What is Augeo?

“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.” It may be a bit of a cliché; however, it was exactly that kind of thinking which led us to develop our Augeo framework.

We’d spent years working with a variety of ecommerce systems; Magento, OSCommerce, Actinic, CS Cart, Zen Cart to name a few. But our clients needed something more – more capabilities, more tailored to their needs, a system which could stay with them for the duration. To grow as their business grows.

With a lot of knowledge of ecommerce systems we knew the pros and cons. We knew that each solution offered its own set of unique benefits for the customer, but, also a number of constraints which often led to compromises being made.

Off the shelf systems, as they are known, had the benefits of reduced cost and fast deployment; however, often forced the client to make decisions based on ‘what’s available?’ and not ‘What’s good for my business?’. Bespoke systems, developed for the client were often higher in cost, slow to deploy, but, gave the clients the exact functionality and solution for their needs.

We needed a third way, something which gave the customer speed, functionality, value and durability. We put our thinking caps on.

Augeo is the result of our thinking. An ecommerce framework that brings together the best of both worlds, so that you can get on with the important task of making more money online.

Who is it for?

Augeo has been developed with serious ecommerce businesses in mind.

It’s a complex task for any ecommerce owner to evaluate the range of solutions available and make a decisive move forward. To make it easier to evaluate the options and see where Augeo sits, we have produced the following table to outline the four principal tiers of ecommerce solution:

1. Self build – Combining hosted and ‘out of the box’ solutions, self-builds do not require much technical knowledge or ability. They are typically cheap to set up with the core software generally costing a few hundred pounds or dollars… more

2. Off the Shelf – These solutions include programming code systems such as Magento, OSCommerce, JoomlaShop, ZenCart and CSCart. They allow for the average web designer to customise the look of a standard online shop, selecting and implement various features made available to them via a standard system… more

The pros and cons

3. Custom Framework – Augeo sits within this suite of systems, using closed code sets (privately developed code that is not shared with others), a custom framework allows for a greater range of sophisticated capabilities, matching a client’s specific set of needs, to be implemented… more

4. In-house Developments – Typically once an ecommerce company has reached a higher level of turnover and profitability they will make the move towards recruiting their own team of programmers… more

The pros and cons

There are lots of individual reasons for and against each type of ecommerce.

Instead of displaying a very long list of minute differences we have highlighted the main ones for both off the shelf systems and the Augeo system:

	Off the shelf	Custom Augeo Ecommerce
Features and functionality	Normally extensive lists of functions are available by default, or as part of a series of optional additional add on features… more The solution will be built to cater for the widest range of common requirements. A real positive in many cases, as long as the common functionality does what you need it to do.	Standard functionality is built around the requirements of each individual store using private code from within our extensive code libraries… more Instead of selecting options you start by listing exactly what features are required by each function. Each part of the system is built around those specific requirements. The solution does exactly what you need it to do, without compromise, or the need to fit around another piece of existing functionality.
Cost	No ‘real’ programming occurs, development costs are associated with integrating a design into the back-end templates for the system… more The various steps or pages of the system are fixed. The design process simply follows each fixed page. Costs for design can be reasonable and overall you get a lot of functionality for your budget. Typically a Magento site can cost between £2k and £10k.	An Augeo system is built around a bespoke database structure… more The system is programmed from core libraries but specific unique functional requirements are often programmed from scratch. This can increase the time and cost of a system, although the overall budget is dictated by the complexity and quantity of custom features. An initial Augeo site can cost between £10k and £50k according to the exact specification and level of complexity.
Future proofing	Once a system is active and has been running for a weeks, the site owners or administrators will often identify new routes to increase sales or improve ease of use… more To develop an existing off-the-shelf site requires installation of additional plugins or modules if they exist. Where not available, highly complex module development is required or no solution may be available.	As each Augeo system is created from bespoke code structures with a development and test server available, future requirements for any kind of functionality can be catered for… more Programming new features or functionality is much easier due to the flexibility within the framework. Therefore, many Augeo sites are continually developed to take advantage of any emerging opportunities to increase sales.
Security	With any off the shelf system there are at least tens of thousands of people with access to the source code of those sites built upon the system… more This means lots of hackers have had as much time as they like to work out how to break into the system from the inside outwards. Periodically security exploits will become available and need to installed on the site. Installation of security updates is essential to keep the site secure and can normally be installed quite quickly. However, it’s important that the lists of security exploits are monitored on a daily basis and a support contract is in place to implement any patches as they become available. If the core programming of the system has been customised or altered there will often be a requirement for reprogramming to allow for patches to be installed. This can increase the cost and time required to keep the site secure.	The Augeo source code is not available to any third party, making it a lot, lot, harder to hack into our sites… more Each site has a series of in-built layers of security designed to prevent hacking attempts. Every programmer employed in our site builds is required to have extensive knowledge and abilities in the hacking of websites, ensuring they understand the methods used by hackers. In order to prevent so called, ‘Outside-in hacking’ our built in hacking detection system is set to alert our team of any attempt to breach the system. Any incidents are logged, along with the type of hacking method used and any resultant effects. Our additional layers of protection mean that hacking attempts can be watched and monitored to ensure they are not successful. As the Augeo system does not perform like a standard off the shelf system, junior hackers looking for easy opportunities simply give up early and reach for “lower hanging fruit” in the form of off the shelf systems with known security weaknesses.

Quality approach

Sitting behind the cool exterior of any website are literally hundreds of thousands of lines of code. A complex tangle of letters, words and syntax, it is these lines which perform all the calculations and functions driving a successful ecommerce system. However, when it comes to websites, not all code is created equal.

There are quick, cheap and dirty ways, to programme sites, which result in short term goals being met; however, these introduce limitations to the system preventing ongoing development of a site. Any new developer casting his eye over the code for the first time, sees a tangled mess of code which needs to be carefully unravelled before the most basic improvements can be made.

Good sites depend on solid programming architecture. By putting good foundations down, clearly identifying the structure on which the site is built, a site can achieve its ongoing goals without the continuous need to redevelop and rebuild a site from scratch.

Augeo not only provides good foundations and solid structures for ongoing site development, we make the process of switching development to another team, such as your own in-house team, a doddle. By commenting code accurately, any new developer introduced to the site can become quickly familiar with the existing system, improving the speed at which the site can be developed. There’s no need to unravel the mysteries of our code, we’ve included its very own instruction manual within it.

Augeo has been designed around an Object Oriented structure to allow for easier comprehension of the system by future programmers. The result improves the reliability of the system and makes it durable for future requirements. The small investment required at these earlier stages results in saving several times the number of hours that would usually be required to achieve ongoing development work.

An added benefit of this approach is that ongoing security testing and hacking prevention can occur on all Augeo systems ensuring they are inherently more secure and robust.

Project processes

A custom development process allows for the client’s requirements to set the direction and end result of the development.

This is markedly different to an Off-the-shelf approach where a client’s needs come second to the pre-built functionality available. Even where customisation is available, it is seldom possible for the ongoing requirements needed to ensure growth can be met.

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What is Augeo?

Who is it for?

The pros and cons

Quality approach

Project processes

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