Blog

by

Magento, EasyAsk and IJHANA

IJHANA is a global technology consulting firm that delivers progressive eCommerce sites using Magento Enterprise and Magento Go, along with Magento Extensions. IJHANA is a Magento Silver Partner and have an unmatched understanding of the Magento e-commerce plaform.

IJHANA released a new case study on integrating EasyAsk eCommerce Edition with Magento, and the benefits one client received from the EasyAsk natural language search, navigation and merchanding. Click here to read this case study.

According to Kevin Calloway, Managing Partner at IJHANA:

“The e-commerce catalog was characterized by complex descriptions and terminology requiring a search product that intuitively knew what the visitor was looking for.  The EasyAsk natural language solution was easy to implement and dramatically expanded the search and navigation capabilities, helping the site convert customers faster.”

by

EasyAsk and Magento

This morning we officially announced our partnership with Magento – now part of eBay’s X.Commerce division and a driving force inside the X.Commerce platform.  Magento merchants using any edition of the Magento Commerce platform can now plug-in EasyAsk and improve customer conversion with our natural language search, navigation and merchandising.  To learn more about how EasyAsk embraces and enhances the Magento platform, please visit our Magento partner page.

We have been working with Magento for a while now and have a wildly successful customer implementation at a large, national tools retailer.  IJHANA, a leading Magento solution partner, implemented the solution at the tools retailer, and is thrilled with EasyAsk.  According to Kevin Calloway, Managing Partner at IJHANA:

“The e-commerce catalog was characterized by complex descriptions and terminology requiring a search product that intuitively knew what the visitor was looking for.  The EasyAsk natural language solution was easy to implement and dramatically expanded the search and navigation capabilities, helping the site convert customers faster.”

We are thrilled to be a part of the Magento and X.Commerce communities and look forward to working with many more Magento customers and merchants.

Thanks,

John-

by

EasyAsk Partners with Magento to Bring the Enterprise-Class Natural Language EasyAsk E-Commerce Edition Search to Magento Merchants Worldwide

The Integration of EasyAsk Search and Merchandising with Magento Allows Customers of Any Size to Take Advantage of the Conversion Power of Natural Language

BURLINGTON, MA and LOS ANGELES, CA—November 1, 2011 – EasyAsk, the industry leading provider of natural language e-commerce search and merchandising solutions, today announced a partnership with Magento, the fastest growing e-commerce platform in the world, to integrate EasyAsk’s best-in-class natural language eCommerce search, navigation and merchandising platform with Magento, bringing the solution to Magento merchants around the globe. The integrated solution makes it faster and easier for Magento Enterprise and Community customers to power their sites with EasyAsk’s enterprise-class natural language search and merchandising to increase conversion rates, deliver the best shopping experience and grow their e-commerce revenue.

“Converting visitors into buyers is a significant priority to our customers regardless of size or sector,” said Phil Robinson, Vice President of Business Development at Magento. “The EasyAsk search and merchandising solution uses natural language technology to provide an enterprise-class solution that is affordable and easy to use by any size customer. Now, any of our merchants can take advantage of EasyAsk to increase their conversion rates and grow their eCommerce revenue.”

The EasyAsk eCommerce search and merchandising software – available on-premise or as a service (SaaS) – is a comprehensive, full-featured solution that uses natural language technology to offer superior capabilities, including:

  • Intuitive natural language search that allows customers to enter highly descriptive search phrases – “men’s blue polo shirts under $50” – and find the exact products they seek in a single click
  • Powerful automatic features such as relaxation, spell correction and more, virtually eliminating the “no results” page creating a better shopping experience and drastically reducing lost visitors due to search
  • Integrated faceted navigation powered by natural language attributes that make it faster and easier for shoppers to navigate to products they like and speeding conversion
  • Easy to use merchandising tools which allow non-technical users to create powerful promotions with cross-sell and up-sell offers driven by natural language rules
  • Advanced analytics that identify trends in shopping behavior, brand experience and more, providing pinpoint advice to merchandising teams to better tune the shopping experience

EasyAsk eCommerce Edition has helped customers achieve industry-leading conversion rates that dramatically increase their e-commerce revenues.

The EasyAsk Magento Extension integrates EasyAsk search, navigation and merchandising with the Magento eCommerce platform for fast, easy implementation and delivers a seamless customer experience for site visitors.  The Extension and the easy to use EasyAsk tools allow customers to implement EasyAsk natural language search and merchandising in days versus the weeks or months required by other third party search platforms, for faster return on investment.

“We are pleased to partner with Magento to create an innovative eCommerce solution that combines to deliver the best customer conversion rates in the industry,” said Craig Bassin, CEO of EasyAsk.  “Blending EasyAsk’s natural language technology with the state of the art eCommerce functionality of Magento allows customers of any size to offer a superior shopping experience that will fuel their eCommerce growth.  We are truly delivering the benefits promised by IBM/Watson to all of our EasyAsk eCommerce customers and doing it today.”

IJHANA, a leading e-commerce consulting firm and Magento partner implemented the combined Magento and EasyAsk solution for a large tool retailer with a catalog of over 5,000 items.  “The e-commerce catalog was characterized by complex descriptions and terminology requiring a search product that intuitively knew what the visitor was looking for,” said Kevin Calloway, Managing Partner, IJHANA.  “The EasyAsk natural language solution was easy to implement and dramatically expanded the search and navigation capabilities, helping the site convert customers faster.”

About Magento
Magento (https://www.magentocommerce.com/) is a feature-rich, open-source, enterprise-class eCommerce solution that offers merchants a high degree of flexibility and control over the user experience, catalog, content, and functionality of their online store. In August 2011, Magento was acquired by eBay Inc., and is now part of the X.commerce division (www.x.com). Launched in 2007, the Magento platform now serves tens of thousands of merchants worldwide, and is supported by a global community of solution partners and third-party developers. Magento Go is a hosted, software-as-a-service solution that provides small and growing merchants with the ecommerce tools they need to succeed online. Based in Los Angeles, Magento, Inc. is a fast-paced, entrepreneurial organization dedicated to the mission of enabling the eCommerce ecosystem. www.magentocommerce.com  

About EasyAsk
EasyAsk is radically changing the speed and ease of how people find information through the company’s ground-breaking natural language search software.  EasyAsk software products go far beyond traditional search, allowing users to simply ask questions in plain English and receive highly tuned results on demand.  The EasyAsk eCommerce Edition uses this unique technology to deliver an industry leading website search, navigation and merchandising solutions that boosts online revenue through increased conversion rates, better customer experience and agile merchandising.  EasyAsk Business Edition revolutionizes enterprise decision-making, moving beyond traditional business intelligence solutions with easy, low-cost deployment and a unique natural language interface that extends access to information anywhere in the organization.

Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, EasyAsk has long been a leader in natural language information analysis and delivery software. Customers such as Coldwater Creek, Lands End, Lillian Vernon, Aramark, TruValue, Siemens, Hartford Hospital, Ceridian, JoAnn Fabrics and Harbor Freight Tools rely on the EasyAsk software products to run their business and e-commerce operations daily.  For more information, please visit EasyAsk.

by

Oracle Buys Endeca – Another E-Commerce Software Company to Vanish?

Endeca goes to Oracle. Now that is big news. I’ve read nine articles analyzing the acquisition and they all paint the same picture: good news for Oracle’s BI solutions; an enhanced Oracle BI architecture with Endeca’s ability to integrate unstructured data; new functionality for Oracle BI in analyzing data from Hadoop.

The consensus is clear: the Endeca acquisition was driven by the need for Oracle to expand its BI solutions and have more offerings to sell to existing Oracle customers.

But does anyone remember when Endeca was an e-commerce search company? What about that segment of their customer base? What should Endeca e-commerce customers expect?

The acquisition news is fresh, so there is little solid information beyond a few comments expecting an integration of Endeca’s search and merchandizing with Oracle’s ATG platform. Does this imply that ATG will become the primary, or even only e-commerce platform which Endeca supports? Where does this leave customers using Endeca with other e-commerce platforms (WebSphere, Magento, others)? With all the focus on the BI aspect of this announcement, I’m not sure anyone knows the answer. . . yet!

What I can tell you is this – Endeca e-commerce customers should not be surprised if they’re treated as second-class citizens. A recent study by Computer Economics found that “42% of Oracle (ORCL) customers are dissatisfied with the quality of Oracle’s support while 58% are dissatisfied with the cost of the support.” And that was for traditional Oracle customers! What about Endeca customers coming into the fold? What about Endeca SaaS customers? Who knows?

What I can tell you for certain is that EasyAsk believes in customer satisfaction. Or as Ford Motors used to say it is ‘JOB 1’. Since we spun EasyAsk from Progress Software back in ’09, we’ve made sure our ALL our customers know how important they are to us and how committed we are to making them successful.

Providing the very best search and merchandizing technology is what EasyAsk is all about. We can deploy in a fraction of the time it takes for a traditional Endeca site and typically ¼ the costs.

Our natural language based search provides dramatically better results, while our merchandizing tools are so intuitive and easy to use you can return control of your e-commerce merchandizing to the experts – your merchandizers.

This is why NetSuite, Magento and Infor were excited to partner with EasyAsk. We provide IBM Watson-like natural language functionality that is intuitive and optimized for customers and end users. With EasyAsk powering you search, when a visitor searches for a product they get the right result the first time, every time.

Congratulations to Endeca on their sale to Oracle. I’m sure they knocked it out of the park. Congratulations to Endeca’s investors and to their employees.

For Endeca’s e-commerce customers however, this might be a different story. If you are looking for best of breed search technology, remember that EasyAsk is here for you too.

Thanks for listening,
Craig

by

Looking for a Better Search Solution?

 

A recent industry study found that 85% of site searches don’t work.  And what happens when visitors can’t find what they are looking for?  A related study found that 80% of visitors that encountered poor search would abandon the site.

Can you really afford to lose customers like this?

Many e-commerce sites, including those in the Internet Retailer 1000, use sub-par search solutions built into their e-commerce platforms or inferior third party products that simply do not produce the right results and are costly to manage.  The result is lost visitors, a poor customer experience and an inability to convert customers.

With EasyAsk natural language search and navigation, your visitors will find products faster and quickly be converted from shoppers to buyers.  This will increase your customer conversion rates.  We guarantee it!

Just ask the over 400 e-commerce sites that are powered by EasyAsk, ranging from large to small, including: The North Face, Journey’s, Anna’s Linens, Lillian Vernon, True Value, JoAnn Fabrics, InkJet Superstore, Travers Tool and Schuler Shoes.

With EasyAsk natural language search your e-commerce site will be turbo-charged with:

  • A more powerful search box where customers can enter even long-tail search phrases – “men’s blue polo shirts under $50” – and get to the exact products they want faster, greatly increasing the odds of purchasing,
  • Built in spell-correction and other linguistic processing techniques that virtually eliminate “no results” searches,
  • Dynamic guided navigation built automatically from your product catalog and generated on the fly based on the visitor’s search terms,
  • Easy to use merchandising tools so merchandisers can manage offers and promotions on their own, without the help of IT staff and making the site more agile.

Just ask InkJet Superstore, a leading online seller of printer cartridges and components.  website.  Accroding to Ilan Douek, the President of InkJet Superstore:

“Nothing is more important than being able to direct buyers to the right cartridge and accessories.  EasyAsk gave us search capabilities that deliver rich, accurate results to both increase conversion rates and reduce the burden on our call center.”

Fill out the form on the right and you can receive a free copy of our e-commerce search guide, The ABCs of E-Commerce Search.  This will help you maximize the effectiveness of your search environment.

In addition, you will be eligible for a free e-commerce search impact analysis, where our team of search and merchandising experts will assess your site and provide direct ways in which better e-commerce search can impact your site and sales.

by

Steve Jobs – We Have Lost a Giant

I heard the sad news an hour ago.  Steve Jobs passed away.  My reaction was immediate.  Loss.  Steve envisioned everything I love in our technology world.  He was brilliant.  He was fearless.  He had the courage of his convictions.  He took on the world and made no apologies. 

Think about it for a minute.  Apple competed with EVERYONE !  They competed with all the PC manufacturers back in the ‘80’s.  They competed with the largest software company in the world, Microsoft.  They competed with IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell . . EVERY hardware manufacturer, almost every software company. 

APPLE did it their way, Steve’s way.  He had a vision and he never let go of it.  I loved (and bought) everything Apple ever built . . .  well, except for the Newton.  OK, no one’s perfect.  Good idea and they got it right decades later with the IPAD. 

I’ll never forget the 1984 ad introducing the Macintosh, (directed by Ridley Scott) that ran during the Super Bowl.  You could have knocked me over with a feather at the conclusion of that ad.  And it never ran again.  Are you kidding me?!

Who had the moxie, the chutzpah, the pure audacity to take on IBM like that?  One shot, but unforgettable.  Brilliant.

And, years later, after building Apple Computer into a $2 billion company, . . .  they fired him.  Maybe one of the most successful marketing moves since New Coke.  No, really.  New Coke was fabulously successful.  Not for the product, but for stimulating an unprecedented demand for Classic Coke.  The net effect was to propel Coca Cola back into first place vs. Pepsi.  Steve said his firing was one of the best things that could have happened to him.  Off he went to start NeXT Computer, then in his spare time, spun off the Graphics Group from Lucasfilm, creating Pixar.

Pixar !  What Steve had done for the PC world, he now did for the world of animation.  Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Wall-E and many more.  26 Academy Awards,  7 Golden Globes, 3 Emmys.  He later sold it to Disney for a lousy $7.4 billion, becoming the largest single stockholder at Disney.  Astounding.

NeXT was, of course, acquired by Apple in 1997.  Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?  Steve rejoined the company and served as CEO from 1997 until a few months ago. 

Steve Jobs, thank you for my iPhone, my iPad, my Macintosh(s).  Thanks for iTunes, iBooks.  Thanks for defining ‘intuitive’ and building it into every Apple product.  Thank you for your commencement speech at Stanford, 2005.  If you haven’t had a chance to read the speech here is a link to it.

I sent this to everyone here at EasyAsk and to my 3 young adult children.  I’d strongly recommend you set aside a few minutes of your time.  It will touch your soul.

Most of all, thank you for being one hell of a role model as visionary, leader and CEO. 

And thank YOU for taking the time to read this. 

The world has lost a giant . . .

by

Natural Language, a Solution Who’s Time Has Come

EasyAsk CEO, Craig Bassin, delivers a stirring byline article that discusses the history of natural language technology, the recent accelerated events which are creating tremendous interest in natural language products, and the various business problems EasyAsk can and has solved to-date. According to Craig:

“If Watson is focused on big problems, how can I use natural language solutions to better my business today? Perhaps you want to increase website customer conversion and user experience, better manage sales processes, deliver superior customer support, or in general, make it easier for your workers to find the right information to do their job. So where do you go?”

Link to the full article.

by

NetSuite E-Commerce

Are you frustrated with the built-in NetSuite e-commerce search?  Is it delivering poor results to your visitors, irritating them to the point of leaving your site?  Could your site use a boost in customer conversion?

EasyAsk gives you the customer conversion power of EasyAsk natural language to your NetSuite e-commerce site.  With EasyAsk, visitors will find products faster and quickly be converted from shoppers to buyers, which will increase your customer conversion rates, order sizes and overall e-commerce revenue.  We guarantee your conversion rates will increase with EasyAsk.

How does EasyAsk do it?  The secret is the natural language technology.  EasyAsk natural language gives your NetSuite Suite Commerce site:

  • A more powerful search box where customers can enter descriptive search phrases – “men’s blue polo shirts under $50” – and get to the exact products they want faster, greatly increasing the odds of purchasing,
  • Automated linguistic processing features such as spell-correction, stemming and relaxation that ensure visitors will see results and not receive the dreaded “no results” page,
  • A greater number of attributes and guided navigation options built automatically by EasyAsk from your product catalog to deliver more accurate results and faster navigation,
  • Easy to use merchandising tools so merchandisers can manage offers and promotions on their own, without the help of IT staff and making the site more agile.

EasyAsk is highly integrated with NetSuite Suite Commerce with automated extracts from the NetSuite Item Catalog, and unique direct integration with the NetSuite application server that eliminates sub-domains and maximizes your SEO.

Just ask InkJet Superstore, a NetSuite customer.  The built in NetSuite search could not handle InkJet Superstore’s search needs.   The company tried other 3rd party search products only to see those fail as well.  Inkjet Superstore turned to EasyAsk, and now has a more visitor friendly search box and has practically eliminated no results pages.  The EasyAsk implementation was fast and required little resource from InkJet Superstore.

Fill out the form on the right and you can receive a free copy of our search tips white paper, The ABCs of E-Commerce Search.

Also check out the EasyAsk product here on our website and learn about the numerous customers that are taking advantage of EasyAsk natural language to convert more visitors. 

by

WebSphere Commerce

Are you tired of using OmniFind to power the e-commerce search behind your WebSphere Commerce site?  Are you spending costly technical resources to update and manage the search?  Does the search box annoy visitors with no results pages and force them to navigate through pages and pages of results to find the products they are looking for?

Why settle for bad and costly search?  EasyAsk uses natural language technology to make your e-commerce search easier to manage while giving your e-commerce site the best search box, most flexible navigation and easiest to use merchandising tools in the industry.

With EasyAsk, visitors will find products faster and quickly be converted from shoppers to buyers, which will increase your customer conversion rates, order sizes and overall e-commerce revenue.  EasyAsk will also virtually eliminate no results searches, delivering a better customer experience.  We guarantee your conversion rates will increase and lost visitors will drop with EasyAsk.

How does EasyAsk do it?  The secret is the natural language technology.  EasyAsk natural language gives your WebSphere Commerce site:

  • A more powerful search box where customers can enter descriptive search phrases – “men’s blue polo shirts under $50” – and get to the exact products they want faster, greatly increasing the odds of purchasing,
  • Automated linguistic processing features such as spell-correction, stemming and relaxation that ensure visitors will see results and not receive the dreaded “no results” page,
  • A greater number of attributes and guided navigation options built automatically by EasyAsk from your product catalog to deliver more accurate results and faster navigation,
  • Easy to use merchandising tools so merchandisers can manage offers and promotions on their own, without the help of IT staff and making the site more agile.

The EasyAsk implementation is easy and requires little resource to maintain.  Search analytics with direct point-and-click actions allow non-technical staff to tune and maintain the search, eliminating frustratingly slow update processes.  With EasyAsk, your search is as dynamic and flexible as you want.

Fill out the form on the right to download our free white paper: Delivering a Richer Shopping Experience on Websphere Commerce.

Also check out the EasyAsk product here on our website and earn about the numerous customers that are taking advantage of EasyAsk natural language to convert more visitors.

by

EasyAsk Search for Magento

EasyAsk gives you the customer conversion power of natural language for your Magento e-commerce site.  With EasyAsk, visitors will find products faster and quickly be converted from shoppers to buyers, which will increase your customer conversion rates, order sizes and overall e-commerce revenue.  We guarantee your conversion rates will increase with EasyAsk.

How does EasyAsk do it?  The secret is the natural language technology.  EasyAsk natural language gives your Magento site:

  • A more powerful search box where customers can enter descriptive search phrases – “men’s blue polo shirts under $50” – and get to the exact products they want faster, greatly increasing the odds of purchasing,
  • A greater number of guided navigation options built directly and automatically by EasyAsk from your product catalog,
  • Easy to use merchandising tools so merchandisers can manage offers and promotions on their own, without the help of IT staff and making the site more agile.

Just ask The North Face Europe, a Magento customer about EasyAsk. The North Face Europe deployed EasyAsk to support their business units across 9 countries including the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain and Austria taking full advantage of EasyAsk’s support for local languages, whilst further leveraging the investment made in their existing Magento systems. The EasyAsk site search and navigation drove a 35% increase in search conversion rates and a 24% increase in revenue from search for the North Face Europe.

Additional EasyAsk Magento customers include: Sonic Sense, Anna’s Linens, HD Tracks and Daz3D.

Fill out the form on the right and receive our free white paper: Delivering a Richer Shopping Experience on Magento.

Also, please sheck out EasyAsk products here on our website and earn about the numerous customers that are taking advantage of EasyAsk natural language to convert more visitors. 

Ready to see how EasyAsk's eCommerce solution can help you? Request a demo!
mp3 database movie database pdf database