While at Pubcon, I had a chance to chat with the friendly guys from Mountain Media about their new search engine friendly ecommerce package, Mountain Commerce. I was interested in the product, because truly se friendly commerce packages are pretty difficult to come by. Sure, things are getting a little better out there, but much of it just isn't perfect. So although I was impressed by Mountain Media's sales pitch, I decided to reserve judgment until I could do a little testing of a demo once I got home.
Now that I've been through the demo, I'm still impressed. The feature set is robust, and should satisfy most needs anyone would have of an ecommerce system. But I expected that. What I was really looking for were the SEO aspects of the software, and I dug around until I was satisfied. The URL structure is sound, the pages are set up to have their own unique titles and metas, and the resulting code is nice and clean. (Note: It is possible for a webmaster to muck up the code, but initial output, assuming the webmaster doesn't break the code on his own, is far cleaner than most other programs I've looked at).
All admin functions seemed clear and easy to understand, despite the fact that there were plenty of editorial control features available. All of the standard features you would expect were there, as well as a few goodies that may not be common, including:
- Ability to import and export products
- Built-in phone order management
- 100% UPS integration
- PayPal integration
- Newsletter capability
There's just a whole host of other features, and the Mountain Media team can also be contracted to create specialized, unique features just for you.
But I saw what I needed to see...a good, easy to use, search engine friendly ecommerce package. It is sorely needed.