The leaders and their platform offerings are:
•
ATG Commerce
•
Demandware
•
Elastic Path Commerce
•
hybris Commerce
•
IBM WebSphere Commerce
•
Venda Enterprise
2009 was a very good year for all six of the leaders. All had good, very good,
or excellent customer growth. Most introduced significant new product versions.
And all delivered financial performance reflecting their customer growth.
Going forward into 2010, ecommerce will build on its 2009 success, strengthened
by enhanced products and improving economic conditions.
ECOMMERCE IN 2009
Tough Times Drive Customers Online
The global recession has been good for ecommerce. More customers went online
to do their shopping because ecommerce could save their time and save their
money. Customers could find the products and services that they wanted or
needed to buy quickly, likely starting their shopping activities with a Google
search and visiting the ecommerce sites that they saw on the first results
page.
Customers were no more patient in 2009 than they’ve been in the past.
They value their time and want to use it efficiently and effectively online.
They want to find things quickly and get any level of detail on items that
are interesting. They want to shop, evaluate and compare, and buy quickly.
They want support in their evaluations. They want immediate help when they
need more info or need clarification.
Customers also want to find the best prices. Another store that offered the
same or similar goods and/or services was that single click away.
For those customers who needed to see what they were going to purchase, ecommerce
helped them identify and find the stores where the goods were available.
Merchants Make It Easier to Do Business Online
In 2009, merchants worked hard to make it easier for customers to do business
online by supporting the activities that customers perform and by using a
range of merchandising techniques to try to influence customer behavior in
their favor. For example, they used search engine optimization (SEO) techniques
to ensure that their sites would be near the top of Internet search results
lists. They built landing pages relevant to the terms in customers’ search
queries. They helped customers make buying decisions with ratings and reviews,
many of which were contributed by other customers and with recommendations
based on customer behavior and previous purchases. They followed up with
emails containing promotions relevant to customers’ visits, behavior,
and purchases during those visits.
Ecommerce Platforms Are the Key
Ecommerce platforms were the key to online business growth in 2009. These are
the software and services mechanisms that support customers’ online
shopping and buying activities and that help merchants acquire new customers,
retain existing customers, up-sell, cross-sell, and promote. With more business
being conducted online and with the Web becoming customers’ first channel
for doing business, 2009 was a very good year for ecommerce platforms and
their suppliers. Recognizing the bottom-line value in improving the customer
experience that they deliver, hundreds of merchants deployed their online
stores on new ecommerce platforms. Hundreds more upgraded to new ecommerce
platform versions.
Four Key Trends in Ecommerce
In 2009, we observed these four key trends in ecommerce. They’re top
customer requirements, and they’ve begun to be implemented in the current
or planned versions of the ecommerce platforms of the leading suppliers.
•
Search. This includes both supporting Internet search and improving site search
and navigation. As we mentioned above, customers begin shopping at Google.
Once they land on an ecommerce site, customers use site search to find products,
get product details, and compare similar products. Ecommerce sites must use
SEO techniques in managing their Web content. They must offer site search facilities
with rich and powerful, but easy-to-use search analysis capabilities and flexible
search results management facilities. Ecommerce platforms must also provide
tools and reports to monitor, analyze, and refine site search.
•
Cross-Channel Ecommerce. Ecommerce is no longer just a self-service Web site.
Ecommerce activities are cross-channel activities. Customers need assisted-service
to help perform shopping, buying, and account management activities. They want
assisted-service via Web chat or telephone. Agents/CSRs need facilities to
perform ecommerce activities on customers’ behalf. Also, (physical) stores
become the delivery channel for products purchased in online stores, and information
in customers’ accounts and in gift registries becomes critical to store
personnel in delivering in-store customer service.
•
Mobile Ecommerce. Mobile devices have the power and flexibility of general
purpose computers. Their Internet connectivity is broad and fast. Customers
expect their mobile apps to be as functional as their desktop/laptop apps.
They want to use their mobile devices as their on-the-road computers. Merchants
must deliver all the capabilities of their ecommerce stores through mobile
devices.
•
Social Ecommerce. Social media can drive customers’ purchase decisions.
Merchants must include ratings and reviews within product and catalog data.
The Leading Ecommerce Suppliers and Their Offerings
We’ve been evaluating ecommerce suppliers and products since 1997. Our
work helps shorten the time and reduce the risk in comparing and selecting
the ecommerce platform that will be best for an online business. Our work helps
ecommerce suppliers understand customer requirements and market trends as input
to their product planning and development processes. It also helps them understand
their competition.
We evaluate the leading ecommerce suppliers and their offerings. The leaders
are viable companies with viable offerings. Viable companies have large and
growing customer bases and good financial performance. Viable offerings address
customer requirements, keep pace with market trends, and are built of modern
technologies. Viable offerings also demonstrate a degree of vision and innovation.
We perform our evaluations against a framework of criteria. The framework-based
approach ensures consistency and objectivity while making it possible to
compare and differentiate ecommerce offerings on an apples-to-apples basis.
We base our evaluations on the product documentation that suppliers distribute
to their customers; on discussions with current customers; on discussion
with suppliers’ development, marketing, and support personnel; and
on actual use of the products.
Based on our work, we’ve identified these leading ecommerce suppliers
and ecommerce offerings:
•
ATG Commerce Suite
•
Demandware (Demandware)
•
Elastic Path Commerce
•
hybris Commerce
•
IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite
•
Venda Enterprise
We’re quite comfortable recommending any of them, but each of them has
its own strengths, limitations, and best fit. Our recommendations consider
the organization’s requirements against the product’s strengths,
limitations, and best fit.
This Report
With this report, we complete our first annual update on the products and companies
in ecommerce. These updates focus on factors that are important in the evaluation,
comparison, and selection of ecommerce products and services. More specifically,
we examine these factors:
•
Customer acquisition and customer growth
•
Product activity
•
Company activity including staffing
•
Company financial performance
In our evaluations of annual performance, we want to see continuing customer
growth, ongoing improvements in products, steady company viability, and good
financial performance. We don’t want to change our evaluations based
on one year’s news, but we do want to raise a red flag when that news
could be an indicator of long-term issues. When significant product and company
events occur, we identify and highlight those that could have an impact on
ecommerce products and technologies, suppliers, and the market landscape.
Now, let’s take a look at 2009 for each of our six leading ecommerce
suppliers individually.
ATG
ATG is a publicly held (NASDAQ: ARTG) ecommerce software supplier based in
Cambridge, MA. The firm was founded in 1995 and currently employs 545 people.
ATG Commerce 9.1 is the current version of ATG’s ecommerce platform.
It was introduced as Dynamo Commerce in 1996. Currently, approximately 400
customer organizations have ecommerce stores deployed on this platform.
Record Financial Performance in 2009
ATG set company records for performance in 2009. Customer growth was very good
and produced record financial performance. There were high levels of product
activity including a new product version of ATG Commerce, a new hosted offering
called ATG LiveStore, and an improved ecommerce reference implementation
that will be the basis for LiveStore deployments. Going forward into 2010,
ATG acquired InstantService in January, expanding its live chat offering.
Customers
ATG’s primary target market for ATG Commerce comprises companies with
at least $10 million in-store and online revenue. Within this target market,
ATG has been most successful in these industry segments:
•
Consumer retail
•
Financial services
•
Manufacturing
•
Communications and technology
•
Travel
•
Media and entertainment
As of January 31,
2010, ATG claims that it had 1,200 customers. This client base includes approximately
500 ATG Optimization Services customers and approximately 300 customers of
the newly acquired InstantService, and approximately 400 ATG Commerce customers.
The ATG Commerce base includes 29 customers who have hosted deployment.