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FREE Webinar: Search, Find, Buy, Give – Simplifying holiday giving by improving ecommerce site search

Posted by geoffbOctober 27, 2009Webinar
The holiday season can be a very frustrating time for shoppers with crowded malls, long lines and not enough time. Consumers are increasingly going online to do their holiday shopping to avoid these hassles. However, with so many retailers now online, it makes it even easier for shoppers to change stores if they can’t find what they’re looking for. As a retailer you want to make sure your shoppers have a satisfying experience that is quick and easy during this busy season.
Join Ed Hoffman, SLI Systems vice president of business development, on Wednesday October 28 at 1pm PDT as he discusses ways to improve your ecommerce site search for the holidays by adding holiday themes, promoting sales, using gift finders and more. This presentation will include examples from real life ecommerce sites as well as live site search critiques.To register, go to http://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/481439930 and make sure you submit your website if you would like your site search critiqued live during the presentation.

We hope to see you there!

Visit SLI Systems @ the Ecommerce Expo

Posted by geoffbOctober 18, 2009Conferences

SLI Systems is exhibiting at the Ecommerce Expo taking place at Earls Court, London on October 20 – 21, 2009. Ecommerce Expo is in its third year and is the largest ecommerce event in the UK. Entry to the expo is FREE of charge so it’s a fantastic opportunity to catch up with the latest thinking and developments in online retailing and meet the companies who can provide the solutions you’re looking for without spending a penny.

If you’re visiting the expo, stop by SLI’s stand, #514, we have an Acer Netbook (Windows XP, 160GB HDD, 10.1 inch) up for grabs so leave us your business card to go in the draw to win. We’ll also be performing FREE site search reviews at our stand so if you’d like someone on our team to review your site search please click here and we’ll arrange a time.  

Osric Powell, Business Development, SLI Systems & Rob McNair, Ecommerce Manager, Tiso UK will be presenting at the Customer Conversion & Retention theatre between 2:45pm – 3:15pm, Wednesday, Oct 21. Please come along to this case study based presentation and learn how Tiso improved their revenues using advanced on-site search.

For more information about this event, visit www.ecommerceexpo.co.uk

We look forward to seeing you there expo!!

Viewing videos increases sales

Posted by Shaun RyanOctober 12, 2009eCommerce, Podcast, Site Search1 comment

Today we posted an interview with Lee Brown from Online Golf on the ecommerce podcast. One of the really interesting pieces of data that Lee shares during the interview is that people who view a video on their site are 85% more likely to buy than people who don’t. This is one of the strongest endorsements for online video I’ve ever seen. Online golf use the videos as a sales pitch, providing more information about a particular product.

As part of our proactive outreach (that we do for all of our customers) we suggested that their videos be incorporated into their site search. The products that have a related video now have a link that allows the videos to be played directly from the search results page. Over half the videos that are watched are now viewed from the search results page.

Online Golf Video

Back to Basics: Tips for How to Get the Most from Site Search – Part 2

Posted by Shaun RyanOctober 12, 2009Newsletter, Site Search1 comment

In our August newsletter, we outlined some basic steps to make your existing site search even better for your visitors. We have more good advice in store for you this month, with ideas that can make your search feature easier to find and use – which, of course, increases the chances that visitors will locate what they need, and even make purchases at your site.

  • Position the search box “above the fold,” or high up on the webpage so that visitors don’t need to scroll down to find it – data shows that people who search rather than browse are 2-3 times as likely to convert, so encourage them to use your site search by making it easy to spot at first glance.
  • Test different positions for the search box, and identify which positions generate the most search traffic – our customer Black Forest Décor did this, and moved its search box from the right-hand upper corner of its site – a common placement for the search box – to the center of the page. They also made other changes to the search box, such as increasing its size and using bolder colors to make it stand out. This all added up to a big jump in average revenue from site search.
  • If you use text like “enter search here” in your search box, use JavaScript code so that the term disappears as soon as people click on the box or start typing within it – otherwise, search users have to take steps to delete the term, or they need to overwrite it with their search term – and this can increase the likelihood of spelling errors and poor search results. Generally speaking, you want to avoid forcing extra steps on your visitors – search should be as painless as possible.
  • Consider putting the cursor focus in the search box – in other words, code the page so that the cursor is automatically in the box, and visitors can start typing their keywords immediately – our customer Surveillance Video is a good example. As you can see when you visit their site, it’s fast and easy to start a search. Just remember that if you do place the focus on search, do so only on those pages where search is the primary box. If there is another form on the box that a visitor clicks on, and the visitor starts typing into that box while the page is still loading, then the focus will switch to the search box while they’re typing – which can be confusing.
  • Add auto complete, which suggests possible terms when visitors type the first few letters of a keyword – it’s especially useful for hard-to-spell searches, and saves time by requiring fewer keystrokes.

Do you have additional ideas for simple ways to make search better? If so, we’d love to hear them – just drop us a line and let us know.

Shop.org Annual Summit 2009 winner

Posted by geoffbOctober 8, 2009Conferences
SLI was an exhibitor and sponsor at this year’s Shop.org Annual Summit. We had a great time and hope all of you who attended gained valuable knowledge from the speakers. This year we also teamed up with some of our partners (Acadaca, Certona, ExactTarget, and PowerReviews) for attendees to enter a drawing for a MacBook Air. We’d like to say congratulations to Chris Hardisty from Timberland! We hope you are enjoying your new MacBook.

We’d love to see you at future events. Keep your eye on our events page to see where we will be exhibiting and make sure you stop by and visit our team at the SLI booth.

A search box, and nothing but a search box

Posted by Shaun RyanOctober 1, 2009Site Search

Is search really the new navigation, as the CEO of DMV.org (an SLI customer) said last year? Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital seems to think so: the firm now features a large search box as the sole element on it’s home page – no photos, no standard navigation, just search. Visitors must enter a search term to get further into the site – although once they do land on a page they will find limited navigation options.

sequoia

There are various reasons why Sequoia would reduce its website to a search box, according to this write-up in VentureBeat.  Regardless of the reasons behind it, you certainly have to wonder if the company that backed Google in its early days might be on to something. Or just on something.

Patricio Robles at Econsultancy says the search box-only page “is a nightmare to use efficiently,” since you have to know exactly what you’re looking for, and you can’t simply browse top-level navigation categories. On the other hand, other industry watchers liked the no-fuss look of the search box, and the fact that it doesn’t distract visitors from the critical goal of finding information.

I agree with Patricio. Despite being a huge fan of site search, I think you need more. To make matters worse the search interface here is non standard – the results are shown (with a very short title) as you type – you have to click on the link at the bottom to see a standard search. I definitely wouldn’t advocate a search only home-page for anyone. What do you think of the idea? Would your visitors embrace it, or hate it?

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