using OXID eShop, either from a technical or design standpoint, has been a tradition for some years now. Thus, during the evening event, the following shops received awards:

In the Enterprise Edition category:

hellweg.de (Shopmacher)
marc-cain.com (Werbewelt + Eric Jankowfsky)
zero.de (TWT Communication)

In the Professional Edition category:

almwild.de (egate media GmbH)

In the Community Edition category:

cgtrader.com ("Net Frequency" UAB)

This year, we also presented an award to an online store for its innovative implementation of an interesting multi-channel business concept: in emmas-enkel.de, realized by our partner SALT Solutions, the online and offline stores are perfectly synchronized and allow delivery and pick-up on site. The purchaser can decide between multiple channels like mobile, online store or offline salesroom.

You can find more pictures of the OXID Partner Day 2011 on Flickr.

Visit Us at the Digital Marketing Exposition and Conference 2011 in Cologne on Sep 21-22!

Marco Steinhaeuser — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:40:55 +0200

This year, the leading German trade fair for the digital economy, Digital Marketing Exposition and Conference (dmexco) will open its doors on 21 and 22 September in Cologne. As usual, OXID eSales will have a stand together with its partners. This year Twenga, TWT, Werbewelt and Heidelpay will be at our booth #E-010/D-011 in hall 8. You're welcome to visit us and talk to us.

It is worth mentioning that every field of our business is covered by the booth chaperones. So, regardless of whether you want to talk to us about OXID eShop Enterprise Edition, module writing, community issues or strategic partnerships, you'll find the right person for your request. And of course, we will also be bringing along our POS multi-touch screen to show you possibilities of connecting your Internet business with your "real" store.

We look forward to meeting you soon at our stand!

OXID eSales Introduced to France at Salon E-Commerce Paris

Marco Steinhaeuser — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:02:22 +0200

In summer 2010, I visited France's #1 e-commerce trade fair, Salon E-Commerce Paris, for the first time to get an impression about the French e-commerce market and to make some initial contacts. One year later, with the help of our friends at Vikapera, OXID was introduced to France with its own stand at Salon E-Commerce Paris 2011.

Apparently, we were in the right place at the right time, literally: our stand was between our competitors’ stands which were advertising their own shopping cart systems. To be honest, I was overwhelmed by the masses of interested people we were able to welcome at our booth. Besides casual visitors, many people - mostly Internet natives - already knew about us, thanks to blog posts by Ludovic Passamonti, isquarecube and Capitaine Ecommerce. Online merchants as well as implementation agencies specializing in e-commerce solutions were interested in learning more about OXID products and in talking to us personally. And of course, our POS multi-touch terminal was a perfect attention-grabber as well :-)

A short anecdote will give you the flavor of the event and help me wrap up this blog post. A visitor came up to our stand. Unfortunately, he didn't speak any English and I only speak a little French, so Marie had to translate. He asked if OXID eShop was suitable to promote just one product. I said "Yes, of course. In general, it would work but the system would be a bit over-sized for this purpose, wouldn't it?". After some more French discussion, Marie turned around and chuckled. Then she told me what this one product is: "It is a little tool to help ladies to use urinals like men, just standing." ^^

OXID eShop Workshop in Yokohama City, Japan on 12 October 2011

Marco Steinhaeuser — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:27:32 +0200

On 12 October 2011, our Japanese partner, Gennai3, will hold a workshop in Yokohama City as an introduction to the features of OXID eShop. The primary audience segments for this workshop are companies planning their entry into the ecommerce market and shop owners that already run e-businesses. Of course, other users or developers interested in open source software, ecommerce and OXID eShop are also welcome to attend.

Date: October 12th, 2011
Time: 2:00 - 4:00 PM local time
Venue: Kanagawa Prefectural Center (3 minutes by foot from Yokohama Station, West exit)
Entry: free
Registry: http://www.gennai3.co.jp/blog/2011-0901

Gennai3 maintains the Japanese translation of the OXID eShop storefront and admin area.

Bienvenue en France, OXID!

Marco Steinhaeuser — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:46:56 +0200

OXID eSales France SAS has been founded to offer products and services to the French market pinpointing the special needs of French clients. The subsidiary is a joint venture together with our partner Vikapera. Please read the related press release published yesterday.

Users of OXID eShop will be happy to hear that we are now able to provide vendor-support and services for the Enterprise and Professional Edition in France as well.

The store front as well as the admin panel and the documentation will completely be localized and translated. In a short time, there will be connectors to French payment providers as well as other extensions available in OXID eXchange. At the OXID Academy, we will train and certify French partners in technology and sales. In addition to that, we will support and engage in the French OXID open-source community.

If you are curious about OXID in the French market, come by and talk to us either at Salon E-Commerce Paris (September 13th - 15th) in France or at Digital Marketing Exposition & Conference in Germany (dmexco, September 21st and 22nd 2011)!