White Papers

Business Whitepapers

European Consumer Attitudes to Mobile Commerce: Key Barriers and Opportunities
ATG sponsored an independent research in three key European markets to find out how and why customers shop with their mobile devices (“m-commerce”). Participants were asked about current habits and attitudes towards m-commerce, likely purchases and factors that would encourage them to use m-commerce in the future. The research surveyed 2,103 consumers in the UK, France, and Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg (BeNeLux) in September 2009.

European Consumer Views of e-Commerce: Buying Behaviour and Trends
In July 2009, ATG commissioned a consumer survey to examine the differences in attitudes towards online shopping across the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, Spain, France and BeNeLux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg). The study asked more than 6,500 consumers about their satisfaction, likes and dislikes, common frustrations and spending habits related to online shopping. The research shows marked differences in buying behaviours among the countries surveyed, and highlights clear areas where retailers can improve the online shopping experience they offer customers.

The Web as Commerce Central: Readying your E-Commerce for the Next Retail Revolution
Written by the e-tailing group: Industry leaders are employing bold strategies and visionary thinking--mining their customer feedback and gaining the most from technology and information. With the perspective of 16 brand giants and the insight from the e-tailing group, read how personalization and cross-channel consistency are driving customer satisfaction...and spending.

Supercharge Your Shopping Cart - Eleven Ways to Close More Online Sales
In the world of online retailing, all shopping carts are not created alike. Just as in a traditional brick-and-mortar retail store, where a cart with a squeaky, broken wheel can ruin the shopper's visit, the e-tailer's implementation of the shopping cart can itself make the difference between a purchase and a lost sale. This paper offers eleven tips to consider in your efforts to turn the shopping cart into a competitive asset that drives more business in the short term; and builds stronger, more valuable customer relationships over the long term.

Consumer Manufacturers: Learn 11 Ways to Engage Your Customers Directly
When consumers need information about your brand and products they're going to the Web first. According to Forrester Research, 58 percent of consumers start their product research on the Web -- and 25 percent of all purchases, whether made online, in stores, or via other channels, begins with a visit to the manufacturer's Web site. So, the Web better not be just an adjunct to your media and retail branding strategies: it's got to become the centerpiece of your entire branding strategy. This paper provides a crash course for consumer product manufacturers about today's best practices for using the Web to support all aspects of the consumer buying cycle, from research to selection to purchase.

Using Proactive Service to Increase Conversions and Order Sizes
While the Web has emerged as a primary research and purchasing channel for many shoppers, nearly 77 percent of consumers still shop across multiple channels. With competing offers just a click away from every e-seller's Web site, more than half of all consumers say a negative online experience leads to online and offline abandonment of the brand. Often, the issue that caused a high-value customer to abandon his or her transaction could have been resolved easily with just a little help from a live agent. You need the ability to offer customers the opportunity to call or chat with a live agent when their Web behavior indicates confusion or the risk of abandonment, and when saving the sale is worth the extra attention you're offering. This White Paper looks at how companies using ATG's e-commerce suite can easily incorporate a live help strategy to bridge the gap between their Web site and their contact center without making extensive changes to their front-end or back-end systems. eStara, an ATG company, provides this ability with its Click to Call and Click to Chat solutions.

Advanced Personalization in e-Commerce
e-Sellers are facing a stark new reality in today's online marketplace: You can no longer expect growth as a result of simply selling online. With the number of net new shoppers online slowing to a 16 percent annual growth rate after seeing highs of as much as 45 or 50 percent, the competition for shoppers is heating up; meanwhile, brand loyalty is sharply decreasing. Given that shopping online is now a mainstream activity, the challenge is no longer getting new customers to shop online, but rather driving more incremental dollars from the existing base of online shoppers. The competition to win the customer has never been fiercer.

Preparing for Next-Generation e-Commerce
With shoppers' expectations maturing and competitive pressures mounting, it is important to recognize the changing face of the online customers you serve and the changing dynamics of the e-commerce marketplace. Moreover, you need to take a hard look at the engine behind your online business - your e-commerce platform -- to determine if it has the core capabilities to meet the needs of the next-generation marketplace. Understanding the requirements of the evolving online marketplace and knowing what customers expect of you will determine your ultimate success or failure in this "new" new economy.

Hosted e-Commerce Without Compromise
Outdated e-commerce platforms and homegrown systems are reaching the end of their limitations trying to support new growth and more sophisticated requirements, especially for personalization. For many companies, now is a time to re-visit the platform that powers their online business. However, not all companies choose to devote their limited time and resources to full-blown in-house e-commerce software development and deployment. Outsourcing the e-commerce platform offers a viable alternative to on-premise platforms, especially as today's e-commerce on demand solutions can deliver a personalized, highly sophisticated e-commerce experience at lower entry costs.

Forrester Research Report, "Commerce Platforms: Build or Buy?"
Most firms will find that buying a commerce platform and combining the packaged functionality with custom services offers greater benefits in agility and scalability, outweighing the custom fit and control that a build approach provides.

Top 10 Considerations for Evaluating e-Commerce Platforms
Your online store is now a bona fide mission-critical business. Now you need to meet the ongoing demands of evolving e-commerce - keep your Web store appealing, responsive, and performing well at high transaction volumes. This paper offers ten considerations to help guide the selection criteria for your next e-commerce platform - which should ideally be the last e-commerce platform you would ever need.

Seeker Experience Survey: Is Search Getting Better?
A great online customer experience demands that a) your customers can easily find exactly what they need when they venture onto your self-service site, and b) your customer service agents can use your search capability to quickly help your customers when they get in touch with you directly. Companies that deliver great online self-service have figured out how to make their search capabilities deliver better answers, measure effectiveness, and continually improve customer satisfaction.

Five Pitfalls to Avoid in Choosing a Customer Service OnDemand Solution
On-demand customer service solutions hold the potential to lower entry costs, and increase productivity and ROI. But if you're considering this implementation method, you should also be wary of the potential pitfalls that some on-demand solutions carry with them. Will you sacrifice the opportunity to differentiate your business? Will you have to settle for basic functionality? Are you introducing unnecessary security risks into your customer interactions? Will an on demand solution stifle your ability to grow your service function into the future? Read this whitepaper to get expert advice from top analysts on how to recognize and avoid the 5 common pitfalls of many on-demand customer service solutions.

12 Ways to Fight Shopping Cart Abandonment
The aisles of online stores are teeming with abandoned carts. By some estimates, shoppers desert well over half of their carts, costing retailers $63 billion in 2004 alone. But it doesn't have to be that way. Focusing on shopping cart abandonment will help you understand your potential customers and what they want, to ultimately create more long-lasting and profitable relationships.

Business Gets Personal: Four Steps to Persona-Based e-Commerce
When Donald Trump says, "It's not personal, it's business" he sure isn't talking about building customer loyalty online. If you're doing any business online, then you'd better make it personal - and fast! Here we offer a step-by-step approach.

Five Questions to Answer When Planning Your e-Commerce Platform
Forrester Research recently noted, "These days, big retailers are less likely to build their own e-commerce platforms from scratch." The question of whether to build or buy e-commerce applications involves new considerations today than it did years ago. And recently, some companies have suffered for not understanding the new climate before acting. Find out what should go into your build vs. buy decision.

A Practical Approach to Event-Triggered Marketing
Even as opt-out rates continue to rise, Jupiter Research reports that only 11 percent of marketers implement any sort of contextually relevant marketing campaigns. But you can build stronger customer relationships by exploiting the full potential of personally relevant, targeted, and well-timed online marketing. Learn how to execute more relevant, compelling, and successful e-marketing campaigns.

Balancing Cost Reduction with Value Generation When Delivering Customer-Centric Service
Customer-centric companies use every customer touchpoint to stimulate interest, close business, satisfy a need or demonstrate commitment to the relationship. But while superior service across all interaction channels is essential, at the same time businesses need to balance profitability concerns. Read this whitepaper and learn about a new approach to driving business goals in the service center by maximizing every customer interaction, streamlining processes, and balancing service cost channels.

With the Benefit of Wisdom
Delivering complete and compelling customer experiences can deliver tangible economic value for businesses, but doing so requires businesses to treat the customer experience from beginning to end as a continuous cycle. Find out how you can make this happen with the benefit of ATG Wisdom.

Optimizing Online Service to Build Effective Customer Relationships
Challenged with year-over-year increases in online and offline contact volume, service organizations are seeking to deflect live contacts to self-service and asynchronous channels; however, organizations are largely failing to meet customer needs in these channels. This failure contains hidden costs for an organization and results in significant brand erosion as customers seek contacts via other touch points and tell peers of poor experiences. This whitepaper from Jupiter Research details what customers are looking for in terms of service, where the common points of failure are, and what every organization should do about it.

Multi-Channel e-Marketing...Finally
All too often today, e-marketing consists of little more than an e-mail blast with a link to a Web page. Other than that simple link, e-mail and the Web are isolated from each other, from other customer touch points, and from other marketing activities happening at the same time. Further, anti-SPAM legislation also constrains a marketer's efforts to reach out to prospects, forcing marketers to build enough trust with their audience to be granted permission to market to them. How can an e-marketing effort be successful amidst these business, technical, and legislative realities? e-Marketers need to conduct much more targeted, personally relevant campaigns that present a consistent image across all e-channels and surround the target audience with their message.

Real World Scenarios: How consumer-facing enterprises use scenarios to drive e-business
Customers choose to do business with enterprises that provide consistent and satisfying end-to-end experiences. This whitepaper introduces the concept of scenarios and defines the term, outlines the key attributes of a high caliber scenario engine, and presents three hypothetical scenario use cases, each focused on a different industry (Financial Services, Media/Entertainment, and Retail).

Application Hosting Services
Designed to accelerate deployment of knowledge management solutions, Application Hosting Services is run by an experienced in-house team of engineers and make it possible to implement knowledge-based self- and assisted-service in as little as two weeks. AH includes installation, management, and ongoing maintenance of the hardware, software, and network infrastructure required for a Primus solution.

Communication Center
With the Internet acting as a communications conduit, consumers are now afforded the opportunity of communicating directly with companies anywhere, anytime and any place. There lies the challenge.

Self-Service Comes of Age
The term "self-service" can mean different things to different people, depending on their perspective and their industry. This paper describes what distinguishes a standard Web site from a high value self-service site; outlines four building blocks of self-service; introduces and discusses the importance of proactive service; and explains the role of self-service in creating and maintaining a rich and satisfying customer experience across channels. After reading this paper, you'll have a clear view of the self-service big picture, a means by which to assess your current online service offerings, and a better vision of what steps you can take to offer truly compelling online service, and thus improve customer loyalty.

Fulfilling the Promise of Web Content Management
For many enterprises, the Web content management system has become a primary limitation to overall e-business success - causing companies to waste time, disappoint customers, and lose money. This white paper will discuss the historical pressures that led to the rise of Web content management systems, how changes in those forces have created many of the problems encountered today, and how enterprises can overcome those problems in the future.

Patty Seybold Group's: Pro-Active, Real-Time Customer Self-Service
ATG has taken a new approach to customer self service. It's an approach that leverages the lessons learned from early order management and product support systems. It's an approach that builds on ATG's innovative technologies' Personalization, Scenarios, and Portal. It's an approach that uses new search technologies and provides tight touchpoint and business process integration. ATG calls it pro-active, real-time customer self service.

ATG, Web Services and .NET
Web services offers an exciting and cost-effective way for application integration, and is gaining industry-wide backing. This paper considers the role that Web services can play with commerce and self-service applications.

ATG Scenario Manager Role
ATG recommends that its customers institute a Scenario Manager role to better manage the process of identifying, defining, and implementing scenarios. The Scenario Manager should be your scenario expert, able to manage communications between and with business and technology stakeholders, and capable of implementing scenarios in the ACC. This paper explains the recommended skills and responsibilities for the Scenario Manager and provides recommendations for identifying whether your organization needs someone in this role.

Technical Whitepapers

ATG Commerce Service Center Performance Tuning
Performance tuning ATG's Commerce Service Center application can yield significant cost savings for organizations. This white paper offers a pragmatic approach for uncovering the technical and business issues that underlie performance problems.

ATG Technical Advantages
Every major software development project has its share of complexity and risk. Rolling out a new e-commerce application is especially challenging because of the many integration points and the need for customizations that give you a competitive advantage. When it comes to a decision about replatforming your e-commerce site, the normal risks are increased by the high stakes: it's one of the most vital sites you operate, generating significant revenue directly and indirectly. You need to get this decision right, and find a solution that will meet both your needs without draining your resources - cash or personnel.

This paper provides insight into the internals of ATG's leading e-commerce technology, compares the solution and approach with different e-commerce packages and self-developed approaches, and highlights the technical and economic advantages you gain when using ATG. It provides some insight into why the ATG Commerce Suite is future-proof and essentially the last e-commerce platform you will ever need.

Internationalisation of ATG
Today's global economy requires companies to deploy e-Commerce infrastructure capable of selling in many different countries. That can be a complex undertaking and there are many different factors to consider when deciding how to architect the solution. This paper examines some of the challenges and discusses the use of ATG's industry-leading Commerce Suite software to build international sites that will thrive in this demanding environment.

Delivering a Unique Online Experience for your Segments, Regions, and Brands
Your online presence is one of your most important channels for business growth. Yet it can be very difficult to determine the best way to use different Web technologies to your advantage. Personalization is more important than ever, but do you need to put up a dedicated site just to serve different segments? How can you best support international sales with a site that works in each region? How can you share to best leverage your hardware, software, and development investments? This white paper discusses the spectrum of technologies for site setup, from personalization through your options for multiple site support, including microsites.

Using Ajax in ATG applications - Using Form Handlers
ATG's Form Handler mechanism poses some interesting issues for the Ajax developer. This whitepaper and accompanying code sample show a way to handle issuing posts to form handlers and also outlines a way to make your form handlers work when JavaScript is turned off, or when a full post is required. Download code sample.

AJAX and ATG applications using DWR
In the Ajax and Java world DWR has established itself as a useful toolkit for making server side Java code available as JavaScript objects in the browser. This white paper and accompanying code show how to expose ATG Nucleus components of all scopes to the browser through DWR. There are two versions of this white paper and code, one for DWR v1.1.4 and one for DWR 2.0. [download the DWR.zip file if you are using v1.1.4 or the DWR20.zip file if you are using v2.0]

Search Engine Optimization Guide: A Review of SEO Techniques for ATG-powered Web Applications
Dynamic web applications are not suited to be easily traversed by search engine spiders/bots/robots. The primary purpose of this white paper is to provide objective and well-researched search engine optimization techniques for ATG web applications. A secondary purpose of this white paper is to showcase new ATG product enhancements that assist in search engine optimization.

Implementing AJAX in ATG Applications
This whitepaper gives a brief overview of what AJAX is and the techniques it employs and then dives into a practical example of using AJAX in your ATG applications.

ATG Search
ATG Search provides a best-of-breed search engine that integrates with your ATG Commerce, Service and Portal solutions for quick and easy deployment. It provides users with powerful tools to search for information across the enterprise ensuring that they find the product, service or other content they are looking for, for increased sales, better service, and better productivity.

The ATG Adaptive Scenario Engine™ - Putting the customer into the customer experience
ATG is a well-known leader and innovator in the development of Java-based frameworks and technologies for web development. This experience comes from many years of building web technology and software solutions that resulted in the creation of the Dynamo Application Server (DAS), and its very successful use in large-scale, high concurrency, high throughput web applications.

The Dynamo Application Framework™ - Accelerating enterprise Web site development
ATG is a well-known leader and innovator in the development of Java-based frameworks and technologies for Web development. This experience comes from many years of building Web technology and software solutions that resulted in the creation of the Dynamo Application Server (DAS) and its successful use in large-scale, high-concurrency, high-throughput Web applications.

Introduction to ATG Content Administration 7.0
ATG Content Administration 7.0 is a full-featured Web-based content management system. Because of its tight integration with the ATG Application Suite, it provides unmatched flexibility and control over managing personalized content and data. It ships with a full set of content Workflow, Deployment, Versioning, and Editing features, as well as an accessible Web-based business user interface. With CA7, your organization can start editing and deploying content right out of the box, or you can tailor the product using the frameworks available to developers.

Understanding Web Content Management Systems
As the complexity of Web applications has increased, so have the tools required to manage them. Over the years, Web content management has evolved dramatically from the days of flat files and FTP. Today, organizations need to consider how to manage a complex collection of content and application assets; code resources, traditional textual content, media files, application data, etc; that can be delivered in multiple formats (HTML, XML, PDF), through multiple delivery channels (Web, email, print), possibly in multiple languages. At the same time, customers are expected to be able to navigate through this complexity to find precisely what they were looking for, or perhaps something they didn't even know they needed, in the shortest time possible. Managing all this requires tools that have been designed to support these kinds of applications. In general, there are five essential components to any Web content management system (WCMS).

ATG Commerce: Performance and Scalability on IBM WebSphere Application Server
In November 2003 ATG conducted a performance study of ATG Commerce 6.1 running on WebSphere Application Server. We conducted our tests under controlled conditions at IBM's Solution Partnership Center in Waltham, Massachusetts, testing on both AIX and Red Hat Linux and using both large and small servers. This white paper discusses the importance of scaling and performance and details the outcome of our study. In short, we found that the ATG-IBM solution exhibits nearly perfect scaling, typically limited only by the capabilities of the operating system.

ATG 6.2.0 Content Administration Scalability and Sizing Guide
This paper presents the results of a study exploring the performance and scaling capabilities of ATG Content Administration. ATG found that ATG Content Administration does not require a large investment in hardware to support the content management needs of most businesses. Furthermore, because ATG Content Administration exhibits good vertical scaling, growth in capacity can be achieved easily in multiprocessor environments. Read the paper to see the full analysis.

Implementing ATG Web Services to Support Commerce, Self-Service, and Personalization
Web services are emerging de facto standards for communication and data exchange between applications. As organizations begin to use Web services to solve complicated business problems, ATG has enhanced its products to allow these organizations to take advantage of Web services. This white paper provides an overview of ATG's Web services capabilities and how the enterprise can integrate Web services with ATG's powerful personalization and commerce capabilities.

ATG Siebel Integration
Customer service expectations are at an all time high with the advent of e-mail and the Web. Customers assume that when they log a call to your call center, you will have a record of the e-mail that they sent yesterday, as it pertains to the product they ordered from your Web site. To create this experience you need the ability to share data across channels within your enterprise. ATG Siebel Integrator connects your ATG solutions to your Siebel e-business applications allowing you to synchronize user profiles across your enterprise maintaining a unified view of your customer.

Using Scenarios for Faster Development
ATG Scenario Personalization reduces development time while promoting code reuse. Scenarios can be built and modified by people with domain-specific knowledge, using the events and actions supplied by ATG along with enterprise-specific events and actions. This reduces the amount of valuable developer time required to build your solution. Built on open standards, ATG allows developers to use and enhance their existing skills to produce better applications faster.

Moving from JHTML to JSP
Version 5.6 of ATG's software introduced the DSP Tag Library, which is an implementation of JHTML in the form of a JSP Tag Library. The DSP Tag Library lowers the JSP learning curve for developers familiar with JHTML, and empowers JSP developers to benefit from the power of ATG services, including droplets and form handlers. This white paper provides a comparison of JHTML and the DSP Tag Library for JSP. The JHTML to JSP Converter, a tool to ease the transition from JHTML to JSP, is also discussed.

Understanding ATG Data Anywhere Architecture
This paper explores the data access problems faced by many companies, discusses the technology behind ATG's Data Anywhere Architecture", and then considers the business implications for companies seeking a unified view of customer data.

Targeting and Personalization in ATG Dynamo
The ATG Dynamo e-Business Platform provides a rich set of features that allow companies to create rules for targeting content to particular users. These rules can be created using a graphical user interface or directly through code. Leveraging the ATG Data Anywhere Architecture", Dynamo provides the ability to direct virtually any material stores in Dynamo to the right person using targeters.

Consumer Views on Live Online Help: a consumer survey commissioned by ATG
In June 2009, ATG commissioned a consumer survey to examine the relative importance of live online help, including click to call and click to chat services, and to explore when and why consumers opt for a live voice or live chat interaction when seeking help online. This survey includes the responses of 1,052 consumers.

Optimizing the E-Commerce Experience
Written by eMarketer: E-Commerce today goes well beyond online retail. Businesses across a range of industries, both B2C and B2B now understand they are e-commerce players. As the online channel becomes core and growth in traditional channels slows, these businesses can use optimization services to gain competitive advantage and propel online revenues.

Next Generation Product Recommendations
This white paper discusses the flaws that have inhibited broader adoption of earlier automated recommendations solutions, and presents the advantages available with the latest generation of solutions. The paper also illustrates how a leading retail brand has implemented an automated recommendations solution and realized a significant, positive business impact.

Live Help: The Power of Click to Call and Click to Chat
Like many companies, you may be struggling with key decisions: Should you add voice or text chat to provide that essential "just-in-time" help? Where is the best place to start for the biggest ROI impact? A growing number of successful online businesses have discovered that offering both live voice and chat help is the best approach to maximize online sales and retention. The decision now is how to get started and figure out what "mix" of live voice and chat help makes sense for your business.

Call Tracking: Measuring Campaign Effectiveness the Old Fashioned Way
Marketers, publishers and agencies are rediscovering a tool for generating leads and proving ROI to their clients...the telephone. New technology has made call tracking affordable and scalable to the needs of both national and local advertisers. See how call tracking and monitoring technology is being used to generate qualified leads and measure campaign effectiveness across any online or offline medium, including print, Web, television and radio campaigns.