IBM and Online Shopping
November 12, 2009
I was quite surprised about IBM’s technology to enrich online shopping. Navigate to “New IBM Software Enriches Online Shopping” and learn about “new that delivers a personalized and more interactive shopping experience for the exploding population of mobile users worldwide. The software incorporates new social networking capabilities and the ability for retailers to reach consumers with personalized promotions, coupons and other content, regardless of how or where the customer chooses to shop with them.”
The technology is part of WebSphere Commerce. The news story asserts:
WebSphere Commerce comes with and leverages the strength of the IBM WebSphere Application Server and DB2 to attain high transaction volumes, reliable, and highly available operation as well as the integration to back-end systems and applications using SOA interfaces. WebSphere Commerce 7 includes new out-of-the-box integrations to social networking offerings such as IBM Lotus Connections, Bazaarvoice and Pluck SiteLife. Recognized as an industry leader, IBM® WebSphere® Commerce software provides companies of all sizes with a powerful customer interaction platform for cross-channel and online commerce, supporting all of a company’s business models while providing a rich, differentiated customer experience. Powerful out-of-the-box capabilities for marketing, catalog management and merchandising help companies revolutionize customer shopping experiences across all sales channels from online and call centers to mobile and in-store.
I dug back through my search archive and noticed references to IBM’s use of Endeca for its online shopping service. I had anecdotal information that indicated IBM had dallied with Fast Search & Transfer’s technology for eCommerce as well.
This announcement does not compute for me. Take a look at this online site, http://www.ibm.com/products/shop/software/in/en/ This is a subsite that allows me to “Shop for Software”. I click on the “view software pricing and buy link”. This is what I see:
An IBM shopping site. Try to buy STAIRS or SearchManager. I couldn’t figure out how to do it.
There are three choices plus some suggestions in the left hand and right hand panels. There are two search boxes. One does not search for software to buy. The user searches everything in the subsite’s index. In fact, there is no way to search for software like FileNet from this shopping page. Sure, I can search for FileNet from the search box, but that results list jumbles documentation, marketing collateral, and other extraneous information.
I can search by “business need”. I guess that’s okay if the potential customer knows what problem is going to be solved by the nebulous “need”. With regard to FileNet, what does that product do? Well, it does quite a number of functions. So “product category” is fuzzy to me. The notion of searching by name is good. My problem is that I am not sure of what some IBM products are now called. One example is STAIRS. So I search the “S” listings and see mostly products that begin with an “R”. At the bottom of the list are the products that start with an “S”, but STAIRS is not a product. To find it, I search for STAIRS in the Web site search box. I get this hit, but I don’t know how to buy it because Search Manager is not listed as a product in the shopping subsite.
My opinion is that this “new” product has not been given the type of shakedown it requires. The subsite used in this example reminds me of Endeca’s “guided navigation” method. Either the IBM shopping site is running Endeca or a service that sure looks a lot like Endeca. Either way, I am not sure what’s “new”. The Endeca system is pretty good, but it is about a decade in the oven. If the system is IBM’s, I wonder why the site does not manifest some of the new features such as those I see when I use Amazon.com.
More information is available at www.ibm.com/websphere/commerce. My hunch is that I will take cautious steps toward the product described in this IBM news release.
Stephen Arnold, November 11, 2009
I want to tell the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank that I was not compensated in pennies which cost more to make than their cash value for this article. Do we need pennies? Do we need this article of mine?
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One Response to “IBM and Online Shopping”
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What you are describing about this site is very typical for many e-commerce sites. It really makes me not want to buy or do anything on such a site. Very good examples for very poor access are also travel sites, where the world of pre-selection and selections on pre-defined structures is still very alive.
From a sales point of view, giving a ‘no result’ page as IBM does on this site and that many e-commerce sites do, goes so against any sales principle (never say ‘no’, always come with relevant alternatives).
In addition, the site does not speak my language and when they want my deal, they should.
These are all very basic sales and communication techniques that are very absent from many e-commerce sites.
Why? There is no need, since modern search engines can index millions of product records, provide very fast access, use synonyms, spell check, provide related terms, guided navigation, evidence why products are shown and … relevance. Maybe the product is not exaclty what you asked for, but it is close. How many times have I gone to a store (a real one) with a good idea of what I wanted and came out with something different (but happy with my purchase)?
Food for thought.