News

Digital Forest Inc.

NTT Com to Launch Online Sales-Recommendation Service

NTT Communications (NTT Com) and its subsidiary company Digital Forest Inc. announced today that the companies will launch a sales-recommendation service, named Biz Marketing Smart Recommend, which interfaces with web-analytics solution and online retailers in Japan can use to increase sales and raise conversion rates by encouraging specific behavior when consumers visit their websites. The service will launch on January 28, 2010 and will be sold both by NTT Com and Digital Forest, which together developed the electronic-commerce solution.

Online sales in Japan grew 13.9% to over 6 trillion yen in 2008, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Retailers are increasingly using analytics-based recommendations as an effective tool to grow online sales, a trend that is prompting applications service providers (ASP) to package recommendation services for online retailers.

Biz Marketing Smart Recommend enables retailers to recommend specific products and services tailored to based on their past behavior when visiting a specific company’s website. A powerful analytic engine developed by NTT Com evaluates the customer’s behavior by examining their log file and purchase history on the retailer’s website.

Biz Marketing Smart Recommend is basically an ASP-type service that is easy to introduce and operate, with no need to develop new systems or install new facilities. What’s more, it is highly customizable and can be integrated with other network systems.

Primary Features

1. Price at the lowest level in the field, from just 200,000 yen initially and from 50,000 yen monthly, putting Biz Marketing Smart Recommend within the reach of virtually any company that wants to grow its online sales.

2. Powerful analytic engine capable of providing diverse recommendations, even with limited data, by employing analytical techniques based on probability, as well as purchase chronology to identify more recent interests. The service is highly customizable to suit a broad range of product categories, from physical items to digital content and much more based on know-how gathered from NTT Com Group companies that use the service for their own websites. NTT Com expects to further tailor the service for increasingly specialized products and services.

3. Easy operation and analysis via a convenient interface that allows the retailer to adjust settings as required, for example, to focus recommendations on seasonable goods. The enterprise user can easily view recommendations being made by the system, as well as confirm click-through rates and conversion rates by product category, etc., as well as monitor hourly sales via charts. Operation, management and support will be provided by Digital Forest.

4. Easy introduction on the enterprise user side by simply adding HTML tags to the company’s website. The recommendation window comes in more than 10 user-selectable templates.

NTT Com, to support its full-scale entry into the field of enterprise marketing solutions, acquired Digital Forest, Japan’s leading provider of total web marketing ROI solutions, in the spring of 2009. The wholly-owned subsidiary is the developer of Biz Marketing Visionalist, a web-marketing analytical tool, and together with NTT Com provides related consulting services based on this tool. The two companies previously trialed the online recommendation service in preparation for the upcoming commercial launch.

About NTT Communications Corporation

NTT Communications provides a broad range of global networks, management solutions and IT services to customers worldwide. The company is renowned for reliable, high-quality security, hosting, voice, data and IP services, as well as expertise in managed networks and leadership in IPv6 transit technology. NTT Communications’ extensive infrastructure includes Arcstar™ Global IP-VPN and Global e-VLAN, as well as a Tier-1 IP backbone reaching more than 150 countries in partnership with major Internet service providers, and secure data centers in Asia, North America and Europe. NTT Communications is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, one of the world’s largest telecoms with listings on the Tokyo, London and New York stock exchanges. Please visit www.ntt.com/index-e.html.

About Digital Forest Inc.

Digital Forest, a leading company in the web analytics field in Japan for more than 10 years, provides its in-house developed web analytics solution Visionalist, net marketing system development and consulting services to its customers. Initially starting from web marketing analysis and visualization, Digital Forest is now leveraging the accumulated experience and knowledge to SFA, CRM or Sales data in order to enhance business activities and increase profit.
Since its establishment in 1998, large Japanese corporations such as NTT Resonant, NEC Biglobe have entrust Visionalist web analytics solution and its related services to optimize their online presence and improve their visitors’ online experience.
More information available at: http://www.digitalforest.co.jp/english

Contact Us