WebSphere Commerce - Express

Features and benefits

IBM WebSphere Commerce - Express includes a number of features that are designed specifically to meet the needs of midmarket customers, but also shares basic as well as more advanced e-commerce capabilities with the rest of the WebSphere Commerce family. WebSphere Commerce Express is limited to companies with less than 1,000 employees only and single store deployment with up to a maximum of 200 PVUs. Features and benefits include:

NEW! Mobile device support, which enables mobile as a new touch point for browsing the store, receiving marketing messages, promotions, coupon codes, and completing transactions. The mobile store model provides out-of-the-box support for smart phones allowing retailers to quickly adopt mobile as a new touch point for doing business.

NEW! Social commerce capabilities enable online stores to support product ratings and reviews via integration with BazaarVoice, blogs, photo galleries, and user profiles via integration with IBM Lotus Connections and Pluck Sitelife.

Enhanced Search & Navigation through improved integration with WebSphere Content Discovery for easier search-based merchandising and natural language search.

Web Content Management through integration with IBM Workplace Web Content Management for improved handling of structured and unstructured content (for example. how-to guides, news articles).

Enhanced Web Analytics with auto-tagging and custom reports by analytics vendors for marketing promotions, campaigns and A/B Testing.

SOA Enhancements such as packaged Web Services for integration to external order management and ERP systems and the ability to model WebSphere Commerce processes in BPEL.

Quick and easy installation - Designed to get you up and running fast so you can begin creating your store right away, WebSphere Commerce - Express includes the following installation features:

• Quick Install allows you to quickly perform a single processor installation and create a WebSphere Commerce instance in a few steps, with minimal user interaction
• Customer Install is available for multi-tier installations or when you want more control over how the specific elements of the WebSphere Commerce Express software stack are installed
• WebSphere Commerce Install Shield, based on Install Shield for Multi-platform Edition (ISMPE), is used to install all bundled software and helps provide for silent installation of key elements such as WebSphere Application Server (WAS) and DB2 Express
• Java-based Problem Determination Tool analyzes the up-and-running logs and generates reports to help you quickly troubleshooting any problems

Affordable, complete solution - With WebSphere Commerce - Express you'll get a complete e-commerce software solution that addresses your needs for production and pre-production staging - all at one affordable price. Up to 200 PVUs of WebSphere Commerce - Express can be purchased.

Streamlined Starter Stores - Designed to help get your production store up quickly, the starter stores in WebSphere Commerce - Express include the core capabilities required for a complete end-to-end e-commerce site. Store designed for business-to-commerce (B2C) is included and can be customized to meet your specific needs now and extended to utilize more advanced features as you need them. The latest starter stores have been re-designed to be smaller and easier to customize.

Catalog import utility - This utility makes it quick and easy for you to import a pre-existing product catalog, stored in a spreadsheet in comma-separated values (CSV) format, into the WebSphere Commerce Express database.

Easy to use tools - WebSphere Commerce - Express comes with a broad collection of tools, many of which are wizard-based, for easy administration and management of your site. Most are built into an intuitive Web-based framework called IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce, which can help you with everything from managing the look and feel of your store, to catalog management, to creating and maintaining orders, and tracking store activities. Here are just a few of the many supported features:

• Product Management Tools - Easily create, update, delete, and modify attributes and prices of your catalog entries with this powerful, yet intuitive Web-based tool. You can manage your catalog quickly and directly, easily finding and listing products to change, then making simple or mass edits. The simple catalog tree structure makes it easy to add or delete product categories. Sales catalogs, which have a flexible display structure that allows you to associate products to more than one category to suit the requirements of your store, are also supported. You can create one or more sales catalogs for display purposes or for seasonal or clearance merchandise.
• Store Style Editor - This tool makes it easy to change the basic look and feel of your store, including colors and location of action buttons, without special technical skills.
  Change Page Text Editor - Non-technical users can easily change the descriptive text that is included in the site pages and in the store flow with this editing tool

Fast-path documentation - Get the information you need fast from the Information Center help system that is built into WebSphere Commerce Express. The Information Center includes advanced search and bookmark capabilities that make it easy to use. In addition, specialized documentation such as the Quick Start Guide is provided. This document picks up right after installation and steps you through the store publishing and customization process, providing tips and techniques that will get you into production quickly.

Open standards support - Built on accepted, industry standards like Java technology, JavaServer Pages, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and XML, WebSphere Commerce - Express can be easily integrated to your existing, in-house developed middleware and systems including IBM CICS, IBM MQSeries, IBM IMS products and SAP R/3.

Broad platform support - WebSphere Commerce - Express supports your platform needs today and tomorrow, with support for Windows and Linux (for Intel only) operating systems.

 

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