Commerce Server Features at a Glance

Commerce Server 2002 features function together seamlessly, enabling you to provide merchandising, catalog display, customer service, and order management and receipt.

The following table provides an overview of the Commerce Server features.

Commerce Server Feature Description
Product Catalog System
  • Create and update catalogs of products to sell.
  • Create multilingual catalogs.
  • Create multicurrency catalogs.
  • Import catalogs of products from other data sources in XML or CSV format.
  • Export catalogs in XML format.
  • Export changes to a catalog since a certain date.
  • Add integrated search capabilities, making it easy for users to find what they need:
    • Category search. Browse by product category.
    • Free-text search. Find products by full or partial name or property.
    • Property search. Find products based on a property value, such as Price < $10.
    • Specification search. Refine the search request until the product is found.
  • Build virtual catalogs with special pricing for groups of users.
  • Apply discounts to products.
  • Identify which products are selling by running Commerce Server reports.
  • Exchange catalog data with vendors by using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000.
Profiling System
  • Manage millions of users and organizations.
  • Enable users to manage their own profile information and to research the status of their order.
  • Build profiles for any business-related entity, such as users or organizations.
  • Determine what information to collect about the users visiting your site.
  • Determine what information to display to specific users, such as virtual catalogs.
  • Analyze profile information to determine who is visiting your site.
  • Create target expressions to match content to users.
  • Create advertising, discount, and direct mail campaigns to target specific user groups.
Business Analytics System
  • Import large amounts of site usage data collected from different data sources into the Commerce Server Data Warehouse, and manage the data.
  • Analyze site effectiveness by running Commerce Server reports, or by creating your own custom reports.
  • Identify specific groups of users by running a report, and then export the results to a list. Use the list in a direct mail campaign, or to update the properties of the users so you can target merchandise or content to them.
  • Review collected data to identify hidden trends and new customer segments, and to view the properties of the segments.
  • Provide intelligent cross-sell capabilities, and dynamically recommend products to users as they navigate your site.
Targeting System
  • Personalize the buying experience with targeted merchandising.
  • Deliver the optimal content for a given user in a given context.
  • Create, analyze, and manage personalized and targeted discounts, and direct marketing and advertising campaigns.
  • Add predictive capabilities to your Web site.
  • Target ads or discounts to users of a specific profile. For example, you can target ads to female users who visit your site three times a week, and who have purchased three or more products.
  • Create and schedule campaigns for customers who compete within the same industry. The competing ads are never shown on the same page.
  • Charge your advertising customers based on the number of ad requests or clicks they want their ads to receive.
  • Charge your advertising customers based upon the page on which they want their ad to appear.
Business Processing Pipeline System
  • Customize your order, targeting, and merchandising processes.
  • Define and link together the stages of a business process.

See Also

Editions of Commerce Server 2002

Comparing Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition Features

Commerce Server Architecture

Commerce Server Concepts

Commerce Server .NET Application Framework

Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.