By Troy Brown, Demandware Retail Practice

I'm pumped! You know why? We just finished Demandware's first ever XCHANGE workshop. Over 100 people attended including: clients, channel partners, implementation partners, LINK technology partners, our client advisory board, and of course the Demandware team. Yeah, yeah, it was a conference. Big deal you say. So what? Well, here's how I see it.

We have incredible customers and partners - awesome individuals. People, who desire to work with us and with each other collaboratively to learn, improve and drive ecommerce growth. People who are engaged. We have a COMMUNITY of like-minded individuals. Everyone has a voice. Everyone can contribute.

The networking aspect of the event was phenomenal: Merchandisers building relationships with other Merchandisers, Developers connecting with our just announced beta Developer Community and eCommerce executives sharing ideas with other ecommerce executives. I feel so fortunate to be able to work with so many people who are so tightly aligned. Why? Because EVERYONE in this community cares about the same thing: each other's success. It's a bond that enables us to transcend the occasional speed bump, process glitch, or software bug. It's a commitment that is creating profound loyalty in ALL directions. Look, I've been around the ecommerce space for a while, and this type of harmony is UNPRECEDENTED. Ok, ok, maybe I'm a bit giddy. But seriously, if you aren't a Demandware customer, how happy are you and your peers on that "other" ecommerce platform? Really.

But another reason I'm so pumped is that the CONTENT met the mark according to our event surveys. This was not a bunch of individuals taking the microphone to pontificate about conceptual ecommerce ideas. This was down and dirty, practical, hands-on, in-the-trenches, boots-on-the-ground, get-your-hands-dirty work. People went home with ideas that are impacting their business NOW. The Business Track featured great workshop sessions on how to optimize on-site search, implement Active Merchandising, improve search engine optimization, shape our roadmap, and how to really leverage our new LINK program.

The Technical Track unleashed the power of Demandware's multi-site capabilities to quickly enable international expansion or multi-brand rollouts, demonstrated how to build sites for scalability and growth, outlined how to use our mobile cartridge to launch your own mobile storefront, shared tips for ramping new developers and showcased the benefits of using automated testing tools.

The Client Advisory Board ("CAB") came together again to help Demandware executives shape the future of Demandware. We have a terrific CAB made up of engaged business leaders who are capable of thinking like a client and like a Demandware shareholder.

And thank you to our LINK partner Fluid for sponsoring the Red Sox game for XCHANGE attendees. Luckily, the Rox Sox won. Some of us, including me, even got to hang with Will Farrell!

If you missed the event, no worries. I'm sorry we had to turn some of you away. We didn't expect such an overwhelming demand. I'm just glad the fire marshal didn't show up since we filled the rooms (and then some). Want the content? As a client, log on to our XCHANGE portal and download the presentations directly. Talk to your Client Relationship Manager. Engage!

And better yet, plan ahead! We're planning a to blow it out of the water in Spring 2011 with an even bigger, better event. Bring your entire team and experience what the game-changing combination of accessible expertise, a vibrant community and empowering technology can do for you!

By Jamus Driscoll, Demandware Marketing

In the course of working with our clients, Demandware is regularly asked for its perspective on best practices in user experience. As part of our business model, where we goal ourselves on helping our clients grow revenue, we gladly provide them, most often in the course of the implementation and post-launch support. But CPO Commerce has taken it a step further, and actually provided content to their customers highlighting how the user experience has been improved. What's better, each featured enhancement comes with a bold "Tell us what you think!" button to gather actually, honest-to-goodness customer feedback.

What's better, CPO then explains each enhancement in detail...

And then added a bold "Tell us what you think!" button to gather actually, honest-to-goodness customer feedback.

Kudos to the team at CPO! 

By Adam Forrest, Demandware Product Marketing 

Product finders, gift finders and configurators have proven to be very successful—resulting in conversion rates of 20-30% for those who engage. So why doesn't every site have one? The trouble is the time, effort and money that goes into creating the finders—that for the most part are hard coded flash object that don't account for out of stock products or seasonal turnover. You are left with an empty shell that you need to pump more time, effort and money into. That is why we were pumped to see the new completely dynamic and data driven Board Finder on the recently relaunched www.burton.com, built by the folks at Burton!

Using their internal flash skills combined with Demandware out of the box features (i.e. search refinements, price scrollers, customizable attributes) and their intimate knowledge of what makes a board good for certain people, Burton has launched an unbelievable Board Finder. Check it out and get that special someone a new board for the holidays so they can shred it when the powder returns this winter.

For those of you short on time, below are some screen shots of the finder. But if you have an extra moment, check out the real thing.

Demandware client innovations—designed, built and launched all on their own. Now that is what Demandware is all about.

By Zachary E. Cook, Demandware Interactive Marketing

As a member of the Demandware marketing team, one of the best parts of my job is being able to work with such innovative, high-growth brands every day. And while that interaction typically involves email campaigns, case studies, website content and speaking engagements, sometimes it is a little less conventional. So when a brand new Burton snowboard fully customized for Demandware came across my desk as a giveaway for Shop.org Annual Summit 2009, I had to give it a try. Unfortunately, there is no snow at Demandware headquarters so we had to get a little creative.

You see, I'm a Burton brand loyalist and have been since I purchased my very first snowboard—a 1997 Burton Floater. I now ride an aging 2001 Burton BMC, with Burton Custom bindings and Burton Moto boots and spent six years riding in the shadow of the Burton factory in Burlington, VT. So while it's great to have a brand like this on our roster, you can imagine how hard it was for me to send this off to the winner of our raffle! Congratulations to our winner and we hope to catch a few sightings of this board out on the slopes this season.

For the rest of you, I encourage you to check out the new Burton site and some of the highly stylized, highly innovative techniques it uses to sell products online. Visitors have a wealth of content at their fingertips including images, videos, music, user-generated content and of course the entire Burton catalog.

By Zachary E. Cook, Demandware Interactive Marketing

We are pleased to welcome the sixth member of the Jones Apparel Group family of brands to launch on the Demandware eCommerce Platform-Rachel Roy. In addition to giving shoppers access to the full range of the brand's collections, www.rachelroy.com utilizes a variety of visual and interactive tools to create a highly engaging social shopping experience. Here is a taste of some of the innovative features you'll find on their site:

Online Shopping Goes Social
Not only can you share your thoughts about all of Rachel's styles with all your friends on 175 different social networks, but you can also view her most recent Tweets and Facebook updates. Now you can shop online with your friends-wherever they are.

Everything Rachel
From documentaries, to Oprah, to store openings and trips to Africa, the Everything Rachel section offers a 360 degree view of the designer, her clothes and what goes on behind the scenes.

Grab a Hot New Look
Take the guess work out of putting together a great outfit with the help of the Rachel Rachel Roy Lookbook. From clothes to shoes and accessories, the lookbook offers a few suggestions straight from the designer for you to look your best.

Congratulations to Rachel Roy and Jones Apparel Group for launching another highly stylized, innovative site.

By Zachary E. Cook, Demandware Interactive Marketing

While everyone else is mourning the end of summer, we know that cooler days and longer nights means it's time to head out to Las Vegas for Shop.org Annual Summit 2009! This year we are more excited than usual since we have so much to share-both in terms of company news and great giveaways in our booth-so here are your top five reasons to stop by booth 707 at the show:

5) Meet the Family
Learn about our latest partnerships with some of the world's biggest brands-including Crocs, Columbia, Rachel Roy, s.Oliver, Liz Claiborne, Frederick's of Hollywood, Anne Klein and many more. As a bonus, we will have a lot of these clients hanging out at our booth throughout the show, why not stop by and hear what they have to say about working with Demandware? They know better than anyone.

4) Fill Your Schwag Bag
No offense to those who would rather a key chain or some other forgettable chotchkie, but we're pretty sure that free Crocs will be high on every retailer's list. So swing by our booth, kick off those uncomfortable wing-tips and slip on a pair of comfy, custom Crocs-you deserve it. And while you're at it, enter our drawing for a custom Burton snowboard-just in time for our Winter '10 release.

3) Kick the Tires
Whether you're a seasoned ecommerce veteran or a brand looking to dive in for the first time, this event is the perfect opportunity to get a hands-on, in-person demo of our industry leading on-demand ecommerce platform. Stop by our eCommerce Studio to learn how our on-demand ecommerce platform can help your online business grow.

2) Join the ecommerce (r)evolution
Full-featured ecommerce platform. Integrated development environment that enables full customization. None of the technology burden and IT capital investment required with in-house applications. That's an ecommerce (r)evolution. Stop by to learn what this could mean for your business.

1) Get Ready for Winter
With summer in our rearview mirror, its time to start getting ready for the launch of our newest release, Demandware Winter '10. In addition to 55 new features and enhancements, Demandware Winter '10 gives merchants access to a full-featured, customizable mobile storefront designed to optimize the speed of transactions made through a mobile phone.

Bonus: A Demandware for Every Retailer
Different strokes for different folks, we hear ya. Some people want all the control. We can do that. Some people want to outsource everything. We do that too. Others want to be guided to launch quickly. Yup, that too. Some even want to see the servers blinking away in their office. We've got you covered. Swing by to learn more about how our new delivery options can be tailored to fit your brand's needs.

By Jamus Driscoll, Demandware Marketing

While putting the finishing touches on the new client section of our website, I couldn’t help but notice just how many great apparel sites are running on the Demandware eCommerce Platform. So this got me thinking about exactly what it is in our platform that makes it so appealing for apparel brands. One of the reasons that stuck out to me was that apparel brands have a set of requirements that are often difficult to reconcile in a single solution—merchandising, customization and innovation—all of which are major pieces of our platform:

• Merchandising: Whether online or in stores, merchandising is essential for apparel brands and they simply cannot and will not settle for second best. Marketers and merchandisers need to be able to control all aspects of these sites—from product and catalog data to promotions and price books to content and searchandising—at anytime, from anywhere and with Demandware’s web-based user interface they can.


• Customization: Apparel brands need the ability to express the uniqueness of their brand and a cookie-cutter solution just won’t do. From simple changes to content to more complex changes to the underlying code and architecture, Demandware’s integrated development environment (IDE) allows full customization—not just retheming a few templates.


• Innovation: With the rapid pace in which ecommerce is evolving, apparel brands need to stay on the cutting edge more than ever before. But with many in-house applications, staying on the forefront of innovation can be difficult (aka expensive and slow). Today’s apparel brands need a constant stream of new features, new functionality and performance enhancements. And they need all this delivered regularly, automatically and at no cost to them as Demandware does with our seasonal upgrades.

There are certainly some things that Demandware does not do (yes, we’re self aware) but merchandising, customization and innovation? Well, our customers are telling us we check those boxes quite emphatically.

By Jamus Driscoll, Demandware Marketing

Great news published today by Demandware partner PFSweb about the success Roots has been having on the PFSWeb end-to-end ecommerce solution. The headline says it all "Roots Experiences Incredible Online Sales Growth with PFSweb's End2End eCommerce Solution." Congratulations to everyone on the team-customer, partner, technology provider-on delivering success. If you're interested in reading the full announcement, please check it out here.

By Jamus Driscoll, Demandware Marketing

Congratulations to Crocs on the re-launch of its US site on the Demandware eCommerce Platform, www.crocs.com - the first of many to be rolled out over the coming months. The new site looks amazing and is loaded with new features that improve the online experience for the millions of Crocs fans out there. A few noteworthy new features:

• Search: by size, style, color and price
• Multiple Product Views: top, front, side, back and zoom
• Enhanced Shopping Cart Functionality: including the addition of a mini-cart
• Email a Friend and Wish List: for dropping those not-so-subtle hints!

We're very excited to share this news and hope you'll check out the new site. And if you're looking for a new pair of Crocs, you can take advantage of Free Shipping during the month of July.

We look forward to new Crocs sites popping up across the globe very shortly!

By Jamus Driscoll, Demandware Marketing

Earlier this week we announced that Columbia Sportswear, one of the world's largest outerwear brands, selected Demandware for its new business-to-consumer online channel.

It's always exciting to add a new member to our family of high-growth brands and we are eager to see Columbia's innovative spirit unfold on the web. Columbia is planning unique user experiences by incorporating contextual product content and rich media on its new sites - initially a US site, with others to follow for Canada and Europe (Columbia products are already sold in more than 100 countries!). Columbia also plans to integrate ecommerce kiosks into some of its bricks-and-mortar stores to expand the product selection it offers customers in the stores.

Some of the reasons Columbia selected Demandware because it provides:

• Enterprise-class ecommerce platform capabilities, without the costly Web hosting infrastructure
• Full in-house control over all aspects of the online shopping experience
• The ability to develop multiple sites quickly from a common architecture
• Seamless, automatic upgrades to continually leverage new functionality and enable best practices
• Guaranteed site performance and security
• Support for multiple languages, currencies and payment types
• Extensive expertise launching ecommerce sites internationally

For the complete story, please take a moment to read the announcement.