EPiServer adds advanced behavioral merchandising capabilities to increase e-commerce conversions

Partnership with Apptus integrates personalization, intelligent search and recommendations to enhance the online shopping experience offered by e-commerce enterprises

London, UK: EPiServer, an innovator in multichannel digital marketing and e-commerce software, today [September 11, 2012] announced the availability of behavioral merchandising for EPiServer Commerce through a partnership with Apptus and the integration of Apptus behavioral merchandising. The add-on uses Apptus’ self-learning software to automatically generate product navigation, personalized recommendations and offers for individual visitors, helping online retailers increase customer satisfaction, conversion rates and order values.

The behavioral merchandising software features ‘plug and play’ integration with EPiServer Commerce, minimizing implementation time and risk, and can be deployed easily on any number of pages using pre-built widgets. Utilizing customer behavioral data in this way is a cost effective method for organizations to improve conversion rates without the need for additional resource.

The auto-generation of tailored content provided by behavioral merchandising removes the need for merchandisers to build and maintain multiple rules and settings in order to deliver a personalized, up to date experience. Therefore it is particularly suited to helping companies with large or complex product catalogs to present customers with the most relevant search results, offers and product recommendations.

The automatic recommendations are based on an array of data including past purchases, trending top sellers, shopping basket, and recent activity. Apptus’ technology is also the only existing solution that uses the same behavioral software engine to power both search/navigation and recommendation functions.

“Taking e-commerce to the next level means personalization is an essential part of the online shopping experience, but providing a personalized visitor experience based on huge and complex product catalogs can be a real challenge," said Bob Egner, vice president of product management at EPiServer. “This new behavioral merchandising add-on will reduce the work required for our customers to personalize while providing a powerful tool that enables them to increase conversions and boost order values.”

Michael Mokhberi, CEO at Apptus said, "Creating relevance in sales-related interactions is a great challenge for online retailers. Choosing a combination of EPiServer Commerce and Apptus Behavioral Merchandising means a unified and easy-to-install solution for personalized search, navigation and recommendations. Until now, solutions with this level of advanced capabilities have only been available to large retailers with multi-million dollar budgets. The cooperation between Apptus and EPiServer enables unparalleled relevance for online retailers.”

For further information on Apptus behavioral merchandising for EPiServer Commerce, please visit: www.episerver.com/addons/apptus