Archive for category: Blog

The eCommerce world is large, complex and fraught with both danger and the opportunity to open new markets and increase sales. The stakes are high, and companies want to make sure they are making all the right choices along the way. Those are some of the reasons why retailers choose to work with the industry’s largest vendors. They are also some of the very same reasons why many select smaller partners to accomplish their goals.

In the world of online retail, bigger isn’t always better.

Large vendors and technology providers often tout their global footprint, number of employees and financial size in their corporate profiles. All of these are potentially good things, but not necessarily relevant to delivering the best solution to a customer.

Etailinsights recently offered some food for thought on why bigger isn’t always better. We think they’re right on the mark and have a few more ideas to add to the discussion.

Innovation. Many smaller technology vendors can spot a product opportunity or a common customer issue and design solutions far more quickly and with less bureaucracy than their larger counterparts. They can adapt to changing market conditions rapidly, and aren’t left trying to sell last decade’s solution in 2013.

Specialization. Smaller partners don’t have to try to be all things to all people. In many cases, they have a niche – a certain specialty product or a specific market type or size they service best. All of their focus goes into providing the best possible customer solutions for those audiences

Attention. As Etailinsights points out, there’s little doubt that smaller vendors often excel when it comes to personal service and attention.  Resources can be quickly shifted to address clients’ needs.

Cost Effectiveness. The smaller vendor usually does not need to support a global sales force or multiple offices around the world. Product development, sales and management are often under one roof, which not only translates into less cost to the end user, but also sparks greater innovation (see above).

When it comes to search technology for today’s eCommerce retailer, we like to think EasyAsk delivers the best of both worlds. We’re innovators in the field of natural language search, allowing users to simply ask questions in plain English and receive highly tuned results. That specialty focus and unique technology have helped drive some of the highest conversion rates in the industry. Yet our mainstream approach means we integrate seamlessly with eCommerce sites from some of the biggest names in the industry, including Magento and Netsuite.

Those of us of a certain age may remember a tag line which Avis Rental Cars famously launched in the 1960s. It not only gave Avis a memorable brand promise, it also it summarizes in a nutshell why it’s often a smart move to take a look at the smaller vendor: “We Try Harder.”

While classic merchandising techniques such as cross-selling and up-selling remain important in today’s retail environment, eCommerce has brought many changes to the world of merchandising. There are new merchandising tools and analytics and algorithmic display techniques. Sales influencers have also changed dramatically with the increased importance of social media and customer reviews.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that while most bricks and mortar merchandising is designed to promote certain products for a fixed period of time, online merchandising operates in real time, and can be changed immediately depending on customer behavior.

Leveraged correctly, and with the right tools, these changes hold the promise of an effective, agile merchandising environment. Let’s take a look at how to make that happen.

Unlike many eCommerce platforms, EasyAsk was designed with the merchandiser in mind. Using information from the product catalog, and based on the products a visitor is looking at, merchandisers can configure truly dynamic merchandising programs.

And while most platform merchandising tools allow very limited data to drive merchandising, EasyAsk allows merchandisers to enter any number of fields or attributes, and can even derive attributes for specific promotions. Operational attributes, such as sales data, product margin or inventory level can also be used to drive merchandising efforts.

Product promotions can be displayed in a number of different locations on an eCommerce site using EasyAsk. Landing pages, product detail pages and the shopping cart are all options for cross-sells, upsells and promotions.

Banner ads are the online equivalent of promotional store signage, but with greater functionality. The banner can link to any group of products which the merchandiser can create through a natural language search query.  So a banner ad promoting “The Season’s Hottest Shoes” could execute an EasyAsk rule for “5 best-selling pumps.”

Landing pages can also be configured to show products based on dynamic, natural language rules.

Smart merchandisers are already using social media and product reviews to better position products and increase sales. In addition to reaching customers with sale and promotional information via social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, retailers are leveraging customer feedback, product reviews and Facebook “Likes” to drive sales. EasyAsk makes it simple to raise and/or promote products based on reviews, stars or “Likes” using natural language rules.

For example, a merchandiser could use product review data to group products and display specific items at the top of the page. A plain English rule, “lawnmowers rated 4 stars or higher” would create a group of “4-Star Lawnmowers” for the customer to shop. Or a rule “top 5 rated televisions” would find and present the most highly rated TVs, honing the customer’s search and bringing the sale closer.

With buyers increasingly interested in purchaser feedback, this becomes an extremely powerful merchandising tool.

EasyAsk Commerce Studio makes it easy for merchandisers to take advantage of the promise of online merchandising by making it easy to define, maintain, and manage merchandising programs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merchandising has been around for as long as there have been marketplaces. Both veteran retailers and academic experts have spent countless hours analyzing and honing the best practices for displaying products for maximum sales and profits.

While many of those tried-and-true principles are applicable to the world of online retailing, there are important differences. Understanding those differences, and exploiting the advantages that new technology is bringing to the retail landscape, can make a huge difference in your bottom line.

First, what’s the same: The concept of promoting certain products over others, cross-selling and up-selling are universal, no matter whether you are selling your goods in a corner boutique or an online superstore.

It seems intuitive that eCommerce platforms should simplify these tasks, but in many cases that promise has not been fulfilled. With many eCommerce platforms, cross-sells and upsells often need to be configured on an item-by-item basis, which can translate into an onerous and time-consuming task.

Similarly, the ordering of items on display pages is often based on rudimentary algorithms which assign a static “priority value” to each item. Merchandisers wanting to push certain products to the top of pages have to re-number their priority values – another thankless chore that makes it hard for merchandisers to react quickly to changing market conditions.

Deciding where merchandise should appear on category and subcategory pages is hard-wired in many eCommerce platforms. That wouldn’t be so bad if the retailer only had to configure things once and be done. But inventory is never static – and as products are added or removed, additional time and effort is constantly needed to keep the most attractive products from a merchandising perspective at the forefront.

All of these challenges are multiplied for large and/or highly active retailers.

EasyAsk completely eliminates these issues and delivers solutions that allow merchandisers to react quickly and easily make changes in how products are displayed, upsold and cross-promoted.

For example, using natural language rules a merchandiser can feature specific products by identifying common product attributes and presenting them to the customer in a creative manner, such as “Hot Items” or “Great Values.”

Changing the display order is just as simple. A merchandiser can create and apply a variety of different rules (using plain English) to order products based on any number of attributes, including product attributes such as price, color or brand or operational attributes such as inventory level, popularity and margin.

Cross-sells and upsells are also easily implemented using natural language rules. Let’s say a retailer wants to cross-sell sunglasses with swimwear. With EasyAsk Commerce Studio, the merchandiser would create an event rule for “swimwear” and an action rule for “sunglasses” with a promotion type of “cross sell.” Done. Quite a bit easier than selecting every swimwear item and manually placing sunglasses in the “related products” area!

To entice a customer looking at handbags to consider a premium brand such as Kate Spade handbags, a merchandiser would simply set up an event rule of “NOT Kate Spade handbags” and an action rule of “Kate Spade handbags” with a promotion type of “upsell.” This would ensure that Kate Spade handbags appeared as “Items You Might Be Interested In” on any page where handbags other than Kate Spade were shown.

Classic merchandising techniques such as cross-selling, upselling and product promotions still hold powerful promise for eCommerce retailers. But the ability to quickly react and adapt to changing trends and market condition makes these tactics even more valuable to the bottom line. In our next installment, we’ll look at how to maximize some of the newer merchandising considerations that are unique to the age of internet retailing.

Site search is getting better these days, and with that development comes the assumption that the most “relevant” results should always show up in the first page of the results display.  While that seems like a pretty reasonable expectation, there is actually more to it than meets the eye.

“Relevancy” is actually a loaded term that can have differing meanings depending on how the term is used, and who is using it.  EasyAsk understands that there is a difference between “search relevancy” and “business relevancy,” and allows the merchant to control the results display based on the importance of both of these considerations.

Consider this example:  A customer of a large online retailer is looking for a television. She types “television” into the search field and sees results that include TVs, but also television remote controls, television antennas, and other television-related products. Those results all contain the keyword she entered and are therefore “search relevant.” But are these results displayed optimally from a “business relevancy” perspective?

It’s a common mistake for a search admin to treat this kind of situation as a search issue and attempt to improve the results by restricting the definition of “television” to return only actual televisions and not accessories.  The problem with this approach is twofold: It now makes it harder for the site search function to find accessories for a “TV remote” search, and it doesn’t allow the customer to further navigate to the TV accessories after viewing the actual televisions.

EasyAsk’s technology delivers a different solution. With EasyAsk, the retailer doesn’t need to eliminate results to present the most “relevant” options first. EasyAsk allows customization of how results are displayed through simple “business rules” that weight search results.  Using plain English, the retailer can simply type in rules that will prioritize how the results of the search are displayed.

This gives the retailer complete control and solves a problem common to many site search engines. It also has dramatic implications for merchandising, since items can be prioritized by brand, price, whether they are on sale, etc. We’ll explore that avenue further in a future blog.

But back to relevancy: In many cases it’s very difficult for site search technology to know how business relevant a product is to the search request. A related item such as accessory may be categorized in the same place as the looked-for item, and have many of the same words in the product title, but may actually be quite different from the searched-for item.

The site search is doing its job when it finds every product that corresponds to the searched phrase in the correct product category. Now it’s up to the retailer and the display technology to show that information in such a way that the buyer and seller sees what is appropriate in the top results.

To illustrate with another example, let’s say a customer searches for a gas grill.  Good site search technology should find all of the products related to gas grills — including the grills themselves as well as accessories such as grill covers and grill cooking implements. A merchandiser with a powerful tool like EasyAsk, however, can control how the search results are displayed with a simple business rule that prioritizes non-accessories when showing equally search relevant products.  In this way, a single business rule can have the HDTVs and the gas grills show first for their related searches while also including their equally “search relevant” accessories  further down in the results.

The topic of relevancy in search results is more complex than it initially seems. But with EasyAsk, there is also a simple solution that serves the needs of both the retailer and consumer.

Not all of us are gifted spellers. Or typists. Add to that the fact that more and more of us are multi-tasking, searching for products and information on the go, using mobile devices with tiny, tiny keypads, and it’s easy to see why it’s important for eCommerce retailers to have search capabilities that understand and correct misspellings. The online shopper sitting leisurely at a desktop computer using a full size qwerty keyboard is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

You may think your website search already offers spelling correction. And it probably does have some basic functionality in that area. But is the spelling correction good enough to deliver the correct results even when the error may not be an obvious misspelling?

Many eCommerce search engines use the equivalent of a pocket dictionary to catch misspellings. This may catch common misspellings of common words, but falls far short when it comes to brand names, industry terms or incorrect part numbers.

EasyAsk uses all the words in your product database as a reference for valid spelling. When it’s unable to get an exact match, a powerful algorithm identifies the closest logical alternative. For example, if a buyer mistypes the word “jeans” as “jeens,” EasyAsk will automatically return results for “jeans.”

But EasyAsk doesn’t stop there. EasyAsk can generate the most likely correction for the misspelling, but also display other possible options as well. To continue the example, perhaps the shopper really meant to type in “teens.” EasyAsk will also deliver that possible alternative – if the client user has chosen to expand the options on their display.  EasyAsk’s spell correction gives the eCommerce site complete control over how expanded the search result is that is presented to the online shopper.

Perhaps the biggest benefit good spell correction makes is to eliminate the No Results page. If your search capability can understand what the likely intent of the user is, it can deliver results even if the term or phrase is entered incorrectly.  Since the number one job of your eCommerce search engine is to make sure results are returned whenever possible, this becomes an extremely important feature.

EasyAsk’s natural language search capabilities can linguistically process an entire search phrase to understand the complete context of the query. Misspellings or not, accurate results are delivered.

Maybe it’s a good thing our fourth grade teachers didn’t know that technology would bring us to the point where we are today – we might all be worse spellers than we already are.

 

 

We don’t want to appear rude, but if this is a question you’ve been asking about your eCommerce site, the chances are it’s because it’s no good. Poor or inconsistent search results are a fact of life for all too many online retailers, with damaging results to conversion, sales and profitability. Here are a few of the prime offenders/key culprits that may be driving your customers away from your search box.

No results. Readers of previous EasyAsk blogs will know that we can’t emphasize enough the importance of returning results to a search query. There’s just no excuse for the “No Results” page. If your eCommerce search can understand both the intent of the search and the content of the product catalog, this problem is eliminated.

Irrelevant results. A close second in the worst search practices is the delivery of multiple pages of irrelevant results.  It’s just as frustrating to the customer as the “No Results” page and just as unproductive for the retailer.

Inconsistent results. Chances are your website search sometime delivers and sometimes falls short. But customers have the expectation that your search should work all the time, every time. And the recollection of a poor experience is likely to make more of an impression of that of a smooth transaction.

If your site search has been guilty of any of these bad behaviors, chances are you have trained your customer to ignore your search box. If the customer is determined enough, and your navigation is good enough, they may still click through multiple steps necessary to find the product they are looking for. Alternatively, they may just go to a better site.

What To Do

Natural language search software eliminates all of these missteps by letting shoppers describe what they are seeking in plain English and get back highly tuned results every time they search.  The semantic processing technology can interpret what the customer is looking for and thus always returns the most relevant results. If there is no exact match, the software intelligently returns the closest thing available. By adopting natural language search, both the customer’s experience and the bottom line are greatly improved.

Making the course correction, adopting natural language search, and delivering accurate, relevant search results will delight new and returning customers who use your search function. But if your search box function has been poor in the past, it’s important to let customers know that things have changed and that they can expect an improved experience.

There are several simple steps you can take to regain user confidence in your search box. One of the easiest is to post a banner on the site that asks the shopper to “Try our new, improved search box!” Changing the look and feel or position and size of the search box also draws attention to the fact that something has changed. Make your search box large enough and prominent enough for visitors to easily see it. The top center of the page is generally the best location for visibility and usage.

Another user-friendly approach is to put a leading phrase into the search box instead of a blank space or “enter keyword.” A phrase like “What are you looking for” encourages the shopper to not only use the box, but we specific about what they are hoping to find.

If customers aren’t using your search box, it’s time to take a hard look at the results it is delivering and make a commitment to make a change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week at IRCE 2013, EasyAsk unveiled a new way to search for products. The new Search-as-you-Type (SayT) brings shoppers one step closer to getting the right product on the first page. When EasyAsk eCommerce search is powering a site, as you begin to type in the search box, a drop down area opens guiding you with smarter search suggestions, better instant product results with images & also category + attribute guided navigation.

Have you ever been to a commerce website, typed something into the search box and received many pages of results, not showing what you were looking for? SayT fixes that!

Available now, new SayT with navigation is available free to all existing EasyAsk customers, and anyone switching to EasyAsk by September 30, 2013. This feature works with both the cloud based SaaS and installed versions of EasyAsk eCommerce Search.

We’re very excited to be exhibiting at IRCE 2013, going on right now in Chicago from June 4-7. As of now, the show has officially begun with the Opening Reception taking place in the Exhibit Hall.

Wednesday, the Exhibit Hall is open from 9 am to 7 pm and on Thursday from 9 am to 4:15 pm.

EasyAsk will be giving demos and talking about our eCommerce Edition. Please ask us how it’s helped our customers achieve unbelievable decreases in bounce rates, increased use of the search box, and increased conversions, all leading to higher revenue.

If you’re at IRCE, please stop by booth 708. We’re giving away popcorn! You should be able to smell your way to our booth. 😉

SEO is the lifeblood of the online retailer. Most online shoppers begin looking for an item by using a well-known search engine such as Google or Bing, and how your products show up in those results is critical to your success. Making SEO additionally challenging for eCommerce businesses is the fact that their sites are constantly changing as inventory comes and goes. And the seemingly mysterious changes and updates to the algorithms used by the major search engines only add to the anxiety and confusion for anyone wanting to increase traffic to their site.  It can seem like a daunting (and never-ending) task.

As the leader in eCommerce site search, navigation and merchandising, Easy Ask has long enabled high performing, SEO-optimized online commerce sites. It is a core driver in our technology and an important feature in taking our eCommerce customers to the next level.

Here are a few suggestions from the EasyAsk experts for getting the most out of your SEO efforts:

High Quality URLs – This is a good idea, no matter what kind of technology you are using. URLs that make sense to a human also happen to look good to Bing and Google search engines. A long string of numbers and symbols in a URL is meaningless both to the customer and the search engine crawlers. Using the descriptors that your customer is looking for and that actually represent the product is always a smart move.

Use an XML Sitemap – Because eCommerce sites have a large number of products and URLs, it is important to get those products indexed in such a way that search engines can find them.  An XML sitemap does just that, ensuring that Google and Bing don’t miss anything.  EasyAsk provides a rich, best-in-class XML sitemap generator right out-of-the-box, with no need to purchase an extra module. Crawler-friendly links are simple to build, so your site can include a virtually unlimited number of dynamically built landing pages for products, brands and more.

Facilitate the “Long Tail” – It’s great to rank highly for a popular general search term such as “dresses.” But a long-tail term such as “Michael Kors green halter dress” is far more likely to reach customers closer to making a purchase, and result in higher conversion. More traffic isn’t always better – quality over quantity translates to higher sales and better profits. Use long tail keywords and phrases to increase the chances of your website visitors converting into sales. And while you’re at it, keep in mind that product names should be created with search users in mind. Describing a product as “emerald” is unlikely to reflect the search terms used by a customer looking for a green dress.

EasyAsk allows you to understand how your prospects and customers are searching and adjust your results based on their terms, quickly and easily. When it comes to site search, the analytics power within EasyAsk is second to none. Ad hoc reporting distills out the terms of top value and gives you powerful insights into what drives your customer.

Few things are more satisfying to an e-commerce retailer than experiencing rapid growth in site usage and sales. But with that growth can come challenges, which if not seen and addressed, can undermine the anticipated success and profitability.

Many e-tailers begin with an off-the-shelf ecommerce platform, such as Magento, Netsuite or IBM Websphere Commerce, which allows them to quickly and easily build and deploy their ecommerce site, and manage operations. These platforms generally provide a shopping cart and content management system, as well as features to assist with product catalog management, order management and customer relationship management. In addition, most platforms provide basic search and navigation features. These generally allow for keyword search based on a finite number of fields from the product catalog and provide site and product navigation.

For many smaller companies, or those in the start-up phase, these basic services are often enough. But growth and product expansion can change all that. The growth trajectory often incudes increasing complexity in:

• The number of products offered on the site
• The number of product attributes and SKUs
• The ways in which products need to be described and categorized (prices, sizes, colors, etc.)
• The desire to merchandise products in a more agile, sophisticated manner (rapidly changing promotions, cross-sells, etc.)

If the product catalog becomes unwieldy and products become difficult to find and merchandise on the site, the retailer has a problem that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. Once a customer has a frustrating experience on a site, the chances of return visits and sales are greatly reduced.

A third party partner such as EasyAsk can address these problems, give customers an enhanced shopping experience and provide a sound foundation for continued growth. Using natural language site search, navigation and merchandising solutions that integrate seamlessly with the ecommerce platform, EasyAsk has allowed many retailers to double and triple their conversion rates.

The benefits brought by upgrading to EasyAsk include:

• Improved Search – EasyAsk’s rich linguistic processing “understands” the relationship between words and how they apply to the product catalog, delivering accurate results and eliminating the “no results” page.  EasyAsk understands both the intent of the search and the content of the catalog.
• Flexible Navigation – EasyAsk’s natural language rules can derive attributes from any field in your product catalog. Navigation is easily extended using dynamic attributes which merchandisers can adjust on the fly for visitors.
• Dynamic Merchandising: EasyAsk offers a rich suite of merchandising tools in an easy-to-use interface that eliminates the need for IT involvement. The natural language rules and virtually unlimited number of attributes deliver the ultimate combination of flexibility, agility and simplicity.
• Simplified, Low-Cost Management – A complete set of out-of-the-box analytics and actionable reports track visitor behavior and allows management to clearly see the complete picture and easily make adjustments to fine-tune the shopping experience.

Knowing when to augment your platform with an integrated, third party solution can go a long way towards meeting the challenges associated with managing rapid growth and maintaining a positive trajectory. As you evaluate your needs and available options it is important to remember that not all third party solutions are truly integrated. EasyAsk offers both on-premise and SaaS versions, both of which provide full integration with your e-commerce platform to maintain high degrees of SEO and easy product data integration.