Digital Showcase: 17 Companies to Know

Opportunities abound for emerging and established enterprises looking to make or maintain their virtual mark. Industry trade shows like SES, eTail, Conversion Conference, IRCE and many others, offer unparalleled opportunities to educate yourself on emerging trends, technologies and talk, in general, but they are also a fantastic mechanism to drive brand awareness and rub elbows with those who have the ability to help you grow your business, whether it be through partnerships or press.

Website Magazine attended IRCE this week in our hometown of Chicago and brought back 17 companies (or news items) that caught our virtual eye in this digital showcase.

Needle

One of the more interesting companies was that of Needle, a live chat/sales "guided shopping" platform for big retailers that leverages vendors' brand advocates. Needle helps retailers recruit and train those advocates who receive rewards and payouts based on the quality of their participation. Needle counts Overstock.com, Norwegian Cruise Line and Coach and others as clients currently.

Feedvisor

Website Magazine covered Feedvisor in late May and it was well received at the time by our readers, and the same can be said for its presence at IRCE. The algorithmic repricing solution for Amazon, which is currently in use by brands such as American Greetings, will be very appealing to Internet retailers of all budgets interested in optimizing their advertising spend at the popular marketplace.

WisePricer

Maximizing ad spend has been a hot topic this year and numerous companies have built solutions to help Web retailers do exactly that. WisePricer's is a unique solution Website Magazine encountered that enables retailers to track, monitor and gain insights about their competitors in order to determine an optimal pricing strategy.

Listrak

Email marketing service Listrak was busy at IRCE showcasing its ecommerce-based platform for Internet retailers.

Listrak's solutions run deep and include those for acquisition and engagement, post-purchase and re-engagement, life cycle management and segmentation.

Doogma

Interactive product personalization platform Doogma is certainly a service that will appeal to startup merchants looking to add interactivity into the purchase process, enabling buyers to visualize products before they buy based on their design preference matched with the Web retailers offering.

SAP

Days after Salesforce purchased ExactTarget, SAP announced that they have acquired Hybris Software, a popular provider of ecommerce technology for both B2B and B2C segments, featuring management of content, orders and data from the platform, as well as powerful search and merchandising features.

AT&T and IBM

AT&T and IBM teamed up to offer the ecommerce suite that will provide a convenient service in a single, subscription-based package with features including predictable monthly pricing and integrated software licensing.

This payment format differentiates this product from others by eliminating the up-front licensing fees typical to ecommerce solutions. Also key to mid-size retailers, and their bottom lines, is the scalability of the website and application hosting to meet their changing promotional and seasonal needs.

RetailMeNot.com

RetailMeNot.com is enjoying fantastic growth, as according to a recent review of comScore's monthly unique visitor data, RetailMeNot.com ranked as the 25th most visited retail website. Categories in the review included coupon, retail and travel websites.

BrightTag

At IRCE 2013, BrightTag showcased its products including BrightTag Tag Management and BrightTag FUSE, its omni-channel data integration platform. BrightTag's team of marketing and analytics experts were onsite to offer event attendees consultative advice on how to drive their business with better data.They also announced three tips for driving online results: embrace your customer's multi-device world, take data quality seriously and think real-time with your data strategy.

Simple Helix

Web hosting tends to be one of those topics that no one ever thinks about until they need it. A new breed of hosting companies is emerging fortunately that are committed/dedicated to serving the ecommerce market, and more specifically users of specific platforms - like the popular Magento solution. Simple Helix is one such provider that is quickly making its market in the

Signifyd

Internet retailers are very concerned about payment fraud but some fascinating companies are emerging, such as Signifyd, to minimize the problem and impact. Signifyd uses real-time, big data, relationship graph analysis that reveals and scores information from various sources (e.g. social, geo, address, phone, names, airports, cards) to simplify the often complex but important decision about whether transactions should be reviewed by an agent.

eBay

If you're in ecommerce, you're likely dealing with eBay or using one of its service in some capacity. Ebay was present showcasing numerous offerings including the Magento platform, Paypal and GSI-Commerce.

STELLAService

Sam Collin of the rapidly growing customer service measurements and ratings provider STELLAService spoke about a recent deal with none other than Google in which the search engine monolith will be paying STELLAService to license its customer service ratings to include alongside product listings in Google Shopping. For those unfamiliar with STELLAService, it's a company that tests and then rates the customer service performance of a variety of online retailers and businesses by stress testing more than 300 different elements of a customer's online experience, and then seeing how companies from various industries stack up against one another.

ModCloth

ModCloth is continuing to push its unique social media strategy as it slowly takes over the world of online apparel retail. By leveraging all of the key social networks that aren't just Facebook and Twitter, including Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram, the company is able to share their unique and fashionable products and interact with consumers through a variety of online touch points. But the real crux of ModCloth's built-in social media strategy is the company's ability to integrate user feedback and images into their business, sometimes going so far as to use pictures of customers modeling their products or allowing customers to write copy for a product by asking them questions like, "How would you describe this?"

Bongo International

This ecommerce platform helps brands expand their business to the global market. The platform deals with global logistics, duty and sales tax obstacles, as well as screens all international customers to prevent fraudulent orders. In fact, Bongo International boasts a 0.0 percent fraud rate since the company first launched in 2007, and also ships orders to almost anywhere in the world within five days. Merchants can choose from three different solutions, which typically work with all shopping platforms.

GoDataFeed

This ecommerce marketing software helps merchants increase their traffic and visibility on more than 70 comparison shopping sites and affiliate networks. The platform can be leveraged to automate datafeed submissions and optimize product listings. In fact, GoFeedData provides merchants with feed optimization tips, as well as offers an instant validation tool that tells users if their data needs to be adjusted before going live on shopping channels. Plus, GoDataFeed provides analytics, which track merchants' best performing shopping sites and products, and measures a campaigns overall success.

Ecwid

E-commerce widget provider Ecwid has teamed up with popular website builder WIX to offer an ecommerce extension within the WIX App Market. While the app has only been live for about two weeks, it has already seen approximately 1,000 sign-ups in that period. The free app not only allows users to add a secure shopping cart to their WIX site, but to their Facebook Page and mobile site as well.