Today we’re kicking off a two-part tutorial series that will introduce you to the wonderful world of Adobe Business Catalyst, an online business platform for websites and online stores, which is built for web designers.
In part one, author Rob Frieman walks us through the process of building a template-driven website with a database driven backend for a fictional Irish dance school. Along the way you’ll learn how to create integrated ecommerce functionality, and email marketing capabilities.
Using a combination of Templates, Web pages, Modules, ecommerce, Web forms and email marketing reports, you’ll see how easy it is to deliver on the sometimes competing demands of building a website and creating online business solutions.
Make sure you stay tuned for part two, where we’ll put Business Catalyst’s payment processing and reporting capabilities under the microscope.
No problems, and I (we) understand your point of view and we hear you and the other partners on that point. I just wanted to make sure we didn’t leave the wrong impression.
As for support, well… I’m doing support cases right now trying to help the team get cases down! Hopefully you’ll start getting responses faster soon.
Thanks Brett. Yes, that’s what I meant - I do think it should be a default feature of the order reports. And a quick search of your support forum reveals that many others agree. Without the sizes of t-shirts ordered, how can an order be fulfilled using those default reports? Seeing as the system comes with a Product Attributes feature, it is peculiar to me that they’re not in the reports.
Custom reports I can understand take time and money. But I don’t think this should be a custom report (a month and $550) for every site build that needs it.
Didn’t mean to imply the $550 applies with every report run - sorry if I did. Just meant that every new client that requires product attributes in their order reports = $550 and a month of waiting time.
And yes, the support had been mostly quick for me up until recently. Waiting days on end, over and over, on one request without responses goes a long way towards making me forget about all those quick ones I guess.
Thanks for the candid feedback all, it’s appreciated!
I work at Adobe and have been with BC almost since its inception, so there’s a few points I’d like to make. This also, could be considered a “sponsored post”
In regards to support - we’re aware we need to improve with support dramatically and we’re working on doing so. Right now we’re swamped and we’re working hard to get out of that situation - the response we’ve had has been so positive that we just need more hands on deck that we don’t have. But we’re working on it and will be improving.
That said, waiting a month for a reply is definitely an anomaly, not the trend. I’m sorry that it happened to you, Qazpoc.
In regards to the report you mention paying $550 for - not everyone needs to pay this for every report. The report you had was a custom built report that we then added to your site. I do realise you’re saying the system should have this report by default and that’s feedback I’ll take back to the team, but i just wanted to point out that this is also the exception, not the rule. We only have a handful of customers who need custom reports due to the way they’ve implemented something on this system.
In regards to phone support, this is something I’ll take back to the team. I think it’s something we will consider, but I’d also like to add that it’s not the best answer to many of our support queries. Many queries require investigation, time spent analyzing what the web designer has built and the business case behind the implementation. This kind of thing isn’t always done efficiently over the phone, and hence we have a ticketing system that allows us to analyse the problem and respond. In any case, that’s not saying we won’t do phone support (it’s also not saying we will) but I did want to explain why we’ve chosen the path we have.
Brilliant, I love these types of posts Impartiality & expert opinion is one of the big reasons I trust sitepoint and keep comming back for more. I was intertested in this product as in the future I want to offer CMS solutions to clients without having to learn how to learn php and mySQL I just have not got the time
One again, great post, you just cant beat customer feedback
It’s good to see that BC is paying attention and involved. I believe they have a good thing going as long as Adobe doesn’t change it too much.
In the GoodBarry/BusinessCatalyst days it seemed the focus was on making a great product for the developers and their clients. This of course is beneficial to BC as well.
There has to be a balance and I feel that Adobe is having a tendency to upset that balance. My fear is a “All for Adobe, and Adobe for Adobe” scenario.
BC has a lot to offer and is on a very good track. Support will be the key, especially in the current economy. I’ve noticed that as the economy slowed down customer service suffered in pretty much every industry. That seems backwards to me.
Post-Adobe, the tech support has been on a decline, which is what I feared would happen.
Yep, it has been very poor. I’m still waiting on responses to an issue raised over a month ago. I need to pester them just to get a response. I’ve had enough of it personally. Terrible support. And no phone number, so you have to wait for them to reply.
The reporting is awful. We set up an online store for a client, only to find out that the back end reporting doesn’t include product attributes (eg: sizes), which renders the report useless for fulfillment. And then they charge you $550 to add it. And yet they don’t include it as a fix to the system. So anytime a client wants product attributes to be included in their order reports, you need to pay $550 and wait a month for it to be added.
Business Catalyst is fine if you don’t want to do any server-side programming. I’m sure it could be popular with designers. But if you want anything outside of the box, you’re in trouble. And you need to be sure you don’t have picky clients using this platform. I would not recommend it. But again, for designers who don’t want to touch server side programming, and have clients that are happy with what comes out of the box, it’s ok.
Technical support is a very important aspect to me. When it was GoodBarry/Business Catalyst support was very good… Post-Adobe, the tech support has been on a decline, which is what I feared would happen. Over the years my experience with Adobe tech support would receive a 2 on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best, so I’m not thrilled with the patter I’m seeing.
It’s important that you understand what the system is and is not. I think the best way to do that is:
they offer a free partner level where you get a trial site so dig into that, but don’t get caught up in the cool features, spend time deep on the admin side as if you were a client.
when you setup your development or trial site for your clients the domain name will be ****.businesscatalyst.com. Some of your clients may decide to visit www.businesscatalyst.com and see that the hosting prices are online and therefore can affect your ability to set your own prices.
My understanding is that there are no plans for phone support, however, I’ve watched Business Catalyst go through a lot of changes so anything is possible…
I wouldn’t expect it to be any better than Adobe’s current phone “support” for other products though. Adobe is not big on service after the sale, but rather focused on selling the next release.
Interesting article… though perhaps a disclaimer should have been given considering Adobe sponsor this place (therefore you’ve financial intensives for promoting the platform). Or perhaps I’m just being cynical at seeing this post under a SitePoint sponsored message advertising the very thing the article is actively promoting.
