Inktomi Upgrades Commerce Engine

Internet infrastructure software company Inktomi Corp. this week unveiled its
Commerce Engine 3.0, upgraded to include automated merchandising, targeted
opt-in e-mail marketing tools and new feature search capabilities.


In addition, Inktomi Commerce Engine results can now be tightly integrated
with the Inktomi Search Engine and other Web search services, “enabling
portals and destination sites to unlock new revenue streams without
compromising search relevance or performance,” the company said.


The Inktomi Commerce Engine is in use by more than 50 companies in a range of
markets including portals, destination sites, retailing, banks, credit card
services, insurance providers, telecommunications providers, Internet
appliance providers and wireless portals.


3.0 enhancements include:

  • Automated Merchandising: Customer sites can incorporate merchandising offers
    that are automatically generated and targeted from Inktomi’s product
    database, comprising hundreds of merchants and over 5 million products
    Inktomi’s profiling and targeting system dynamically promotes the most
    popular and successful offers into heavier rotation

  • Search-Commerce Integration: This enables portals and destination sites to
    integrate relevant product offers with Web search results. For example, a
    consumer who searches the Web for information on digital cameras would also
    be presented with matching product listings that link directly to merchant
    “buy pages.”

  • Product Spotlight: This opt-in e-mail marketing platform integrates with
    Inktomi’s product database, merchandising and user profiling systems to drive
    overall customer relationships and repeat traffic. Users can sign up for
    offers and alerts via rich HTML e-mail and specify delivery frequency and
    areas of interest
  • Local Merchants: The upgraded platform includes support for local merchant
    listings, allowing consumers to select nearby merchants offering services
    such as installation or same-day delivery

  • Reporting and Analysis Tools: The upgraded Inktomi platform provides a robust
    billing, reporting and data mining infrastructure capable of supporting
    complex global partner networks and a variety of pay-for-performance
    affiliate models


Inktomi’s private-label offering encompasses a rich set of outsourced
commerce services, including merchant recruitment, XML product database
aggregation, full text and product feature searching, targeted merchandising,
user profiling and personalization, affiliate tracking, data mining, billing
and reporting. Commerce Engine 3.0 is expected to
be rolled out during the third quarter of 2000.

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