Online retail has been on a tear. According to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau, retail eCommerce sales for the third quarter of 2013 hit a staggering $67 billion, an increase of 17.5 percent from Q3 2012. During the same period, total retail sales increased at a modest 4.7 percent. So as online sales channels continue to push profits, eCommerce executives are scrambling to keep up with the unprecedented growth. Many are looking to replatform their current software to accommodate both...
Category - Websphere Commerce
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A recent survey conducted by Load Impact, a company that produces a cloud-based, on-demand load testing tool, revealed that eCommerce sites “are some of the worst performing as a category even though availability and performance directly impact their bottom line.” For those in the eCommerce business, the statement is sure to cut to the quick, but at the same time, it should also be a statement that will inspire positive changes in the community. The survey’s findings, which don’t just... 
When hiring or outsourcing an individual or a firm for eCommerce website development, any retailer can agree: a subject matter expert is the candidate of choice. What is difficult to find consensus on, however, is what constitutes an SME. In the 2008 best-seller, “The Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell inspired readers by saying that if an individual devotes 10,000 hours, boiled down to a 40-hour work week over the course of five years, they will achieve the status of expert in their... 
Let’s face it. Almost every eCommerce organization that internalizes its WebSphere Commerce duties has difficulty finding qualified resources. And that’s because there are simply not enough administrators and developers trained on WebSphere Commerce to recruit and fill the demand. Therefore, the solution to this persistent problem is to outsource that work. By shifting ongoing eCommerce development and support tasks off-site to highly specialized firms, merchants won’t have to worry about finding, training or retaining these skills themselves. Unsurprisingly, the best firms... 
Every time someone purchases an iPhone, it seems like a newer, more powerful version is released just moments afterward. Over the past six years, eight versions of the iPhone have been introduced to the market, leaving so many smartphone users with new-version envy. The question circling the minds of these not-so-outdated smartphone users then is: Is it worth it to upgrade? Often times, however, the answer is no – especially if the phone is still relatively new. According to NBC... When IBM released V7.0 for the WebSphere Commerce platform, the goal was to provide a powerful customer interaction platform for cross-channel and online commerce. And although some time has passed, there are still some businesses that haven’t made the move to IBM's most recent version. Many of those businesses may be delaying their adoption of V7.0 due to a lack of understanding surrounding the platform changes that came with it. Many others might be holding off until the benefits of doing so can be better understood.
In the video shown above, the IBM team delivers on both accounts, offering a high-level summary of the enhancements available on V7.0, including the hardware, operating systems and browsers that are supported – and those that are not. The IBM video also highlights the features that are available, such as automated multi-channel marketing, mobile commerce and social networking.
For businesses that are committed to focusing on omni-channel retailing, V7.0 simplifies those efforts. For example, the mobile upgrades now available help eCommerce companies better engage with consumers who want to shop in-store while simultaneously researching prices and other options on their phones. The SMS capabilities found within the upgrade are also incredibly valuable, considering the growing prevalence for text-based marketing and promotional messages.
"E-commerce is no longer simply about selling things online," IBM states. "It's about delivering a seamless, integrated experience across all touch points. With the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies, e-commerce is now about transforming customer shopping experiences to leverage the power of your brand, providing a rich, personalized experience across multiple channels of your business."
Keeping those objectives at the core of IBM operations, six feature packs have been delivered since V7.0 launched. But before WebSphere Commerce users will be able to take advantage of the added functionality found within each of those feature packs, they will have to ensure that they are working on the V7.0 platform. To get assistance bringing your eCommerce site up to date, feel free to reach out to the team at NetSphere Strategies. We’d be happy to pick up where the above video left off.
In today’s omni-channel environment, there are so many different buyer types coming in. Some want to buy online and pick up their purchases in-store. Some just want to window shop on a website, but potentially make final purchase decisions in a brick-and-mortar location. Still others want to comparison shop on their phones while perusing a store's racks. One of the common themes facing retailers, however, is that there’s often a separation of inventory for in-store versus online. The challenge then... 
To stay on top of the eCommerce game, webstore owners will need to hone their skills in the upcoming years. They'll have to go to market more aggressively than ever before – and especially so as more competitors enter the online playing field. To help eCommerce practitioners better prepare for the year ahead, Gartner, the world's leading information technology research agency, studied the key technical, organizational and go-to-market challenges they will face. With its findings, Gartner then created a guide... 
Research. Scientists do it. Grad students do it. And so do consumers. In fact, consumers are doing so much online research that marketers are reassessing what their abandoned shopping cart rates really mean. What was once blanketed as a lost sale might now indicate nothing more than a customer checking out prices on the web before buying them at a later date at a brick-and-mortar location. Conducting product research now to buy later is just one of many indicators revealing...