Web Site for the Nation`s Leading Fabric and Crafts Retailer to Take Advantage of Advanced Search, Scenarios and Personalization Capabilities
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--March 27, 2006--ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG), whose technology powers leading e-commerce sites and corresponding e-marketing and customer service, today announced that Idea Forest, the leading provider of e-commerce & direct marketing solutions to retailers, distributors and manufacturers in the large and growing U.S. crafts market, has increased its investment in the ATG technology that powers www.joann.com. Owned and operated by IdeaForest, www.joann.com reaches millions of creative enthusiasts every month with the latest project ideas, advice and supplies.
Since the launch of www.joann.com in September 2000, Idea Forest has relied on ATG Commerce to increase sales and customer retention rates by providing each customer with a personalized online buying experience. The site has experienced significant e-Commerce growth in the past several years and now provides more than 2 million customers the ability to research, search and purchase more than 40,000 products online. To effectively manage the ongoing increase in traffic, Idea Forest has purchased additional licenses and will be upgrading to the latest version of ATG Commerce. The growth of the site and sector in general is reflected in recent numbers released by Nielsen/NetRatings. Visits to nine of the top 10 home and garden sites increased by double digits in November 2005, led by Joann.com, which experienced a 64% increase to 2.3 million from 1.4 million in November 2004.
"Since our site launch, ATG`s platform has enabled us to provide the rich online customer experience that is driving the rapid and substantial growth of our e-Commerce business," said Linsly Donnelly, chief operating officer of Idea Forest. "Not only will this upgrade allow us to handle the growing volume of business we are experiencing, it also ensures ongoing expansion by providing the marketing, merchandising, personalization, cross-sell and up-sell capabilities required to deliver the most compelling and relevant experience to each of our online customers."
Customers for each of the 15 product categories on www.joann.com have unique preferences and behaviors, requiring an adaptive and dynamic site. The newest promotional up-sell and merchandising features of ATG Commerce allow Idea Forest to run each of these categories almost as if they were individual businesses, while still maintaining the integrity of the JoAnn brand.
"After performing due diligence on several e-commerce platforms, it was clear that continuing our investment in ATG allows us to provide the dynamic experience our customers expect from joann.com," commented Idea Forest`s director of IT, Juan Gonzalez.
"The crafts industry is surprisingly complex given its multiple sales and marketing opportunities across a large variety of product sets," stated ATG`s senior vice president of marketing, Cliff Conneighton. "Using ATG`s technology, Idea Forest has created a Web site that provides the selection, expertise and individual service that customers have come to expect in JoAnn Stores, while granting the company the ability to efficiently manage a large volume of transactions across multiple product categories."
About ATG
ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc., NASDAQ: ARTG) makes the software that the world`s most customer-conscious companies use to create a more relevant and consistent customer experience, throughout the marketing, commerce, and service lifecycle, and across the Web, e-mail, call center, and mobile channels. Offering an alternative to the traditional silo-based approach to customer-facing applications, ATG Wisdom(TM) is the company`s strategy for delivering a seamless, more compelling, and mutually valuable experience to each customer and segment. The company fulfills this strategy by providing fully integrated best-of-breed product suites installed on-premise or delivered on-demand. ATG`s solutions power over 600 major brands, including A&E; Networks, Airbus, American Airlines, American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy, Boeing, Cingular Wireless, DirecTV, France Telecom, Friends Provident, Hewlett-Packard, Hotels.com, Hyatt Hotels, HSBC, InterContinental Hotels Group, Kingfisher, Louis Vuitton, Merrill Lynch, Neiman Marcus, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Symantec, T-Mobile, Target, US Army, US Navy, Warner Music, and Wells Fargo. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with additional locations throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information about ATG, please visit www.atg.com.
(C) 2006 Art Technology Group, Inc. ATG, Art Technology Group, and ATG Wisdom are registered trademarks of Art Technology Group, Inc. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.
This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause ATG`s actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important risk factors affecting ATG`s business generally may be found in its periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. Risk factors related to the subject matter of this press release include the possibility that the ATG product deployment will not be successful, on time or significantly enhance the user`s Internet experience or handle user volumes; that those customers leveraging ATG won`t have the opportunity to increase revenue and decrease future costs; the need to adapt to rapid changes so products do not become obsolete; the possibility of errors in ATG`s software products; the possibility that the solution will not make customer implementations faster or more flexible or permit the customer to meet its customer-facing or infrastructure requirements; that the customer will not close additional business due to the implementation of the ATG product; that the ATG product will not continue to be integrated with third party applications servers or will not support all Web services enabled systems; that ATG`s product strategy may change in the future; and the risks and costs of intellectual property litigation. ATG undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.
Contacts:
ATG
Tucker Walsh, 617-386-1159
twalsh@atg.com
or
Matter Communications
Jesse Ciccone, 978-499-9250 x230
atg@matternow.com
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