ShopLocal Delivers Seamless Shopping Experience, Supports Record Consumer Traffic During 2007 Holiday Season With Microsoft Soft
January 08 2008 - 12:00PM
PR Newswire (US)
Consumers preparing for holidays drive 84 percent increase in
ShopLocal traffic; nonstop availability throughout holiday season
is supported by Microsoft technologies. REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 8
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. today announced that
ShopLocal, a leader in multichannel shopping and marketing
services, successfully managed an unprecedented growth in online
consumer traffic during the 2007 holiday shopping season, supported
by its use of multiple Microsoft technologies, delivering 100
percent uptime and a seamless shopping experience for the record
number of visitors to its ShopLocal-powered Web sites. (Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO) ShopLocal
kicked off the season by handling a record 267 million page views
during the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day,
amounting to an 84 percent jump in activity over 2006. With
Microsoft server infrastructure, including Windows Server 2003 and
Microsoft SQL Server 2005, scaling to process massive increases in
user activity, ShopLocal saw more consumers than ever researching
online before buying in a store. "We spend all year planning to
support our unique peak of online traffic," said Ed McLaughlin,
senior director of technology at ShopLocal. "Microsoft provides
ShopLocal with a cost-effective, scalable technology architecture
that helped enable our site to accommodate a holiday increase of
more than 600 percent over nonholiday traffic levels. Microsoft
technologies enabled us to achieve 100 percent uptime for our
retail clients and deliver the most up-to-date sales and product
information to busy holiday shoppers." Integrating Online and Store
for Multichannel Shoppers ShopLocal's comparison shopping site,
ShopLocal.com, serves as a timely, localized resource for consumers
to readily find online and in-store offers from such leading
retailers as Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, CVS and Sears. In
addition to using Microsoft technology to help securely integrate
retailers' online and local ads, ShopLocal uses Microsoft software
for its front-end applications that provide several interactive
ways for consumers to become savvier shoppers through product
reviews, category searches, hosted forums, maps, dynamic shopping
lists and more. "Today's digital consumers want to be more
knowledgeable about products, brands, features, pricing and even
sourcing before they buy," said Geoff Thomas, general manager for
the U.S. Retail and Hospitality Group at Microsoft. "We are pleased
with ShopLocal's success using Microsoft software and solutions to
help empower shoppers to be more in control of their interactions
and experiences with retailers. Microsoft is committed to helping
retailers and companies like ShopLocal offer consumers as seamless
an experience as possible, whatever channel they choose to shop and
make purchases." The Microsoft Technologies That Enable ShopLocal's
Success To prepare for the 2007 holiday shopping season, ShopLocal
grew its IT environment four times its typical size, adding servers
running Windows Server 2003, an integrated, highly secure and
easy-to-manage server infrastructure that powers ShopLocal's
applications, networks and Web services. Additional Microsoft
technologies behind ShopLocal's successful Web sites include SQL
Server 2005, an integrated data management and analysis platform to
help ShopLocal gain greater insight into critical information and
run its business applications. For the consumer-facing components,
ShopLocal uses Visual Studio and .NET Framework for its range of
tools that enable its developers to build dynamic and compelling
features and experiences into the ShopLocal.com site. "We have a
very homogeneous Microsoft environment at ShopLocal that allows us
to scale each tier of the architecture independently," said
McLaughlin. "Because Microsoft technology is tightly coupled across
the architecture tiers, we don't have to worry about integration
issues. Instead we can focus on delivering new features and
advanced functions to meet shoppers' escalating demands for
knowledge and service and our retail customers' strong desire to
keep consumers happy." About ShopLocal ShopLocal, the leader in
multi-channel shopping services, offers a complete suite of
solutions connecting advertisers and consumers online and in-store.
The company's consumer Web site, ShopLocal.com, provides users with
choice and control in their shopping experience by offering the
most comprehensive selection of timely online and in-store offers
on one easy-to-use site. With ShopLocal.com, consumers can find
millions of products and up-to-date weekly sales, deals, and
coupons for consumer electronics, apparel, groceries and more.
ShopLocal's industry leading SmartCircular and SmartCatalog
solutions are used by more than one hundred of the nation's top
retailers, including Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, CVS and Sears.
ShopLocal powers multi-channel shopping for hundreds of newspaper
Web sites and other leading local and shopping sites, such as Los
Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Arizona Republic, Google and
SuperPages.com. ShopLocal is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI),
Tribune Company (NYSE:TRB), and The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI).
For more information, visit http://www.aboutshoplocal.com/. About
Microsoft in Retail Microsoft's U.S. Retail Industry Group provides
software that helps empower retail's biggest assets -- its people
-- to make better decisions at every stage of the value chain.
Microsoft software helps enable retail employees to strengthen
customer relationships, build high-value business connections and
improve operations by addressing key areas such as store systems,
real-time analytics and supply chain management. Through a
combination of Microsoft- and partner-provided solutions, retail
customers enable their employees to deliver an outstanding customer
experience across various channels by turning data into insight,
transforming ideas into action and turning change into opportunity.
More information about Microsoft's work in the Retail industry can
be found at http://www.microsoft.com/industry/retail. About
Microsoft Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is the worldwide
leader in software, services and solutions that help people and
businesses realize their full potential.
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO
http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: Microsoft Corp. CONTACT:
Laurie Woicik of Ignite Corp., +1-206-706-3346, ; or Ted Ladd of
Microsoft Corp., +1-646-225-4722, Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/ http://www.aboutshoplocal.com/
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