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Sun 28 Jan 2007
Technology vs. Web designers?
Last week, I attended the A.G. Edwards Retail Technology conference in Coral Gables, Florida.  I felt bad that I was enjoying a sunny 82 degrees while my wife back in the Boston area was enjoying something between 8 and 2.  But the presenters made me feel better.  They were a mix between vendors of technolgy to retailers, and some leading retailers– CIOs, CEOs, presidents of direct businesses.  I was impressed by how technology-diven many retailers have become.  Far beyond back-end operational systems, technology now controls many of the merchandising decisions.  For many of the most succesful merchants, decisions on planning, allocation, size mix, pricing, and markdowns are driven not by experience and inuition but almost entirely by data and algorithms.I can’t help but feel like, many times, paradoxically, web sites are the part of retailing least driven by technology.  How many sites present products based on what some web designer thought was a good idea, vs. how many test everything constantly?  How many sites present the same home page or special offers to every visitor, when we all know that that information may be irrelevant to many of the visitors? 
  

How many web sites present a cross-sell offer of something the visitor already owns, when we could be personalizing the offer to the visitor? As is happening in other merchandising decisions, we should be using technology to see beyond what humans can fathom.  Instead, on the web, we’re still, in many cases, ignoring the obvious.  The technology is available — what will it take to compel more widespread adoption?
  

[tags] eCommerce, merchandising, marketing, personalization [/tags]

 

Sun 28 Jan 2007 - Filed under: Geek stuff,Let's get Personal,e-commerce — Cliff Conneighton
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Thu 25 Jan 2007
On-demand or on-premise? One size does not fit all

Bob Warfield from Callidus Software has a great article on the Sand Hill Group’s site, bringing some rationality to the SaaS discussion. As we’ve been saying for quite some time, there is no one “right” model (on-demand or on-premise) for software deployments. I mentioned in my last post that we’re seeing great adoption of ATG’s OnDemand offerings from some very large companies. Likewise, some smaller companies prefer a traditional licensed application model installed on-site, despite the “conventional wisdom” of SaaS/on-demand being THE model for SMBs.

Now more than ever, customers should have the flexibility to chose the model that is right for them. This should be self-evident and alone should dictate a hybrid model. But even for companies that are not motivated solely by their customers’ best interests, Bob makes a really good point:

“For established software vendors, the transition to a pure on-demand model can be daunting. The financial, engineering and customer service issues aren’t anything to be taken lightly.”

The hybrid model is best for customers and best for vendors – I can’t see why any software company would choose one over the other.

Can you?

 

[tags] Saas, software as a service, on-demand, Callidus Software, Bob Warfield, Sand Hill Group [/tags]

Thu 25 Jan 2007 - Filed under: Geek stuff,Trendy,e-commerce — Cliff Conneighton
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Wed 17 Jan 2007
Two Tricks to Delivering More Dynamic Websites
I read last week that Mercado Software has introduced a product that will “automatically add and remove products based on inventory and profit margins”.  This may be interesting in some cases (and a  very scary thought to some), but misses the larger point.  The eTailing Group, in their The Merchant Speaks survey last year, reports that over 50% of merchants change web store elements weekly or more often, and that an increasing number of the best sites change their home page daily.   Further, they report that 83% of merchants make changes primarily manually, and only 7% primarily deliver personalized changes.
      

ATG was founded on the idea of dynamic web sites.  We know that the best sites are those that deliver the most relevant information to visitors — most timely, most accurate, most personal.  The state of the art has advanced to the point where every piece of content — prices, offers, cross-sells, images — everything — whether displayed on a web page, in an email or even to a contact center agent, can be controlled by anything — identity of the visitor, segments or personas, browsing behavior, time of day, what’s in the shopping cart, purchase history — and yes, even inventory or profit margins. 
    

   

The two tricks to making this work effectvely and efficiently are
    

  1. Having a highly generalized underlying rules processor built into the site infrastucture so that any action or characteristic of the visitor can be sensed, and any piece of content can be presented, and
  2. Presenting all that power to the merchandisers in an intuitive, easy-to-use, task-oriented application so they can implement their unique business strategies, and change them as frequently as they like, without launching IT projects.
    

Our customers are just beginning to deploy sites built this way, and as merchandisers realize how much more effective these sites can be, I expect dynamic, relevant, personalized sites to become an imperative for competitive etailing…

Wed 17 Jan 2007 - Filed under: Geek stuff,Trendy,e-commerce — Cliff Conneighton
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