Introduced in Feature Pack 2

IBM Digital Analytics integration enhancements

IBM Digital Analytics, formerly known as Coremetrics Analytics is a web analytics solution that can be integrated with WebSphere Commerce customers. The latest enhancements provide tighter integration with IBM Digital Analytics for business users. This integration offers a number of new tools that make it easier to deploy and administer IBM Digital Analytics features.

What are the benefits of integrating a store with IBM Digital Analytics?

After you integrate your store with IBM Digital Analytics and begin gathering analytical data about customer interactions, you can:
  • View analytics reports designed specifically for WebSphere Commerce. These reports include a Campaigns report, an e-Marketing Spot report, a Marketing Experiments report, a Promotions report, and a B2B Contracts report.
  • Create and export customer segments that are built from analytical data that is gathered for IBM Digital Analytics, and use the segments in WebSphere Commerce campaigns.
  • Introduced in Feature Pack 2Display personalized product recommendations on store pages by using IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer. IBM Product Recommendations is an IBM Enterprise Marketing Management application that can be integrated with WebSphere Commerce using the IBM Digital Analytics integration.

What are the feature pack enhancements to IBM Digital Analytics for IBM WebSphere Commerce?

Review the following sections to understand the latest enhancements to the solution.

Introduced in Feature Pack 3

1. Management Center integration with IBM Digital Analytics

Business users can now access relevant analytics reports and dashboards in IBM Digital Analytics directly from Management Center. The Management Center user interface provides multiple access points to specific IBM Digital Analytics reports so that business users can move efficiently between the two applications. To make this integration seamless, you can configure single sign-on between Management Center and IBM Digital Analytics so that business users do not have to log on to IBM Digital Analytics separately.
Introduced in Feature Pack 3

2. Support for the latest IBM Digital Analytics tag library and APIs

The WebSphere Commerce analytics tag library is updated to take advantage of the standard IBM Digital Analytics library that is introduced in 2010. When you use the standard IBM Digital Analytics library, your site is configured to obtain the latest tag library directly from the IBM Digital Analytics site (//libs.coremetrics.com/eluminate.js). As a result, your site does not need to:
  • Periodically request an updated eluminate.js library file from IBM Digital Analytics or IBM support.
  • Host a cmcustom.js file that contains your customized data collection functions. This file reduces the number of source file requests in your store pages.
The standard IBM Digital Analytics library supports the collection of:
  • All available Explore attributes (50) for all tags, without the need for a custom library update.
  • All available extra fields (15) for all tags to use with the IBM Digital Analytics Standard Data Export solution, without the need for a custom library update.
Because the standard IBM Digital Analytics library is hosted at the //libs.coremetrics.com site, you can leverage the content distribution network to enhance file availability, minimize client file request and load time globally, and eliminate file hosting bandwidth charges.
Introduced in Feature Pack 2

3. Enhanced tools and support for IBM Product Recommendations

If your site currently uses or plans to use IBM Product Recommendations to generate personalized product recommendations on the storefront, you can take advantage of a number of new features to reduce implementation costs and give marketing managers complete control over when and where to display the wisdom-of-the-crowd product recommendations:
Introduced in Feature Pack 3Starter stores with specialized e-Marketing Spots for dynamic recommendations
Introduced in Feature Pack 3Both the Madisons and Elite starter stores now contain five e-Marketing Spots that are designed to display dynamic recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations. You can publish either starter store, turn on the IBM Product Recommendations store feature. Then, you can build web activities in Management Center to display recommendations in any of the five e-Marketing Spots. You can use similar e-Marketing Spot code on your own WebSphere Commerce store.

Introduced in Feature Pack 2The code for these specialized e-Marketing Spots is included in Feature Pack 2 stores as well. You must manually copy the code to the correct store directory.

Introduced in Feature Pack 2Web activity support for IBM Product Recommendations
Introduced in Feature Pack 2To display either flat-file or dynamic recommendations in e-Marketing Spots on store pages, marketing managers can create web activities that use a new Display IBM Product Recommendations action.
Introduced in Feature Pack 3IBM Product Recommendations data extraction utility
Introduced in Feature Pack 3This new utility automatically generates the Enterprise Product Report (EPR) data that IBM Product Recommendations requires for dynamic recommendations, eliminating the need for you to build your own custom utility. The utility extracts catalog data from your database and generates ECDF and EPCMF files in the correct format to load into IBM Product Recommendations. You can configure and customize the utility so that your files contain the specific catalog entry data that you want IBM Product Recommendations to have.
Introduced in Feature Pack 2Automatic import of flat file recommendations on a schedule
Introduced in Feature Pack 2Managing the latest flat file recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations is now easier because you can schedule a job to automatically import the recommendations into the WebSphere Commerce database.

Introduced in Feature Pack 3If any problems occur with the import, you can view the import status and error messages in Management Center.

Introduced in Feature Pack 3

4. Improved export function for IBM Digital Analytics based customer segments

You can now configure the IBM Digital Analytics based customer segment export process to update an existing customer segment in WebSphere Commerce, rather than creating a new one each time you run an export. As a result, business users no longer need track multiple versions of the same customer segment in WebSphere Commerce. The export process can either add customers to or replace customers in the existing customer segment, depending on which configuration suits your business. To simplify the process of moving customer segments from your production server to your staging server for business users, WebSphere Commerce offers a new utility to automatically transfer the data from one server to the other.

Which user roles benefit from enhancements to IBM Digital Analytics for IBM WebSphere Commerce?

  • Catalog, Product, and Marketing Managers who want to work more efficiently with the latest tools and reports in IBM Digital Analytics, and who want to take advantage of IBM Product Recommendations capabilities.
  • IT developers who want to shorten the implementation time for IBM Product Recommendations.
  • Administrators who want more efficient tools and utilities to support IBM Digital Analytics features, including IBM Product Recommendations and IBM Digital Analytics based customer segments.