Blog | Blog - SLI Systems

Why You Don’t Need to Brush Your Hair When You Buy Cosmetics

Posted by SLI SystemsJuly 21, 2014eCommerce, Merchandising, Navigation, Ratings and Reviews, Site Search, Site Search Tips, User Experience, Web Search

Are you addicted to cosmetics? Hoarding makeup is not uncommon. If you own multiples of eye shadows, lipsticks, blushes and brushes (as I do…), then you’re not alone. Indeed, it’s globally pandemic: according to research by Feel Unique, there are millions of women on the planet who hoard cosmetics. The same research also found women spend more than US$170,000 on makeup in their lifetime — and would rather ditch their man than go without cosmetics. Really! (Can’t say I share that sentiment!)

Pore-refining, firming, lifting, tightening, toning, brightening, whitening, collagen, retinol, vitamin A, vitamin C, aloe vera, lactic acid, glycolic acid, grapefruit seed extract… sound familiar? Of course, all of these processes and ingredients promise women the one thing we’re so desperate to hold on to … eternal youth.

Traditionally, women have bought beauty products offline, visiting their aesthetician at a department store cosmetics counter, pharmacy or specialised cosmetics boutique. Some still do, to get the informed opinion of someone they possibly know and certainly trust.

But that’s changed. Nowadays, consumers can access this information from the comfort of their own home (where, they’re probably wearing a snail slime mask — yes it really exists, I’ve tried it). They can even browse for cosmetics on the go via their tablet or mobile device.

With online beauty e-tailers such as Sephora, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Adore Beauty and Strawberrynet, women can feed their insatiable beauty-beast desire in a matter of minutes. Online beauty retailers are not only price competitive and stock the latest and most coveted beauty products — they also provide a wealth of information in the form of blogs and forums. So instead of talking to one person, who no doubt has some degree of vested interest in the sale (which may, or may not change their view of a product’s suitability), women can get the honest feedback from as many people as reviews they want to read. And often it’s those comments that shape purchasing decisions.

Buying online is also fast.

Beauty e-tailer e.l.f. Cosmetics (which stands for “eyes lips face”), has an intuitive search solution that instantly connects users with the products they’re looking for; in fact, the search “learns” from past site search behaviour by tracking visitors’ aggregate search queries and clickthroughs. What does this mean? That digital shoppers are being presented with the most popular and relevant search results. (So no plugging in “eye shadow” to annoyingly receive results for “mascara”.)

Beauty e-tailer, e.l.f. Cosmetics, “learns” from every visitor’s search. The result is a search function that helps users find exactly what they’re looking for in a matter of seconds.

Don’t know exactly what you’re looking for? No need for a breakout. In addition to the user product reviews and popular and relevant searches, online beauty retailers make the shopping process even more stress-free by offering best-sellers, how-to’s, celebrity-inspired looks and video makeup tutorials… as well as a list of all the products required to achieve those looks. Did a new blush colour catch your eye in a magazine, but you can’t recall the product’s name? Not a problem. Sticking with our savvy beauty e-tailer e.l.f. Cosmetics (and yes, I do own quite a few of their products!) allows you to search for the product type, e.g. “blush,” to reveal “as seen in,” which displays cosmetics and skincare that has received press mentions.

Reviews written by people who’ve previously bought the product help visitors decide what to buy.

I also like e.l.f. Cosmetics’ intuitive product-recommendations engine; this optimises suggested products based on recommendation logic and data learned from past customer behaviour. For example, when a visitor lands on a product details page for a lipstick, they’ll be presented with other products typically bought with that lipstick, such as a lip exfoliator.

Australia’s Adore Beauty uses video demonstrations to help guide shoppers’ decisions.

Australian-based cosmetics e-tailer Adore Beauty allows visitors to navigate its site by skin type, catering for dry, oily, problem or blemish-prone skin. Shoppers can also search for products by ratings and reviews; this will be important if they only want to consider top-rated products to buy.

Onsite videos demonstrating how to use products also help to humanise the whole digital experience. While it’s not the same as asking the assistant at the counter for tricks in using shaded tones to make your eyes appear larger, you can sit, to your heart’s content, and learn how to apply products you may never have seen before, or products you felt too silly to ask about. You get the benefit of experts, and no one will know — until, of course, they see how well you can shade your eyelids!

So to fellow beauty addicts who haven’t yet tried the online shopping experience, give it a go: chances are, you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for!

Technology Makes Back-to-School Shopping Elementary

Posted by Dawn MortensenJuly 17, 2014eCommerce, Navigation, Site Search, User Experience

Though many of us are barely settling into summer, retailers are already touting back-to-school clothes and supplies. This year, the role of e-commerce in back-to-school shopping is bigger than ever. According to a June report by eMarketer, online back-to-school purchases in 2014 will increase 16% over 2013 – a growth rate that’s nearly triple the 5.85% growth rate in overall retail sales.

Smart retailers are optimizing their mobile sites and using more advanced search and navigation technology to capture the growing audience of online back-to-school shoppers.

Mobile-Optimized Sites

In mobile shopping experiences of years past, many site visitors would give up out of frustration with the cumbersome navigation. Today, retailers with good mobile-specific sites make it exceptionally easy for customers to shop using smartphones or tablets. These retailers will gain loyalty and carry an advantage into back-to-school shopping and beyond.

Tea Collection is a great example of a mobile site done right. My eight-year-old’s one desire for new clothing is a maxi dress (the kind that “are swirly and go to the floor,” in case you didn’t know). On Tea Collection’s mobile site, I search “Girls 8 maxi dress” and three great options come up – all in the right size. Easy peasy, as a third grader might say.

Advanced Site Search & Navigation

Just as with mobile search, online retailers will win shopper loyalty when they make it easy for visitors to find and buy what they’re looking for. Just as great search is critical to help shoppers find exactly what they want, great navigation is essential to help them browse or narrow down items in a broad category.

I went to Lakeshore Learning’s site knowing that I wanted some type of learning game. I typed “learning game” in the search box, then with 529 search results I was able to narrow down to a few great options by clicking the refinements “mathematics,” “puzzles & games,” “3^rd grade” and “top rated.” Yes, The Allowance Game looks like a great way to ease my third grader back into math practice.

Next, visiting Gymboree, I searched for some clothing basics for my 12-year-old, entering “girls uniform navy.” Up popped navy blue cardigans, skirts, pants and hair accessories – I picked what I needed and was on my way through checkout. Done.

It’s Not Always So Easy

Unfortunately, not all e-commerce sites make it so simple for visitors. It’s hard to know the immense value of good search technology until you encounter a site that does it poorly. I thought I might stock up on notebooks, folders and other basic staples at DollarTree.com. But when I searched “notebooks,” the results just showed me filler paper, legal pads and journals. I had to scroll beyond the first 12 results before I saw composition notebooks and spiral bound notebooks. Annoyed with the less streamlined experience, I left the site and decided to pick up these items another time.

Make Sure Shoppers Don’t Lose Patience

As more stores learn how to do search and navigation right, consumers lose patience with retailers who make it more work than fun to do their shopping. Retailers who want to compete effectively need to keep up, and that means looking for the best technology possible for site features like search, navigation, product recommendations and merchandising. Retailers who go with a cheap, basic search function just to check that item off their list are missing the opportunity to delight and retain the customers who are used to better relevancy and a better, faster, more fun shopping experience.

Do Americans Like Soccer? World Cup E-Commerce Data Is Revealing

Posted by Tim CallanJuly 11, 2014eCommerce, Web Search

Americans have a love-hate relationship with soccer. Just look at the headlines this week:

🙂 “The Debate is Over, Americans Love Soccer” (article3),
🙁 “America’s Favorite National Pastime: Hating Soccer” (Ann Coulter),
🙂 “World Cup Gives Soccer Momentum” (SFGate),
🙁 “Future of Soccer: Bright for Our Team, Not the Sport” (CBS),

Because SLI works with 800+ e-commerce vendors globally and can study consumer search behavior online, we are in the unique position to put this debate to rest and learn how the World Cup really affected interest in soccer. Forget opinions and gut feeling, the data don’t lie.

So what did we find? Well, the 2014 World Cup kicked up more than just a sea of Tim Howard fans in the U.S. Increasingly more consumers appear to be interested in soccer and soccer gear. SLI studied consumer search behavior between March 2 and July 9, 2014 and found that for the month of June, soccer-related searches increased by 280% compared to May.

The study was conducted across eight leading international sporting goods and apparel retailers with combined monthly revenue of approximately $500M and analyzed more than 341 million consumer searches to track interest in soccer-related products. The interests of U.S.-based consumers were clear: there were more than 2.2 million soccer related product searches from just these eight e-commerce sites alone.

And that’s not all. Soccer is played year-round in the U.S., but recreational soccer gear tends to be purchased before the fall and spring seasons. We found a boost in online shopping behavior during June for products ranging from soccer cleats, balls, shin guards, gloves and other equipment, demonstrating the country’s increased interest in actually playing the sport.

Additional findings from the study include:

June 16^thwas the peak day for soccer-related shopping in the U.S., the day the U.S. played Ghana.
In the U.S., the international teams with most consumer interest are Brazil, followed by Germany, Argentina, and the Netherlands.
- The most popular search terms, in order, for the U.S. were:
  - Soccer
  - USA Soccer
  - FIFA
  - Nike Soccer

It’s clear that The World Cup U.S. fanfare will continue long after Sunday’s final game. Writer Alan Black of SFGate put it best, “File soccer under American.”

Going Global: It’s About More than Translation

Posted by Kemberly GongJuly 2, 2014Press, Social Media

Taking your online business into new international markets presents a huge opportunity. Global e-commerce sales have already passed the trillion dollar mark and growth in overseas markets like Asia-Pacific and South America have already surpassed growth in North America.

But expanding your online borders comes with a fair number of challenges. Translating your site into the local language is no easy feat – and it’s just one part of the puzzle. There are many other factors you need to consider to develop an international e-commerce site that appropriately serves the local market.

Offer Products in the Correct Language and Currency

When expanding into new global areas, retailers mostly focus on their e-commerce platform and its ability to accommodate visitors from those regions – whether information is offered in the right language and prices reflect the local currency, for example.

Ensure Superior Search Ability in Every Language

But it’s important that retailers don’t ignore site search, which is another critical element for success in a new region. The best search helps visitors find what they want in their language, plus accounts for cultural differences that impact the way shoppers in different countries navigate a site. Shoppers looking for household items on retail sites in Japan and Brazil will likely have different preferences than someone searching for the same items on retail sites in the U.S.

Account for Regional Preferences

That variation in consumer preferences vary by region is also an important aspect to address with search and navigation. Your international visitors will likely jump to another site if they don’t see what they’re most interested in on yours.

Some of SLI’s international clients like Boden (in the UK) and Surfstitch (out of Australia) look to us to help them not only provide adequate language translation support, but also to deliver the items that are relevant to their visitors in different countries.

Next Steps?

We recently announced complete support for seven additional languages, which brings SLI’s language support to cover 14 languages – Arabic, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Indonesian, Italian, German, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish English. With this extensive language support, plus SLI’s flagship Learning Search technology, it’s fairly simple for retailers to get the site search component of their international site working successfully.

Having SLI Systems part of an e-commerce internationalization project can take a huge burden off of a company’s marketing and IT teams. SLI takes care of making sure the relevancy of search results always reflects the most popular items in different regions of the world, which helps with inventory and fulfillment strategies as well.

If you’re thinking about going global and want to meet local language and cultural requirements, be sure you don’t overlook your search and navigation to ensure you maximize your ROI and establish local brand loyalty.

Learn to Entice Shoppers with Great Content

Posted by Dawn MortensenJune 25, 2014eCommerce, Site Search, Site Search Tips, Success Stories

Want to drive e-commerce sales, plus bring customers to your site instead of going to competitors’ sites or Amazon? Think content. The creative use of content can give your customers a unique and memorable shopping experience – one that creates powerful brand loyalty and moves customers along the path to purchase.

In our new e-book, “Use Creative Content to Convince Online Shoppers to Buy,” you’ll learn how e-commerce sites can increase conversions by creating remarkable content – social media posts, videos, blogs, infographics and more – and then bringing that content into their search results.

As I explain in today’s post on Ecommerce Outtakes, some online shopping decisions are easy, like finding a new water filter using the replacement number. But many online purchasing decisions – buying clothes, shoes, electronics, toys, etc. – are made through closer scrutiny of product details and non-product content, like Instagram photos of real product users or a how-to video showing what can be done with the product.

Such content can really help convince a browser to click the “Add to Cart” button. Consider this sampling of advice from the e-book:

Always add photos to your blog or social media post to catch readers’ attention through visuals as well as content.
If you’re an online retailer that sells any kind of food or kitchen product, it is a no-brainer to add a recipe section to your e-commerce site.
A standout site search is especially critical for retailers with products that don’t lend themselves to very specific searches.

The new e-book features many more tips, along with success stories of companies who have used content to increase conversions, including e.l.f. Cosmetics, FTD, King Arthur Flour, Kidrobot and others. Click here for a free download.

How to Drive Sales from Popular Search Engines

Posted by Jason MillerJune 11, 2014eCommerce, SEO, Webinar

Jason Miller will provide additional insight on this topic at IRCE 2014 at the E-commerce Accelerator Theater, Booth #601. Catch his presentation at 2 p.m. Wednesday, June 11, or at 11 a.m. Thursday, June 12. View other Theater information here.

I recently did a webinar about how online retailers can increase conversions – and lower bounce rates – through dynamic landing page banners. I find this topic very interesting since, in my previous position with Motorcycle Superstore, I had a lot of success using SLI Systems Dynamic Product Banners. What makes this concept highly effective is the use of a learning engine, like SLI Learning Search, to determine what products and content to show in the landing page banners, based on the behavior of previous shoppers.

It’s no surprise that people shop for different items in different ways. It is extremely valuable to have a learning engine that, in real-time, can analyze and aggregate data on how visitors shop your site for various types of products. Rather than making assumptions about how to best present relative products to your customers, you can use all the rich data and user behavior on your site.

For example, through a learning engine you can see which facets people typically select for certain types of searches, as well as what colors are most popular and what items convert at the highest rate. The learning allows the search itself to present results that best match people’s interests and deliver a better more relevant experience. This learning can be applied to on-site merchandising, autocomplete and product recommendations, to name a few.

When it comes to SEO, SEM and landing page optimization, some key performance indicators are conversion rate and bounce rate. The industry average bounce rate for e-commerce sites is generally agreed to be around 34%, though some large e-commerce sites claim bounce rates of less than 10%, according to the Q2 2013 Web-Analytics Benchmark study by ClickTale. (Note: If you happen to have an exceptionally low bounce rate, I suggest you check your analytics tagging, because you may have duplicate site tagging.) Among its many other negative impacts, a high bounce rate will obviously hurt conversion and make your SEM campaigns less cost effective.

Some common reasons why users bounce:

Page content doesn’t match users expectations (this often happens with poorly managed SEM campaigns that aren’t targeted enough)
Poorly designed UI, including sites that don’t properly handle tablets and mobile devices
Site performance (milliseconds matter – users are not willing to wait)
Out of stock or unavailable products

A few ways to reduce bounce rate:

Closely monitor your SEM campaigns for relevant landing pages
Use responsive design and a qualified UI team, which can help you optimize user experience on the widest range of devices
Use a high-performance content delivery network such as Akamai to decrease page load times
Take advantage of SLI Dynamic Product Banners, which use advanced learning algorithms to show relevant products on your product pages – even when the current product is unavailable or out of stock

As an e-commerce retailer, you may have very little control over what page Google ranks your site for a specific search term. However, you can still drive sales through popular search engines using Dynamic Product Banners to populate landing pages for natural and paid search. This approach has proven very effective for many SLI clients. If you’d like to view my recent webinar to see how e-commerce sites like Wine Enthusiast and others use Dynamic Product Banners, you can get it here.

10 Years of IRCE, and This One Could Be the Best

Posted by EdHoffmanJune 2, 2014Conferences, eCommerce, Site Search

As IRCE prepares for its 10^th annual e-commerce conference and exhibition next week (June 10-12), I look forward to my 10^th year of attending on behalf of SLI Systems. SLI will have a strong presence at IRCE – we plan to give the thousands of retailers gathering in Chicago the message that the quality of their site search makes an enormous difference in whether shoppers decide to buy or bounce from their site.

To showcase the difference that better search delivers for our clients, we’ve created the E-commerce Accelerator Theater at IRCE. Throughout the show, visitors to the theater (booth #601) will hear representatives from successful e-commerce businesses share how they have increased conversion rates and per-visit value by optimizing their site search. Visit our IRCE 2014 page for a complete schedule of speakers from businesses including Harry & David, Internet Retailer, Silver Star Brands (formerly Miles Kimball), Carolina Rustica, ReNew Life, Steiner Tractor, Zachys Wine & Liquor, JAM Paper and eImprovement.com.

Chicago is a great backdrop for the quality content and excellent networking opportunities that the Internet Retailer and IRCE teams put together each year for the industry’s biggest conference and exhibition. We’re taking advantage of some of Chicago’s best attractions for our retailer-only show events. On Tuesday night, we’ll take retailers out for a fabulous dinner and drinks at Lawry’s Prime Rib Restaurant — space is limited, so RSVP now. On Wednesday night, we’ll serve cocktails and offer an unforgettable experience at Tilt!, for those daring enough to peer out over Chicago at a 30 degree angle, from the 94^th floor of the John Hancock Building. Please note that this is not the Chicago observation platform that cracked last week – thankfully. We’ll continue taking RSVPs for these events until space fills up, or until noon on each event day.

One of my favorite parts of IRCE is meeting retailers and sharing how SLI can make a significant impact on the user experience and revenue. If you’d like to schedule a one-on-one meeting with me at IRCE, submit the mini-form on our IRCE page and I’ll make it happen. If you’re missing the show, you don’t have to miss out on the expert advice our sales directors can provide – just sign up for a demo or free site search critique at your convenience.

Overcome the Limitations of Solr Search

Posted by Tim CallanMay 22, 2014eCommerce, Site Search, Success Stories

If you’re like the vast majority of online retailers, you will face the need to re-platform at some point. Maybe you’re in the middle of one of these initiatives now, or are about to get started. Or perhaps you recently completed a re-platform. Whatever the case, you may be less than satisfied with the merchandising, indexing and customization capabilities of the default Solr search that comes with your platform.

Thankfully, it’s a cinch to implement an advanced site search that addresses the shortcomings of Solr and integrates quickly and easily with your platform – new or old. Upgrading your search offers your customers a much better experience on your site, which leads to stronger brand loyalty and more sales. Here are a few examples:

e.l.f. Cosmetics, a well-known U.S. consumer brand, experienced disappointing results from the search that came as a default feature of its e-commerce platform. The company knew it had a problem because customers often abandoned the site after conducting a search and the customer service team was tapped out by calls from visitors who couldn’t find what they wanted. Additionally, e.l.f. had a difficult time getting visibility for non-product content like videos and blog posts.

Once e.l.f. implemented SLI Learning Search, it was able to take advantage of features like Rich Auto Complete and Learning Recommendations to get more products in front of visitors. The e.l.f. team was also able to offer detailed refinement capabilities to help customers narrow down the field of search results. Plus the new search indexed the educational content the company wanted to showcase.

As a result, e.l.f. saw a 21% increase in per-visit value on its e-commerce site. With SLI powering its mobile commerce site, e.l.f. also saw a 4x higher conversion rate on mobile for site search users.

Thompson & Morgan is one of the UK’s largest seed and plant retailers. This longstanding consumer brand recently re-platformed and decided to try the default Solr search. Unfortunately, the company soon realized that the Solr search was creating a poor user experience, as demonstrated by the negative customer feedback it received. A previous user of SLI Learning Search, the company’s e-commerce team decided a switch back to SLI was necessary to keep customers happy.

According to Clare Dixey, e-commerce manager of Thompson & Morgan, SLI’s implementation with its new platform was swift – the new search was live within six weeks. And the results are significant: the 21% of site visitors using site search now account for 47% of total site revenue, and the conversion rate for site search users is 74% higher than the site average. Plus, the negative customer feedback about the site’s search function has turned to praise.

Dixey attributes the impact on Thompson & Morgan’s business to SLI’s ability to continually improve relevancy through its learning-based approach, as well as the SLI Auto Complete feature, which helps customers with particularly difficult-to-spell product names. Additionally, rich merchandising capabilities allow Dixey’s team to create custom landing pages for specific terms.

Zachys Wine & Liquor is a specialty retailer of high-end wine and spirits. The company recently began a re-platforming initiative and found that its reliance on SLI to power its search has smoothed the transition. The company also uses SLI Rich Auto Complete and refinements to improve the search experience, and gets a traffic boost from the SEO-optimized landing pages created by SLI Site Champion.

These are just a few examples of retailers that were able to use advanced search features to create a more engaging online experience and, in some cases, ease the move to a new platform. Other retailers have even delayed the need to move to a new platform because of the site improvements they were able to achieve with advanced site search. You can read more about the possibility of extending the life of your current platform in the white paper “Site Search vs. Re-platforming.”

If your platform’s default search is causing you unneeded aggravation and lackluster results, perhaps you need an upgrade. With the ROI benefits you can expect, not only will your customers thank you, but your bottom line will, too.

Results Pour In As Zachys Improves E-Commerce Experience

Posted by SLI SystemsMay 8, 2014eCommerce, Success Stories, User Experience

Do you have a favorite online store where you shop for specialty items and always find something that fulfills your desires? For lovers of high-end wine and spirits, Zachys Wine & Liquor is a popular destination. Because Zachys’ customers largely know what they’re looking for when they visit the site, they don’t spend lots of time browsing different pages and products. As Zachys’ E-commerce Director Victor Castro explained, customers tend to search, find what they want, and purchase — 1, 2, 3 — which also means if they don’t see something that grabs their interest right away, they’re gone.

Zachys knows the importance of delivering site search results that are right in line with shoppers’ expectations, which is why the company turned to SLI Systems not long ago. Since implementing SLI Learning Search, Zachys has seen 33% more visitors use the search box, and conversion rates and per-visit values for search users are twice those of non-search users.

Zachys also uses SLI Rich Auto Complete and learning-based navigation pages to boost those results, and now sees Rich Auto Complete results producing a 10x higher conversion rate than the site average.

For long-tail search terms that tend to have higher conversion value, Castro’s team uses SLI Site Champion to create dynamic SEO-optimized landing pages. The optimized landing pages get higher rankings in Google and Bing, which drives more high-converting traffic to the site. Another key to Zachys’ online success is the use of extensive refinement options in search results, along with merchandising banners for popular terms.

If you want to learn more about Zachys’ e-commerce success using SLI, read the Chain Store Age article or the press release. And if you need to put in place a strategy for generating higher revenue from search and navigation, similar to what Zachys has done, feel free to reach out to us at discovery@sli-systems.com.

Omnichannel Strategy a Key Focus for 83% of Retailers

Posted by Marcus LawApril 30, 2014eCommerce, Site Search

The SLI Connect end user conference in London recently brought together more than 100 e-commerce thought leaders to discuss best practices, plans for the coming year and SLI’s role in achieving their goals.

During the event, SLI conducted a survey of leading retail brands including Kingfisher, Wickes, Snow+Rock, French Connection and Faberge, exploring their opinions on the importance of, urgency of and correct approach to providing a true omnichannel shopping experience.

As discussed this week in a press release, the survey revealed some interesting findings, including:

83% of brands expect to have an omnichannel strategy in place within 18 months
100% of brands see mobile as a key channel
85% of brands are implementing new technologies to go omnichannel
64% of brands are going omnichannel through repurposed budgets
Online-only and offline e-commerce retailers have different understandings of omnichannel, with few online-only brands exploring offline opportunities

Of the channels identified by respondents as the most important to their omnichannel strategy, the answers showed:

mobile – 100%
tablet – 97%
online – 95%
bricks-and-mortar – 61%
kiosk – 15%

David Kohn, multichannel director for Snow+Rock commented on the research findings, saying: “As a business who has bricks-and-mortar stores as well as online, we see delivering a consistent customer experience through all channels as both our key challenge and our key opportunity. The survey suggests we are not alone in this.”

The survey findings tell us that solution providers like SLI need to continue to focus on helping retail brands adapt their online strategy to multiple channels. Many SLI customers are working with us to streamline their mobile sites. At the same time, we see an increasing number of our clients applying the learning in our search to other areas of their sites – using SLI Learning Recommendations, merchandising banners and customized landing pages, for example. In the next year, we expect to help more clients take advantage of additional channels using our learning technology.

What are you doing to improve your customers’ brand experience across multiple channels? What channels are most important to your business over the next several months? Please share your comments below.

Effective Design Options You May Have Overlooked

Posted by Dawn MortensenApril 23, 2014eCommerce, Press, Ratings and Reviews, Site Search, Site Search Tips, Success Stories

Earlier this week, eConsultancy posted the article: 25 Effective Design Patterns for E-commerce Site Search Results. The article highlights great examples of search relevancy, site design and refinement options that help smooth customers’ path to find, and purchase, the items they’re looking for.

Five of the e-commerce sites spotlighted in the eConsultancy article are clients of SLI Systems, including Sutton’s Seeds, Abe’s of Maine, Boden, Lovehoney and B&Q. We’ve worked with these companies to implement effective site search solutions, using design options that many retailers overlook.

Abe’s of Maine – Filtered Reviews

Camera and photography retailer Abe’s of Maine stands out because of the way the company highlights reviews within search results. Not only can visitors view reviews in search results, but they can also set filtering options so they can find reviews that discuss aspects of camera equipment that are most relevant to them. Wine Enthusiast is another SLI client that offers the capability of reviews filtering. In both cases, the reviews filtering option gets a lot of use and tends to result in higher conversions.

Boden – Effective Use of Refinements

Boden offers a comprehensive set of filtering options, including Category, Sub-category, Top-rated by Age, Top-rated by Size, Price Range, Color and more. The results page also lists search suggestions at the top, offering visitors alternate search terms to try. The Help and Style & Fit tabs across the top give shoppers more options for finding the right items according to personal characteristics like size and shape.

By making these improvements in site search, Boden has increased customer engagement and conversion rates for search. Read more in this Boden case study.

Lovehoney – Capitalizing on Trends

Lovehoney used search to its benefit by recognizing a fast-growing trend among fans of the book “50 Shades of Grey.” Long before the book became a mainstream success, the team at Lovehoney.co.uk noticed the search term was frequently used on their site. The company immediately capitalized on the emerging trend by creating custom product landing pages for searches related to “50 Shades of Grey.” By reacting quickly, Lovehoney not only boosted sales but also struck a product licensing deal with the “50 Shades” franchise. Now they are the exclusive retailer of the popular branded items. Read more in this Lovehoney case study.

Following Best Practices Leads to Profitability

What’s not discussed in the eConsultancy piece is that effective site search pages often generate higher per-visit and average order values, while reducing bounce rates. After implementing improvements with SLI, Boden’s search users became worth about 215% more per visit than non-site search users. Lovehoney experienced a 16% increase in average revenue per visit.

If your site search solution isn’t improving your e-commerce sales, you might want to take a close look at more examples of search done well. In addition to the examples in the eConsultancy article, you can find more than 20 case studies at sli-systems.com/customers/case-studies.

Do More Selling Within Search: Start Merchandising

Posted by Kemberly GongApril 3, 2014eCommerce, Merchandising, Site Search, Site Search Tips

When I’m shopping for clothes, beautiful, colorful displays tend to catch my attention, as do big “sale” signs. But if I’m shopping for something less personal, like housewares or gardening items, I need signage that makes it clear where I need to go to find what I want. But that’s just me. Other consumers have different preferences – which makes it challenging for merchandisers to figure out how best to compel shoppers to make a purchase.

E-commerce marketers face similar challenges, as they have to understand how best to highlight promotions – on what pages, in what format and with what messages. Search results pages are a prime location for online merchandising, as we explain in the latest edition of the Big Book of Site Search Tips for 2014, available for free download. Once visitors have conducted a search on your site, they’re in the mood to make a purchase, provided they find what they’re seeking and you make it easy to browse through product options. For more effective merchandising, consider bringing these ideas into search:

Override search results (sparingly): While too many overrides can negatively impact the relevancy of search results, it can make sense to do an override when you want to place relevant promotional items at the top of the list – like sales or seasonal items. Online shoppers pay the most attention to the first several results above the fold, after which there’s a steep drop-off in engagement. Take advantage of where their attention is focused. Of course, the products that you push to the top of search results still need to be highly relevant to the search term.

Avoid presenting unrelated cross-sell or up-sell products: Shoppers will distrust search results if they are wildly off-base from their search terms. From their point of view, they’ve used the search box to tell you exactly what they want, and it’s your job to supply it. If you want to promote products that aren’t truly connected to searches, you should do so on other pages such as cart or checkout pages.

Show related searches on content pages: Even if visitors don’t find what they’re looking for within the first several results for their search, they may be encouraged to keep on looking if you offer related searches on content or product detail pages – or they may decide to start a new search. It’s best to create related searches based on keywords or phrases other visitors have used in the past when searching for the same items. Since they’re based on the language of your visitors, they’re a great way to promote related content or products and may also provide SEO benefits.

Create banners related to specific keywords: Keyword-driven banners on search results pages send your visitors the message that they’re seeing the right results for the right products. A banner can also highlight a promotion that’s related to the search, which can either move along the decision to make a purchase (like an extra discount or free-shipping deal), or propel the visitor into related searching (like a banner about products from the same brand).

For more ideas about selling through search, download the 2014 edition of the Big Book of Site Search Tips today.

Boden, LED Hut and SwimShop Talk ROI at Internet Retailing Expo

Posted by SLI SystemsMarch 27, 2014Conferences, Search Conferences, Success Stories

This week at the Internet Retailing Expo in Birmingham, England, thousands of e-commerce retailers are attending presentations, browsing the exhibit hall and taking part in workshops to connect with peers and gain insight into how they can improve their business in a multichannel ecosystem. Among the 60 retail speakers at the event are several SLI customers.

In a presentation on the topic of connecting shoppers to the products they’re most likely to buy, Keith Scott of LED Hut and Mark Sear of SwimShop spoke to an over-filled room about the results they’ve seen using SLI Learning Search technology and other SLI e-commerce acceleration solutions. LED Hut is the UK’s largest retailer of LED lighting products, while SwimShop is the Swim Specialist for Sports Direct, the UK’s largest sports retailer.

Here are a few comments from their presentations:

“SLI is giving us an estimated 400% to 500% ROI.” – Mark Sear, SwimShop
“My recommendation: I would implement SLI.” – Mark Sear, SwimShop
“Keyword suggestions with images and descriptions help our customers find what they’re searching for.” – Keith Scott, LED Hut
“The technology learns from visitor behavior to deliver the most relevant products.” – Keith Scott, LED Hut
“We use SLI search to examine the customer journey and improve the user experience.” – Keith Scott, LED Hut

In a separate presentation, Boden E-commerce Manager Paul Knutton presented a session on best practices for offering your e-commerce site across multiple countries and languages. Also speaking to a standing-room-only crowd, Knutton provided examples and metrics on how SLI Systems has helped with Boden’s international reach. His comments included:

“What SLI does particularly well is make sense of non-English languages.”
“Our search users convert at 1.77x the rate of non-search users and spend 2x more than what non-search users spend.”

To read more about how Boden, LED Hut and other leading companies around the globe use SLI to increase their profitability, take a look at our case studies.

If you’re at IRX today, stop by to see us on the show floor or in the Top 500 Lounge. Otherwise, keep an eye on our Events page to see where SLI will be in the coming months.

Kidrobot Makes More MUNNY with Social Content in its Search

Posted by Dawn MortensenMarch 18, 2014Site Search, Social Media, Success Stories, User Experience

Kidrobot is one of those brands that people love to Like – it’s common for a single Kidrobot post to receive more than 1,000 Likes on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. As the retailer’s popularity has expanded for its mustache-sporting Labbits, paint-it-yourself MUNNYs and other popular art toys, so has the company’s need to connect its online shoppers with its wealth of social media and blog content.

Such rich non-product content can be the catalyst that transforms a browser to a buyer – or drives up order values.

Case in point: While researching Kidrobot for this blog, I searched the company’s site for Yummy brand toys and enjoyed looking at Yummy’s plush pizza, hot chocolate and ice cream sandwich… but it wasn’t until I clicked on the Instagram tab and saw the adorable photos of these stuffed toys that I experienced the overwhelming need to own more than one Yummy plush of my own (#truth – I now own nine).

Six months ago, Kidrobot did not yet have this valuable social media content available on the site’s product pages. A fan searching Kidrobot for Marvel MUNNY toys would not have learned from the search results that Kidrobot also has Marvel Labbits, or that Marvel Labbit artist Frank Kozik would be signing products at certain Kidrobot store locations. In fact, six months ago it was challenging for shoppers even to find the products they wanted on Kidrobot.com.

“We give our products unique names, and it used to be that if you didn’t get the spelling correct for an on-site search, you wouldn’t find the product you were looking for,” Kelsey Vendetti, Kidrobot e-commerce & digital marketing manager, said in a case study and press release published today. “Visitors would search for something as simple as a t-shirt and get one result when in fact we offer over 20 t-shirt styles.”

To resolve these challenges and others, Kidrobot turned to SLI Systems. We made their products easily findable with technology that produces the most relevant search results, and we brought in the social, blog and video content that could help shoppers decide to buy. We also increased their site traffic through our Site Champion SEO solution.

The results tell the rest of the story: a 13% increase in orders, a 4x increase in conversions for visitors using the search box and a very happy customer.

“From the capabilities of their technology to the helpfulness of their support, the whole package of working with SLI is a huge improvement from what we had before,” Vendetti said.

Take a closer look at this and other SLI customer success stories by browsing our case studies.

Do Your Search Results Pages Drive Customers to Buy or Bounce?

Posted by Kemberly GongMarch 13, 2014Site Search, Site Search Tips

Search results pages are usually the place where online shoppers convert or leave. If your search really works and shows visitors the products they’re looking for, you’ll strengthen loyalty from those shoppers – or, if your search delivers a jumble of results that have nothing to do with the search terms used, it’s likely that shoppers will make a quick exit.

Search results pages need a little TLC so they can do the best possible job of showing off as many relevant products as possible, while allowing customers to adjust their view of results according to how they want to browse and shop. Here are a few tips to make sure your search results pages lead shoppers to buy, rather than bounce.

Create a consistent look and feel: Search results pages should not look dramatically different from the rest of your online storefront. It’s important to reinforce your brand in every element of your site, especially on the pages where visitors are making a purchase decision. Your results pages should mirror the look and feel of your overall website, brick-and-mortar stores and social channels. When all of these elements are properly coordinated, they create a positive brand experience.

Keep the search term in the search box: It is good practice to leave search terms in the search box, even when visitors are already viewing results. They may realize that they should add more descriptive words to their search terms or correct spelling errors. Some might want a reminder of what they just searched for. Whatever the reason, it’s helpful and saves time if visitors don’t have to retype their search terms.

Show a breadcrumb trail: A breadcrumb trail displays the search term and any refinements that the visitor applied to search results. It helps visitors understand where they are and how they arrived at the current page. It also makes it easy to remove search refinements and go back to a wider range of results. Breadcrumbs take up very little space on the webpage, but they can go a long way toward helping visitors navigate through search results.

There’s much more you can do to make search pages easy for visitors to browse, including allowing visitors to select the number of results they want to see on a page, or adding infinite scrolling so that visitors never have to click on a new page to see more results. For these tips and over a hundred more, download a free copy of the 2014 edition of the Big Book of Site Search Tips.

Amazon, You Don’t Know Me

Posted by Max BunagMarch 11, 2014Related Search, User Experience

I’m an avid online shopper. It’s convenient and simple, and best of all, I don’t have to deal with annoying store clerks. These are attributes that are absolutely necessary in my ideal shopping experience. Amazon.com is one of my shopping destinations of choice because of its wide selection of products. It’s like Walmart with a cooler name and actual customer service. The online juggernaut also gets into my head via typical big data fashion — it always tries to guess what I want. The keyword in that last statement, however, is “tries.”

Amazon thinks it has me figured out as a shopper. The retail giant knows that if I click through to an item on a search query — an item like “Legend of Zelda” — even if I don’t ‘add to cart,’ I have shown interest in said item. Ideally for Amazon, the next time I visit, I would see, click, and buy one of these ‘recommended’ items related to “Legend of Zelda” that are scattered throughout my view as I browse the site. Although Amazon’s concept is spot on, it’s not quite right in execution.

I searched for “The Legend of Zelda,” and as we all know, “Zelda” and all its associated products are exclusively Nintendo products. Therefore, if I’m performing search queries for anything “Zelda” or “Mario” or “Metroid”-related, you’d think that Amazon would recommend Nintendo-specific products to me.

This isn’t the case with Amazon’s recommendations. On my Amazon homepage, I have an entire “recommended” section devoted to — you guessed it — Sony and PlayStation accessories and games. Not only is this a waste of valuable real estate, it’s a missed opportunity. If Amazon’s recommendation algorithms were effective, they would surmise my interest in Nintendo and show Nintendo accessories and games in my feed. PlayStation 3 games are absolutely no interest to me as a Wii U owner.

Now I was curious; would Amazon’s algorithms make similar incorrect assumptions outside the realm of the video game console wars? The conclusion was what I expected. I performed search queries for iPhone and Apple products, clearly showing Amazon that I have an interest in iPhones and Apple products. But, back on my homepage, I get a section dedicated exclusively to LG and Samsung phones. I have literally asked Amazon in all its infinite wisdom to show and bring me directly to iPhones, and the retailer shows me something it should know I don’t want. It’s no different than asking a sales associate where the iPhones are and that associate trying to up-sell LG and Samsung accessories — it does not make sense. In the brick-and-mortar retail world, this would be a lost customer.

There are countless instances of these faulty “product recommendations” not only on Amazon, but all over the e-commerce web space. In theory, product recommendations are a form of suggested selling. It’s the same as merchandising like-products next to each other on a store endcap. If you put too many random products near each other, or completely unrelated ones, you’ll confuse and lose that customer to the store with better merchandising. Need proof? Look at the in-store customer experience in T.J.Maxx and Marshalls versus the experience at Target or Best Buy.

Effective recommendations are a proven way to up-sell and increase conversion. To be effective, however, relevancy is absolutely necessary. SLI Systems recently announced the availability of a new product, SLI Learning Recommendations, which uses the power of SLI Learning Search data to provide contextually relevant recommendations. To learn more, take a look at our Learning Recommendations product page, or contact me at max.bunag@sli-systems.com.

Max Bunag, who clearly favors Nintendo over Sony, is an enterprise sales representative for SLI Systems.

Get Psychic with Search by Improving Relevancy

Posted by Kemberly GongMarch 5, 2014eCommerce, Site Search, Site Search Tips

Have you ever conducted a search on an e-commerce site, only to wish it could read your mind and deliver the exact items you’re looking for? OK, maybe expecting “psychic search” is a little much, but it’s certainly possible for your search to provide results that are in line with your customers’ needs. Here are a few ways you can bring some psychic power to search:

Keep an eye on user behavior: How your visitors navigate around your site and click on products can help you do a better job of creating relevant results. Examine search data to uncover the products that customers click on after they enter a given search term. Then you can place these products at the top of search results, which makes the results more relevant.

Control results that matter to your business: Sometimes you need products to appear in search results in a different order than what your search product might recommend. For instance, you may want to place promotional or sale products higher, or perhaps highlight certain brand names. A full-service search solution should allow you to reorder results to suit business goals, while still ensuring that visitors see plenty of relevant results.

Jump directly to a product page: When you know exactly what visitors are searching for, it makes more sense to direct them to a product page, rather than a list of results. This may be the case if there’s only one result for their search, or if visitors type in specific product or SKU numbers, which means you know precisely what they want. Similarly, if they type in a search term such as “returns,” you can take them directly to the page about your returns policy. This is a good way to improve visitors’ satisfaction with search.

You can dig deeper into tips about relevance and many other facets of site search by reading SLI’s 2014 edition of the Big Book of Site Search Tips. We’ve pulled together many helpful ideas on making search more relevant – along with more than 100 tips on search boxes, refinements, merchandising and many more key search topics. Here’s a free download of our latest e-book.

Three of the Best Trends in E-commerce Site Search

Posted by Sasha ButkovichFebruary 25, 2014eCommerce, Site Search, Social Media, Success Stories

Sasha Butkovich is senior writer for Ecommerce Outtakes and a guest blogger for SLI’s Site Search Today.

When it comes to e-commerce site search, what’s going to be the next big trend? Well, there are a few serious contenders to take a look at. Some truly cool features have been popping up in online stores around the web, and they are bound to take off for widespread use throughout the coming year. Take a look at the newest best practices in site search.

Autocomplete

Personally, I can’t wait until autocomplete and rich autocomplete are the norm on every e-commerce site. Until then, this growing trend is well worth exploring, since there are a few different levels of this feature. At the most basic level, autocomplete can guess at the user’s search term, prompting them to select from a drop-down. Even this is helpful to steering shoppers in the right direction and avoiding spelling errors.

Beyond this, rich autocomplete can come into play for an even more satisfying search experience. Displaying suggested search terms is great, but displaying specific products is even better. Rounding it out by showing a thumbnail image, short description, and in some cases the price, goes above and beyond for the user. The example below from The Home Depot even offers project guides. All this extra info in the search helps people get to shopping faster, which is really the whole point. Easy and seamless!

Creative Refinements

Once shoppers enter a search term and view the results page, there are even more opportunities to create a great experience. Refinement options are a prime example of this. Get creative here, and show your customers images to help narrow down their search. The key is not to go too over the top and overwhelm a shopper, but to create imagery that is helpful to the shopper and makes your brand memorable. The Republic of Tea does a great job of this, displaying images of what the brewed tea looks like. Very cool!

Social Media Integration

Have a strong fan base on social networks? Tie it into your search results page. This offers some interesting refinement options for your shoppers. For example, FTD offers the ability to sort search results by most Facebook likes. It’s an awesome way to show shoppers which products are popular among their peers. Or check out Kidrobot. Their search results pages offer tabs that give users all kinds of social options. You can see when these products were mentioned on Instagram and Twitter, for instance. Can someone say “retweet”? When site search is social and fun, it’s a win for everyone.

These are just a few ideas to implement into a site search to kick it up to the next level. Expect to see these on more and more e-commerce sites in the year ahead. With the way these features make the search experience easier and richer for the shopper, they are bound to take off in a big way.

To learn more top site search tips, download the 2014 edition of SLI’s Big Book of Site Search Tips.

SLI Launches Learning Recommendations

Posted by Shaun RyanFebruary 19, 2014eCommerce, Site Search, Success Stories

SLI Systems’ mission is to accelerate sales for our e-commerce clients by helping their site visitors find the products they want to buy. We’ve done this over the past 12 years by developing and offering advanced site search, navigation, merchandising, mobile and SEO solutions. Today we announced a new way that SLI is connecting shoppers with the products they seek: SLI Learning Recommendations.

SLI Learning Recommendations shows related products to shoppers at various stages in the online buying process. Because the logic behind selected recommendations is based on our proven and patented learning technology, the suggestions are highly relevant. As shoppers notice additional products they want and add them to their online carts, the result is more conversions and higher average order values.

Not only does Learning Recommendations provide more relevant choices to the buyer, but also provides sellers with more ways to up-sell and cross-sell products. SLI clients can implement Learning Recommendations in one or multiple areas of their site, including home pages, landing pages, product results pages and checkout pages. Retailers can also use SLI Learning Recommendations beyond the online store – think in-store kiosks, catalogs, shipping receipts and order confirmation emails.

There are many types of recommendations SLI clients can implement, each based on different algorithms. We can create recommendations based on what other buyers searched for, clicked on or purchased. We can show other products by the same brand, top-selling products in a category or previously viewed products.

An example of SLI Learning Recommendations in use is on the site for Michael C. Fina, a leading East Coast retailer of fine jewelry and home goods. In its first two months of using Learning Recommendations, an average of 34% of Michael C. Fina customers viewing the recommendations clicked on at least one of the product suggestions shown. In the screen shot at the left, you can see the “Recommended” section SLI populates.

SLI has also helped Michael C. Fina see a 313% increase in per-visit value and a 187% increase in conversions for site search users, as detailed in a new case study posted today.

SLI Learning Recommendations can be very effective on checkout pages as well. In the below example, Footwear etc. shows recommended products based on the item the visitor put in her cart.

Footwear etc. VP of E-commerce Mike Baranov told us the feature improves how customers find products of interest on the site, and said he expects it to positively impact sales and revenue.

In addition to increasing conversions and order values, Learning Recommendations can reduce the bounce rate on your site and help shoppers discover new products you want to introduce. The Learning Recommendations solution is one more way SLI helps you accelerate your e-commerce business.

To learn more about SLI Learning Recommendations and our introductory pricing, email discovery@sli-systems.com or call us at (866) 240-2812.

Why Do Online Valentine’s Day Shoppers Spend More?

Posted by Dawn MortensenFebruary 10, 2014eCommerce, Site Search, Success Stories

Online Valentine’s Day shoppers will spend 31% more than those who purchase items related to Valentine’s Day in a physical store, says the National Retail Federation. Broken down to amount spent per shopper, the average person will spend $133.91, but the average online shopper will spend $175.80.

There are many potential reasons for this; online shoppers may be more likely to buy multiple gifts that are shipped to different addresses, or they simply tend to choose more expensive gifts. Shipping and gift wrapping services would account for part of the more than $40 difference.

Search and You Shall Spend
Another possible reason for the extra money online shoppers spend is that they’re more likely to find and buy the gifts they’re looking for if they’re shopping on sites with a good search function. Rather than wandering through aisles of pink and red stuffed animals and cardboard heart boxes of chocolates, online Valentine’s Day shoppers can go to their favorite gift sites, type in search terms, then refine the results until they find the gifts they want to buy.

FTD, Interflora, Samuels Jewelers, The Diamond Store, Lovehoney, Harry and David, Gourmet GiftBaskets and Vermont Teddy Bear are all sites that have Valentine’s Day related gift items. And all are powered by SLI search, which means the search results are incredibly relevant because of SLI’s advanced learning technology. You type a word or two into the search box, you see relevant items, you click the one you want, you go through checkout and you’re done. On these sites, most customers find what they want within the first five search results provided.

It’s not surprising that a great user experience leads to more money spent at that site. Lovehoney saw 16% higher average order values (AOVs) after improving their site search. PartySuppliesDelivered.com saw 18% higher AOVs with SLI search. Boden had a dramatic increase of 215% in revenue per visit, and other SLI customers have seen similar results, like a doubling in the conversion rate for customers searching for recipes and products at KingArthurFlour.com.

Great search makes for a great shopping experience when looking online for a gift on Valentine’s Day – or any day.

Create a Better Shopping Experience with Refinements

Posted by Kemberly GongFebruary 6, 2014Ratings and Reviews, User Experience1 comment

Think back to the last time you were in a big-box retail store with an overwhelming array of products. How did you find your way around, without being paralyzed by the vast selection? Retail merchandisers work to make it easier for you by categorizing groups of products in certain areas of the store. Signs point you to the correct aisle for bed and bath items, electronics, toys, and other products, so you’re not wandering aimlessly.

For online shoppers, the experience can be very similar. If users encounter a large set of search results for a particular keyword, they can also feel overwhelmed. As an e-commerce merchant, you can help them tremendously by offering refinement options to narrow numerous product results to a manageable set. While site search is considered one of the most essential elements to an e-commerce site, refinements are just as crucial in guiding shoppers to the right product, and to a sale.

Our new Big Book of Site Search Tips for 2014, available for free download, is filled with ideas for improving this vital part of your site search solution. Here are just a few of the suggestions from the Big Book – and you’ll also find more than 100 tips on everything from search box placement to merchandising in the Big Book.

Make refinements intuitive: Don’t force visitors to guess what your refinements are trying to say. When shoppers come to your site, they may have certain keywords in mind. Name refinements in a way that will match your users’ language, and that makes sense for the products you’re selling. SLI customer ReNew Life, which sells probiotics products, has a refinements category called “Concerns,” which highlights common health and wellness issues that customers may experience:

Pick the right place for refinements: Depending on how your visitors search your site, different placements for refinements may be called for. The most common spots are in the left navigation pane, and at the top of the search page. Either option may work fine, but you should test different positions and see which ones your visitors use most. We don’t recommend using the bottom of the page for refinements, since it forces visitors to scroll down, and the right side of the page may confuse visitors that aren’t used to seeing navigation bars there. Additionally, if your site utilizes search pages with infinite scrolling, consider floating refinements that will travel down the page as a user scrolls.

Refinements for ratings and reviews: Sometimes a series of reviews can be the difference in deciding whether or not to buy a product. Depending on the e-commerce business and product types, some visitors find value in sorting products by ratings or reviews. You can allow visitors to refine their search results based on the star rankings, for example, which can help users narrow down a selection to only top-rated products.

Allow users to navigate between refinements: If a visitor has clicked on a certain refinement, but decides he or she wants to see a different refinement, don’t force them to click the “back” button to get to the original search results page first. Users should be able to simply click a different refinement option from the page they are on, and see a new batch of results.

These are just a few of the many tips that you should keep in mind when optimizing your e-commerce site experience to make browsing and shopping easier. Download the 2014 edition of the Big Book of Site Search Tips today.

What features do you plan on adding to your e-commerce site in 2014? We’d love to hear from you!

Infographic: Retail Site Searches Show Super Bowl Fan Favorites

Posted by Dawn MortensenJanuary 30, 2014eCommerce, Site Search

The popularity of yesterday’s Super Bowl related blog spurred us to create an infographic! The findings are based on recent online shoppers’ searches on e-commerce sites powered by SLI Systems.

Denver or Seattle? Online Shopping Behavior Shows Fan Popularity for Super Bowl 2014

Posted by Dawn MortensenJanuary 29, 2014eCommerce, Site Search2 comments

Football fans around the world are gearing up for the biggest day of the season. On Super Bowl Sunday a record-breaking 111 million viewers are expected to be glued to their sets to see whether the Broncos or the Seahawks can carry the day.

But which team will they be rooting for? We can answer that question by looking at online searching behavior among shoppers seeking NFL logo wear for purchase.

During the week following the NFC and AFC Championship games, nearly 160,000 searches for the Denver Broncos or Seattle Seahawks were made on e-commerce sites powered by SLI Systems. Looking at which team’s products were searched most often turned up some interesting findings.

State-by-State Team Preferences: The map below shows fan preference by U.S. state, blue states searching most for Seahawks gear and orange states searching most for Broncos gear.

Most states in the west searched more for Seahawks, as is expected for a Washington team. But it’s interesting to see how many states in the Midwest and on (or near) the East Coast searched more for Seahawks gear than for Broncos gear. Most central states preferred Broncos fan gear.

Quarterback Preferences: On the same e-commerce sites, Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning jerseys and fan items were searched for more than twice as often as Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson jerseys and fan items. True, Manning has been on a winning Super Bowl team in the past. But could the drastic difference suggest more fan support for the Broncos?

Type of Product Preferences: As far as which types of fan gear were searched for the most, you can see in the graphs below that jerseys are the top-searched Super Bowl team product. Hats and shirts are the next most popular items. More Seahawks fans want jerseys than anything else, whereas Broncos fans like a variety of fan apparel.

Overall Team Preference: So who do we want to win overall? Out of the more than 160,000 online retail searches we reviewed, the Seahawks led search activity by the slim margin of 2.6%.

Peak Shopping Days: Looking at our search data, it was also interesting to see that online retail site searches for the Broncos or Seahawks were 3-4 times higher within the first three days after the NFC and AFC championship games than on days four and five after the championships. This suggests that online retailers should be ready to sell the winning teams’ gear immediately after the Super Bowl teams are decided – a good point for e-commerce companies to note in preparing for Super Bowl XLIX next year.

Whichever team wins, at least half the country’s fans – and all online retailers who have been selling fan gear – should be happy with Sunday’s result.

Making the Mobile Experience Better, from the Big Book of Site Search Tips

Posted by Kemberly GongJanuary 28, 2014eCommerce, Mobile/Tablets

You’ve probably made some New Year’s resolutions like getting healthy and going to the gym or watching less TV – but have you thought about how to improve your business?

Now that the holiday rush is over, it’s a good time of year to take a closer look at all the components that make up your eCommerce business and see which ones you can improve.

We’ll be taking a close look in the coming weeks at ways you can improve the online shopping experience for your customers by improving relevancy of search results and other aspects of search and navigation.

The full list is available in our free Big Book of Site Search Tips. Here’s a close look at some of our tips for helping improve ‘findability’ on your mobile site.

Understand mobile users’ intent: Think like a detective, and follow your users around – virtually speaking. You need to learn how visitors find your site, and the paths they take once they get there. This is especially important in the mobile environment because without fast, easy ways to get to the products and content they want, mobile users are more likely to abandon your site. Make sure your mobile reporting systems can record how visitors arrive, which products they view, and how much time they spend on your site.

Account for misspellings and synonyms: Tapping out words on a mobile keyboard isn’t easy for most of us, and it’s common to misspell words – or, to type short synonyms instead of longer keywords, in hopes that you can locate a product with the minimum number of taps. Anticipate that your visitors will run into this challenge, and create synonym rules in search. These rules build linkages between words so that the correct product or piece of content is shown even if a word is misspelled or a different term is used.

Convert links into buttons for easier navigation: Similar to the problem above, even experienced mobile device users can find it hard to click on tiny links within text. (It’s painfully easy to click on something you didn’t want, forcing you to go back to a previous page and start your search again.) You can solve this problem by converting links to buttons, especially for functions like choosing sizes or colors, and adding items to shopping carts. By avoiding mistaken clicks, visitors can choose products and proceed to check out more quickly.

We’ll be covering more tips from the Big Book in the SLI blog over the next few weeks, but if you want to benefit from the full list of more than 100 ideas for better search, download the Big Book now.

2014 Could Be the Year that Online Retailers Outsmart Amazon

Posted by Shaun RyanJanuary 21, 2014eCommerce, Site Search

As I look through articles on trends and business strategies for 2014, it’s clear that Amazon is driving many online retailers’ business decisions this year. With Amazon’s advantages in fulfillment speed, pricing, inventory, and the sophistication of its e-commerce engine, I imagine the question of how to effectively compete with the behemoth keeps many online retailers up at night.

However, there is a category of savvy online business owners – many of whom we have the pleasure of working with – who are keeping the Amazons, eBays and Walmart.com’s of the world at bay by finding their own niches.

These retailers are discovering that they can maintain dominance on their home turf and draw new shoppers to their sites by showcasing their domain expertise and augmenting their unique assets with services from third-party providers. For example, a merchant can use videos and social media marketing to effectively emphasize its unique specialty.

Additionally, retailers are looking to service providers to handle critical areas of their website like search, shopping cart and check-out, mobile design, personalization, and more. When a service provider has a single best-of-breed offering and leverages it across hundreds of retailers, it’s possible for that service provider to surpass Amazon’s own offered capabilities in these areas.

The key for retailers of any size is to maintain a solid focus on delivering the best overall shopping experience possible – through both technology and easy access to great customer service. In other words, don’t worry so much about what Amazon is doing, just worry about making sure you’re doing the best you can at what you do well, and look to your technology service partners to optimize performance for your website, which is what we do well.

As an example, look at Kidrobot, whose pop art and designer toys are constantly shared over Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites. SLI incorporated social media content into Kidrobot’s on-site search. Now, when you search for MUNNY (see screen shot below), not only can you easily find a MUNNY product, but you can click on the Instagram tab to view photos of MUNNY toys, click on the Video tab to view videos of MUNNYs, and so on. Even though you can buy MUNNY toys and other Kidrobot products on Amazon, many shoppers still want to buy directly from Kidrobot’s site because they enjoy the delightful user experience that Kidrobot has created for shoppers.

So if you’re looking to beat Amazon at its own game, leverage the assets you have that they don’t. It may be your physical stores, unique access to products, a deep knowledge of your niche, or something else. Also ensure they know that your service and responsiveness is the best around. I wrote more about how we do this in the recent blog, A Unique Approach to Customer Service.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what retailers should focus on in the coming year to compete effectively with the online giants. Please comment below to start a conversation.

The New Big Book of Site Search Tips 2014 has launched!

Posted by Kemberly GongJanuary 15, 2014eCommerce, Mobile/Tablets, Site Search, Site Search Tips, User Experience

It’s only been a year and a half since we last revised the Big Book of Site Search Tips. But as the speed of innovation for eCommerce increases, we found there were just too many new things we needed to include.

What kinds of things? Well, for one we found that mobile shopping has come so far in the last couple years – what used to account for 7% of total eCommerce sales in 2011 is now estimated to contribute to 16% of total eCommerce sales. This points to the growing comfort that people feel in making purchases on a mobile device. It’s becoming increasingly important to offer a user friendly shopping experience.

When you download the revised Big Book of Site Search Tips for 2014, you’ll find many more recommendations on how to optimize your mobile site so visitors find what they want quickly, leading to decreased bounce rates, higher conversions and ultimately, creating a powerful mobile search that users love.

Additionally, if you’ve been keeping up with holiday shopping trends, you’re well aware of how social media sites, like Pinterest and Facebook, have been a driving factor in increasing traffic and sales to some sites. The Big Book delves into these trends and illustrates interesting ways you can integrate social media, videos, blogs and other content into your site for a richer, more engaging experience.

You’ll find these tips and many more – download the Big Book of Site Search Tips.

King Arthur Flour’s Recipe for Rising Revenue

Posted by Dawn MortensenDecember 18, 2013eCommerce, Success Stories

What percentage of your online revenue is driven by your site’s search function? Is it anywhere near 50%? If attributing half your sales to search sounds crazy, consider the testimony of one of SLI Systems’ customers, King Arthur Flour.

“Search has jumped from 17% of our revenue to almost 50% of our revenue,” said Jeff Wilcox, eCommerce Producer for King Arthur Flour, who cites results from working with SLI in this new 30-second video.

Headquartered in Vermont, King Arthur Flour is the oldest flour company in America and the number-one seller of whole wheat flour in America. Although most would not consider five-pound bags of flour to be the ideal item to purchase online, the company has turned KingArthurFlour.com into an incredibly popular site for bakers – both amateur and professional – to share recipes and purchase baking products.

The wealth of knowledge on King Arthur Flour’s website flows from the company’s commitment to developing a vibrant community around their products’ users. Their Norwich, Vermont headquarters has become a destination for cooks and connoisseurs with its retail store, state-of-the-art bakery, and a Baking Education Center that holds courses for bakers of all levels.

Part of the genius of King Arthur Flour’s success is their ability to combine aspects of their rich community and knowledge base into their eCommerce site. With SLI Systems’ help, King Arthur Flour has made it easy for site users to search from thousands of enticing recipes, then read reviews, shop for ingredients and link to related videos or blogs.

In my first search on the site, I typed “gluten free pie crust” into the search box and found a recipe that’s rated five stars and has been pinned to Pinterest more than 1,000 times. The site offers the kind of start-to-finish help that gives me confidence that I’m not going to screw up the pie; just one simple search, and I have the recipe, the ingredients I can purchase right from their site, cooking tips from the experts, and reviews from 59 people who have tried it. This is the kind of user experience that creates serious fans. And now I’m one of them.

There’s advanced technology that goes in to making the search and user experience this successful – and you can read more about it in a previous blog from King Arthur Flour’s Customer Success Manager at SLI. But what shoppers see is what I found – an easy search that delivered relevant and accurate results, along with valuable content that created confidence in my decision to buy the ingredients. There will be gluten free pumpkin pie at my house for Christmas!

In both baking and business, the secret to success is often in the ingredients. Just as King Arthur Flour’s quality ingredients help ensure their customers’ baking success, the SLI Systems technology that powers their online community and store ensures visitors find and buy exactly what they need.

“SLI has very intuitive tools,” said Wilcox. “They implement new features quite often, so as they become available to us we consider implementing them immediately. We know that it’s easy to do and the results are very good.”

No wonder King Arthur Flour has increased its conversion rates from 3.7% to almost 6%, and has grown its search-based revenue to nearly 50% of its business. They make it seem as easy as pie.

Which Shopping Experience Would You Prefer?

Posted by Max BunagDecember 10, 2013eCommerce, Merchandising, Site Search

Imagine yourself walking through the mall. You want that red shirt that you’ve seen your favorite singer wear on the latest episode of TMZ. You’ve got money in your pocket. You arrive at your destination. There are two stores that sell the very same shirt: Store X and Store Y. Let’s walk through the shopping experience at both.

Store X has an attractive presentation and merchandising. The store is full of employees, each devoted to their section; they are folding clothes and spraying perfume to ensure a solid guest experience. You realize that this is a pretty big store. You don’t see red shirts, but you’ve seen an advertisement showing that they carry the particular one you want. You walk through the store, passing employee after employee and asking each one where to find red shirts. None of them have an idea. They do, however, show you a completely different item and ask if you want to buy it. They are obviously not helping your shopping experience. In fact, they are hurting it. After turning down assorted belts, shoes and dresses, you casually stroll right out the exit and directly into Store Y.

You get to the entryway of Store Y, which also has an attractive presentation and merchandising. Store Y has a dedicated employee to greet you, and she asks: “Can I help you find something?” You answer: “I’m looking for the red shirt I saw Justin Bieber sporting on the red carpet.” She acknowledges your request and immediately points to a corner of the store dedicated to this red shirt – along with similar shirts. You have been in this store for all of 30 seconds at this point and you already have the shirt in hand, headed to the register – the red shirt is yours.

The experience at Store X describes the concept of having a sub-par site-search experience. All too often, I visit a website and type in the search box “red shirt,” only to find “black dresses,” “leather boots” or even worse, “no results.” This is a slap in the face to your customer. Your customer is on your site to buy. They have specifically asked for a “red shirt” and you are doing everything in your power not to help them, ensuring a negative shopping experience and a visit to the competitor’s website. You have not converted a customer plus you have ensured they don’t come back.

Shop Y, on the other hand, has a search bar that works. I visit the website, I type in the search bar “red shirt” and voila, I have the red shirt in my shopping cart. You have made that conversion and you have gained and retained that customer. This is a success – a success due to effective site search.

If you’re not thinking about site search, you absolutely should be. And if you already have site search, kudos to you – but if it’s not contributing to at least a third of your revenue, you should probably reevaluate your options. Simply having a search box is only half of the solution. Having one that works is completing the puzzle.

Max Bunag is an Enterprise Market Development Representative for SLI Systems (who may or may not be searching online for the red shirt Justin Bieber wears). For more eCommerce insight, contact him at max.bunag@sli-systems.com.

SaaS Based Site Search Offers Reliability During Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Posted by geoffbNovember 27, 2013eCommerce, Navigation, Site Search

Imagine getting your online storefront ready for holiday shoppers during the lucrative Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping days and beyond, only to have the entire eCommerce experience shut down due to traffic surges or server problems. The last thing you want your eager buyers to encounter is an error message or a painfully slow shopping experience.

For popular components of your website, like search and navigation, choosing properly hosted solutions can help you avoid failure exactly at the time when you need the highest performance and availability. With eCommerce experts predicting that online spending will increase about 15% in November and December – a total of $61.8 billion – you want to ensure your site is performing at its best during this time.

SaaS based solutions offer far better redundancy than many eCommerce businesses can build in-house. An infrastructure that hosts client sites on multiple servers in multiple data centers, in geographically separated locations, means the site will remain operational even if there is a problem. It’s the smart way to handle spikes in traffic or unexpected outages that could disappoint customers and cause a significant loss of revenue.

The type of highly redundant system described above can help meet many challenges – everything from a hurricane knocking servers offline to unprecedented crowds of shoppers overwhelming your website on Cyber Monday.

At SLI, we use multiple servers in each of our eight data centers in locations around the world to host our client sites, and we make sure to only use a fraction of the capacity of these servers at any given time. In this way, if a disruption occurs, our customers are assured of uptime. If you have questions about bringing greater redundancy to your eCommerce site, ask us by emailing discovery@sli-systems.com.

Survey Reveals eCommerce Marketers are Leaving Money on the Table. Are You?

Posted by geoffbNovember 20, 2013eCommerce, Newsletter, Site Search

The results from our annual eCommerce survey are in. Unfortunately, what our latest survey revealed is that a majority of marketers are not taking advantage of the extra “punch” that site search can give their marketing programs. This represents a huge missed opportunity for eCommerce brands to improve ROI of their marketing campaigns and increase sales.

According to our recent survey of 160 global eCommerce professionals, the majority (57%) indicated that they don’t tap into the wealth of customer information in their site search systems. The reason? Half (50%) said it was because of limited resources. Others (30%) simply don’t know how to use site search data effectively. And 10% said their existing site search solution doesn’t allow for integration with marketing programs.

While I don’t doubt that some site search solutions have limited capabilities in this area, my guess is that most people aren’t using site search to its full advantage because they simply don’t know how, or they think it’s more effort than it really is.

Savvy eCommerce marketers use site search data to deliver more customized offers in their email marketing campaigns. Jelly Belly increased their email open rate by 85%. PartySuppliesDelivered uses site search data to guide its Google AdWords campaigns. Motorcycle Superstore and others use SLI to create special site search and natural search landing pages that generate higher click-throughs and conversions, and even fuel their advertising initiatives.

Looking to 2014, survey respondents clearly identified site search, SEO and eCommerce platform as the top three priorities for the coming year. Mobile initiatives and customer-focused analytics ranked next in priority.

It’s great to see that site search remains a top area of focus in the coming year for retail brands, as it has in years past. Of course this is not surprising to me, as I’ve seen how even small improvements with site search can directly improve a business’ usability and profitability, making it one of the most valuable parts of any eCommerce website. My hope is that with this continued focus on search, marketers will take a closer look at the ways in which their site search activity and reports can improve the effectiveness and increase ROI of their marketing efforts.

With the holidays fast approaching, now is the time to “think outside the search box” and use your site search to drive greater brand visibility and loyalty. If you need help putting some of these ideas into action, ask us how SLI can work with you to get them implemented quickly.

For more insight into the thoughts and practices of eCommerce retailers, download our full survey report and analysis. Also view the survey results infographic.

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