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IBM Named in Leaders Quadrant for E-Commerce
WebSphere Commerce Listed As a Leader in E-Commerce Magic Quadrant

Independent analyst, Gartner, Inc. recently evaluated the top vendors in e-commerce and determined IBM is a leader in e-commerce. Gartner defines leaders as "technology providers that demonstrate the highest levels of support for B2C and B2B Internet sales."

Improving the online customer experience, enabling Web 2.0 and supporting mobile e-commerce are three goals driving the demand for website redesigns and upgrades. Use this Magic Quadrant during the vendor evaluation and selection process.

What You Need To Know

The economic downturn has spurred investment in online sales technology, as organizations struggle to reduce the overall cost of goods sold, expand addressable markets, and keep up with the online innovation from Amazon.com, eBay and other online leaders servicing consumer markets. Rising standards for the Web experience are creating a demand for rich Internet experiences with user-generated content provided to the seller via product reviews or social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter.

Online buyers want websites to accelerate the processes that perform product search, review relevant information, make comparisons and complete purchases. Tools should help buyers better understand products, and draw on community-based information for buying decisions. Moreover, consistent, orchestrated online experiences are required across multiple points of interaction, including smartphones, to enable contextual awareness that matches customers’ browsing, buying and interaction habits.

Hence, online sales environments are increasingly becoming rich, interactive media that appeal to a growing number and variety of different customer segments. At the same time, e-commerce as a whole continues to gain momentum as a viable, alternative sales channel, where the intensive application of technology helps companies reduce staffing expenses (such as salespeople), attain stronger line of sight on revenue under management, and improve sales and margin expansion in many instances.

Users should select a vendor with a proven record of successful e-commerce implementations, deep functional capabilities and an open Web-services-based architecture. In addition, users should ensure that their e-commerce technology provider:

Provides all key commodity e-commerce components, such as shopping cart management, product catalogs and settlement processes required for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce.
Provides a Web 2.0 rich Internet application (RIA) customer experience with shopping tools, such as sliders for search and single-page check-out, and the ability to leverage user-generated content, such as product reviews, wikis, blogs and Really Simple Syndication (RSS).