Archive for category: Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The robust future of e-commerce retail is hardly in dispute. According to Forrester Research, the online retail market is expected to reach $246 billion in 2014.

While consumers have embraced online shopping, the consensus on how well e-tailers’ websites are serving those customers remains open for discussion. Difficult navigation and irrelevant (or nonexistent) search results consistently rank at the top of the list of shopper frustrations. An e-commerce site that could think and respond more like a human being would go a long way to resolving those issues. Enter natural language search.

Natural language search allows users to describe what they are seeking in plain English and receive highly tuned results on demand. The same technology also allows the retailer to simplify and streamline many operational aspects of e-commerce. The benefits can have a significant positive impact on both the customer’s experience and the bottom line.

Reduced clicks/Improved shopper experience. Even on sites with sound navigational structures, a customer may have to click 6 to 10 times to get to the merchandise being searched for. The larger the site, the more SKUs, the more likely a customer will need to spend time and effort to “drill down” to find a specific product.

A customer looking for “black patent leather size 8 flats” can have those results accurately returned in one click, not many. That kind of ease, speed and efficiency engenders customer loyalty, return visits and improves sales. Using linguistic and semantic processing techniques, natural language search interprets what the shopper is looking for so that most relevant products are returned. If no exact match is found, the search returns the closest thing available. The dreaded “No Results” page becomes a thing of the past.

Higher conversion. It’s hardly a secret that a primary goal of the e-commerce retailer is to get items into the customer’s shopping cart – the quicker and easier the better. By understanding what the customer is looking for, and delivering those results, natural language search improves conversion rates. When a well-known national outerwear retailer deployed natural language search, it saw an increase in conversion of over 20%, along with an associated decrease in the number of searches. Shoppers were simply able to find the items they were looking for much faster. The printer supplies e-tailer Inkjetsuperstore (where customers often shop using product numbers) saw a significant drop in call center activity from customers unable to find the items they were looking for. Switching over to natural language search improved both the customer experience and the bottom line.

Continuous improvement. With a natural language search and merchandising platform, the shopper isn’t the only one with a better experience. Because a natural language search platform understands the context and intent of user inquiries, it provides insight which the retailer can use to fine-tune site navigation and which the merchandising manager can use to more effectively target product selection, offers and promotions to customers.

Dynamic, Simplified Merchandising.  Merchandising is made far more streamlined and simple with an easy-to-use interface that puts the merchandiser in the driver’s seat and eliminates the need for IT staff involvement. Using natural language rules, a merchandiser can simply describe “what” they want to happen and “when” they would like that scheduled. New promotions and offers can be implemented quickly and easily.

As the world of e-commerce becomes more diverse, sophisticated and widely adopted, the benefits offered by natural language search are poised to play an increasingly important role for the e-commerce customer and retailer alike.

Merchandising and Management

This post is part 2 of a two part series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Part I of this blog post, we discussed the numerous benefits e-commerce search technology can provide for your customer, which directly translate to increased conversion and sales for your business.

In addition to providing the customer with an improved shopping experience, effective e-commerce search also gives you, the retailer, a veritable treasure trove of information regarding what visitors are looking for and what visitors like.

The predictive value of this information gives senior management insights to make important decisions about likely areas for future sales growth. The immediacy and richness of the information lets the merchandising team capitalize quickly and efficiently on opportunities for successful merchandising efforts and inventory forecasting.

The best search platforms allow merchandising managers to not only capture data but put it to work with simple-to-use tools to generate effective promotions and offers. A search platform that supports natural language processing gives merchandisers the ability to easily create and manage offers using plain English, without requiring support from the web or IT teams. Merchandisers can add, change or eliminate promotions quickly as market conditions shift.

Data gathered by an effective search platform also provides analytic information which allows for continuous improvement of the search function and eliminates inefficiencies. Among the analytics you should look for in an e-commerce search engine are:

• An easy-to-read, high level dashboard that provides at-a-glance metrics and information on how the search environment is performing
• Detailed reports that show top visitor searches and clicks, zero result searches and problematic search terms
• Actionable links that allow the user to immediately address any issues uncovered in the reports
• Natural language query ability to provide easy access to the comprehensive information generated by the search engine and the ability to generate ad hoc reports

Insight provided by search analytics on customer demand or trends can guide critical decisions on offline processes such as inventory, product line expansion and in-store promotions. A few examples:

• A high search volume and/or conversion on a specific product can help determine the need to order additional stock
• High volume search results with low conversion can signal the need to consider a price reduction or make adjustments to other facets of the product’s merchandising
• Searches for products not carried on the e-commerce site signal potential demand and create suggestions for profitable additions to the product line

A good e-commerce search and merchandising platform delivers benefits that are both numerous and wide-ranging. They include improved conversion rates, better customer experience leading to stronger loyalty, agile promotions and merchandising, and improved accuracy and efficiency in product ordering.  Most importantly, all of these increase e-commerce revenues and generate ROI on your search technology.

Not all e-commerce search engines are the same. Whether you purchase on-premise software or SaaS, the product must deliver on the benefits promised and provide a low cost of ownership and operation. When shopping for an e-commerce search platform, it’s critical to do your homework. Keeping the guidelines and recommendations outlined in this two-part blog in mind will go a long way towards making a good and profitable decision.

Why is eCommerce Search Important?

This post is part 1 of a two part series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a nutshell, search can make or break the profitability of your e-commerce site. Poor search leads to lost visitors, poor conversion rates and lower revenue. A recent Jupiter Research study reports that 85% of site searches don’t return what the user sought.  And another study by Jupiter Media Matrix showed that 80% of visitors will abandon a site if the search is poor. Those are sobering statistics.

On the bright side, a report from the Aberdeen Group found that retailers implementing “Best in Class” e-commerce search reaped enormous benefits, including:

• An increase in year-over-year average order value by 20% (compared to 8% Industry Average)
• Net profit margins of 15% (compared to 5% Industry Average)
• Average online conversion rate of 6% (compared to 4% Industry Average)

It doesn’t take long to see what those performance results can mean to your bottom line.

Best Practices

Your e-commerce search needs to meet the needs of all your visitors, from casual shoppers who may want to peruse a lot of product, to motivated buyers who know exactly what they want and wish to purchase right away. To accommodate both kinds of visitors, your search capabilities should:

• Always return results.  We can’t emphasize this enough. No results = no sale.
• Return accurate, edited results. The only thing worse than seeing the “No Results” page is a deluge of results that are not germane to the search. Bad results = unlikely sale.
• Offer lots of attributes. Buyers will come to your site with a very specific set of attributes in mind, while shoppers may want to explore a wide variety of attributes to guide their purchasing decisions. Your e-commerce search engine needs to be able to accommodate both.

Does Your Search Deliver?

There are several key features that can play an important role in eliminating the dreaded “no results” page.

• Relaxation: This allows a search engine to ignore one or more words in the search description if the entire string of words would not return a result.
• Spelling Correction: Typos happen, especially with increased adoption of smaller tablet and mobile keypads. A rich dictionary with automatic spell correction is essential to understanding these misspellings and delivering the results the visitor intended.
• Term Stemming: Simply put, this means understanding and including all the possible variations of the search term such as plurals, tenses, genders and hyphenated forms.
• Definable Search Terms:   A search engine which facilitates adding Defined Terms to the search dictionary allows you to include synonyms and alternative phrases that customers might use in their search, as well as add definitions for terms from the product catalog which a search engine might not automatically understand.

When it comes to delivering accurate results, keyword-based search engines tend to come up short. If they read multiple keywords in the search phrase, they can deliver huge numbers of results, many of them irrelevant. To avoid this, a “best in class” search engine should provide:

• Natural Language Search: A search engine with natural language capabilities can linguistically process an entire search phrase to understand the complete context and deliver correspondingly accurate results.
• Relevancy: Search managers should have the capability to define and rank the relevancy of search terms and catalog fields with the most relevant terms moved to the top of the search results.

Attributes (any adjectives that describe a product) are essential to the search process. The more attributes in your search dictionary, the more likely it is to deliver highly accurate results across a wide variety of searches.  In addition to direct attributes such as size, color and price, your search engine should support a range of other attributes including operational attributes (inventory, product age, etc.). This allows you to incorporate data from your operational systems to raise specific products in search results or to drive promotions.

In part II of this blog, we’ll explore further how critical a role e-commerce search can play in effective merchandising and proactive management.

 

This is a guest post from the folks at AbandonAid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In recent years, rates of shopping cart abandonment have gone way up. However, with the help of Abandonaid, e-commerce marketers who have problems with high shopping cart abandonment do not have to worry anymore. But why do customers leave their shopping carts without purchasing?

One cause which affects whether a customer continues the purchase and completes the checkout are high shipping costs of goods. But instead of making the shipping free, online marketers can offer free shipping for purchases over an agreed total. These costs should be one of the easiest decisions the customers have to deal with. In the end it is important to make shipping costs as well as the check-out process clear and understandable for the buyers.

Another reason which leads to high shopping cart abandonment rates is the shopping cart payment options during the check-out process. Most abandoned shopping carts on e-commerce websites do not offer sufficient payment options. If people cannot select the payment method they prefer, they might look for alternative websites where they can choose their favoured form of payment. To reduce high shopping cart abandonment rates, the payment process should be as pleasant and convenient as possible for the customer.

Online retailers who struggle with high cart abandonment can be backed by working with Abandonaid. One way Abandonaid increases the number of customers that follow through with their purchase is email retargeting, which is at low cost and highly effective. At best, customers can receive a shopping cart recovery email a few minutes after the cart abandonment occurred.

With the aid of Abandonaid e-commerce marketers can be sure of help to avoid lost sales and have the abandoned shopping carts recovered.

Look For The Man In The Furry Green Hat!

If you are an Infor Storefront Customer, you may be heading to Orlando this weekend for Inforum 2013. If you are planning to be there, our own Ben Rudnick would love to meet up with you while he’s there!

Infor Storefront is built on the award winning EasyAsk eCommerce Edition Site Search and Navigation platform. EasyAsk drives higher conversion through better part number searching, faster response, and better results with understanding of shopper intent, thanks to EasyAsk’s Natural Language Semantic Search.

We aren’t exhibiting in the Expo Hall. However, Ben will be there walking around in a green furry hat (to make it really easy for you to find him). You can also find Ben in the following sessions:

Monday

• 11:45 AM – 12:45 PM – W304A DIST-5002 – Storefront Overview
• 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM – W304A DIST-5001 – Storefront – What’s New and What’s around the Corner

Tuesday

• 11:45 AM – 12:45 PM – W304A DIST-5001 – Storefront – What’s New and What’s around the Corner
• 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM – W303C DIST-3023C – FACTS Roundtable: Using Storefront with EasyAsk
• 3:15 PM – 4:15 PM – W304A DIST-5006 – Storefront Rocks with Easy Ask & Google Analytics
• 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM – W303B DIST-2024C – A+ Roundtable on eCommerce topics

Wednesday

• 9:45 AM – 10:45 AM – W304A DIST-3024C – Storefront for FACTS Roundtable

We hope to see you at Inforum!

 

 

 

 

 

Top tier eCommerce platforms like Magento and Websphere Commerce are optimized to provide an array of services to help you deliver an excellent eCommerce site.  These services includes a shopping cart, content management system, product catalog management, customer relationship management, order management and more.

They also offer basic keyword search and many offer an advanced search option based on Solr, a popular open source project.  However, Solr may not be the right answer for many eCommerce companies.  It’s difficult to administer, requiring development resources for basic administration as well as creating rules for navigation, sorting and merchandising.  Solr also lacks support for some of the most important site search features, like actionable customer analytics.  Solr’s inability to manage spell-correction and stemming means admins have to enter all the various word forms into the system manually, increasing the burden of maintaining it.

For companies just starting out in eCommerce or those with a limited number of products that are easy to find and navigate, the site search functionality that comes with your eCommerce platform may be adequate.  But, at what point does the business outgrow those capabilities? When any of the following occur:

• The number of products you offer on your site grows
• The variances of the products (a.k.a. SKUs and attributes) grows
• The ways in which you want to describe product options in your navigation become more variable – different price ranges, different sizes or colors, etc.
• The ways in which you want to merchandise your products gets more sophisticated – fast changing promotions, cross-sells, up-sells, etc.

The changes in product characteristics sneak up on online businesses very quickly.  The business grows rapidly, new products and variances are added to meet that growth, and suddenly the product catalog becomes unwieldy and products become difficult to find and merchandise on the site.  At this point, the business has outgrown the search, navigation and merchandising functionality that comes with your eCommerce platform – even with upgraded options, like Solr.

Need more information to help you figure out whether it’s time to integrate a better site search, navigation and merchandising solution with your eCommerce platform? Schedule a demo with our team and we’ll be happy to tell you all about it.

A recent piece by Allison Enright for Internet Retailer shares a discovery by Rakuten Inc.  Their discovery states that “U.S. consumers cite price most often as the prime factor in choosing to make a purchase online, according to an online survey of more than 5,300 consumers in a dozen countries. 75% of U.S. respondents rank price as the most important factor, while the global average stands at 61%.  The survey included responses from consumers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, the United States, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Rakuten, which is based in Japan, operates marketplaces in all those countries. It is the second-largest eCommerce company in Asia, according to Internet Retailer’s Asia 500.”

With it being fairly obvious that price is so important, offering a discounted price should be the ultimate money maker… as long as your customers know you are offering discounted items.  So I sat down with Ben Rudnick, Director of Field Technical Services at EasyAsk, to discuss how a retailer could use EasyAsk to entice buyers through promotions and business rules.

Here is what he had to say:

“This price sensitivity can be used to drive sales through targeted email campaigns, sorting product results and more with EasyAsk.  For example, for a price conscious customer who buys Tools, a set of products could be selected such as “Tools on sale with discount over 60%” and with a single link from within the email, the site product search could deliver those products, sorted by decreasing discount percentage.  With EasyAsk a single campaign landing page can serve many email campaigns for the future.  The products are selected for each campaign within the EasyAsk’s Natural Language tools.  For each email campaign the link can point to the same landing page, passing the EasyAsk campaign selection as part of the search. In addition the request passed to EasyAsk could also sort by your choice of: price, margin, discount percentage, price sensitivity score and more.”

EasyAsk is more than just eCommerce Site Search and Navigation.  It’s Natural Language engine puts the power in the hands of the Merchandisers, and the examples Ben mentioned are just a few of the many ways that EasyAsk can help your eCommerce Site do its job to the best of its abilities.  Come see what else we can help you accomplish.  Visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.

Today’s blog is a video i discovered thanks to MultiChannel Merchant, where their Senior Content Manager, Tim Parry talks to CommerceV3 founders Nathan Focht and Blake Ellis about recent eCommerce trends, and some changes that have been made in the last five years.  In this video, they discuss eCommerce site usability, homepage issues, mobile issues and much more.

Enjoy!

These issues they bring up, whether it be usability, eCommerce Site Search problems, issues with mobile, homepage issues, content issues, whatever they may be, we at EasyAsk can help make sure your website does its job to the best of its abilities.  Let us show you how.  Visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.

Shopping cart abandonment is one of the most popular occurrences when it comes to eCommerce.  Nearly 72 percent of eCommerce shoppers add items to their cart but never complete their purchase.  In this second part of a two-part infographic created by SeeWhy, you’ll see how the behavior of eCommerce shoppers, whether they be new shoppers or returning customers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nutshell:

Ninety-nine percent of new customers will not buy from your eCommerce site on their first visit.  Of those new customers who abandon their cart, one quarter of them will not return.  The percentage of returning customers who abandon their shopping cart is about 50-50 on who returns to buy and who does not.  The average time delay between a customers first visit and them buying from your site is about 20 minutes.  And 72 percent of visitors will make a purchase in the first 12 hours.  As far as understanding cart abandonment in a 28-day period, one-time abandoners have an 18 percent chance of making a purchase, serial abandoners have a 48 percent chance of making a purchase, and Recent Goal Abandoners (meaning they’ve already made a purchase before) have a 57 percent chance of making a purchase.  Abandonment rates are higher among those with lower totals in their shopping cart.

This is just more fuel for you, the eCommerce Merchant, to use in your defense against shopping cart abandonment.  The more you know, the more you can do to help increase your conversion rates and average order sizes.  To learn more about what else you can do to increase your conversion rates and average order sizes, visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.

This week’s infographic brings tips on your shopping cart for your eCommerce Site.  The shopping cart, being the final step in the conversion from window-shopper to buyer, doesn’t ever really make the sale, but it sure can brake it.  To avoid losing the sale in the final steps, take heed to this infographic by Demac Media.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most commonly used ideas for the Shopping Cart are:

No more than 5 pages to complete the check-out process. The sweet spot for input fields is between 21-28. Prominent features to use are multiple shipping options, express check-out, guest check-out, gift cards, and promo codes/coupons. Go with the standard of white background and black text for the majority of it, but adding some color for flare helps when it’s in the correct place. And the use of smarter technology helps to determine what credit card is used based on the first four numbers, and can automatically fill in city, state and country based on the zip code.

These are just a few tips to help convert your shoppers to buyers in the final stages of the sale process. To see what else EasyAsk can do to help convert your shoppers into buyers, visit our website or call us at 781-402-5641.