Houten, 19 December 2002 - BroadVision, Inc. (Nasdaq: BVSN), the leading provider of enterprise business portal applications and content management, provides the software that powers hundreds of online stores for leading retailers worldwide.
According to recent Gartner Group research, online shoppers in the U.S. will spend an average of $235 for holiday Internet purchases, more than a quarter of the total $800 they plan to spend on gifts. Gartner predicts that online holiday sales worldwide will total $38.2 billion, a 48.4 percent increase from 2001. BroadVision customers are well-positioned to take advantage of the growing number of people who will be doing their holiday shopping online this year.
BroadVision’s retail customers range from mass retailers --including Sears and Circuit City --to specialty retailers, including RedEnvelope, recently named Best of the Web by Internet Retailer. All of these retailers are taking advantage of BroadVision's industry-leading enterprise business portal e-commerce applications to provide a higher level of service to their customers.
RedEnvelope, an online and mail order specialty gift retailer, uses Gift Reminders to help registered users remember gift-giving occasions and includes gift suggestions appropriate for the recipient and occasion. The site supports multiple ship-to addresses and includes a recipient list, which remembers past recipient names and vital statistics.
The redenvelope.com site is tightly integrated with RedEnvelope's call center and print catalog. Shoppers can review their order histories and track orders online whether the order was placed online or over the phone. Similarly, RedEnvelope's call center staff has access to the same customer view. The "quickorder" feature lets online shoppers quickly order any catalog item by number, without having to search the site.
"We've always tried to create as entertaining, interesting and inspiring an experience as you can get online," notes Hillary Billings, chairman and chief marketing officer, RedEnvelope.
Circuit City's online superstore offers side-by-side feature and price comparisons of 1,400 brand-name electronics, appliances and personal computers. After completing online transactions, customers can avoid shipping charges and delays by picking up purchases at their local Circuit City store. Customers can also take advantage of real-time credit authorization and inventory reservation.
Sears, a leading U.S. retailer of apparel, home and automotive products and services, utilizes BroadVision’s personalization technology to tailor content to the interest of each customer. A virtual, free-standing insert, updated twice weekly, reflects the latest Sears in-store promotions. "PartsDirect," which includes over 90,000 diagrams, helps customers find parts for appliances, lawn equipment, power tools and home electronics. Online shoppers benefit from online tracking of order status and repair service requests. The company has found that sears.com influences one out of every ten in-store purchases of major appliances, accounting for more than $500 million of in-store sales in that category alone.
Rand McNally, the world’s premier provider of mapping and travel solutions, operates map and travel stores across the United States as well as an online store with more than 4,500 travel products. In addition to purchasing travel-related products, site visitors can do online trip-planning and get turn-by-turn driving directions. After launching their BroadVision-powered site, traffic more than doubled from the previous year and shopping cart abandonment was only 20 percent -- well below the industry average of 75 percent.
Chelsea Interactive leverages BroadVision technology to provide a common, multi-tiered technology platform for brands that include Cole Haan, Elisabeth by Liz Claiborne, Maidenform, Ralph Lauren and Timberland. The top tier of these sites presents a distinctive look and feel, controlled by each brand. Below that, all the brands share features and functionality, including shopping bags, store locators, product detail, and purchase history.
"Five out of the top ten Fortune 500 retailers use BroadVision to power their enterprise business portals," says Sanjay Gupta, senior vice president of marketing and alliances. "These companies rely on BroadVision’s industry-leading personalization and seamless integration with backend systems to provide shoppers with a more compelling shopping experience -- by presenting them with information and offers geared to their interests and by making it easy to complete and monitor their purchases."
About BroadVision
BroadVision's (Nasdaq: BVSN) enterprise business portal applications create immediate bottom line value by transforming the way organizations do business -- moving relationships with employees, partners and customers to a personalized, self-service model that increases revenues, reduces costs and improves productivity. BroadVision is the leading provider of portal software to Fortune 500 companies that use BroadVision to power their enterprise business portal initiatives--leveraging the web and wireless devices to unify and extend their enterprise applications, information and business processes, to collaborate with over 50 million users.
For more information about BroadVision, Inc., call 650.542.5100, email info@broadvision.com or visit www.broadvision.com.
BroadVision, BroadVision One-To-One, and BroadVision One-To-One Portal are trademarks or registered trademarks of BroadVision, Inc. in the United States and other countries.