We strive to continually improve the service that we offer our customers. One part of that is ensuring that the search and navigation pages load quickly. The graph below shows how the average time (to serve the complete search page) for one of our customers has improved over the last 12 months.

Even though this customer has a complex search, we thought 2 seconds was a little slower than we would like. We’re much happier with it sitting below half a second.

The changes that you can see are improvements to our algorithms and the configuration of our servers. They are examples of improvements that all of our customers receive the benefit of (with no additional cost to them).

Our April and May newsletters contain a two part article on using your site search for more than just people visiting your web site or e-commerce site. We discuss using site search for search marketing, customer service teams, in-store kiosks, targeted emails and more.

Today we’re announcing that Spencer’s and its sister company, costume retailer Spirit Halloween are using our Learning Search and Site Champion services. Spencer’s sells humorous gifts and Spirit Halloween sells costumes.

The two e-commerce sites (the company also operates brick-and-mortar locations around the country) see their biggest traffic around Halloween and Christmas. It’s important that we are able to handle these seasonal spikes to ensure that their customers can always find just the right products.

Jay Greenberg, director of ecommerce for Spencer’s, had been an SLI customer at his previous position at Franklin Electronics, and was so happy with our service that he advocated using us at his new company. We’ve seen this several times - when individuals move companies. For me this underscores the importance of ensuring that our customers receive the best service that they can.

You can read more details about Spencer’s and its choice of SLI here: Spencer’s and Spirit Halloween Improve Customer Experience on the Web Using Learning Search and Site Champion From SLI Systems.

Last week You Tube announced that they will optionally show you search suggestions as you type. I really like this feature - it helps people formulate queries in an intuitive and familiar way. Most browsers have a similar functionality that will show previous queries you have entered - so people don’t have to learn anything new to use this. 

My main complaint is that it is not on by default. You have to click on the advanced link beside the search box and select the option. So very few people will use it. I’ve also see some suggestions that don’t have any results - they need to make sure this doesn’t happen. However these are minor complaints. I’m sure this is a trend we will see more of.

This week SLI Systems will be visiting Toronto, ON and Minneapolis, MN as part of the ExactTarget Route 1 to 1 seminar series.

For more information on the various cities and to register visit the Route 1 to 1 site.

Steven Seiller wrote an article outlining the 11 things he hates about site search. He makes some good points and captures the passion that people feel when site search isn’t there, can’t be found, or doesn’t work.  You need to have site search, make it highly visible and it should be flawless. This is not easy to do and the disappointing thing is that if you do it well most visitors won’t notice it (people notice things that don’t work properly) - but they will be happier and will get more from your site.

I may sound like a broken record here - but if you want to improve your site search we would love to show you what we can do. Contact us and we’ll try to dazzle you.

Avi Rappoport did an excellent post on search log junk. This is the set of queries that aren’t very useful  when you’re analyzing search logs, mostly from crawlers, hackers and spammers. We see a lot of these types of queries and constantly trying to block them and remove them from our reporting - so we can extract useful information. I hadn’t seen anyone talking about this before - but it is something else you need to be aware of when you’re trying to extract the valuable information that is in search logs.

Next week SLI Systems will be visiting Cincinnati, OH and Chicago, IL as part of the ExactTarget Route 1 to 1 seminar series.

For more information on the various cities and to register visit the Route 1 to 1 site.

There is no question that search drives revenue: it brings customers to your site, it connects customers to products, and it can be used to trigger relevant offers on your site. Making the most of your search opportunity isn’t simple: you have SEO, paid search, paid inclusion, advertising, site search, and site merchandising. All seem to have different paradigms, tools, reporting and lingo, and making trade-offs can be a challenge. But there are steps you can take to optimize your customers’ search experience, and reap increased and more profitable revenue as a result.

Watch this free webinar to hear:

• How marketers manage their search campaigns and tools, based on a survey of marketing executives

• How a leading retailer achieved 10x expected incremental revenue through automated user-generated search optimization

• The impact of recommendations and personalization on revenue

• A practical approach to testing online campaigns

• Whether search results pages convert better than category pages.

Takeaways: At the close of this session, you will:

• Compare your own search-driven revenue results to our benchmark (Sue is presenting her survey results)

• Understand better how to automate search optimization for the long tail of searches

• Be able to apply proven tactics for testing email and PPC campaigns

• Gain useful insights on your products and services based on the language of your visitors and customers

Speakers

• Ed Hoffman – VP of Worldwide Field Operations - SLI Systems

• Sue Aldrich – Senior Vice President, Senior Consultant/Analyst - Particia Seybold Group

• Jay Greenberg – Director, eCommerce - Spencer’s

Watch Now

SLI along with Salesforce.com and Omniture are sponsoring Exact Target’s Route 1 to 1 seminar series titled “The New eMarketing Essentials”. This 13 city seminar tour will help put email, analytics, CRM and search solutions to work in ways that will help your marketing investments perform better.

This week we will be in Atlanta, GA on Tuesday April 22 and in New York City on Thursday April 24.

For more information on the various cities and to register visit the Route 1 to 1 site.