With online shopping enjoying ever increasing popularity, it’s never been more crucial for e-Commerce companies to understand every facet of their shoppers' online activities. Pitching its e-commerce software as a means to build a hosted online shopping experience similar to what Amazon has in place, NetSuite offers its  e-Commerce Company Edition and e-Commerce+ Company Edition, which bundle the company’s ERP and CRM services into a hosted package geared for Web retailers. Both the basic and premium versions are designed for companies to launch or expand their e-commerce operations beyond the template-based offerings of eBay or Yahoo stores. In addition, both versions offer PayPal Express Checkout, as well as multilingual support, and accept payment in 16 currencies. Both editions also provide real-time inventory updates, so customers are alerted of an out-of-stock item before they get to checkout.

The principal difference between the basic version and the premium edition is in their inventory management capabilities. Furthermore, the basic e-Commerce Company Edition is designed for smaller merchants with concentrated inventories while e-Commerce+ is a better fit for larger outfits in which merchandise might be spread across multiple warehouses and distribution centers. e-Commerce+ also offers some expanded shipping options, such as the ability to pull together orders from multiple distribution sources.

The strategy behind these solutions is to empower the e-commerce industry which inadvertently leads to a better as well as richer shopping experience for users. With these solutions, you can review your cart abandonment rate and drill down to identify those visitors who abandoned their carts. You can also view conversion rates, the numbers of visitors who registered on your site, and how many of these visitors actually completed a purchase.

In addition, with NetSuite’s e-commerce solutions, you can increase your sales by following up with abandoned carts, improving customer conversion rations, and understanding the purchase ratio of specific items. They also deliver shopping activity analysis reports that indicate the ratio of cart additions to orders on an item-by-item basis. You can display your cart abandonment rate directly on your Real-time Dashboard, and set up alert notifications if the number exceeds your user-defined level. As a result, you may correct the problem both by updating your site and by following up with specific customers.

Small wonder then that NetSuite is creating waves in the industry with their ecommerce business management software solutions. What makes NetSuite stand out in particular is the fact that it was one of the first providers to recognize the need for extensive management and accounting tools to accompany a scalable ecommerce shopping cart suite. Another key advantage is that with hosted software, such as NetSuite, every user is on the latest version. Therefore, there is no downtime for reinstalls or new training. There are also no upgrade bills, plus the user ends up paying only for what he or she needs.

“Almost all of our ecommerce customers use the financial and CRM modules. Pretty much any ecommerce company needs to manage their orders and financial data and most of the product oriented companies need to manage their inventory and warehouse,” says Baruch Goldwasser, sales & marketing team, NetSuite. “On the customer service side, everyone needs to track their customers, keep data on them and offer customer support. But not everyone needs all of the elements offered in NetSuite. We have companies with as few as two employees who pay for and use the basic elements of the suite. Conversely, NetSuite itself, which has about 1,000 employees, also uses the entire suite to manage every aspect of our company.”

The whole suite includes things like time and billing, a payroll module, shipping management and website development and management, including multi-lingual website development. The software won’t translate your product descriptions and other text, but it will translate menus and navigation as well as automatically handle the currency of the user’s country.

Worldwide, more than 6,000 companies of all sizes are using this server-based suite of tools to manage their ecommerce businesses. With online shopping showing no signs of abating, this number is bound to increase fast.

By Shanti Anne Morais