At recent TUG sessions, we’ve seen that Infor placed Storefront into an extended maintenance mode. Michael Watkins at Quality Pool Supply (a Storefront user) estimates the cost of replacing Storefront at $350-500K, but the great news is that there really is an alternative, and therefore a future for Storefront.
Last month, EasyAsk ran a live webinar entitled “The Future of Storefront: EasyAsk and mStorefront Alliance”, alongside Jonathan Kronberg, CEO at TriGroup. If you missed it, you can read the summary of the webinar content below – or you can watch the full recording here.
Craig Bassin, CEO at EasyAsk, began by outlining the current situation facing Storefront customers and how best to move forward.
EasyAsk is an AI-based Natural Language engine with a deep understanding of both data and language. As EasyAsk has worked directly with increasing numbers of Storefront customers, we have found that they are not using EasyAsk anywhere near as well as they could be and are experiencing ‘ok’ search at best. EasyAsk can significantly enhance the Storefront experience.
Craig went on to outline the 3 main messages:
- Engage with EasyAsk by allowing us to review your search and analytics and see what we can do to help drive more revenue.
- Enhance EasyAsk to take advantage of additional functionality. We have a strong AI-based B2B eCommerce solution that very few of the Storefront base are using.
- Enhance Storefront’s dated UX. Our partnership with mStorefront enables us to significantly improve the front-end UX far beyond its current ‘AOL.com’ level.
Jonathan Kronberg, CEO at TriGroup presented next about what mStorefront can do for the overall User Experience of your site. mStorefront is able to tie right into your current Storefront commerce, without dual entries, keeping the same brand identity no matter which platform people are using to view your site.
Jonathan presented 3 sites:
- TriDistributors: this is a demo site showing how mStorefront can build upon Storefront’s powerful eCommerce solution, giving it a fresh new look.
- EBPsupply.com: A completely customized site where everything you see is mStorefront. EBP Supply have complete control over their main page and they’re able to keep the same branding and design across platforms.
- Moda Fabrics: mStorefront provided a fully-fledged solution for their main site, which includes their blogs, login, shop, etc. The right information is available whether in desktop-view or mobile-view.
John Atkins from Moda Fabrics was invited to talk about his experience. John shared how Moda transitioned from not having the ability to modify and improve Storefront, to taking Storefront to the next level.
“We’re compared to Amazon whether we like it or not, and [users] expect that experience across multi-billion dollar entities, to the multi-million dollar entities, to the little fabric company down in Texas.”
Robin Aitken, Product Manager at EasyAsk, demonstrated how EasyAsk functionality is particularly suited to B2B eCommerce:
- You already have EasyAsk so you should be benefitting from the following functionality:
- Custom catalogs
- Handling complex part numbers
- Attribute display control
If you don’t think you’re getting these benefits, please get in touch.
- Upgrading to the latest EasyAsk version will give many benefits, including:
- Improved catalog partitioning
- Extended numeric capability
- Auto-attribute display control
- Speed improvement of between 5x and 10x
- If you’re upgrading your front-end and using mStorefront, it gives you the opportunity to include some of the visual EasyAsk features:
- Comprehensive banner management system
- Ability to configure the display of attributes and attribute values
- Search messaging
- ‘No Results’ page configuration
- Merchandizing using Natural Language rules
- New dashboards in addition to the advanced analytics you already have
Craig Bassin concluded the webinar and encouraged Storefront customers to work directly with EasyAsk to enhance the whole Storefront experience.
EasyAsk will provide concierge support to give you control over merchandising and analytics in Studio. EasyAsk are also creating a Storefront roadmap going forward. Tell us what you would like to see in the future.
Make an EasyAsk Direct upgrade to your existing Storefront site utilizing a term pricing model, as opposed to an expensive on-premise model:
- 50% annual support fees credited towards EasyAsk license
- EasyAsk search and analytics health assessment – immediately see improvements in search and revenue
- mStorefront review of your site – create a roadmap to take your Storefront site forward
- Support and engineering: Free training and concierge support