Implementation enhancements

Learn about the new features and functionality offered by WebSphere Commerce Version 7 that can increase your efficiency as an administrator and reduce the total cost of your implementation.

Introduced in Feature Pack 2

WebSphere Commerce search offers enhanced search capabilities

WebSphere Commerce search leverages the Apache Solr search platform to deliver enhanced search capabilities in starter stores. WebSphere Commerce search allows business users to manage search term associations and search-based merchandising rules with the Management Center. These built-in search capabilities and tools allow businesses to optimize the search experience and reduce the total cost of implementation. The overall capabilities of the site are increased by providing a tightly integrated commerce and search solution.

Introduced in Feature Pack 3Enhance your WebSphere Commerce search implementation by adding these Feature Pack 3 features:
  • Site search statistics: Analyze top search hits and misses so you can continually improve site search effectiveness and increase conversion rates.
  • Indexing for categories: Enhance your store's auto-suggest feature by suggesting categories, in addition to products.
  • Indexing for Web content: Index static store pages, such as related articles and shipping information, so that customers can access these pages through search and auto-suggest.
  • Search rule experiments: Gather usage and conversion statistics for specific search rules to see which rules are most effective at driving sales.

Feature Pack 5 or laterBusiness users can improve customer search results by selecting the product attributes for facet display in the storefront for different categories.

Feature Pack 6 or laterWebSphere Commerce search includes enhancements to relevancy and search indexing:
  • Search relevancy improvements include the ability to promote or demote catalog entries to fine-tune search results.
  • Search indexing improvements include an inventory search index that can be updated on a frequent basis. It can be used to promote or exclude products based on their updated inventory counts in the index.
Introduced in Feature Pack 2

Web feed utility facilitates connecting to a web feed and harvesting its information

The Web feed utility provides a new way to connect to Web feeds, such as a Content Management System, and harvest the information they provide. Previously, third-party software had to be acquired and configured to achieve similar goals. Therefore, with an improved native ability to perform these tasks, Feature Pack 2 offers cost and time savings.

Architecturally, the Web feed utility is built around the Data Load utility. The web feed utility uses the data load efficiency in reading data and loading it into your WebSphere Commerce database. The newly designed Web feed utility can connect to a Web feed and harvest its static content, such as PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, media files and other file formats. Attaching static content, such as a user guide or video, to catalog entries or marketing information can create a more engaging site for shoppers.

Introduced in Feature Pack 2

Support selling of subscriptions and recurring orders

Retailers can now sell service-based and subscription-based offerings and enable shoppers to place and manage recurring orders online. Service-based and subscription-based offerings increase customer loyalty and encourage shoppers to buy more frequently.
Introduced in Feature Pack 2

Support for Oracle RAC as the WebSphere Commerce database

WebSphere Commerce now supports with Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) as the WebSphere Commerce database. Using Oracle RAC, you can scale your database tier horizontally by using a number of computers, LPARs, or blades to distribute your query processing across multiple nodes.
Introduced in Feature Pack 1

Improve cache performance with WebSphere eXtreme Scale V7.0

By deploying WebSphere eXtreme Scale version 7.0 to your IT environment, you can extend the WebSphere Commerce cache to an eXtreme Scale network-attached cache, with no custom development. By leveraging a standard plug-in architecture, eXtreme Scale can be readily implemented in a new or existing installation via a service provider interface that extends the performance and scalability of WebSphere Dynamic Cache Service (DynaCache). This architecture helps customers to realize the benefits of improved cache performance for data-intensive operations managed within the WebSphere Commerce environment.

Introduced in Feature Pack 1

Lower the total cost of ownership with eXtreme Scale V7.0

Using commodity-priced hardware, eXtreme Scale can be used to expand WebSphere cache resources to meet the demands of high workloads and related performance spikes associated with seasonal demand and other factors that affect online business agility. By taking advantage of eXtreme Scale features, it is possible to lower the total cost of ownership for WebSphere Commerce by offloading the performance costs normally attributed to cache operations onto inexpensive, highly available and high-performing infrastructure.