NetSuite Adds New E-Commerce Features
NetSuite, a Web-based application provider, recently announced two new modules designed to further enhance its e-commerce capabilities and provide deeper integration with the suite's financial, inventory management and sales and customer-support systems.
The San Mateo, Calif.-based company will add new analytics and site-building modules to the application suite's e-commerce tools, which will now be called NetCommerce. Adding the NetCommerce moniker to the e-commerce application is largely about marketing and positioning as the company “probably won't be selling it as a standalone product.” according to Zach Nelson, chief executive officer of NetSuite. However, it demonstrates that NetSuite realizes just how important integration among accounting, inventory, CRM, and Web stores is to business efficiency these days.
When it comes to integration from the Web store to customer service to marketing to inventory to accounting, few companies offer the end-to-end integration of NetSuite. “We are in the second generation of e-commerce,” Baruch Goldwasser, senior product manager at NetSuite, says. “The focus is now on multi-channel integration, customer self-service and integrated end-to-end processes.”
More and more, Goldwasser says, a business' Web site and storefront is its face. “Customers want a single point of contact. They expect a company's physical store and Web site to communicate.”
The NetCommerce Era Begins
NetCommerce Analytics is designed to incorporate both trend and customer-specific behavioral data, according to the company. Marketing reports measure revenue and traffic generated from all channels, campaigns and keywords. In addition to a macro view, you can also drill down to individual customers' behavior to track shopping cart activity, how many times they have visited, what pages they viewed, when they viewed each page and how they found your site and so on.
New cart-abandonment reports are designed to provide both aggregate and detailed information on shopping patterns. Overall abandonment rates can be measured for any date range and on a per-item basis. You can choose to have abandonment reports e-mailed to you several times a day, highlighting unusual shopping patterns.
NetCommerce Site Builder helps companies build and manage customizable sites created with any tool (such as Macromedia Dreamweaver) and integrate with NetSuite's accounting, inventory and customer management capabilities. It also lets companies sell on-line in any language and in any currency chosen by the Web shopper.
NetCommerce Site Builder also includes new search tools to provide merchants with customizable search forms that can query any item field in the database, determine the result fields and limit results based on any criteria such as price or manufacturer. According to NetSuite, you can publish multiple search forms to a Web site, further targeting results. NetCommerce Analytics and Site Builder will be available for an additional fee, which has not yet been determined, according to the company. Features offered in the basic NetSuite's NetCommerce service include:
- Ability to generate template-based Web sites complete with pricing and inventory data held in NetSuite
- Transaction capabilities including purchase orders and real-time credit card payments
- Order management with fulfillment and billing workflow
- CRM capabilities to record all transactions and interactions
- Customer self-service portals to track shipments, view orders and manage support issues
- Affiliate and E-mail marketing tools and reports to manage marketing campaigns including click-through rates, ROI of each campaign and revenue generated from each partner
- Personalized price lists and content
The NetCommerce Analytics and NetCommerce Site Builder modules will be available in the summer.
Dan Muse is executive editor of Internet.com's Small Business Channel and EarthWeb's Networking & Communications Channe .
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Dan Muse is a journalist and digital content specialist. He was a leader of content teams, covering topics of interest to business leaders as well as technology decision makers. He also wrote and edited articles on a wide variety of subjects. He was the editor in Chief of CIO.com (IDG Brands) and the CIO Digital Magazine. HeI worked alongside organizations like Drexel University and Deloitte. Specialties: Content Strategy, SEO, Analytics and Editing and Writing. Brand Positioning, Content Management Systems. Technology Journalism. Audience development, Executive Leadership, Team Development.
