Archive for category: News & Events

Andertons Music Company, the musician’s No.1 superstore, deployed EasyAsk in 2013 to deliver a greatly enhanced search & navigation capability to support the expansion of their online business whilst leveraging their existing ecommerce platform.

 

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – March 04, 2014 – EasyAsk, the leader in natural language software and solutions, today announced that Andertons Music Company has achieved record growth from their online business since deploying EasyAsk eCommerce Edition early in 2013. EasyAsk’s comprehensive advanced site search, navigation and online merchandising solution, which replaced SLI Systems old-style keyword search offering, has delivered a vastly improved customer experience and helped Andertons Music to achieve record revenue growth in 2013. The EasyAsk solution allows customers to more easily find products or content, driving improvements in conversion rates and has empowered the Andertons web team with a simple to use but powerful capability to deliver an optimal, relevant and personalized shopping experience on any device.

“At Andertons Music Company, the online channel is a key element of our growth strategy” stated Lee Anderton, CEO. “2013 delivered a record year in terms of online sales with revenue increasing by 25%. We have to offer our customers the very best online experience to mirror the high quality expert service we offer in-store and an important element of this is helping guide our customers to the right product. EasyAsk has enabled us to drive significant business improvement in a short period of time, increasing conversion rates and reducing bounced searches, whilst allowing us to leverage greater return from our existing ecommerce infrastructure. Without having to re-platform EasyAsk has delivered results, underpinning the growth we have seen from online and equipping our relatively small team with the necessary tools to deliver continuous improvement to our online offering.”

One of the unique EasyAsk features – derived attributes – gave the Andertons online merchandising team far greater flexibility to market their products to different audiences and skill levels. For example, Andertons were able to create a new merchandising attribute called “Beginners” which is defined in a simple, English style natural language rule and reused across different products, such as “Beginner Drum Kits”, “Beginner Guitars” and “Beginner Keyboards.” According to Andrew Chart, Ecommerce Manager at Andertons, “EasyAsk derived attributes simplified our search, navigation and merchandising, and eliminated a costly process of restructuring our product catalog every time we wanted new attributes.”

With a product range in excess of 11,000 products, ensuring browsers can quickly and easily find exactly what they are looking for is critically important to support Andertons ambitions for their online business. EasyAsk’s natural language search technology allows consumers to be far more explicit when defining a search term, facilitating a more human interaction via the search box, as opposed to the traditional key-word search solutions which lack the intelligent understanding of language to deliver a rich and satisfying search experience.

EasyAsk’s advanced Search As You Type (SAYT) functionality provided a tremendous boost to the Andertons site, allowing browsers to navigate a large and complex range of products directly within the search box, helping find the right products in a single click. The SAYT functionality goes beyond traditional auto-complete, providing detailed optimized suggestions for products, categories and content as the visitor types. SAYT helped Andertons Music Company achieve a 12% increase in conversion rates and a 10% decrease in bounced searches.

The successful deployment of EasyAsk’s eCommerce Edition by Andertons Music is highlighted by a number of significant advances, including:

• The deployment of EasyAsk’s advanced “Search As You Type” functionality to proactively highlight relevant search terms and navigation options as the visitor types, getting them to the relevant products faster.
• The ability for visitors to utilize EasyAsk’s unique natural language and voice capabilities to deliver a far more effective search experience than traditional keyword search.
• A richer user interface that offers a deep set of refinement options on both search and navigation giving customers many different methods to find products that meet their specifications.

“It is great to see EasyAsk delivering so well for Andertons Music, not only in terms of a greatly enhanced user experience but also helping drive real business improvement and underpinning the growth of their online channel, said Simon Persse, VP EasyAsk Europe. ‘ EasyAsk’s natural language technology is providing a next generation search capability, which is essential as today’s consumers demand more than being able to search using key words’.

About Andertons

Andertons Music Co. is a family run musical instrument retailer with nearly 50 years of experience serving the music community in the UK. From the Guildford music store and the online musical instrument shop, Andertons offers musicians a huge selection of guitars, amps, drums, pianos, keyboards, synthesizers, recording equipment, PA systems, music accessories and more – all at competitive prices and with a high level of customer service. For more information, please visit www.andertons.co.uk.

About EasyAsk

EasyAsk is radically changing the speed and ease of how people find information through 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. Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, with offices in Europe, EasyAsk has long been a leader in natural language information analysis and delivery software. Customers such as The North Face, Coldwater Creek, Lillian Vernon, Aramark, True Value, Journey’s, Anna’s Linens and Harbor Freight Tools rely on the EasyAsk software products to run their business and eCommerce operations daily. For further information please visit www.easyask.com.

EasyAsk is proud to be a sponsor and exhibitor at the upcoming National Retail Federation “Big Show” in New York City, January 12 to 15, 2014. EasyAsk will be in Booth #2138 among the Sponsor Booths near the Hall 3E and Hall 3B entrances. Please join us for live demonstrations and the always handy tips and tricks from EasyAsk’s own “Man in the Green Hat”, Ben Rudnick.

To learn more about the NRF Big Show, use the following links to the NRF Event site:

• NRF Big Show 2014 Site
• NRF Big Show Exhibitor List
• NRF Big Show Exhibitor Map Site

EasyAsk Recognized By Internet Retailer For Its Impact On Driving E-Commerce Sales; Ranked Ahead Of IBM, GSI Commerce And SLI Systems, In The Internet Retailer Leading Vendors To The Top 1000 E-Retailers 2013 Edition®

 

Burlington, MA – October 1, 2013 – EasyAsk, the Natural Language Site Search, Navigation and Merchandising leader, today announced that is has been recognized by Internet Retailer for its impact on e-commerce sales. EasyAsk was named among the top four vendors in the 2013 Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 E-Retailers Guide, which for the first time reveals the leading e-commerce vendors that are driving sales for the largest and fastest-growing online retailers.

A recent report from MarketingSherpa indicates 43% of website visitors will immediately go to the search box, making it a critical component to increasing e-commerce revenue. According to a survey conducted by Internet Retailer, 27% of companies indicated site search as a top e-commerce technology budget priority, with 26% stating they plan to add or replace their site search application within the next twelve months.

“EasyAsk natural language site search, navigation and merchandising solution helps our clients drive significantly more e-commerce revenue by getting the right search results on the right page, the first time,” said Craig Bassin, EasyAsk CEO. If you’re using an old key word search solution, you are using an obsolete technology that is leaving a lot of money on the table.   We are honored to be recognized by Internet Retailer for our impact on driving e-commerce sales.”

Natural language and semantic search has become the most important trend in Internet search with the leading Internet search providers – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo – adding semantic search to their offerings in the last 24 months. Only EasyAsk provides natural language search for e-commerce enterprise, on-premise and cloud platforms.  EasyAsk is the leader in natural language search, with its superior capabilities delivering real results for customers daily.

Gartner Inc. estimates that retailers spent about $3 billion on e-commerce technology in 2012. A recent Internet Retailer survey found that 68.5% of e-retailers plan to increase spending on e-commerce applications and services in 2013.

“EasyAsk is poised to capture a significant share of the growing spend on e-commerce technology, said Bassin. “EasyAsk eCommerce Edition delivers amazing value to our clients. EasyAsk is embedded within Infor Storefront and has out-of-the-box integrations with the leading e-commerce platforms, such as IBM Websphere Commerce, Magento, Hybris and Netsuite. Our customers consistently tell us we help them turn shoppers into buyers.”

EasyAsk is a sponsor at the upcoming Shop.org Annual Summit starting Monday, September 30 in Chicago, IL and will also be at the Internet Retailing Conference on October 16 in London. Be sure to stop by our booth to see how EasyAsk can help you drive more e-commerce sales.

About the Top 1000 E-Retailers Guide®

For the first time in the retail industry, Internet Retailer has ranked the providers of e-commerce technology by the impact they have on online sales. The new “Leading Vendors to the Top 1000 E-Retailers” book details the top 10 vendors in each of 27 technology and service categories. Please visit Internet Retailer to download your copy of the full report.

Published by CatEx

CatEx DCA bronze sponsor Metakinetic and EasyAsk, the natural language search technology and solutions company, have joined forces to plan and implement a new site search, navigation and merchandising service for Andertons, the musicians superstore.

The new service, which replaces the previous third party search software, was  identified by Metakinetic as part of its ongoing strategic ecommerce consultancy provided to Andertons, advising on all aspects of ecommerce to help drive online sales growth for the business.

The solution from EasyAsk has been rapidly deployed as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution and empowers Andertons to take control of a single solution for their on-site search, navigation and merchandising functions. Using natural language processing, the service allows Andertons to give its website visitors an easy and intuitive way to navigate the site, helping them to easily find the product for which they are searching.

The EasyAsk solution releases the potential of product data held within product descriptions and names, to provide visitors with results that not only use word, phrase and attribute matching, but that have a real understanding of what the user is searching for. This means visitors can specify constraints such as a budget limit or exclusions such as colour or brand.

Darren Bull, director at Metakinetic and leading the EasyAsk project on behalf of Andertons, says, “It has been refreshing to work with the EasyAsk team – they have listened carefully to Metakinetic’s recommendations and ensured that they are implemented quickly, accurately and efficiently. I’m looking forward to seeing the inevitable uplift in sales following launch.”

Burlington, MA – 24 June 2013 – Full service ecommerce agency, Metakinetic, and EasyAsk, the natural language search technology and solutions leader, have joined forces to plan and implement a new site search, navigation and merchandising solution for Andertons, the musicians’ No. 1 superstore.

The need for the solution, which replaces the previous 3^rd party search software, was  identified by Metakinetic as part of the ongoing strategic ecommerce consultancy that it provides to Andertons, advising on all aspects of ecommerce to help drive online sales growth for the business.

The solution from EasyAsk has been rapidly deployed as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution and empowers Andertons to take control of a single solution for their on-site search, navigation and merchandising functions. Using natural language processing, the solution allows Andertons to give its website visitors an easy and intuitive way to navigate the site, helping them to easily find the product for which they are searching.

By tapping into the unstructured data used within the Andertons ecommerce website, the EasyAsk solution releases the potential of product data held within product descriptions and names, to provide visitors with highly relevant results that not only use word, phrase and attribute matching, but that have a real understanding of what the user is searching for. This means that visitors to the site searching who are searching for a blue guitar are not going to miss out on the beautiful Fender Eric Johnson Stratocaster in Tropical Turquoise and visitors can specify constraints such as a budget limit or exclusions such as colour or brand.

Lee Anderton, Managing Director of Andertons commented; “We’re very pleased to have found EasyAsk. It is a solution that helps us to improve our product findability to this extent. We now have faceted navigation, which is essential when working with such a large product catalogue.”

Darren Bull, Director at Metakinetic and leading the EasyAsk project on behalf of Andertons, added; “It has been refreshing to work with the EasyAsk team – they have listened carefully to Metakinetic’s recommendations and ensured that they are implemented quickly, accurately and efficiently. I’m looking forward to seeing the inevitable uplift in sales following launch.”

Simon Persse, VP Sales, Europe, EasyAsk concurred; “The speed of deployment and low upfront investment required to deploy EasyAsk Ecommerce Edition, coupled with the many unique capabilities such as our new autocomplete search as you type capability (SAYT) mean we will deliver a step change in usability for Andertons customers, helping them find the right product more easily as well as giving effective control over the search and navigation experience to the Andertons in-house team. We are looking forward to working in partnership with Metakinetic and the Andertons team to support the growth and development of their online channel.

About Andertons

Andertons Music Co. is a family run musical instrument retailer with nearly 50 years of experience serving the music community in the UK. From the Guildford music store and the online musical instrument shop, Andertons offers musicians a huge selection of guitars, amps, drums, pianos, keyboards, synthesizers, recording equipment, PA systems, music accessories and more – all at competitive prices and with a high level of customer service. For more information, please visit www.andertons.co.uk.

About Metakinetic

Metakinetic is a full service ecommerce agency founded in 2005. Based in Wokingham, Berkshire, with a team of 20 specialists, Metakinetic provides creative, technical and marketing services to a wide range of online retailers.

Focusing on quality, support and delivering results, Metakinetic helps its clients increase ecommerce sales and reduce operational costs. Metakinetic has worked with clients that include Daily Mail Shop, River Island, 118 Golf, Sohos, Laverstoke Park Farm and the award-winning sports bra site, LessBounce.

Metakinetic won an ECMOD Ecommerce Supplier of the Year Award, appears on the Recommended Agencies Register (RAR) for achieving a high level of client satisfaction, was ranked 25^th largest digital agency in the Wirehive100, and shortlisted for a fast growth award, and has staff members that write for a variety of industry publications, including Econsultancy, Direct Commerce Magazine and Digital Marketing Website, Fourth Source and has been involved in judging the Web Marketing Association’s WebAward.  Metakinetic is also one of the founding companies of Berkshire Digital, a Berkshire-based non-profit community that organises events for businesses interested in all aspects of digital.

Metakinetic is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Google Adwords Certified Partner and a Znode Gold Implementation Partner. For more information please visit www.metakinetic.com.

 

Published by Retail Systems

By Karen Moss

Metakinetic, and EasyAsk have joined forces to implement a new site search, navigation and merchandising solution for Andertons.

The need for the solution, which replaces the previous 3rd party search software, was identified by Metakinetic as part of the ongoing strategic e-commerce consultancy that it provides to Andertons, the musicians’ No. 1 superstore.

The solution from EasyAsk, the natural language search technology and solutions leader, has been rapidly deployed as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution and empowers Andertons to take control of a single solution for their on-site search, navigation and merchandising functions.

Using natural language processing, the solution allows Andertons to give its website visitors an easy and intuitive way to navigate the site, helping them to easily find the product for which they are searching.

By tapping into the unstructured data used within the Andertons e-commerce website, the EasyAsk solution releases the potential of product data held within product descriptions and names, to provide visitors with highly relevant results that not only use word, phrase and attribute matching, but that have a real understanding of what the user is searching for.

Lee Anderton, managing director of Andertons, says; “We’re very pleased to have found EasyAsk. It is a solution that helps us to improve our product findability to this extent. We now have faceted navigation, which is essential when working with such a large product catalogue.”

Published by Econsultancy

Full service ecommerce agency, Metakinetic, and EasyAsk, the natural language search technology and solutions leader, have joined forces to plan and implement a new site search, navigation and merchandising solution for Andertons, the musicians’ No. 1 superstore.

The need for the solution, which replaces the previous 3rd party search software, was identified by Metakinetic as part of the ongoing strategic ecommerce consultancy that it provides to Andertons, advising on all aspects of ecommerce to help drive online sales growth for the business.

The solution from EasyAsk has been rapidly deployed as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution and empowers Andertons to take control of a single solution for their on-site search, navigation and merchandising functions. Using natural language processing, the solution allows Andertons to give its website visitors an easy and intuitive way to navigate the site, helping them to easily find the product for which they are searching.

By tapping into the unstructured data used within the Andertons ecommerce website, the EasyAsk solution releases the potential of product data held within product descriptions and names, to provide visitors with highly relevant results that not only use word, phrase and attribute matching, but that have a real understanding of what the user is searching for. This means that visitors to the site searching who are searching for a blue guitar are not going to miss out on the beautiful Fender Eric Johnson Stratocaster in Tropical Turquoise and visitors can specify constraints such as a budget limit or exclusions such as colour or brand.

Lee Anderton, Managing Director of Andertons commented; “We’re very pleased to have found EasyAsk. It is a solution that helps us to improve our product findability to this extent. We now have faceted navigation, which is essential when working with such a large product catalogue.”

Darren Bull, Director at Metakinetic and leading the EasyAsk project on behalf of Andertons, added; “It has been refreshing to work with the EasyAsk team – they have listened carefully to Metakinetic’s recommendations and ensured that they are implemented quickly, accurately and efficiently. I’m looking forward to seeing the inevitable uplift in sales following launch.”

Simon Persse, VP Sales, Europe, EasyAsk concurred; “The speed of deployment and low upfront investment required to deploy EasyAsk Ecommerce Edition, coupled with the many unique capabilities such as our new autocomplete search as you type capability mean we will deliver a step change in usability for Andertons customers, helping them find the right product more easily as well as giving effective control over the search and navigation experience to the Andertons in-house team. We are looking forward to working in partnership with Metakinetic and the Andertons team to support the growth and development of their online channel.

Burlington, MA – June 5, 2013 – EasyAsk, the Natural Language technology and solutions leader, today announced a major enhancement to its eCommerce Edition called Search-as-you-Type (SayT). SayT takes the concept of auto complete to the next level. In addition to offering word suggestions as the visitor is typing, EasyAsk SayT presents product results and targeted category and attribute suggestions that automatically update as a shopper scrolls through the search suggestions.

According to MarketingSherpa, 43% of website visitors will immediately go to the search box, making it a critical component to increasing revenue. EasyAsk SayT helps shoppers by putting the right product on the first page, quickly. In addition to providing a better search and navigation experience for customers, EasyAsk SayT provides an unprecedented level of styling controls, including layout and color, the types of suggestions returned, which navigation facets are offered and how many, the number of search suggestions and the number of product suggestions and the types of fields shown, for example, name, image, description, price and more.

“We found EasyAsk SayT very easy to implement,” said Michael Schuler, Director, eCommerce, Schuler Shoes.  “The new search box feature that offers word suggestions, but also shows products, categories and attributes is currently running on our development site. We are very excited to roll it out to our live site in the next few weeks.”

“On many e-commerce websites, visitors type keywords in the search box and receive too many pages of results that don’t include the item they are actually looking for,” said Craig Bassin, CEO of EasyAsk. “When this happens, e-commerce sites lose customers. EasyAsk SayT eliminates this problem. By helping shoppers find the products they want quickly, it decreases the time it takes to get products into the shopping cart and increases revenue.

Available now, SayT will be provided to all existing EasyAsk Cloud and on-premise customers at no additional charge. New customers that purchase EasyAsk eCommerce Edition by September 30, 2013 will also get SayT at no additional charge.

 

About EasyAsk

EasyAsk is radically changing the speed and ease of how people find information through 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. EasyAsk eCommerce Edition uses this unique technology to deliver industry-leading website search, navigation and merchandising solutions that boost online revenue through increased conversion rates, improved customer experience and agile merchandising. EasyAsk Quiri , mobile Siri-like CRM for smartphones and Business Edition revolutionize 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, with offices in Europe, EasyAsk has long been a leader in natural language information analysis and delivery software. Customers such as The North Face, Coldwater Creek, Lands’ End, Lillian Vernon, Aramark, TrueValue, Siemens, JoAnn Fabrics and Harbor Freight Tools rely on the EasyAsk software products to run their business and eCommerce operations daily.

For further information please visit www.easyask.com.

Published in Direct Marketing News
June 1, 2013
by Ryan Joe, Senior Editor

It can be relatively easy to engage customers on e-commerce websites when marketers know who those customers are or the nature of their purchase histories. But what about customers who don’t sign in? Or first-time customers? The following are three ways companies are building engagement through incremental improvements to their e-commerce strategies:

Using location to optimize offers

Electronics retailer Crutchfield New Media may only have two physical locations in Virginia, but it has an e-commerce business across the United States—where customers on different coasts have different buying habits.

Crutchfield knew it needed to use customer location to push relevant deals and offers on its website. Yet, it also needed to do this seamlessly. “If you have to wait for someone to log a ZIP Code, you’ve lost a large percentage of your visitors,” says Zach Zimet, the company’s senior director of marketing. While it’s natural to ask for location information when a customer orders a product or signs up for a newsletter, it’s jarring to do so simply when a customer enters the website. Two years ago the company began using an IP targeting solution from Digital Element. The benefits have been twofold: First, the solution tells local searchers about product in stock at nearby branches.

Second, the shipping banner on the Crutchfield page changes its offer based on the customer’s location. “We’re shipping 100% of product out of one warehouse in Virginia,” Zimet says. “So there’s very relevant time and transit information depending on where you live.” It’s important for customers to get this information before the checkout process, Zimet says. “If someone is in California, we can say there’s free delivery but we can’t crow about [fast] delivery,” he says.

Making searches more natural

As recently as last year, hardware retailer Tacoma Screw Products had nothing more than a static online catalog with poor navigational and search functionalities. “We heard it day in and day out,” says Eric McGregor, Tacoma Screw’s e-commerce manager. Customers going to the website couldn’t even find a product based on its part number. In November 2012 the company went live with an e-commerce website, powered by NetSuite.

But Tacoma Screw still wanted to optimize its search capabilities. “In our industry there are a lot of different terms,” McGregor explains. “Products can be listed multiple different ways. To have people type the way they speak and still return [relevant] results was huge for us.” The company added a solution from NetSuite’s partner EasyAsk to provide natural language capabilities to its search function. Through this, the company has increased its search relevancy for more than 45,000 products—leading to improvements in conversion rates, average order values, and customer satisfaction.

Surfacing products

Many manufacturers sell through third-party retail websites, like Amazon or, in the case of juvenile products company Mobi Technologies Inc., Babies“R”Us. Mobi needed to generate customer engagement there—particularly tricky since its most popular products, baby monitors, are commoditized.

The answer was finding a way to optimize its organic search rankings. Partnering with a company called HookLogic, Mobi ensured that search variables included whether the product is actually in stock or whether the shopper’s previous behavior indicates that the product is relevant. If these variables check out, the search algorithms surface and highlight Mobi’s products on Babies“R”Us above such dominant competitors as Summer Infant.

“We’re not just seeing an increase of sales from Babies“R”Us, we’re seeing an increase of calls coming into Mobi and a huge increase in people going to our website to obtain more information,” says Andy Buckband, Mobi’s national sales manager. “That’s a plus for us. We’re increasing sales across the board.”