Tag Archive for: natural language

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SemanticWeb – EasyAsk Helps DollarDays Boost Sales and Web Presence

EasyAsk reports that their client DollarDays has marked several milestones this back-to-school season thanks in part to EasyAsk’s natural language semantic search. The article states, “In 11 short years, Dollar Days is celebrating several milestones, including doubling the number of SKUs it offers to more than 225,000 and the number of suppliers to more than 500. Traffic on the DollarDays.com site has increased significantly, as have the number of memberships. All of this translates into revenue growth for DollarDays, even in a business environment where competitors are shrinking or going out of business.”

The article continues, “DollarDays CEO Marc Joseph attributes DollarDays’ continued success to many key variables, including a growing number of price-sensitive shoppers, dominant marketing as seen in the company’s back-to-school programs and an overall exceptional customer experience, led by strong site search, merchandising and analytic capabilities. ‘As the volume of traffic and the total number of items increases, the more important it is to present the right items to the visitor as quickly as possible,’ says Joseph. DollarDays originally used the open source search product, Solr as part of its open source e-commerce software stack. Solr is an open source search platform from the Apache Lucene project.”

For the full article, click here.

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Gartner E-Commerce Search Best Practices Part 2

In my last blog post, I discussed the recent Gartner report “Best Practices in Strategically Combining Search, Content Analytics and E-Commerce.” One of the most important e-commerce search best practices that analysts Whit Andrews and Gene Alvarez emphasize is the ability to “Offer effective definition-matching and handling of ambiguity in Query terms.” Let’s take a closer look at what this means, and how it applies to your search environment.

Effective Definition Matching

The Gartner reports talks about how a truly effective e-commerce search environment must understand the “language variations that are specific to what’s being sold and the audience to whom it’s being sold.” This really boils down to two items a search engine must be able to do:

  1. For each term in a search string, understand what that value represents – an attribute, product name, product category, etc. – and allow each column to have different relevancies.
  2. The ability to process search strings of different complexities as entire entities and understand how the individual terms relate in order to return the most accurate results.

This is the essence of natural language.  A natural language engine will process a complete search phrase, break it down linguistically and understand the full meaning of the request – NOT just what individual terms mean.  In this way, a natural language engine such as EasyAsk can fully support the specific “language of the site” and allow visitors to “speak” to the site in that language via the search engine.

With natural language processing, you can be assured that not only will simple searches – “blue shirts” – be processed effective, but so will complex ones – “women’s blue short sleeve shirts under $50.”  You can fulfill this e-commerce search best practice with the most effective definition matching possible.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity can come in many different forms.  It can come from mistakes or typos.  It can come from simple language variations such as different tenses.  Or it can come from a visitor’s lack of knowledge of the products – asking for “purple blouses” when none are available on the site.  To help you fulfill this aspect of the Gartner best practices, your search engine needs to give you the following:

  • Spell correction – your search engine needs to provide automatic spell correction.  Anticipating and pre-coding every potential misspelling of each term on your Website is a time consuming task. Who wants to do that?
  • Stemming – Your search engine needs to automatically support the different tenses, plurals and other variances of terms.  Once again, why should you need to have the time consuming task of entering every potential variance of each term?
  • Relaxation – this concept allows the search engine to drop part of a search term if no specific products exist in order to make sure some products are returned.  Seeing some products is always better than seeing NO products.  With relaxation, a search for “black levi jeans” will still return Levi jeans, even if there are none in black.  You search engine needs to have automatic support for this capability.

All of these characteristics will help you virtually eliminate the dreaded “no results” page and dramatically enhance the customer experience by always returning products to the visitor, even when there is some degree of ambiguity.

Further Flexibility

What if your “site language” is more complex than standard terms?  What if your site has a number of acronyms and industry terms?  What if you have cryptic model numbers that customers need to use to find parts or products?

To fulfill this last requirement, your search engine needs to make it easy to add synonyms, custom search terms and rules.  Once again this is where natural language engines help you implement best practices.

With natural language, you easily specify additional search terms and rules in – well, natural language.  You simply type in terms of any level of complexity and associate those with the existing terms or products in your catalog by simply pointing and clicking.

Learn More

To read more on these capabilities, please download our white paper, “The ABCs of E-Commerce Search: A Guide to Essential E-Commerce Search Features.”  In Part 3 of our blog post series, we’ll look at best practices in Search Analytics and Merchandising.

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Internet Retailer: Tool retailer lets mobile shoppers speak their searches

Travers Tools Company implements a voice search feature into its mobile site.

Consumers visiting the mobile site for Travers Tools Company Inc. searching for a specific drill bit now need only ask for it.

The retailer recently launched an updated m-commerce site that enables consumers to speak their site searches. The service, from site search provider EasyAsk, lets shoppers touch a microphone icon then say what they want into their smartphone to see a list of results.

“The industrial supply business is very competitive and what sets us apart is our industry knowledge and our ability to provide the right tools and parts for our customers,” says Bruce Zolot, president, Travers Tools. “EasyAsk search helps us ensure that our customers find what they are looking for quickly on our site and now just as easily on our mobile site. Shoppers can speak what they want into the search box and see what they want immediately.”

Shoppers can use their Apple Inc. iPhone 4S or a smartphone using Google Inc.’s Android operating system to speak their search queries. Consumers see a microphone icon next to the search box that prompts them to speak into their device.

“A consumer might be in a hardware store and see a tool they want,” an EasyAsk spokesman says. “Maybe they think it costs too much, or they want to see if they can get a better deal online. They pull out their Android or iPhone and go to Travers Tools and touch the search box microphone icon. They say ’Jet bandsaw‘ or ’Jet bandsaw over $1500.’ They can speak their search as they would describe it to a salesperson– the more info, the tighter the search results. The list is short and accurate, which is critical on smartphones with little screen space.”

EasyAsk uses what it calls natural language search—software and algorithms provided by EasyAsk that seek to understand what the consumer wants to buy and returns appropriate search results, the company says.

This natural language search engine can better understand the intent behind shopper requests than other search engines, EasyAsk says. “Try ’not stripe dress shirts under $80‘ for example,” the spokesman says. “Keyword-based search engines would return stripe shirts for $80 and possibly underwear and dresses. People can get around poor search on a desktop, but won’t on a mobile device.”

Travers Tool, No. 826 in Internet Retailer’s Second 500 Guide, already uses EasyAsk for its e-commerce site. The site search tool on the retailer’s desktop e-commerce site supports multiple search methods, such as the ability to view results within a category and narrow the results to specific items using a single results page, and also recognizes synonyms for search terms common to the metalworking industry. The results also reflect the current pricing and inventory amounts.

Travers began using the EasyAsk site search technology after consumers began telling the retailer they couldn’t find items on its e-commerce site as easily as they could in its print catalog. Given that the site offered a search box, those complaints represented a clear sign that that the search tool, which was supplied with its information management software, wasn’t working.

The EasyAsk system connects to Travers Tool’s back-office system that manages the flow of inventory and tracks product costs for the retailer’s more than 100,000 SKUs. This ensures that shoppers get up-to-date inventory and pricing information.

“Keyword-search back-ends won’t cut it,” says Craig Bassin, CEO of EasyAsk. “Even Google understands this. They’re in the process of evolving closer to natural language with semantic search. If your search box can’t understand the intent behind shoppers’ requests now, you’ll be irrelevant when that request comes from a mobile device. Mobile users can’t navigate as easily and will quickly abandon the site if it requires multiple searches. They either see it and get it, or move on.”

This article originally appeared in Internet Retailer: https://www.internetretailer.com/2012/06/14/tool-retailer-lets-mobile-shoppers-speak-their-searches

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EasyAsk Products – Excerpt from Sync-Up Interview on the Pulse Network

Sync-Up host Tyler Pyburn asks CEO Craig Bassin about EasyAsk’s products – EasyAsk eCommerce, Business Edition and Quiri.

 

 

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EasyAsk Quiri – Interview Excerpt on Pulse Network Sync-Up">Voice Recognition & EasyAsk Quiri – Interview Excerpt on Pulse Network Sync-Up

EasyAsk CEO Craig Bassin talks about the differences between “voice-recognition” and “natural language search” – without understanding intent, you can’t accurately answer questions. Craig also notes that even Google is evolving from traditional keyword search.

 

 

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Google joining IBM, Apple and EasyAsk? Pigs fly! News at 11…

 

(Message from the CEO of EasyAsk, Craig Bassin)

Looks like this is the beginning of the end for keyword search.  You’ve probably seen a number of articles discussing Google’s shift to ‘semantic search’.  Anyone understand what that REALLY means?  First, the definition of ‘semantic search’ is an understanding of the ‘intent’, or meaning, of the search, rather than just matching the keywords.

Now why would the undisputed 800-pound gorilla of keyword search, change course at this late date?  Conventional wisdom says they were forced to take a hard look after Apple launched Siri.  The timing sure seems to reinforce the fact that they’ve been playing with semantic search for some time, but needed to make a marketing splash now.

So, why change?  Well, obviously it’s a BETTER way to search and they had to, or they wouldn’t have!  I mean, really, Google acknowledging the limitations of keyword search?

Quoting from Paul Demery’s recent article (to read it, click here) about Google’s adoption of semantic search in Internet Retailer, ‘“Semantic search should allow Google as well as other search engines to better understand the true user intent of a search query,” says Kevin Lee, CEO of search marketing firm Didit.

Also, quoting from the same article: “Every day, we’re improving our ability to give you the best answers to your questions as quickly as possible,” Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search technology, said in a blog post. “In doing so, we convert raw data into knowledge for millions of users around the world. But our ability to deliver this experience is a function of our understanding your question and also truly understanding all the data that’s out there. And right now, our understanding is pretty darn limited. Ask us for ‘the 10 deepest lakes in the U.S,’ and we’ll give you decent results based on those keywords, but not necessarily because we understand what depth is or what a lake is.”

Now, understanding ‘intent’ AND ‘content’ is something that is at the very core of who EasyAsk is and how EasyAsk searches.  It’s the idea that, in an e-commerce setting, you can search for ‘men’s dress shirts under $30’ or ‘ladies red pumps size 6’ and get EXACTLY what you’re looking for.  Natural language understands the semantics involved in the search.  We understand the ‘intent’ of the question, we understand the ‘content’ of the data.  In adopting a new ‘semantic’ architecture Google will start to understand the ‘intent’ piece as well.

Now, who else searches this way?  How about Microsoft’s Bing, IBM’s Watson, obviously Apple’s Siri.

Now which of these companies can help you improve your e-commerce site?

None of them.

OK, but what about the other e-commerce search providers.  You probably know a few of them.  Endeca, SLI, Adobe, SOLR.

No, no, no and no.  Strictly keyword search.  Old news. Yesterday’s tech.

So we want to be the first to welcome Google.  We like them, use them all the time for internet search, along with Bing.  But when it comes to e-commerce search, folks, EasyAsk is leading the way.  Let us show you how.

It’s what we do.

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EasyAsk Named Cool Vendor

It is always great to be considered Cool.  But that is usually a personal distinction.  Now Cool is an attribute given to software vendors such as EasyAsk.

EasyAsk is proud to announce that we have been included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the ‘Cool Vendors in Analytics and Business Intelligence, 2012’* report by Gartner, Inc.  We feel this is an accomplishment due to our products, our team, and most of all our customers.

As we look at our market position today, EasyAsk has dramatically expanded its solution footprint and customer reach in the past 12 months.  Direct sales to customers have grown.  We’ve forged new solution partnerships with IBM Big Insights and SugarCRM while expanding our partnerships with Infor and NetSuite.  We have also more than doubled the number of channel partners we work with, including our distribution partnership with BrainSell in the SugarCRM market.

Our eCommerce edition product continues to be the clear solution leader in e-commerce search, navigation and merchandising.  No other vendor can come close to performing the long-tail natural language searches that EasyAsk does, nor can any vendor make merchandising as easy to use as EasyAsk.

And our new Quiri product is revolutionizing the way people use mobile devices and mobile corporate applications.  Quiri is the only solution on the market that provides Siri-like voice-enabled natural language tools that work with your corporate data and applications.

Thank you, Gartner.  And a special thank you to our customers and partners.

 

*  Gartner “Cool Vendors in Analytics and Business Intelligence, 2012” by Bill Gassman, Douglas Laney, Andreas Bitterer, David Newman, Rita L. Sallam, James Richardson, 27 April 2012

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

 

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EasyAsk Brings Intelligence and Control Lucene/Solr Can’t Touch

Lucene/Solr is great for developers that enjoy tinkering with code as if it’s DNA and you’re working on the Captain America Super-Soldier Serum. But what if you don’t have the time or resources? What if you’re a company that cannot afford the manpower or hours needed to work on the open-source, Java-based search library? What if… what you need is a rich, mature product with the most accurate search engine on the planet?

Apache Lucene, for those who are unclear on the difference, is the library and Apache Solr is a layer of code on top of Lucene that turns it into a search platform, adding management and website APIs that are tailored for e-commerce. With Lucene/Solr you get a basic search engine, that requires a large IT staff or an army of consultants. It takes a lot of time, experience and troubleshooting to get the results you’re hoping for.

But let’s say you’ve outgrown the basic search functionality, or get frustrated having to build everything you need. And you’ve noticed how the e-commerce community has shifted to mobile sites with voice-recognition, and the abilities of open-source seem more and more limited. So wouldn’t you be tired of continuing to compete with every other e-commerce company that is trying to do the same thing with the same keyword-hampered technology? Why wouldn’t you want to stand out from the pack?

Where Lucene/Solr falls short, EasyAsk excels.

Companies like IBM, Magento, NetSuite, Infor and more have partnered with EasyAsk for a reason. The powerful Natural Language search-box and easy-to-use merchandising tools allow you to perform tasks a keyword-based software (Lucene/Solr) can’t even dream of. The intuitive site-search, dynamic navigation, and merchandising software utilizes Natural Language to increase conversion rates. It understands the intent of the search and delivers faster, more accurate results than keyword or navigation-driven softwares. The limitations you find with Lucene/Solr are simply not found with EasyAsk.

From understanding numeric units, to intelligent term relaxation, to merchandising capabilities like: Cross-Sell/Up-Sell promotions, EasyAsk has proven to bring something to the table that Lucene and Solr just can’t touch. Not to mention with EasyAsk you’re a step ahead of the game.

Take a quick look around and see which direction the technological world is headed. IBM’s Watson, Apple’s Siri, Nuance’s Dragon-Go, Panasonic’s Smart-TVs, and many more have all made the jump to a Natural Language Processing engine. It’s just a smarter way to connect with your customers.

And EasyAsk has been a leader in Natural Language for over a decade.

For example, on an EasyAsk-powered site, you can use your iPhone 4S or Android to verbally search for products on their mobile-sites. And thanks to the natural language engine that powers EasyAsk, they’ll find exactly what they’re looking for. Go to Lands’ End’s site on your phone, type-in or speak a product you’d like to see and a price constraint (i.e. Black Sleeveless Dresses for under $100) and see for yourself how powerful EasyAsk is. You’re not going to find that functionality with an open-source, keyword-based software.

Also the EasyAsk Commerce Studio puts the power back in the hands of the merchandiser. Want to add a new brand for your site, or cross-sell a couple of items? No problem, it literally takes a minute. To see what I’m talking about click here.

Look, if you want to keep trying to reinvent the wheel, go right ahead. But if you’re tired of sputtering in a Model-T and you’d rather upgrade to a search that’s better, the wave of the future, comes with merchandising capabilities that Lucene/Solr just can’t match, come take a look at EasyAsk, the Search That Means Business.

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Siri-Cized Sites With Voice-Enabled Mobile Shopping? EasyAsk Customers Are Already There

The technological world seems to be making a shift. It began with those three days in February 2011, when IBM’s Watson computer competed on Jeopardy! (By the way, the natural language super-computer trounced the shows two biggest champions!) And culminated with Apple releasing Siri in their latest model of cell phone, the iPhone 4S on October 14th, 2011.

You can feel the buzz in the air, a change in the winds, that a paradigm-shift is coming. The ability to tell your electronics what to do.

So wouldn’t it make sense that this same technology could be used by everyday consumers to shop on their smart-phones? Isn’t it logical, that the next step will be the ability to use this natural language technology to search and purchase items on your favorite website? That this technology would improve user experience, retention and increase conversion rates? Wouldn’t you want your favorite sites to be Siri-cized?

Well, if you’re a client of EasyAsk, this power is already at your fingertips… err… voice-box.

EasyAsk-powered sites such as: Lands’ End, Harbor Freight Tools, J. Jill, True Value and Coldwater Creek, are already Siri-cized. Customers of these and other EasyAsk clients can use their iPhone 4S or Android to verbally search for their products on their mobile-sites. And thanks to the natural language engine that powers EasyAsk, they’ll find exactly what they are looking for.

Now, I hear the nay-sayers, griping about the times that Siri doesn’t work as well as they want. First of all, Siri is cutting-edge technology, so of course it’s still working out a few of the kinks. But here’s where EasyAsk differs. With Siri, the options are so varied, it’s difficult for the software to search through the entire Internet to find the right answer every time. With EasyAsk, the data needed is pulled from the company’s product catalogue. So, if you’re on Lands’ End, you’re going to be searching for items Lands’ End is known for having, like swimwear, shoes, luggage, etc. If you’re on Harbor Freight Tools, you’re going to search for items they’re known for having; air compressors, engines, toolboxes or various tools. EasyAsk understands the context of your request and retrieves the right product on the first page.

This isn’t the future; it’s the present. EasyAsk sites are and have been ahead of the game, because EasyAsk has been mastering Natural Language for over a decade. Feel free to find out more here.

So go ahead, grab your iPhone 4S or Android 2.1, jump on Lands’ End and get ready for summer by shopping for a new bathing suit or try True Value and order that new grill you’ve been waiting for. It’s as simple tapping the search box, tapping the microphone, and saying what you’re looking for.

Welcome to the future.

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Oracle Welcomes ATG and Endeca, Is Your Site Welcome Too?

You’re currently a customer of Endeca. Your site has been expensive to maintain, but it has worked well enough and you see no need to make a change. Recently however, changes have been made to the company who runs your search. Changes that could affect your relationship and your ability to do business.

In October of 2011, Oracle acquired Endeca, a leading provider of unstructured data management, Web commerce and business intelligence solutions. A year before that, they acquired the Art Technology Group, Inc. (ATG), an e-commerce software platform that is one of the industry’s top-ranked, commerce solutions. Essentially packaging a search and platform duo. But… What if you don’t own both pieces of the puzzle? What if you’re an Endeca customer, but not an ATG customer? Is your site in danger? Is your business in danger?

Before Oracle acquired these pieces of technology, Endeca and ATG were open – meaning they worked cooperatively with other solutions in the market. Didn’t matter who you had for an e-commerce platform, be it Magento, IBM’s WebSphere, in-house, etc., you could still work with Endeca.

Is that still the case?

If recent history proves prophetic, then probably not. Oracle has a history of closing the proprietary loop when they acquire a company, making them a part of the Oracle stack. If you are inside that stack, then your feeling of security should be warm-and-fuzzy. But what if you’re not inside the loop? What if you’re currently using Endeca for your search and have a platform not named ATG? Will Endeca continue to fit? Should you be concerned?

If you are concerned and don’t feel like being at the mercy of Oracle, what can you do about it?

Here’s the good news:

You do have options and one of them can kill two birds with one stone: Get out from under Oracle’s thumb and upgrade your search by switching to EasyAsk. EasyAsk provides a user-friendly and cost-effective way to make complex business data accessible to anyone. With EasyAsk’s natural language engine, it’s Apple’s Siri and IBM’s Watson rolled into one best-of-breed, site-search, navigation and merchandising tool.

In other words, it’s common sense brought to search. It also happens to be platform-agnostic, easy to maintain, plus it puts the power in the hands of the merchandisers, costing far less than Endeca, and touting the lowest total cost of ownership in the business. To learn more about e-commerce search and how it can impact your site, please read our paper, The ABC’s of E-Commerce Search.

So… You’re an Endeca customer, but you are also now a customer of Oracle, the 4th largest software company in the world. Will your company get lost in the shuffle? Maybe yes, maybe no, and you’re welcome to stick around and find out, but… Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to “Find, Analyze, and Understand” that it’s time to switch to a Search That Means Business.

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