Apple CEO Steve Jobs displays ATG OnDemand customer National Geographic’s Web site on the new iPad during its launch on Wednesday.

Like most folks, we sat on the edge of our seats on Wednesday afternoon, waiting to see the latest bit of coolness that Apple would unveil next. I was particularly excited to see National Geographic’s site featured with the iPad launch for two reasons: One, because National Geo is an ATG OnDemand customer, and two, because I’m planning a trip overseas and the National Geographic connection made me think about the benefits of having a device like that with me when I go and as I prepare for the trip.

The fluid connection between content and commerce really comes to life here. I could be reading the travel section of the New York Times on my new iPad (can’t wait!), click through to research something on the National Geo site, decide I need to pick up a book, or new pair of binoculars or some maps.  And when I walk into a luggage store and the associate on the floor is able to show me specialty items available only on their site, I may find that she is holding an iPad with that nice big screen.  This device, like the iPhone, helps the merchant and the publisher bring better information to the point of decision, and even extend the experience of value.

For consumers, devices like the iPad make life easier. The problem for online merchants is that it’s really hard to make things that simple. Online vendors are tasked with ensuring that their Web platforms are compatible with — and take advantage of — the myriad of tools and applications on today’s market, and with every new device comes new opportunities and challenges.

Forrester’s Josh Bernoff explains the hurdles that devices like the iPad present for Web-based businesses in his recent blog post, “The Splinternet means the end of the Web’s golden age.” Yesterday, he continued that discussion.

These posts serve as a friendly reminder that great Web sites just aren’t enough anymore. Consumer access to commerce will continue to evolve and online merchants should focus carefully on their cross-channel strategies, while learning to embrace new platforms as they arise.

If you are a consumer product manufacturer who wants to increase or maintain the value of your brand,  the first thing you should realize is that going direct is not just about online sales, but building and maintaining brand value as well.

In a recent webinar with Viking Range called “Getting Serious About Going Direct: How Manufacturers Can Develop an Optimal Web Strategy for Their Brand,” Sucharita Mulpuru, principal analyst at Forester Research, explains that there are a number of go-direct online strategies and that choosing the right strategy depends on your market and business needs. Mulpuru points out that more retailers are going online to preserve their revenue and margins while also reducing inventory, and consumer product manufacturers must compete to maintain sales levels. She provides a framework for choosing the right strategy and data to build a business case for investing in that strategy.

Tim Tyler of Viking Range, who joins Mulpuru in the webinar, says the benefits of going direct go far beyond online sales and that doing so helps maintain brand value and support the product life cycle. He shows the wide range of Web-based features that Viking Range uses to support purchases and build brand value across channels.

Malpuru points out that 62 percent of Web buyers are brand loyal. Check out the full webinar, to learn how to maintain – and increase – that loyalty.

Today we are thrilled to announce that ATG has acquired Seattle-based InstantService, a market leading SaaS provider of live chat, email response management, and other customer service and lead capture solutions. Over the last decade, InstantService’s innovative technology has contributed to the online business success of more than 300 customers, including FedEx Kinko’s, Garnet Hill, Orvis, REI, and Sundance.

By combining InstantService’s offerings with our ATG’s market-leading eStara Click to Call service and other complementary optimization services, ATG is well positioned to deliver on enterprise and mid-sized business requirements for live help, which we view as a key component to an effective online selling and service strategy.

Not only are we excited about the possibilities InstantService and ATG offer to our current and future customers, but we are also welcoming a highly knowledgeable team of live help and customer service technology experts into the ATG family.

We look forward to providing you with ongoing updates as we integrate the InstantService and ATG solutions and operations over time.

With double-digit e-commerce growth and rising consumer expectations of Internet and cross-channel shopping, consumer product manufacturers need to create the right online brand presence.  Consumers are already “going direct” to manufacturers for consideration, purchase, and post-purchase support.  If you are a consumer product manufacturer, even if you don’t sell online, your Web presence is one of your most valuable opportunities to have a direct relationship with your consumers – to not only influence consumer purchase, but also support the full product life cycle – including usage, satisfaction, and brand loyalty.

In our January 12^th webinar, Getting Serious About Going Direct, How Manufacturers Can Develop an Optimal Ecommerce Strategy for their Brand with Viking Range and Forrester Research, learn how you can benefit by selling direct to drive and maintain sales growth, maintain brand value, and capture valuable information about consumers, their wants, and their expectations.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• How Viking Range uses the Web to present a consistent brand, sell to, and service different audiences, and maintains a direct connection with its consumers
• How to build a business case for investment in your direct-to-consumer channel
• How to leverage your direct customer relationship to ensure satisfaction with knowledge, communities and service
• How to marry your B2C and B2B solution to improve operational efficiencies

Register

When we walk into a store, bank, or hotel, chances are we’re instantly greeted with a friendly, “Hello, can I help you with anything today?” As customers we usually welcome this proactive offer of support because it helps us get what we need more quickly. However, what many companies don’t always appreciate yet is that people want the same level of support across all channels – and especially online. In fact, nearly 85 percent of consumers say they want access to online live help.

Are you offering this support? Live help solutions provide quick and easy access to a sales or service associate via click to call and click to chat technologies. Online live help can boost sales, increase customer loyalty, and reduce abandonment rates.

Join ATG’s Ryan Hoppe this Thursday at 1 p.m. EST for a complimentary 1to1 Media Webinar entitled, “Engage the Right Customers at the Right Time,” and learn how including a live help option like click to call and click to chat can be the difference between satisfaction and site abandonment.

The Webinar will also address:

• How to use online service as a sales channel
• The three myths about live online service
• How to engage your best customers in the moment

Click here to register for this free video webinar.

Remember the days of yesteryear when we booked airline reservations through travel agents and received paper tickets in the (snail) mail? Well, those days are long gone and the bulk of all flight reservations are booked online, challenging airlines to create an efficient and seamless online shopping experience.

Join us tomorrow for a free webinar to hear Continental Airlines explain how they did just that by optimizing their online booking process with live help technology.

Ken Penny, managing director of marketing communications at Continental Airlines, will discuss how ATG’s live help technology not only reduced Continental’s Web site abandonment, but improved customer satisfaction, decreased customer service costs and helped the company obtain real-time, detailed analytics.

Tune in tomorrow at 11 a.m. EST for the ATG video webinar entitled, “How Continental Airlines Increased Customer Satisfaction with Live Help,” and see in more detail how Continental used proactive live help to identify areas for optimization and drive measurable results.

Also hear from travel industry guest speaker and expert, Henry Harteveldt, principal analyst at Forrester Research, about the importance of live help within the travel industry.

Please register for this free interactive video webinar. We hope to connect with you then.

It may very well need both, according to Ronit Weinberg, VP of e-Commerce and Online Marketing at Diane von Furstenberg and Bernardine Wu, Founder and CEO of FitForCommerce. The answer entirely depends on your site and webstore goals.

In a recent webinar, “Outgrowing Your Webstore? Should You Re-design or Re-platform?”  Bernardine and Ronit shared their perspective on this difficult, yet important decision.  Bernardine kicked off the session with a poll to understand why participants felt they were outgrowing their site.

Over 70% of respondents felt their site was either not flexible enough or needed web design usability improvements.  The detailed answers broke out as follows:

• 37.9% Not flexible enough
• 34.4% Web design/usability improvements
• 10.3% Limitations to increasing conversions difficult/impossible/too expensive to make
• 6.8% Not search engine friendly enough
• 6.8% Need to leverage mobile commerce
• 3.4% Need to leverage social media
• 0.4% Other

Bernardine explained that the answer to the question of whether to re-design or re-platform starts with business objectives.  “Our clients follow a process called ‘e-commerce diligence,’ which emphasizes requirements and research as equally important as evaluating platform choices.” For the requirements phase, Bernardine then offered a 10-step process:

 1. Align with business objectives
 2. Define functional requirements in detail
 3. Know relevant best practices
 4. Perform competitive analysis
 5. Prioritize and time-phase requirements
 6. Document use cases
 7. Diagram workflow design
 8. Apply creative design
 9. Test and adjust requirements …again and again
 10. Keep requirements updated …always

Ronit of DVF.com explained that her organization had both re-platformed and re-designed since the initial launch of its webstore in 2005.  “There are advantages to both,” she stated.

Pros of re-platforming:

• Implement current e-commerce best practices
• Expand on merchandising features
• Customize: DVF needed the ability to express the uniqueness of the brand and a cookie-cutter solution was not the answer
• Innovate: With the rapid pace in which ecommerce is evolving, DVF needed to stay on the cutting edge

Pros of re-designing:

• Keep the customer’s curiosity piqued
• Help with SEO
• Evolve with technology

To hear the full insight of these industry experts, just follow this link to view the ATG webinar recording, “Outgrowing your Webstore? Should you Re-design or Re-platform?”

Yesterday, we posted about a recent eMarketer article discussing 2010 e-commerce business trends, and how retailers are investing in e-commerce technologies like live help services and personalization capabilities to upgrade their e-commerce webstores to prepare for future spikes in consumer confidence. It was nice to hear this validated by research from Internet Retailer and Vovici Corp., but the truth is we’re observing this trend firsthand with many of the mid-sized, growing and large merchants that we’ve been working with. In fact, this afternoon we’re tackling this very topic as we look at the various considerations mid-sized and growing companies need to take into account when evaluating their e-commerce and overall business growth plans. 

It’s easy for companies to determine what revenue goals to aim for in the next 12 months or 5 years, but it can be daunting to figure out if a re-design or a total re-platform of an e-commerce webstore is needed to actually meet those objectives. 

Today at 1:00 pm ET, join me in learning how the VP of e-Commerce and Online Marketing at Diane von Furstenberg met these challenges. You’ll also get practical information and advice from industry expert Bernardine Wu, Founder and CEO of FitForCommerce.

Click here to register for “Outgrowing your Webstore? Should you Re-design or Re-platform?” – a webinar presented by ATG.

eMarketer published two articles on Friday that centered around the future of retailers’ e-commerce business initiatives, including some thoughts on the holiday shopping season and eCommerce investment trends as we head into 2010.

In a Q&A session with Scot Wingo, CEO of Channel Advisor, one of our strategic software providers, the message was clear—social and mobile initiatives aren’t on retailers’ menus for this holiday season, but it will be the main dish next year and a key part of their long-term success. Scot said retailers “will start to adopt these tactics en masse” in 2010, but this year we should only expect to see “dabbling.” It’s interesting to hear that characterization, since we’re seeing quite a bit of “dabbling” these days as companies like Tommy Hilfiger launch mobile stores and others like Best Buy, American Eagle Outfitters and Diane Von Furstenberg have introduced cool social shopping features that help their customers connect with each other on their sites, or chat live with customer care agents via Facebook pages.

This year Best Buy introduced the Pitch In Card, a reloadable
card friends and family can donate to.

The second article puts the spotlight on e-commerce technologies like live help services and personalization capabilities, pointing out that retailers are investing in upgrading their e-commerce sites now to prepare for the future spike in consumer confidence. The article highlights a survey conducted by Internet Retailer and Vovici Corp., which found that more than seven in 10 online retailers plan to invest in more sophisticated and advanced e-commerce applications and services this year, noting their existing software can’t compete with online consumers’ demand for a top-notch shopping experience. While e-commerce applications such as content management and customer reviews topped the chart of desired site add-ons or replacements, live help was right behind with 34 percent of all respondents indicating a plan to add or replace live chat / click to call in the next year. The survey also revealed that 37 percent of respondents plan to add or replace personalization, indicating a continued emphasis on this for 2010.

From surveys to advice from thought-leading CEOs, it is clear that retailers are putting their ducks in a row for 2010 and expecting a resurgence in online consumer activity in the coming months. Both articles are good reads – take a look and feel free to weigh in with your thoughts below.

Nikki Baird of Retail Systems Research has developed a new “Assembled Commerce” model to help online retailers better evaluate the true impact of cross-channel consumers on their business – and to better organize to deliver an effective cross-channel experience.

She shared this new model in a recent ATG-hosted webinar for online retailers after reviewing the key results of the recent 2009 RSR Benchmark Survey: Winning Online Retailers Have Changed the Game.

 “We need a new model”
As Nikki states: “Today we are too much in the weeds. The approach retailers have taken to cross-channel commerce to date is too bottom up. We need a new model.” The term “assembled commerce” is based on the idea of the assembled Web. The model includes 4C’s with a plus – context, content, community, and commerce, all informed by customer insight. What follows is a very abridged version of Nikki’s model. Check out the webinar recording, for the complete explanation.

Context
Nikki explains that context helps a retailer determine which other of the model elements to bring in. There are two factors to consider within context:
1. Decision proximity –where is your customer in the funnel?
2. Physical proximity – what is their physical location with respect to the product? Are they in the store?
This context is collapsed in a low consideration product- shampoo is Nikki’s example where there is not a whole lot of activity. But in a high consideration product, it can be stretched: furniture and refrigerators are Nikki’s examples here. “Bring together the wrong elements in the wrong context,” Nikki warns, and “you can stump or derail” the consumer.

Content
Nikki describes content as “every piece of content that the retailer can bring to bear that can influence or shape consumer behavior. It can include category and product information, user information like blogs, and comparison and analysis.” Content presented early in the buying process should be more educational vs. product-related information which should come later in the selection process when the retailer is trying to influence the buying process.

Community
Nikki explains that we have seen a transformation of the role of the retailer or the brand: from always playing the role of the expert to becoming more of a facilitator to “bring together the people that are important to them.” This could include store associates, but could also include friends and family, reviewers, and crowd source opinions like ratings. Early in the process, consumers are seeking educational sources. “Is this the product someone needs?” Later in the buying process consumers seek validation and confirmation that they have made the right decision. Nikki shares a good example: “like teenage girls buying prom dresses.”

Commerce
Commerce, Nikki explains, “is all of the purchase power a retailer or brand can bring to bear,” including price and promotion. It is “enabling the ability to capture a transaction no matter where it originated or where it can be completed” including online, in-store, mobile, etc.” Early in the buying process, commerce elements should not be emphasized because the consumer has not yet decided to buy the product.

Customer Insight
The insight in Nikki’s model is knowing when to emphasize which of the elements above and it comes from the retailer knowing how their customers shop their stores or brands. Do they rely on product reviews? Are they specification oriented? Retailers needs to understand how their customers engage them and then share content or community.

Nikki illustrated her model with a number of specific examples, including Best Buy, Vitamin Shoppe, and Nike Running.

Please comment to let us know if this new cross-channel commerce model helps you with your content and community investments.