COREMEDIA LIVECONTEXT BROCHURE
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The Era of the Experience-Driven Shopper
As e-Commerce expands in both scope and importance, it creates new challenges for companies hoping to provide unified customer experiences that differentiate, generate revenue and improve customer loyalty.
A vast array of connected digital devices has put a portable shopping device in everyone’s hands, ushering in the “age of the empowered consumer” and forever changing the rules of business as usual. This new breed of consumer is more informed, more empowered, and increasingly reliant on a social community to make purchasing decisions.
E-Commerce is shifting from an era dominated by Transactional Commerce to one harness-ing Experiential Commerce. Transactional commerce is focused on price and efficiency — prioritizing tools that help shoppers zero in on a specific product and convert quickly. But it also assumes that shoppers know what they want to buy and that price is the most important factor.
In contrast, experiential commerce is more immersive, attempting to understand the shopper throughout their journey and develop an emotional connection that delights, inspires and informs. These experiences have been common in retail stores for decades but have been neglected online, as the focus has largely been on the mechanics of a merchant’s interaction with a customer.
Unfortunately, most companies are not prepared to cater to experiential commerce. To begin with, they often lack the appropri-ate technology, skills and processes. And many have entirely separate teams and systems for managing brand/marketing content and their e-Commerce systems. As a result, it is very difficult for companies to create and deliver content-based, emotional shopping experiences that cross multiple channels and inspire this new breed of experiential shopper.
CoreMedia is prepared to solve this problem by helping companies using IBM WebSphere Commerce to transform their traditional, transactional e-Commerce approach and usher in this next generation of experiential shopping.
“It is no longer enough to
enable an online catalog
and transactional
e-Commerce: Today’s
marketers want to tell
brand and product
stories through the
deep personalization
and contextualization of
content and interactive
digital experiences.”
Peter Sheldon and Stephen Powers “Content and Commerce: The Odd Couple or The Power Couple.” November 2013.Forrester Research, Inc.
Transactional
Commerce
Experiential
Commerce
Transactional commerce focuses on optimizing the mechanics of shopper interactions. Experiential commerce is immersive, attempting to understand the shopper throughout their journey and develop an emotional connection that delights, inspires and informs.CoreMedia LiveContext
at a Glance
CoreMedia LiveContext is a next-generation digital engagement application that empowers e-Commerce and marketing professionals to incrementally transform their online stores by infusing them with visually engaging experiences and immersive content. Based on deep, real-time IBM WebSphere Commerce integration, it allows them to create and manage blended, content-rich shopping experiences.
CoreMedia LiveContext enables companies to transform their online stores with:
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gContent marketing and story-telling
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gA simple yet powerful design environment for business users
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gUnrestricted layout and design options
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gBuilt-in social tools and moderation
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gDigital asset management
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gResponsive and adaptive design for multi-touchpoint delivery
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gA validated solution based on real-time integration with IBM WebSphere Commerce
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gEvolutionary approach that enables you to grow-as-you-go, and no need to rip and replace
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gRapid, fixed price implementation
The benefits for companies that adopt this next-generation application are:
g
gIncreased visitor traffic and engagement
Blend product information, pricing, personalization, and marketing capabilities in real-time to create, preview and publish dynamic online brand experiences.
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Transform the e-Commerce Experience
with CoreMedia LiveContext
When customers interact with a company they expect a unified experience across all channels. However, brand and commerce interactions typically exist in different worlds, forcing shoppers to navigate these disconnected worlds on their own. These disconnected experiences result in “friction” and, not surprisingly, many choose to abandon brand sites entirely and address their educational and inspirational needs elsewhere.
This siloed approach to building online shops and brand identities is unable to effectively address the growing demands of this new breed of empowered, experience-driven digital consumer.
CoreMedia is able to leverage its 18 years of experience in delivering online platforms for leading enterprise brands to address the demand for experiential commerce from IBM WebSphere Commerce users. CoreMedia LiveContext provides the foundation with its three key components: Visual Engagement, Immersive Content and Incremental Innovation.
Transactional
Commerce
Experiential
Commerce
Visual
Engagement
Immersive
Content
Incremental
Innovation
g gStunning design elements g gExciting layouts g gResponsive and adaptive design g gBlended marketing and product content
g gProduct aligned storytelling g gRich media g gGrow-as-you-go g gIBM validated solution g
gFixed price rapid implementation
Visual Engagement Attracts Shoppers
A fairly rigid, catalog-driven structure for displaying and navigating products is very effective for transactional commerce but leads to online stores that lack differentiation. With 92.6% of shoppers indicating that visuals are the most influential factor affecting a purchase decision, the visual impact must be move beyond cookie cutter displays. Many stores are also unable to provide experiences that are optimized for mobile devices or are struggling with the duplication of effort as separate teams attempt to cater for these touchpoints.
To address these limitations in a cost effective and flexible way, CoreMedia has provided the following three intuitive, pre-built capabilities that can be deployed out-of-the-box by marketing and e-Commerce professionals.
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Entice Shoppers with Stunning Design ElementsCoreMedia LiveContext provides business users with control over the look and feel of their content. It provides numerous visually appealing, free form layout options and a comprehensive catalog of design elements — including slide shows, carousel views, tabs, and more.
Because CoreMedia LiveContext separates content from layout and presentation, business users can quickly restructure and re-use content in a variety of styles and layouts to maximize impact and effectiveness.
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Rapidly Extend IBM WebSphere Online Stores and Incorporate Exciting LayoutsCoreMedia LiveContext gives companies the freedom to operate “outside the box” of rigid site templates and navigational hierarchies.
By providing pre-built site templates CoreMedia makes it easy for marketers and e-Commerce professionals to rapidly extend and enhance their stores without involving IT.
They can add new nodes to the main navigation and blend commerce and content into the any store page and its navigational structure.
CoreMedia LiveContext also provides support for a wide range of design approaches includes parallax and long scrolling.
92.6% of shoppers
said that visuals are
the most influential
factor affecting a
purchase decision.
Source:
Research study conducted by the Seoul International Color Expo, 2004.
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Master Multi-Channel Commerce with Responsive, Adaptive Design and ManagementTo address the growing importance of multi-touchpoint online experiences,
CoreMedia LiveContext provides built-in responsive and adaptive Web capabilities as a foundation for building modern, effective user experiences. CoreMedia LiveContext’s fluid page grids and flexible image handling is based on modern responsive Web design technologies (including HTML5, CSS3, and Media Queries) that adapt to the screen width of and browser on any device — from smartphones and tablets all the way to desktop PCs.
CoreMedia LiveContext allows marketing and e-Commerce professionals to create a variety of standard image views for different aspect ratios or devices without duplicating the original image. The system also allows business users to manually override these views and adjust the focus points to cater for various devices or screen sizes.
CoreMedia LiveContext also helps companies organize and deliver their content with sophisticated tagging and asset management capabilities. These tools enable the system to automatically identify the device and deliver relevant, device-specific content.
By enabling flexible, fluid and visually inspiring online stores, CoreMedia ensures that companies can reach their customers with a branded experience across all devices and stages of the customer journey.
Desktop
CoreMedia supports modern responsive Web design technologies to adapt the online experience for any platform or device.
Tablet Smartphone
“In an era of consistent
cross-channel digital
experiences, customers
need unified experiences
while marketers and
eBusiness professionals
need the tools to manage
these experiences.”
Peter Sheldon and Stephen Powers “Content and Commerce: The Odd Couple or The Power Couple.” November 2013.
Immersive Content Increases Engagement
To ensure that e-Commerce experiences are as relevant, unified and “frictionless” as possible, CoreMedia LiveContext engages the new breed of experience-driven shopper with these three primary capabilities:
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Blend Marketing and Product InformationContent created and managed in CoreMedia LiveContext can be combined with real-time product information from IBM WebSphere Commerce and brought into the online store. The use of that blended content will vary depending on which aspects of the online store are being addressed:
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gHome pages and Product Category pages can be enhanced with interactive
image maps, rich media, inspirational content, and social analytics. This content can be personalized based on user profile, cart contents, past purchases, social activity, and more. And to ensure that the path to purchase is always clear and up-to-date, all of this content can be instantly blended and dynamically delivered at runtime with real-time product data including pricing, availability, discounts, and more.
g
gProduct detail pages and checkout pages can be augmented with rich media
and social content including customer ratings and reviews, instructional videos, document downloads, support information, related product lists or anything else to secure conversion, generate upsell opportunities, or enhance the post- purchasing process.
g
gCampaign pages and Microsites that focus on a specific product line or branding
concept can be created and seamlessly inserted into the online store or optimized for multi-channel publishing. And CoreMedia LiveContext makes it easy to manage seasonal campaigns with advanced time-based publishing tools that assign content a valid start and end date.
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Attract and Keep Visitors Engaged with Product Aligned StorytellingSome shoppers know exactly what they want — others don’t. Some are driven primarily by price and availability, whereas others have an emotional attachment to a particular brand that is best addressed through storytelling.
Stories can be constructed around virtually any product or collection of products in IBM WebSphere Commerce. When products are combined together with rich media as part of a real-life user story, they do a much better job of addressing the practical and emotional needs of the shopper.
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These stories can include additional lifestyle content and show the product in use in a variety of real-world contexts, including seasonal, current topics and trends, that inspire and engage shoppers on a far deeper level compared to scrolling through a long list of unrelated products.
CoreMedia LiveContext helps companies tell these brand stories by enabling marketing and e-Commerce professionals using IBM WebSphere Commerce to create inspirational content that seamlessly embeds product and cart information. Because story telling also lends itself to social communities, CoreMedia LiveContext provides a broad range of pre-built social capabilities including ratings, comments, discussions, and rich media uploads. Business users have powerful moderation tools to manage the conversation, maintain control over their brand and curate the best content to publish to their sites.
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Increase Product Impact with Immersive, Rich MediaSince visual presentation is the top factor affecting a consumer’s purchase decision, companies must make their Web stores aesthetically appealing and visually engaging. A static online catalog with basic images and product details no longer impresses or inspires.
CoreMedia LiveContext makes it easy to manage, edit, and integrate a wide variety of rich media content types including images, PDFs, binary files, style sheets, and sophisticated page layouts.
Marketing and e-Commerce professionals can upload content from multiple sources (including user generated content), create image maps and galleries, integrate videos, and leverage a comprehensive library of content templates and styles. CoreMedia also supplies a powerful image-editing tool with rich out-of-the-box functionality that includes cropping, rotation and filtering.
By adding increasing amounts of relevant, searchable content, CoreMedia LiveContext helps to improve organic site ranking in search engines and drive traffic from earned media while honoring and applying any existing URL and SEO rules.
The same blended approach is also applied to the underlying site search capabilities for both shoppers and business users. They can perform a unified search across all content and commerce items with results presented from both environments.
Incremental Innovation that Delivers Results
Speed and predictability are essential in today‘s fast-paced e-Commerce marketplace. Complex, one-off projects increase risk and limit opportunity. In fact, the Kinsey Group found that 45% of large projects run over budget and 56% deliver less functionality than predicted.
Shifting approaches — from transactional to experiential — is not something that can happen overnight. Although companies face enormous pressure to transform their online properties to deliver improved customer experiences across any platform, they need to manage their level of risk by taking an evolutionary and predictable approach that lays a sustainable foundation for future growth.
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Grow-as-you-go Approach Ensures Immediate Value and Reduces RiskCoreMedia LiveContext provides a safer, more flexible, and more “future-proof” solution. The “grow-as-you-go” implementation approach is designed to provide predictable results at a reasonable price. Solutions like this are meant to serve as the foundation for a longer-term customer experience strategy, not a “one-and-done” marketing campaign. It is an evolutionary implementation process, and CoreMedia supports companies at every stage of their growth.
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Protect Your Investments with a Validated IBM SolutionCoreMedia LiveContext provides seamless integration with your IBM WebSphere Commerce platform, including the ability to leverage its segmentation and personalization capabilities.
When companies purchase CoreMedia LiveContext, they are getting access to a fully productized offering that has been officially validated for use. This allows them to protect their existing investments and get the most of both their marketing and e-Commerce systems.
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Reduce Risk with a Predictable, Fixed Price ImplementationCoreMedia provides a predictable, convenient implementation option called the Express Deployment Solution (EDS). EDS is a fixed-price, fixed-scope deployment offering that ensures customers can implement CoreMedia LiveContext within a reasonable timeframe, at a predictable price with minimal risk. EDS projects are often delivered in less than 10 weeks, and are aligned with tangible business value. CoreMedia LiveContext does not require a huge investment or re-working of the existing IBM WebSphere Commerce store. It is designed to augment the existing
Visual Engagement
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Empower e-Commerce Professionals with a Flexible, Intuitive Design EnvironmentCoreMedia LiveContext addresses the challenges faced by marketing and e-Commerce professionals with its innovative design environment — the CoreMedia Studio. CoreMedia Studio is a dynamic, Web-based interface for the design, creation and delivery of content driven experiences that can be seamlessly integrated into your IBM WebSphere Commerce online store. It’s here that business users will feel at home as they create, preview, and publish compelling pages and microsites that seamlessly blend brand content (including editorial, social, personalized, and rich media content) with e-Commerce information (products, packages, promotions, and more).
And, unlike some Web tools, CoreMedia Studio is information-based, meaning that it allows business users to manage and reuse individual content assets — not just static pages. They can keep pace with market and social trends by creating appealing content and publishing within minutes without the need for IT involvement.
Access all library content, external content and bookmarks Select page layout with multiple styles Place multiple content items Initiate approval, publishing, and translation processes Access content properties and attributes Real-time preview of desktop, mobile and tablet
experiences Real-time preview on external devices Real-time preview of persona and time-based experiences
Form View Pane
for management of content elements
Preview Pane
for preview of content in context
CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced: Transforming
the Digital Customer Experience
Transforming the online store with blended content and commerce experiences is a critical step toward meeting the needs of experience-driven shoppers. For some companies, however — particularly those with global Web properties or multiple brand sites — this may not be enough.
Companies that want to achieve real competitive differentiation need to manage unified omni-channel experiences with an intelligent and flexible blend of content management and e-Commerce functionality that encompasses all of a company’s digital customer experience initiatives.
The goal is to provide consumers with an immersive and engaging experience that incorporates a seamless hand-off between the discovery, decision, checkout and post-purchase processes. Likewise, marketers and e-Commerce professionals should not have to struggle with disconnected tools and systems on the backend to create and deliver these experiences.
To meet this need, CoreMedia provides an optional set of advanced features that enable the solution to serve as a centralized management and engagement hub for blended brand experiences across all of a companies Web properties — including multi-language sites.
Going Beyond the Transformed Online Store
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Transactional
Commerce
Experiential
Commerce
VisualEngagement Immersive Content Incremental Innovation
“A fragmented and
poorly integrated digital
presence that confuses
the customer, is difficult
to manage, and,
ultimately, leaves
revenue on the table.”
Peter Sheldon and Stephen Powers “Content and Commerce: The Odd Couple or The Power Couple.” November 2013.12
A Digital Experience Hub for Unified Customer Experiences
CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced is based on a unique integration of CoreMedia CMS and IBM WebSphere Commerce platforms that utilizes each system for its strengths to deliver engaging customer experiences online as well as a set of simple, intuitive back-end tools that empower rather than hinder business users.
With these advanced features, companies can do more than just transform their existing online shops. They can also bring blended experiences and dedicated e-Commerce functionality (shopping cart, check out, product catalog, etc.) into their omni-channel marketing sites.
It’s not enough for these features to exist in isolation, however. In order to stay competitive and effectively deploy new services and technologies, Web Content Management and e-Commerce systems must work in tight coordination with all other enterprise systems. CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced provides an extensible and easy to integrate architecture that orchestrates digital content and data from multiple sources — including leading Web analytics engines such as Google Analytics and SiteCatalyst. The advanced feature set also includes pre-built integrations with a range of key third party content sources including RSS feeds and video management platforms.
Expand Reach and Brand Consistency with Effective Brand
Management
It is extremely difficult to manage the quality, consistency, and accuracy of marketing content and product information that is shared across multiple corporate brand sites or global sites. Content is often maintained in separate systems, leading to increased costs and wasteful, redundant processes. This can make the roll out of global and corporate-wide campaigns difficult, expensive and time consuming. This is sometimes compounded by the complexity of local laws, customs, and usage rights.
CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced masters the challenges of multi-site management with its powerful workflow tools and uniquely flexible architecture.
CoreMedia LiveContext’s flexible architecture makes it easy to deploy new services and integrate with existing enterprise systems.
MULTI-TOUCHPOINT DELIVERY AND DIALOG DIVERSE CONTENT ECOSYSTEM
Experience
Context
CRM ANALYTICS WCM MARKETING AUTOMATIONDigital
Experience
Hub
e-COMMERCECreate Content Once and Easily Localize it for Different Sites
CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced acts as a centralized management and engagement hub capable of delivering brand content and e-Commerce experiences to separate regional sites or brands — in multiple languages. Local business users can customize virtually all aspects of their Web properties including content, structure, templates, and metadata.
CoreMedia simplifies processes and reduces time-to-Web for multi-site, multi-language product launches and marketing campaigns. It allows business users to launch new sites quickly and easily update the status of local sites when content on the master sites changes. Local sites can be managed independently or centrally so that they can be as different or as similar as needed.
Get the Most Out of Existing Investments with Reusable Content and Site Layouts
Because CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced separates content from presentation, efficiencies can be gained and the value of corporate content maximized by creating content once and reusing it on multiple Web properties without the need for duplication. Content and layouts can be shared or reused across sites based on user, group or site permissions.
Faster Time-to-Web for Regional Content with Smart Translation Workflows
CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced supports end-to-end translation workflows to translate content into multiple languages and supports easy integration with leading translation management systems via standard exchange formats such as XLIFF.
Business users can initiate the translation process by selecting a master content item, creating a new language variant and sending it to a colleague or external agency for translation and localization. Translators have access to a side-by-side view of their new content alongside the original language version to help facilitate the translation process.
Business users can use the CoreMedia LiveContext translation tools to check the status of a translation, receive notifications when a translation is complete, or check when a language variant needs updating.
CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced supports side-by-side translation and integration with leading translation management systems.
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Increase Productivity with Collaborative Teamwork
Content and commerce teams often work in isolation. While e-Commerce workflows are often highly structured and extremely time-sensitive, creative teams are accustomed to a more informal, less-structured process.
The new demands of experiential commerce, however, require these teams to work in a much more coordinated fashion, while still retaining their unique strengths and efficient processes.
Truly effective coordination must support both lightweight and more structured collabora-tion tools that cover the entire content lifecycle from the creacollabora-tion, translacollabora-tion and revision of content all the way through to approval, delivery and analysis.
Work Smarter and Faster and with Flexible Content Sets
CoreMedia LiveContext ensures that business users can work together — across departments and pre-defined roles — on shared content sets of multiple related assets.
They can define and share these content sets, publish new or modified assets in a set with a single click, or propose a content set for approval.
Business users also have access to a customizable “My Edited Content” area that automatically displays all content they have edited within a specified time frame. They can then place these items into a new content set for sharing or into a workflow for publication.
This lightweight collaboration environment makes it easy to adapt to unforeseen situations and interruptions in the typical work environment (e.g. allow for work to continue when somebody is on leave).
Easy Integration with Advanced Approval and Publishing Workflows
Sometimes companies need more than just lightweight collaboration, however. To support more complex publishing environments, CoreMedia LiveContext Advanced provides ease of integration with a range of more advanced and structured multi-step publishing and approval workflows.
Easily find content that was edited during a specified time frame with “My Edited Content.”
My Edited Content area
IBM and CoreMedia: A Unique Combination
CoreMedia LiveContext is the result of a deep integration between two exceptional enterprise technology providers: CoreMedia and IBM.
Each system is utilized for its strengths. IBM WebSphere Commerce provides a powerful customer interaction platform for cross-channel commerce. CoreMedia is an expert at delivering engaging, contextual customer experiences across all touchpoints.
Working together, CoreMedia and IBM provide a rich experience-driven Commerce solution to drive brand building and enrich the product catalog, with tools that ensure maximum flexibility of design and layout.
About CoreMedia
CoreMedia is a leading digital experience (DX) company that has been powering the online strategy of organizations across varied industries for more than 19 years. We partner with our customers to connect them with their audiences wherever they are by seamlessly integrating digital, e-Commerce and social media assets, accelerating time to market, and increasing the productivity of business users. Our solutions also help transform e-Commerce stores by infusing visually compelling and immersive content into the online customer experience, resulting in increased engagement, sales, and loyalty.
Established in 1996, CoreMedia is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, with offices in San Francisco, Washington, London and Singapore. CoreMedia’s clients include global brands, such as Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), BILD, CLAAS, Continental, Deutsche Telekom, Henkel, Internet Broadcasting, Office Depot and Telefónica Germany.
For more information, please our website: www.coremedia.com
Email: [email protected]
Copyright 2015. CoreMedia Corporation. All rights reserved. IBM and WebSphere are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”) in the United States and in several other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 0415-PB-US-LCX001
The Americas
CoreMedia Corporation 114 Sansome Street, Suite 1300 San Francisco, CA 94104 USA Tel + 1.415.371.0400 CoreMedia Corporation 1001 N. 19th Street, Suite 1200 Arlington, VA 22209 USA Tel + 1.703.945.1079
Europe, Middle East and Africa
CoreMedia Ltd. 90 Long Acre Covent Garden London WC2E 9RZ United Kingdom Tel + 44.207.849.3317 Asia Pacific
CoreMedia Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. 25 International Business Park #0–106 German Centre Singapore 609916 Tel + 65.6562.8866