ATG Announces Ecosystem of Partners to Complement ATG Products For Next Generation "Web 2.0" Capability

May 2, 2007; 07:17 AM
ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG), whose e-commerce suite powers more top online sellers than any other, today announced it has assembled a rich partner ecosystem of Web 2.0 pioneers to help its customers further enhance the user experience on their Web sites. ATG is showcasing these partners among the sponsors and exhibitors at its annual user conference, ATG Insight Live 2007, being held this week in Charleston, South Carolina. The conference has drawn a record crowd of over 600 attendees.

Through rich media-enabled interfaces and social computing capabilities, consumers shopping ATG-powered sites will find it easier and faster to discover the products they want, evaluate them using realistic graphics and user-generated content, and complete the checkout process. The partnerships complement the robust features available in the ATG Commerce Suite, whether delivered OnDemand (hosted), or via licensed software.

Web 2.0 is a term that has come to describe collaboration and social media tools such as ratings and reviews, blogs, social networking sites, wikis and Really Simple Syndication (RSS), as well as technologies such as AJAX and Flex that are used to build rich internet applications (RIA) such as rich shopping carts, apparel outfitting solutions, single pane shopping and guided product configurators. User generated content applications and rich media interfaces are more powerful when deployed with the ATG Commerce Suite.

User Generated Content (UGC)

The ATG Commerce Suite allows ratings and reviews partners to leverage consumer profile data and shopping behavior to personalize the content that shoppers see. For example, instead of showing both casual and professional photographers all the reviews available for a camera, they could see reviews from “people like them.”

ATG’s powerful searchandising solutions enable merchandisers to incorporate content provided by ratings engines into their offer strategies. For example, a merchandiser could choose to present search query matches in order of the customer ratings the products have received. Or, a merchandiser could choose to offer, as an upsell, products which have received a higher user rating than the product selected by the shopper.

Current user generated content partners include:

• Bazaarvoice offers a uniquely customizable ratings and reviews infrastructure. The Bazaarvoice solution includes completely configurable implementation, account-specific content moderation, community management, analytics and support.. Bazaarvoice customers own all of their ratings and reviews content and can amplify its marketing and natural search traffic-driving potential through SyndicateVoice. SyndicateVoice includes branded content syndication to 11 of the world’s largest comparison shopping sites, including MSN, Pricerunner.com, and Smarter.com.
• PowerReviews provides customer reviews and customer-driven merchandising solutions to multi-channel retailers to help convert more shoppers, and attract new shoppers to their websites. PowerReviews’ unique tag-based approach to reviews empowers shoppers with authentic peer-level input at each step in the shopping process, helping them find, compare and decide on the right product for them. PowerReviews offers its service on a fully-managed basis, with no downtime risk of a traditional ASP and no up-front fees.

Rich Media

Rich media applications and interfaces provide users with a more realistic view of the products they are evaluating, giving them confidence in their selections and increasing conversion rates. In addition, they allow shopper interactions during the buying process to be much more fluid; for example, making cross-sell offers as an inherently natural part of the shopping cart and checkout process, thus increasing order size.

The ATG Commerce Suite provides the underlying content and logic that implements the merchant’s strategy and drives these displays. For example, the ATG catalog and merchandising tools may drive what colors and fabric should be presented, or what cross-sell offer should be made at what moment, personalized to a specific customer.

Examples of rich user experiences deployed on the ATG Commerce platform can be seen at many sites, including www.nau.com, www.teamworkathletic.com and www.restorationhardware.com.

Current rich media/shopping partners include:

• Allurent makes shopping your website easier, more compelling, and fun. Their innovative e-commerce products deliver rich interactions throughout the shopping lifecycle, from browsing to choosing to buying. The result is a superior shopping experience leading to more satisfied customers and greater sales. ATG recently announced the availability of Allurent products as an option with ATG Commerce OnDemand
• LiquidPixels’ enables ATG's customers to easily enhance their ATG-powered merchandising sites with Dynamic Imaging solutions such as Interactive Zoom and Pan, Spin, Mix-and-Match, Personalized Product Photos, Colorization, Fabric and Texture Draping , Individualized Dynamic eMail, Product Configurators, and eCatalogs. Using LiquidPixels' LiquiFire services through ATG OnDemand, customized visual content is created automatically on-the-fly providing powerfully engaging rich media interfaces that result in increased conversions.
• Scene7 provides the industry’s leading on-demand rich media platform and is integrated with more ATG customer implementations than any other. Scene7's solutions are built on an integrated technology platform for unrivaled breadth, depth, scalability and ease of use. Solutions include Dynamic Imaging (real-time sizing, zoom, 360 degree spin & rotate, colorize, templating), eCatalogs, eVideos, Product Configurators, Targeted email & print, and Image Management.

In addition to these software providers, ATG works closely with a number of interactive agencies and systems integrators who specialize in next generation rich media technologies. Among others, they include:

• Avenue A | Razorfish is the largest interactive marketing and technology services firm in the U.S., with solutions entrenched in deep technology, rigorous analytics and a rich understanding of customer needs, including award-winning web media and creative, search marketing services, email marketing/eCRM, and world-class creative, design and implementation.
• Blast Radius helps businesses deliver innovative and profitable customer experiences by combining business strategy, experience design, and industry-leading technologies. Blast Radius has formed relationships with ATG customers including AOL, BMW, Jenny Craig, Newell Rubbermaid, Nike, Nintendo, Philips and NAU.
• CGI is one of the largest independent information technology and business process services firms in the world. With approximately 25,000 professionals, CGI provides end-to-end IT and business process services to clients worldwide from offices in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific as well as from centres of excellence in North America, Europe and India.
• Resource Interactive, known widely for its revolutionizing consumer insights, is an independent interactive agency that helps companies such as Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, L.L. Bean, Apple, Victoria's Secret, Sherwin-Williams and Hewlett-Packard to build innovative Web and consumer experiences that drive sales, deepen brand loyalty, and create community.
• Sapient, a global innovation leader in marketing, business operations, and technology, combining user insight, award-winning design and technology to help clients determine and optimize the channels for their customers, committed to creativity, client success, and delivering extraordinary value.
• LBI is the leading European full service and fully integrated digital agency network servicing clients with marketing and technology solutions. Formed by the merger of LB Icon and Framfab last year, LBI now has a combined force of over 1200 professionals in 26 offices across the globe.

“Web 2.0 technologies not only enable more appealing user interactions, they actually increase conversion rates and order size," said Cliff Conneighton, senior vice president of marketing, ATG. "The rich media applications present products more realistically, and the user generated content gives shoppers the confidence that comes from objective recommendations. We have assembled an ecosystem of partners with the most widely used and acclaimed technologies, and combining them with the leading personalization capabilities of the ATG Commerce Suite creates a uniquely compelling shopping experience.”

About ATG

ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG) makes the software and delivers the on demand solutions that the world's most customer-conscious companies use to power their e-commerce web sites, attract prospects, convert them to buyers and ensure their satisfaction so they become loyal, repeat, profitable customers. Our e-commerce suite is ranked the #1 current offering and #1 in strategy by the industry's most influential analyst firms, and powers more of the top 300 internet retailers than any other vendor. Our eStara brand provides customer interaction solutions to enhance conversions and customer support, and delivers the world's most widely used click-to-call service. ATG's solutions are used by over 900 major brands, including Amazon, American Eagle Outfitters, AOL, AT&T, Best Buy, B&Q Cabela’s, Carrefour, Cingular, Coca Cola, Continental Airlines, CVS, Dell, DirecTV, El Corte Ingles, Expedia, France Telecom, Harvard Business School Publishing, Hewlett-Packard, Hilton, HSBC, Intuit, J. Crew, Macy's, Meredith, Microsoft, Neiman Marcus, New York & Company, Nokia, OfficeMax, PayPal, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Sears, Sony, Symantec, Target, T-Mobile, Urban Outfitters, Verizon, Viacom, Vodafone and Walgreens. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with additional locations throughout North America and Europe. For more information about ATG, please visit www.atg.com.

© 2007 Art Technology Group, Inc. ATG and Art Technology Group are registered trademarks of Art Technology Group, Inc. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause ATG's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important risk factors affecting ATG's business generally may be found in its periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov . Risk factors related to the subject matter of this press release include the possibility that the ATG product deployment will not be successful, on time or significantly enhance the user's Internet experience or will not increase customer revenue across brands; that those customers leveraging ATG will not have the opportunity to increase revenue and decrease future costs; the need to adapt to rapid changes so products do not become obsolete; the possibility of errors in ATG's software products; the possibility that the solution will not make customer implementations faster or more flexible or permit the customer to meet its customer-facing or infrastructure requirements; that the ATG product will not continue to be integrated with third party applications servers or will not support all Web services enabled systems; that ATG's product strategy may change in the future; and the risks and costs of intellectual property litigation. ATG undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.