X-Cart forums

[rrf]

Guys, thanks for your feedback.

Yes, it's been quite a while since I was active on forums and I must say I miss those times. The good thing is that from now on I am going to spend more time on forums. With the help of the other top management, I was able to organize my job in a way so I can spend less on bureaucracy and spend more on actually managing our products.

I want Ecwid community to grow, so I grouped some of the answers to the questions and posted them to Ecwid forums:

http://www.ecwid.com/forums/showthread.php?p=64&posted=1#post64

More answers to follow, it just takes a lot of time to answer all of them. It's because the product was a kind of "secret one", so even many of our 140+ employees are surprised and want answers

[rrf]

Originally Posted by cflsystems

From the demo - it looks promissing. How about putting some or a lot of its features in XCart v5? Or maybe you are doing this already?

This question is not related to Ecwid so I'll go ahead and answer it here.

Well... I am not the one who manages the development of X-Cart. There is a dedicated team for that and I decided to not interfere with their job, as having several managers on the same project is counter-productive.

I do know that X-Cart developers are impressed by Ecwid, and they do want to add some of the Ecwid's features to X-Cart. I just don't know the details. But our director of marketing knows more than me on this topic. His forum nickname is Xplorer.

[cflsystems]

Originally Posted by rrf

I do know that X-Cart developers are impressed by Ecwid, and they do want to add some of the Ecwid's features to X-Cart.

Thank you Ruslan, this in a way answers the question.

[finerpeter]

Looks promising but to stress the point Paul made; Who came up with the name Ecwid? How can I get some of the same weed he was smoking?

[Asiaplay]

Originally Posted by rrf

Well... I am not the one who manages the development of X-Cart. There is a dedicated team for that and I decided to not interfere with their job, as having several managers on the same project is counter-productive.

Happy to hear that there are two separate teams - it is good to know that both products have unique teams and do not canabalise each other for time and resourse input.
Really was looking for assurances that X-Cart doesn't loose emphasis within the company as a core software solution - sort of understand this to be the case (and hope indeed is the outcome, as know ECWID will not meet our own e-commerce strategy requiremets, even though will match some ecommerce users well, for sure).

Thanks for your answers on the business model for ECWID as well - it helps to understand what drove this and get a feel for how things will develop with that product.

Cheers Ruslan - Asiaplay

PS: have to admit that I agree that ECWID is not a great name in English for this product - sounds a bit strange (now I guess it is meant to suggest Easy widget, but I missed that when first saw the name and took me awhile to guess that from the name, what the product could be about, while the name feels cold and dead to a degree - know that last comment is subjective, just not sure how to explain that clearer) - perhaps worth coming up with a new brand for it.

[rrf]

Happy to hear that there are two separate teams - it is good to know that both products have unique teams and do not canabalise each other for time and resourse input.
Really was looking for assurances that X-Cart doesn't loose emphasis within the company as a core software solution - sort of understand this to be the case (and hope indeed is the outcome, as know ECWID will not meet our own e-commerce strategy requiremets, even though will match some ecommerce users well, for sure).

As long as there's demand for PHP shopping cart software, we will be committed to keep X-Cart as the best PHP shopping cart software on the market. We are working on official release of 4.3.0, and work on X-Cart v5 is in progress as well. We also work on another PHP product, a kind of add on to X-Cart that will make it match PA DSS requirements.

[rrf]

As for Ecwid, I just believe that Ecwid is the way to create very efficient, fast and convenient web stores. It's a way to increase reliability and reduce overhead. Of course, Ecwid might currently be perceived as a solution for smaller stores. And it is good for small stores indeed. But the insides of Ecwid are so performance optimized that they actually match demands of high-volume stores as well. Ecwid might currently lack some features that are needed by bigger stores, like product suggestions, upselling and manufacturer tracking. But sooner or later, we'll add it to Ecwid or will just make it possible for 3rd party developers to expand Ecwid with modules.

And we're talking about "sooner" rather than "later". We use AGILE development methodologies with Ecwid. We are focused on delivering new features every 1-3 months.

As for bug-fix releases of Ecwid, there was already one. All stores have recently been updated to fix the bugs discovered in the first day of operation. It's just... Ecwid's updates are seamless. Our tests show that even users who have something in the shopping cart at the moment when update happens, proceed to checkout without knowing they are buying their stuff in a store operated by newer software version.

And... I have to get to it: the name.

Well... it's awkward, I must admit. And the name was my choice. The logic behind choosing this name is simple: it was one of a few SHORT domain names available, not grabbed by the cyber squatters. These bastards are everywhere, and even "megacartpro.com" (sic!) is taken. We have a company policy: never pay anyone who creates a problem then asks money to fix it. No positive response to blackmail, hackers threating to attack, etc... And I believe that cyber squatters are just this case: they grab a domain they don't use, then ask you to pay hundreds and thousands times more to be able to have the domain. I believe that if everyone would followed the same policy of not buying from cyber squatters, they would be gone already. Well, I do follow this policy.

So I decided that nowadays, as most domains are taken (though only a tiny part is actually used), what matters is to have a short domain name, not neccessary meaningful. It's about how long it takes you to type it, not to pronounce it. So, E-Commerce WIDgets (ECWID) was the choice. At first it sounds awkward, even to a Russian ear. But it's easy to type and easy to remember once you know the abbreviation. And there is one more thing about it, first reported by our US tech writers: once you start using it, you fall in love with it

[rrf]

Originally Posted by finerpeter

Looks promising but to stress the point Paul made; Who came up with the name Ecwid? How can I get some of the same weed he was smoking?

That was well... um... Electronic Commerce weed. Better known as "EC weed" .

[Paul Rozman]

Originally Posted by rrf

That was well... um... Electronic Commerce weed. Better known as "EC weed" .

Funny, now I think this would be more memorable and easier to remember.
Personally, I don't think they were smoking something funny, but rather having alphabet soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the last 8 months while playing Scrabble in their spare time.
My understanding is that Ecwid is for the non tech market and they won't know what a widget is or even make that connection, nor should they.

[finerpeter]

Originally Posted by rrf

That was well... um... Electronic Commerce weed. Better known as "EC weed" .

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!

Cheers mate