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Find Your Way Out of Any Paper Jam with This Online Store

Posted by Dawn MortensenConferences, eCommerce, Navigation, Site Search, Success Stories1 comment

This is third in a series of success stories on eCommerce sites that are growing their business with advanced site search. Also in this series, read about Party Supplies Delivered and Vermont Teddy Bear, and see live presentations of these stories at the SLI Theater at IRCE June 3-6.

Jam Paper & Envelope, a top source for paper crafts, creative giftwrap and all other things paper-related, has been featured in Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living and Country Living Magazine, among others. With its flagship New York City store, a successful online retail operation, and two other store locations, the paper company has been able to succeed both in the brick-and-mortar and eCommerce worlds.

JamPaper.com offers more than a million variations of specialty envelopes, paper, cardstock, gift cards and other paper goods, with 70% of its sales going to businesses that place large orders for marketing promotions, weddings or other events. The business started two generations ago and has remained in the family, with grandson Andrew Jacobs leading the effort to create the eCommerce site. Jam Paper first went online in 2004 and the site traffic is growing steadily.

“Our initial site search was rudimentary,” Jacobs said. “But since we’ve started online we’ve been constantly working on improving.”

One of the challenges for JamPaper.com was to help their users find the exact product they wanted among the enormous number of items and pages. Envelopes, for example, are one of their most common searches, but envelopes can come in 50 colors and 50 sizes – with many small variations for each. Since they improved their site search and navigation, Jam Paper has made the following improvements so users can more easily find and purchase the exact product(s) they want:

  • Made site search results more relevant and incorporated sales data into search results tuning so the most popular items come up higher in results.
  • Added synonym suggestions to improve the results on search terms that previously turned up with poor results.
  • Incorporated Rich Auto Complete to auto-populate suggestions based on popular search terms and take users directly to the product page.
  • Analyzed and restructured data internally to improve search results.
  • Added merchandising banners to search results pages.
  • Used A/B testing to identify additional improvements that will increase conversions.

By analyzing their search data on an ongoing basis, Jam Paper continuously improves their online user experience. The impact on online sales is “crawling upwards and keeps getting better,” Jacobs said.

At IRCE in Chicago June 4 and 5, Andrew Jacobs will be at the SLI Theater to share the tips and tricks he’s learned for improving Jam Paper’s eCommerce site search, navigation and SEO. Stop by Booth #501 to meet him or to get a free site critique from the SLI Systems team.

Other SLI Theater presenters include Steiner Tractor, Envelopes.com, Samuels Jewelers and ReNew Life. See the full schedule of presentations here.

eCommerce Merchandising Made Easy

Posted by Kemberly GongeCommerce, Merchandising, Site Search

In contrast to the brick and mortar stores where we all grew up shopping, online shopping offers a variety of ways to put the right items in front of your customers. Instead of sorting through racks or shelves of products that we don’t want in order to find the few items we do want, merchandising on an eCommerce site allows you to easily put front and center the items your customers want most.

Like a personal shopper, let your customers lead you to their favorite items and then suggest other similar pieces, tell them about special promotions and don’t lead them away from their desired item. With successful eCommerce merchandising, you can automate these various incentives to drive your customers to the shopping cart.

Here are a couple tips to improve your merchandising; you’ll find the complete list and more in our Big Book of Site Search Tips. Download it today to learn the most innovative, yet practical ways to improve your site’s usability.

1. Override Search Results

Online shoppers pay the most attention to the first several results “above the fold”, or rather, what is shown initially on screen without scrolling. If you have relevant promotional, sale or seasonal items you’d like to showcase, you might consider overriding search results to place them at the top of the list.

2. Don’t Present Unrelated Cross-sell or Up-sell Products

When your customer enters a search term, it’s a clear signal about what they are looking to find. Keep the products that you recommend focused on the initial search keyword. Shoppers will distrust the value of your search function if it habitually returns irrelevant promotional results.

3. Show Search Results on Product Pages

When someone searches a specific keyword on the web and clicks an organic listing that leads to one of your product detail pages, you can increase conversions and reduce bounce rates of those visits by including other search results for that  keyword. In our Big Book of Site Search Tips, we show an example  from Motorcycle Superstore.

For instance, if a customer searches Google for “Bell Helmet Rally” and clicks a link to Motorcycle Superstore’s detail page they’ll see a banner on the page containing other Bell motorcycle helmets. This surfaces a broader range of products than they would have otherwise seen, which is useful if the original product is out of stock or is not a best seller.

These are just a few tips for increasing clicks and reducing bounce rates on your eCommerce site with effective merchandising. You’ll find even more strategies in our Big Book of Site Search Tips. It’s full of useful guidelines to help make site-wide enhancements on your eCommerce site to create an intuitive site that leads customers to the most relevant and popular items they desire.