ATG/Internet Retailer Survey Shows Retailers Expect Above-Average Online Holiday Season

November 14, 2006; 04:56 AM
ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc. NASDAQ: ARTG), the leading eCommerce platform vendor, today announced that according to a survey ATG co-sponsored with Internet Retailer Magazine, Web retailers expect the 2006 holiday season to drive above-average online holiday traffic and sales. Nearly all of the approximately 300 respondents expect holiday sales to grow this year, and over one third anticipate holiday Web sales to grow by 20 percent or more. The research also indicates that adding and improving site features remains a concern for online sellers, with 37 percent of respondents enhancing site search and merchandising capabilities to attract more holiday shoppers.

The survey was emailed in early October to subscribers of IRNewslink, an Internet Retailer newsletter. Data collected from approximately 300 respondents suggests that retailers hope to leverage a stronger online presence to drive sales throughout the last two months of the calendar year.

“As we enter the holiday season, we’re excited by retailers’ confidence that online traffic and sales will continue to grow significantly,” said Cliff Conneighton, senior vice president of marketing, ATG. “We predicted that site search would quickly become an area that online sellers would hope to enhance, which is why we added dynamic searchandising capabilities to our Commerce platform earlier this year. As more retailers realize the importance of improving site functionality to better serve holiday shoppers, ATG offers the only solution that integrates catalog search and Web store merchandising functionality to ensure that online shoppers find merchandise in a way that fits a retailers’ overall strategy.”

Earlier this year, ATG introduced advanced dynamic navigation capabilities that give online merchants the ability to define, manage and update catalog navigation “facets,” or attributes, to be displayed across home, category and product pages on a commerce website. Facets can be customized based on any available catalog attribute to make the online product search and discovery process more relevant, faster and more successful for consumers, thus increasing order sizes and conversion rates.

“The results of this survey clearly indicate that online retailers expect to conduct significant business on the Web this holiday season,” said Kurt Peters, editor, Internet Retailer. “It is also clear that these retailers have prepared themselves with new technologies designed to provide the most compelling customer experiences online. Each year, retailers have more opportunities to take advantage of powerful customer-facing technologies that can result in loyal, repeat online shoppers and this year those solutions are being relied on to help deliver a banner 2006 holiday season.”

To view the complete survey results, please visit http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=20362.

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, find prospects, convert them to buyers and ensure their satisfaction so they become loyal, repeat, profitable customers. ATG’s B2C e-commerce suite is ranked the #1 current offering by Forrester Research, and powers more of the top 300 internet retailers than any other vendor. ATG’s solutions are used by over 600 major brands, including Adobe, A&E Networks, American Eagle Outfitters, B&Q, Best Buy, Cingular Wireless, Coca Cola, Dell, DirecTV, France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Louis Vuitton, Mercedes-Benz, Neiman Marcus, New York & Company, Nike, Nokia, OfficeMax, PayPal, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Rubbermaid, Smith & Hawken, Symantec, T-Mobile, Target, Urban Outfitters, Verisign, 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

© 2006 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.