PRESS RELEASES
Newest Mercado Release Provides E-Commerce Merchandisers with More Control, Better Insight, and Greater Impact on Business
PALO ALTO, CA - August 10th, 2005 - Mercado Software, a leading provider of e-commerce search and merchandising solutions today announced the release of the newest version of its powerful e-commerce search & navigation platform and merchandising environment.
Mercado CSN v3.5 offers unprecedented catalog richness, and new levels of merchandiser control & insight – leading to a greater impact on business.
"We are very excited about Mercado CSN 3.5 and look forward to exploiting its new merchandising features," said Kevin Ertell, SVP of Online Operations at Tower Records. "The products we sell on TowerRecords.com represent a wide variety of tastes and preferences – and reflect different, yet discernable customer segments. Mercado's new buyer segmentation capabilities will be useful in helping us target the right products to our customers, and their new merchandising triggers will eliminate much of the guesswork when it comes to offering our customers what they want, and reducing the clutter of products in which they are likely less interested."
Mercado CSN 3.5 signifies unprecedented innovation for online merchandising platforms – delivering a complete set of tools for enriching and categorizing online catalogs or shopping environments. As a vital component of any online commerce-generating strategy, it delivers a completely intuitive merchandising environment, and serves as a crucial enabler for marketing and merchandising managers to fully control and merchandise the online shopping experience.
Better Insight and More Control
Merchandising managers are empowered more than ever with Mercado CSN 3.5's "closed-loop" merchandising environment. Enhanced Multivariate Testing (MVT) provides telling insight into the effectiveness of different site scenarios, and Merchant Alerts proactively notify merchandisers of search/navigation activity, or any other reporting detail. New Business-Driven Ranking allows merchandisers to control relevancy of search results based on margins, inventory levels, etc. And CSN 3.5's new Smart Merchandising Workflow features provide the utmost of control and security.
Greater Merchandising Impact
Mercado CSN 3.5 offers new features that give merchandising professionals greater control over the effectiveness of their e-commerce websites and micro sites – and as a result, more control over customer purchases. New merchandising enhancements include: Results-Based Merchandising Triggers, which automatically promote brands or categories; and Buyer Segmentation that 'personalizes' the shopping experience for particular segments (e.g. teen girls).
Richer Product Catalogs
Through tight integration with Mercado's new UniClass™ product, Mercado CSN 3.5 offers e-commerce businesses the ability to Enrich Product Catalogs for optimal search and navigation. Mercado customers can now extract key attributes from product data and related literature, and exploit them in an e-commerce environment – adding more precision to an already powerful search engine, and by automatically creating product categories that can be as granular as necessary, without sacrificing accuracy.
"Segmentation, segmentation, segmentation. Both online and offline, we're seeing more and more retailers create micro sites, stores, and brands that appeal to a distinct shopper – another form of personalization," stated Carrie Johnson, VP and Research Director, in Retail First Look, Forrester Research, Inc., July 29, 2005. "We're seeing more evidence that retailers use this tactic to tailor brands, merchandise assortment, and marketing messages to customers."
"Mercado is 100% dedicated to helping online businesses accelerate their revenue growth by enabling them with the most effective customer-centric tools available in the market today. Our ongoing commitment to developing solutions in partnership with our customers ensures that we are in sync with what our markets require now, and that we're developing solutions to meet future requirements," said Corey Leibow, CEO of Mercado Software. "CSN 3.5 goes beyond powerful search and navigation, to deliver capabilities that will help our customers confidently maintain and aggressively grow their online businesses."
About Mercado Software
Mercado is a leading provider of e-commerce search & navigation, advanced merchandising, and catalog optimization solutions for B2B and B2C businesses. Through offering online customers a superior buying experience and equipping business managers with a powerful platform to implement merchandising strategies, online retailers and businesses can constantly grow their business results. Sears, Williams-Sonoma, JCPenney, Macy's, Target, Tower Records, Blockbuster, MSN, Caterpillar and OfficeMax, are some of the companies benefiting from Mercado's solutions. Mercado's unique technology, combined with its commitment to innovation and its experienced team, delivers bottom line results for its customers. Such benefits include increased revenues, higher productivity, reduced operational costs, and improved customer satisfaction. For more information about Mercado Software, please visit www.mercado.com or call (888) 376-1400.
Media Contact:
Kevin Lindsay
Tel: (403) 697-3183
Email: klindsay@mercado.com
