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Mercado Delivers Rapid Time-to-Market and Great Results through SaaS (Software as a Service) eCommerce Search and Merchandising Solution

Strong Mercado On-Demand adoption signals readiness among online retailers for best-in-class searchandising – made easy

PLEASANTON, CA, March 29, 2007 - Mercado Software, the leading provider of eCommerce search & merchandising solutions, today announced that, within the last few months, the company has seen extremely strong adoption of Mercado On-Demand – the SaaS version of its industry-leading searchandising platform. This offering has been very popular with many SMB, pure-play Internet and multi-channel retailers, including:

Mercado On-Demand is a SaaS application built for companies looking for a hosted world-class search, navigation and merchandising solution that can be quickly implemented. Mercado On-Demand provides relevant and merchandised search and navigation results and rankings, linguistic support and synonyms, spelling correction, actionable reports with integrated data and metrics and over 20 retail domain dictionaries. It utilizes a comprehensive rules engine managed by business users and by metrics driven merchandising that integrates and leverages the power of dynamic business metrics such as conversion rates and inventory levels.

"Software as a Service provides a quicker-to-deploy, lower-risk alternative to traditional licensed software; it also empowers the business unit by enabling ownership of the buying cycle, eliminating dependence on IT, and facilitating ongoing collaborative development," wrote Liz Hebert in Topic Overview: Software as a Service, Forrester Research, October, 2006. "As firms look to focus on core business processes and turn the development and management of non-key assets over to others, SaaS provides an increasingly attractive alternative."

Because of its SaaS model, Mercado On-Demand is extremely attractive to businesses that want best-of-breed searchandising, but need to be up and running in a short time and/or do not possess the manpower and technical expertise required to implement and run on-premise software solutions.

"For a company like PlumberSurplus.com, not having to manage and maintain the hardware and software is advantageous. Mercado On-Demand takes care of the overhead so that we can focus on our core business," said Vanessa Hofmann, Merchandising Team Leader at PlumberSurplus.com. "We can now easily develop, manage and execute promotions, capitalize on up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, and control product rankings."

"We prefer to work with SaaS on-demand solutions whenever possible, to keep IT overhead low and leverage technology partners for growth," said Chad Luellen, E-Commerce Manager at ExOfficio. "In reviewing many of the search vendors out there, Mercado stood out as the only one who offered a complete search, merchandising and navigation solution with the ability to create business rules and run everything through an easy-to-use interface. The merchandising abilities built in to the Mercado solution are fantastic and really sold us on the product. We definitely wanted more than just search results – we wanted the ability to run promotions based on a mix of inventory, margin, price, and keyword triggers, and Mercado delivers all of those things and more."

"By using Mercado On-Demand to combine web analytics with site search and merchandising technology, we are able to deliver the product choice selections that shoppers view as parts of home furnishings collections, arranged by contribution to profit margin," said Brian Beck, CEO of Broadspan Commerce. "Since implementing Mercado On-Demand our average order value has increased by 17%, and we've a 65% increase in the number of on-site searches. Even better, we have seen a 30% improvement in sales conversions among the shoppers that use the search option."

"Mercado has been an incredible lifesaver and a time saver for us," said Jason Cohen, Director of E-Commerce at NAC Marketing. "Back in September 2006, we cut three weeks off of our launch schedule by using Mercado's Product Data Optimizer to clean up the attributes of thousands of vitamin and supplement products. We use Mercado On-Demand to quickly implement new promotions and special offers, as well as easily place additional special content like banners and special offers linked to specific search queries by our customers. In addition to delivering accurate search results, our customers have commented about how easy it is to now find and buy products on our site."

"Because of its flexibility, ease of use and performance, Mercado On-Demand has been very popular with smaller and emerging businesses – and is contributing to their success," said Corey Leibow, president and CEO of Mercado. "With the most proven and feature-rich SaaS searchandising capabilities available, I'm confident that more and more retailers will turn to Mercado On-Demand to help improve their bottom line."

PlumberSurplus.com's Hofmann adds "We have found that the ability to create custom landing pages that integrate with search engine advertising campaigns adds great value to our site by directing our customers to a page closely correlated to their search – and gives marketing the ability to easily track the effectiveness of advertising. We also plan on using other Mercado features such as calculated banner placement and management, and adding product attributes to make it easier for our customers to find and buy the products for which they are searching. Mercado On-Demand is an online merchandiser's dream application."

About Mercado Software
Mercado is the leading eCommerce search & merchandising solution specialist for multi-channel retail and B2B organizations. By enabling a superior buying experience and equipping business managers with a powerful platform on which to execute merchandising strategies, online businesses can aggressively grow revenue and foster customer loyalty. Sears Holdings Corp., Guess?, Inc., Williams-Sonoma Inc., OfficeMax, Macy's, ShopNBC, Delightful Deliveries, and Organize.com are some of the companies benefiting from Mercado's solutions. For more information about Mercado Software, please visit www.mercado.com or call (888) 376-1400.

Media Contact:
Mark Shapiro
858-573-0736
mshapiro@davismarrin.com

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