Social Commerce

Social technologies are increasingly being used to connect with customers to build strong and lasting relationships, through ratings and reviews, blogs, micro-blogging, forums and communities like Facebook. All of these social technologies are changing the customer experience for the better, turning a regular customer into a brand advocate.

IBM WebSphere Commerce offers an integrated, customer-centric platform to help you connect and foster active participation with customers to help improve the customer experience. Social Commerce helps companies make their brand an experience by:

• Engaging customers based on their social behavior with your brand
• Providing your customers with a reason to your return to your website
• Giving clients a reason to talk about your brand on your website
• Providing all the necessary information on your website for your clients to research, compare, make a decision and purchase from you and not your competitor

With storefront integration to Facebook, marketers and merchandisers can now target customers based on what customers “Like” and “Share” while on Facebook. And by leveraging remote widgets, companies can extend the brand experience outside the four walls of their website, enabling their customers to share deals of the day, wish lists and gift registries on any internet property. Through the powerful WebSphere Commerce Management Center, marketers and merchandisers can themselves easily manage and control the content of the widgetsor with a few clicks, orchestrate a campaign across sales channels. The content of the remote widgets can also be deployed on affiliate sites, social networks, blogs or any other web site where customers can be reached.

WebSphere Commerce offers social commerce capabilities in partnership with Lotus Connections as well as partners like Bazaarvoice (link resides outside of ibm.com) and Pluck (link resides outside of ibm.com), and KickApps (link resides outside of ibm.com).

WebSphere Commerce Enterprise
A powerful, flexible solution built on a unified platform for running large, high-volume B2B and advanced business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sites for global businesses. It supports multiple sites, complex direct and indirect business models, contractual agreements, dynamic negotiations and role-based member management.

WebSphere Commerce Professional
A robust online selling environment that enables companies to offer personalized, cross-channel shopping experiences. The product’s infrastructure can support and integrate multiple sales channels and touch points, including Web, kiosk, point-of-sale (POS), call center and more.

WebSphere Commerce - Express
Provides the core capabilities growing firms need to get started or expand their e-commerce site at a minimum investment - all on a rock solid platform that can support more advanced functionality as their needs grow.