Virtuemart vs Magento - Enterprise and development growth

[Forrest]

Maybe some of you older forum and development members can provide me with some insight into this:

I have been poking around with Magento a bit, and while much (much!) slower, it offers a wide array of additional and very useful components to increase the shopping pleasure experience and conversion rates. Not to mention the overall better layout/organization of the admin.

I'm assuming much of this is possible due to their enterprise offering at 11+K that brings in more than enough additional revenue to support more development.

So my question, WHY is VM team not doing this as well? To me it makes sense to have a large revenue source in which to support more development and expansion of an already superior platform (VM) which just needs more INTEGRATED addons. Leveraging the community here to compete at that level makes sense.

I can only imagine if you put the two out 5years from now, VM will have a very hard time competing without a business practice more similar to Magento. IE: Make money off the full blown enterprise, yet still provide a powerful community edition to leverage the community forums for more development.

If Magento can decrease their loading, or servers naturally become larger to support the EAV (database within database) architecture, and more support comes available to integrate with Joomla (it's available and more is coming), this could be very damaging to the long term growth of VM.

Enlighten me?

[MikeUK]

I've added a few opinions, taking some extracts from your post for clarity (actually, this is not really in the correct section, so I'll move it if I think of a better one).

I have been poking around with Magento a bit, and while much (much!) slower, it offers a wide array of additional and very useful components to increase the shopping pleasure experience and conversion rates.

I don't think additional components increase conversion rates, as I think this is more down to how the individual store is setup (the system has to suit the type of products / shoppers). Actually, I don't think Magento is anything like the leader when it comes to this. I also think Virtuemart could improve in this area. There are a few other systems that do a better job in this one area (but are not necessarily systems I would recommend overall).

So my question, WHY is VM team not doing this as well? To me it makes sense to have a large revenue source in which to support more development and expansion of an already superior platform (VM) which just needs more INTEGRATED addons.

In my opinion this is a mistake by Magento. I don't think an Enterprise project (with such a large cost) and open source work together.They are trying to have the best of both worlds. Good luck to them, bit I don't think it will work. In the end, virtually all their time and energy will need to go towards the commercial product (because that's what the users who paid 1000's will demand). I think they will lose a lot of the open-source community (in fact, they already have).

Who wants to developing extensions, modules, improvements to an open-source project when you know that the team are simply putting their efforts into the commercial product? In other words, I think this takes away the motivation to support the open-source project as a growing concern.

Lastly on this part, I'm not from the 'more add-ons is better' side. OsCommerce proved that bigger and more expensive is not necessarily better. Even ZenCart, a lighter version of OsC is considered bloated by many. In my opinion, the new Virtuemart dev team are taking a very good approach here - build the ability to allow others to extend it. E-commerce is too big to have a one-fits-all system. Every shop has different requirements. I think even now, Virtuemart could have less add-ons as a base system. I think Magento tried to add too much into the core system, and this resulted in a very slow system that lost a lot of support early on because of this.

I can only imagine if you put the two out 5years from now, VM will have a very hard time competing without a business practice more similar to Magento. IE: Make money off the full blown enterprise, yet still provide a powerful community edition to leverage the community forums for more development.

Completely, 100% disagree with you here  ( ). For two reasons. 1) as above, I think Magento's business practice will hinder the long-term development of the open-source project, 2)  although I agree VM will need to follow trends, not sit still, I don't think it will be that system that offers competition in 5 years. I think there are a few other open-source systems in early stages now that might though.

If Magento can decrease their loading, or servers naturally become larger to support the EAV (database within database) architecture, and more support comes available to integrate with Joomla (it's available and more is coming), this could be very damaging to the long term growth of VM.

You seem to know what you are doing (based on your input in this forum). Do you think this is the way to approach development - build everything first, include lots of features, and then worry about speed / efficiency? I think from a developers view point, this is not a good approach. What open-source version has now, is a system that is too slow but is still in a growing stage as new features are added.

As far as I know, the Joomla integration is based on a full install of a working system, plus the install of the integration component. I don't think this approach will ever make it competition as a Joomla 'extension'.

[Forrest]

Thanks for your reply MikeUK, but there is no doubt we have some differences in opinion here, as well as similarities. So I'll step through as well:

I don't think additional components increase conversion rates, as I think this is more down to how the individual store is setup (the system has to suit the type of products / shoppers)

What I was referring to when I said "components" was likely not the correct term. There are functions that are known fact to increase conversions that VM currently lacks (Note: I haven't played with 1.2, but I will this weekend). This isn't my opinion, but rather well documented fact. A few to mention:
1. One page checkout.
2. On cart/checkout pages offer upsells:
   a. People who purchased this item, also purchased...
   b. You may also be interested in...
3. Gift registries
4. Better metadata functionality/options
5. More extensive promotion abilities

Actually, I don't think Magento is anything like the leader when it comes to this. I also think Virtuemart could improve in this area. There are a few other systems that do a better job in this one area (but are not necessarily systems I would recommend overall).

I did not say Megento was the leader in these things. What I was pointing out was I was poking around, and found they do offer these things, which are know to be better for conversion. Frankly my primary objective in addressing these specific concerns was not about your or my feelings from a developers standpoint, but rather from my clients perspective (the end user who deals with the end result, successes, and failures everyday), in such that if I can offer a platform that will increase conversions and make them more money, that is what I want to do.

In my opinion this is a mistake by Magento. I don't think an Enterprise project (with such a large cost) and open source work together.They are trying to have the best of both worlds.

You have an interesting take on enterprise and open source marriages. Regardless of Megento's success, it doesn't prove the concept a failure. In fact I can highlight many companies that do use this strategy across many technology fields web and non web with great success; Google, Sun Microsystems, MySQL being just a few of them. It really shouldn't be a question of IF this business model would work, it's been proven too! The question would be how to make it work correctly for VM. And if an OS e-comm platform has not been able to match this marriage successful, that means the opportunity is still wide open... of course this also means it may just not be possible... but I don't believe that to be the case. Because Magento is potentially screwing the model up, doesn't mean the concept won't work... it means their concept isn't working... that is of course, if it really isn't working. To me, I see opportunity. My opinion, successfully leveraging the opportunity of financial success with the ability to maintain a great community persona to open source commitment and contribution, would only propel the VM project to greater heights, faster, thereby enlarging it's committed base. Again, it's not a question of "if", it's a question of "how".

Lastly on this part, I'm not from the 'more add-ons is better' side. OsCommerce proved that bigger and more expensive is not necessarily better.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you here, but there a few very specific things to keep in mind if the "less-is-better" approach is to be taken.
1. If you give less and want the ability for others to add more, is VM making it easy for users add these additional options without hacking. In it's current release (again not played w/ 1.2), that simply is not the case. It's no Joomla with a really easy, extensive, intuitive platform for adding components, modules, and plugins with ease.
2. Likewise, if less is more, are we (VM) making available some very popular functions that most would want, even if it's not included or enabled by default, still available to plug in with ease.
NOTE: Not that this poll says much yet (you've made ur comments on it), but take it for what it is: http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=66570

Completely, 100% disagree with you here  (  ). For two reasons. 1) as above, I think Magento's business practice will hinder the long-term development of the open-source project, 2)  although I agree VM will need to follow trends, not sit still, I don't think it will be that system that offers competition in 5 years. I think there are a few other open-source systems in early stages now that might though... ...As far as I know, the Joomla integration is based on a full install of a working system, plus the install of the integration component. I don't think this approach will ever make it competition as a Joomla 'extension'.

You may likely be right, time will tell

Do you think this is the way to approach development - build everything first, include lots of features, and then worry about speed / efficiency?

Do you really think I think that? VM is already superior in this speed/efficiency aspect, in part due to Joomla of course. With proper templating, GZip, and caching, VM e-comm sites can be surprisingly fast. So this surely was not what I was getting to. I'm looking for ways to ACCELERATE the VM platform in a sensible way, but also to assure that it grows and can capture a majority usage amongst the open-source e-comm community, insuring the success of this system we love. Joomla already give's us (VM) a heavy hand up. In any case, in order to achieve the fore-mentioned, a flexible system that CAN meets the needs/demands of many with ease would be necessary. I believe more time and effort from the community is necessary, and also from the VM team, and if to accomplish that, finding a profitable source of development may be the best answer. Of course if this is at the cost of the community, that wouldn't work, but again, I don't think this issue is as black and white as you make it. Proverbially, where there is a will, there is a way.

[franzpeter]

The only thing from magneto what I would like to see in Virtuemart too is creating conditions. So it is easy in Magento to say for example, use that shipping method and that payment methods, if the customer comes from country xyz. In VM you cannot exclude live shipping quotes (UPS, FEDEX or so) in connection with delivery country. The possibility to create conditions in Magento is not limited only to that purposes. Another problem with virtuemart is, that the checkout process is not made as a component. So there is not an easy way to say: do not show some modules while a customer does a checkout. Example: If You use some banners, the shopping cart module a.s.o. it is not necessary to show those things during the checkout process. If the checkout process happens with SSL the customer may receive browser warnings that some parts are safe and some parts are unsafe a.s.o. But I think in VM 1.5, we will see a lot of progess for those things. And we have to see that Magento is only an adavanced shopping cart, not a CMS with a cart component.

[youngboy815]

I want to know vm vs zencart