'Net Features : digital river

Digital River Launches App Practice Suite

Allison Howen — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

A new suite of tools from e-commerce outsourcing company Digital River are aiming to help online merchants find additional ways to drive revenue across multiple platforms.

The App Practice suite offers online merchants ways to monetize and distribute digital and physical products and services over an abundance of devices, operating systems and commerce channels that buyers use for shopping and engaging with content.

The new suite is part of Digital River’s Global Commerce enterprise solution, and features tools that can be used to increase revenue as well as the lifetime value of consumers – including a solution for cloud billing and subscriptions, a white-labeled enterprise app store, in-app purchasing and marketplaces technology, as well as app monetization and lifecycle optimization services.

“The App Practice further enables online merchants to grow their revenue through alternative channels while maintaining direct relationships with their buyers,” says Mary Suddendorf, group vice president, product at Digital River. “As the retail landscape continues to consolidate and evolve, the direct-to-buyer relationship is more critical than ever before to building and growing a successful global online business.”

360 Degree Analytics Come to Digital River Dashboards

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:47:00 GMT

It's a trend you're likely familiar with first hand - software vendors are increasingly (and rapidly) rolling out much more sophisticated analytics tools within their solutions. Digital River for example has just released 360 Dashboards, a reporting analytics system for its Global Commerce and Commerce Express solutions which is designed to give merchans more detailed metrics on store performance and lifetime value of their customers.

The dashboards are designed to display business related metrics including online store sales, close, rates, shopper recency and frequency, revenue per visitor and more. While most, if not all, e-commerce solutions have some variation of analytics within their dashboards, what makes the Digital River offering interesting is that it puts customer lifetime value front and center.
The system allows merchants to monitor a customers activity based on recency, freqnecy and monetary value (often called RFM metrics). Perhaps more than anything else, these insights provide businesses with a better ability to map and predict shopper engagement. And in today's highly competitive retail environment, that's increasingly important. Digital also makes it possible to analyze and compare the success of several online marketing camapgins and engagements, including bid management, behavioral merchandising and other promotional activities.

“Gaining access to the right e-business metrics and acting on them can tremendously boost incremental revenue. The challenge is that while most online merchants have access to a good standard set of performance metrics they lack the full-picture view of their business at the customer level,” said Joel Ronning, Digital River’s CEO. “Merchants that can operate at this deeper level are at a competitive advantage when it comes to transforming and accelerating growth across an online business.”

White-Label App Stores from Digital River

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:15:00 GMT

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers are rethinking the way in which applications are deployed and distributed, and many of these independent software vendors (ISV's) are exploring new licensing models. The most popular of which of course is the enterprise app store and there are solutions already emerging to fill the need.

Cloud commerce provider Digital River this week introduced a white-label app store for enterprises using their Global Commerce solution. Software publishers will be able to sell their own apps, as well as third-party apps, to customers through their own branded app store. The platform includes online payment processing in multiple currencies and by handling entitlements, global distribution, and payouts, Digtal River is enabling their parters to capitalize on the near meteroic growth of enterprise apps.

With the rapid growth of the native app market, many enterprise software publishers have mistakenly believed that to compete, they’re required to relinquish their customer relationships for exposure in “walled garden” app stores. Joel Ronning, CEO of Digital River, disagrees. “Merchants have always sought ways to maintain direct relationships with their customers,” said Ronning.

"With the addition of global enterprise app stores to Digital River’s app ecosystem, we can offer the enterprise software market a lucrative alternative to the current model. Publishers who tap into one or more components of our app ecosystem can gain access to multiple ways to distribute, monetize and optimize apps themselves. This enables them to increase profitability upfront and over the long term, as they maintain direct relationships with shoppers.”

Digital River Offers B2B Ecommerce Solution

Linc Wonham — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:00:00 GMT

Selling directly to business buyers has increased margin efficiency and produced renewal rates of 30 percent for many ecommerce companies. The new cloud-based, business-to-business solution from Digital River enables merchants to sell directly to business buyers by tailoring their services and using authenticated portals, segmented pricing, preferred payment methods, private reseller networks and more.

“Today’s business buyers are demanding more from their online purchases,” says Joel Ronning, Digital River’s CEO. “They are demanding unprecedented levels of self-service, content, flexibility, and integration across channels and locales. Our enhanced B2B solution helps online merchants answer this call in a way that no other solution can.”

Digital River’s B2B solution offers online merchants the ability to do the following:

•    Streamline system integrations – expand and enhance current online capabilities by integrating Digital River’s commerce solutions with traditional business platforms and systems, including ERP, CRM or partner management systems.
•    Reach new global markets – secure access to markets across the globe and reach underserved channels with flexible solutions and an international resource network of local tax professionals, payment specialists and regional marketing experts.
•    Launch channel-specific sites – customize the B2B shopping experience by offering authenticated portals, and segmented and tiered pricing for specific channel partners or key accounts.
•    Streamline the transaction process – tailor the purchasing process to meet company requirements with multiple seller- and merchant-of-record model options.
•    Secure ownership of the customer lifecycle – drive reccurring revenue by maintaining access to valuable channel customer data and establishing direct customer relationships.

“According to forecasts, the global ecommerce market is poised for tremendous growth – and we expect that B2B will be an important driving force behind it,” says Ronning. “Companies can not only take advantage of this increasing revenue opportunity, but also deliver a world-class user experience that drives operational efficiencies and reduces conflict across their sales channels.”

Digital River Taps a New Revenue Stream for Merchants

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:00:00 GMT

One of the disadvantages for e-commerce merchants can be the lack of quick and responsive customer support that companies are able to offer in brick-and-mortar stores. While most sites have help sections, the inability to provide immediate answers can lead to customers abandoning your site in favor of a better experience.

As mobile and tablet commerce becomes more prevalent, so does this problem. In an effort to combat it head-on, e-commerce solutions provider Digital River is offering enterprise software publishers a new revenue channel that is deserving of a closer look.

The company’s In-Product Commerce technology enables publishers to embed “digital shopping experiences” inside their applications. Buyers, for example, can purchase an upgrade, renew a subscription or add a new service feature without being forced to leave the product.

The In-Product Commerce solution stores buyers' credentials to make it easy for signing on and checking out. A presentation layer automatically displays the shopping experience inside a variety of digital formats including a download manager, pop-up store window, mobile applications, etc. The platform also supports management of transaction processing in multiple currencies, handles fraud and tax management and supports a range of digital marketing capabilities including coupons, discounts, A/B testing and dynamic personalization.

“With the introduction of the tablet and increasing adoption of smartphones and other connected devices, we are watching consumer expectations and online purchase preferences rapidly evolve,” says Joel Ronning, Digital River’s CEO. “Consumers are looking for unparalleled levels of convenience, connectivity and community – what Digital River calls Transparent Commerce. These expectations are carrying over to the enterprise market and what we are seeing is the consumerization of the enterprise buyer. Enterprise software publishers can easily adapt to these market changes by creating quick and seamless purchase experiences inside their applications – and Digital River’s In-product Commerce can help them accomplish just that.”

Digital River Releases My Commerce

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:00:00 GMT

E-commerce solution provider Digital River has introduced a solution for small-to-medium sized business software, digital content publishing and physical goods market dubbed My Commerce.

The offering is essentially a collection of e-commerce products from RegNow, shareit!, SWREG, eSellerate, Reg.net and CCNow. Features include users interfaces that include full site and cart merchandising tools, and shopping cart and order page customization capailigies, APIs to manage products and catalogs, and localization tools displays sites in any language.

“Digital River is committed to providing global e-commerce solutions for the SMB space at prices that are both highly competitive and compelling,” said Joel Ronning, Digital River’s CEO. “The upgrades and enhancements we continue to make to the My Commerce solutions reinforce our ongoing efforts to offer SMBs the flexible tools they need to scale their e-businesses on a global basis, increase their efficiencies and grow their online businesses. With price points as low as zero percent, we are leading the way in helping to break down the barriers to entry so companies of all sizes can be selling online in just minutes or hours rather than days.”

Digital River My Commerce is part of Digital River’s portfolio of global e-commerce solutions, which also includes Digital River® Global Commerce™ and Digital River® Commerce Express™.