5 important e-commerce tools in java explained

Updated April 2021

The digital era is here. The world with no Internet is impossible to imagine. People, around the globe rely on the Internet for anything and everything. Did you know, almost 4.57 billion people, which is more than 50 percent of the world’s population, were active internet users as of April 2020? Considering the growing dependence on the Internet and technology, brands should restructure their marketing strategy to a model that fits today’s requirements for online businesses. Along with offline models, it is of paramount importance that companies, whether they are small businesses or large in size and nature, are selling online.

While deciding on starting with an e-commerce adventure is easy, the hard part is choosing the best e-commerce tool for you. Wondering which e-commerce tool would rightly and perfectly fit your business needs? It’s no doubt that out of ‘so-many’ tools that flood the market, deciding which one will suit your company’s necessities could be difficult. If you are stuck with this issue, then worry not. We’ve got you covered. This article talks about e-commerce tools in Java that you should or must leverage to take your business to a different level. The 5 Java based e-commerce tools we will be talking about in this article are: Magnolia, Broadleaf Commerce, Konakart, Shopizer, Apache Ofbiz.

Broadleaf Commerce

Broadleaf Commerce is ranked as one of the best e-commerce solutions that support B2C, B2B, Marketplace, Multi-Site, Multi-Tenant, and API Commerce. The company has worked hard to build this product in a way that it eliminates hiccups caused while managing multi-channel e-commerce, thereby simplifying digital transformation.

Features

Let’s take a quick look at what features are provided by Broadleaf Commerce:

1. For site management purposes – You can enter names of your products, their summaries, digital assets, and details on content marketing, pricing, and other categories for your products. You get a full package of features like:
   • Product Management (PIM)
   • Catalog Management
   • Cart and Checkout
   • Order Management (OMS)
   • Scalability
2. For marketing purposes – You can craft your offers and promotions and target them based on any specific product, any order, or location. Features that you get are:
   • Offers and Promotions
   • Content Targeting
   • Customer Support Management
   • Faceted Search Management
   • SEO

Benefits

Here are a few advantages that make Broadleaf Commerce incredible, innovative, and unique:

1. Assisted online shopping – Assisted online shopping helps users to search for what they want easily, which automatically enhances customer service, satisfaction, and experience.
2. High-level efficiency – Broadleaf Commerce is tested across “hundreds of transactions per second, tens of thousands of concurrent users, and millions of products in real-world environments”.
3. Highly customizable – Broadleaf Commerce is an open framework comprising over 1,000 elements. These elements can be easily customized to match users’ needs.

Konakart

Konakart is a reasonably priced Java-based eCommerce and a shopping cart software solution for brands.

Features

At a bare minimum, Konakart provides a comprehensive set of features for businesses to have their online stores.

• Shopping experience
• Registered customer
• Internationalization
• Multi-store
• B2B features
• Products
• Indexed search
• Content management support
• Facebook messenger AI-powered bot
• Shopping widgets
• Promotions
• Merchandising
• Customer groups
• Marketing
• Reward points
• Payment modules
• Shipping modules
• SEO
• Analytics tools (like Google Analytics)
• Social media login
• ERP integration

Benefits

• High performance – Konkart can effortlessly and easily manage the throughput of many transactions per second, helping users manage high traffic online.
• Rich set of APIs – APIs provided by Konkart help their users to create and manage their electronic front store conveniently.

Shopizer

Licensed under Apache V2 license, Shopizer is an open-source e-commerce solution for brands to build their own customized online stores using a powerful set of APIs and built-in components.

Features

The incredible functionalities provided are as follows:

• Catalog management
• Shopping cart
• Content management
• Marketing components
• Smart pricing
• Promotions
• Search
• Order fulfillment
• Payment management
• Configuration management
• Shipping management

Benefits

• A well-defined graphical interface that is easy to use.
• No coding skills are required to build, manage, and integrate your existing commerce platforms.
• Shopizer can be downloaded from Github.

Apache OFBiz

Apache OFBiz is a Java-based web framework that provides a suite of enterprise applications for businesses of all sizes to meet their needs. Apache OFBiz covers modules and applications for Enterprise Resource Planning, CRM, SCM, POS, and many more. This means companies aren’t required to leverage multiple solutions to carry out business processes.

Features

The useful functionalities that Apache OFBiz provides are:

• Product management
• Catalog management
• Promotion
• Pricing management
• Supply chain fulfillment
• Contracts
• Payments
• Billing

Benefits

Few exclusive benefits associated with Apache OFBiz are:

• No upfront costs
• Robust and customizable enterprise solution

Magnolia

Magnolia is a powerful, enterprise-grade headless content management system, allowing users to deliver their content across all digital channels.

Features

• Omnichannel content hub
• Personalization and Optimization
• Campaign management
• Portals and Intranets
• Digital asset management
• Single-page apps editing

Benefits

Here are a few benefits associated with Magnolia:

• Connector packs – These packs help users to connect or integrate their online systems with Magnolia’s CMS.
• AI-powered search – Magnolia helps users to search for anything and everything from any channel with the help of the most powerful AI search.

Which tool is the best?

1. Evaluating which tool best fits your organization is a stressful task, but here are some pointers. Before you make any decision, be mindful that selecting the right tool is a matter of balance between your choice, your company’s needs, and your budget.
2. After you have briefly noted what you want, what you need, and what your budget is, go through the recommendations above, research extensively, and then choose the right tool for e-commerce your business.
3. Every company has its own unique set of requirements. Hence, it is extremely critical to research, identity, and then decide which e-commerce tool offered is right for the business.

If you’re looking for a company to partner with for custom web application development for your e-Commerce business please contact us today to receive a free consultation.

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