Mercado announces bFirst, which it describes as an ASP offering that enables businesses to deliver enterprise-grade e-commerce search and navigation capabilities to their online customers. The company claims deployment time for bFirst is simply a matter of days, adding that the ASP on-demand service maintained by Mercado adds little additional load on IT and marketing staffs.

Mercado believes bFirst is well-suited for small- and medium-size businesses--as well as for new-market entrants and business units in larger organizations--through its packaging of merchandising functionality with search/navigation and catalog-enrichment capabilities. Mercado says its bFirst Standard Deployment includes both the Intelligent Search & Navigation Suite and Mercado Merchandiser, a merchandising management console for non-technical business users, and comprehensive reporting and shopping synonym catalogs to ensure the right results are delivered (even if there's a typo or misspelling).

The offering also includes consulting services to help set up and automate merchandising and promotion strategies.