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Posts with Lakeshore Learning Tag

SLI Receives Magento Partner Award and Other 2015 Accolades

Posted by Eileen ElameCommerce, Press, Site Search, Success Stories

SLI Receives Magento’s Highest Partner Honor

Last week at Magento Imagine, SLI received the “2015 Magento Technology Partner Spirit of Excellence Award for North America.” The annual award recognizes partners who have delivered exemplary service to Magento clients. Evaluations are made across a number of critical elements such as commitment to quality deployments, merchant satisfaction, growth, penetration in emerging markets, innovation and strategic planning.

Magento is the provider of the world’s fastest growing e-commerce platform. We are thrilled to partner with them in providing SLI Learning Search Connect™ as an easily downloadable Magento extension.

Magento Spirit of ExcellenceRetail Innovator 2015

Also in 2015, SLI has received other distinctions stemming from the company’s dedication to achieving high ROI for its customers and its commitment to exemplary service for its partners. This follows a record year of awards for SLI, which received a total of 10 awards in 2014 for technology, customer-use scenarios, and customer support. We are proud to acknowledge these accolades for 2015 (and it’s only April!).

SLI Customer Wine Enthusiast Receives Retail TouchPoints 2015 Retail Innovator Award

Wine Enthusiast’s CMO Glenn Edelman was named a winner of Retail TouchPoints 2015 Retail Innovator Award. Wine Enthusiast uses SLI Dynamic Product Banners™, which automatically displays banners with items related to a visitor’s original web search on product pages. Edelman will be recognized at the Retail Innovation Conference, June 16-17 in New York City.

“With SLI Dynamic Product Banners, visitors are more prone to stay and buy from our site rather than clicking back to Google where they could end up on a competitor’s site,” said Edelman. “In fact, when visitors interact with the banners, we see a 48% increase in revenue-per-click and a 14% increase in conversion rates. The banners also have a real impact on lowering bounce rate from the site’s landing pages.”

Read more about their success in our Wine Enthusiast case study.

SLI Customer Lakeshore Learning Recognized by eTail West for Search Excellence’

Lakeshore Learning, supplier of school supplies for preschools and elementary classrooms, was named a 2015 finalist in eTail West’s Best-in-Class Awards for ‘Search’ innovation and excellence. By implementing a rich set of features and refinements by SLI, Lakeshore Learning has been able to improve its site’s customer experience and offer personalized products relevant to shoppers.

As discussed in our Lakeshore Learning case study, the company used SLI Learning Search™ and SLI Site Champion™ to make even more of its content easy to find.

“Multi-faceted search allows customers to quickly narrow down hundreds of products and still maintain a clean and robust search experience,” said Sam Sarullo, VP of E-commerce at Lakeshore Learning. “Personalizing the site to draw people into areas most helpful for them has been a big improvement. Since implementing Learning Search™ we have seen double-digit online revenue growth, while average order values went up 30 percent and conversion rates rose nearly 19 percent.”

Site Champion™ dynamically creates SEO landing pages based on actual user searches that are indexed by Google and other Internet search engines. Lakeshore Learning has seen a return of $127 for every $1 spent on SLI Site Champion.

To learn more about how SLI provides award-winning results for customers like Harry & David and Sports Authority, check out more of our case studies and video testimonials.

Site Search Isn’t Sexy, It Scores Sales

Posted by Tim CallaneCommerce, Site Search, User Experience

There’s no question. Site search isn’t sexy, but it doesn’t have to be, because the revenue it drives speaks for itself. Internet Retailer Senior Editor Thad Reuter said it best in his February article, Reading Shoppers’ Minds:

“Site search receives little in the way of celebrity-level attention in e-commerce… But with retailers typically reporting two or three times the amount of conversions for site search users, the stakes are obvious: Better site search can translate into more profits.” Period.

However, one question still remains: Which site search approach best connects shoppers with the products they’re most likely to buy, making shopping easier and retailers more profitable? Do online shoppers use natural language search, which interprets subjective terms to serve up search results? Or do the most relevant search results come from learning site search, which “learns” what specific search terms resonate most with consumers and – with SLI Learning SearchTM technology – reranks the order of search results based on the latest activity of users?

In e-commerce, there is some uncertainty around the demand for natural language search. North Face e-commerce manager, Charles Caison, told Internet Retailer, “At North Face, for instance, most shoppers search using terms that describe the product, not ambiguous phrases that require natural language processing to decode. It may be that we have been trained by Internet search engines for keyword searches rather than natural language searches.”

A new SLI study also supports Caison’s insight. To demonstrate site search user behavior today, SLI evaluated natural language terms, focusing on subjective search terms including “cheap,” “nice” and “cute” for a Fortune 100 retailer. As you can see in the chart below, out of 67,000 searches, the word “quality” was only used 3 times while “cheap” and “nice” had similar results. The findings reveal that subjective search terms are not yet commonly used among online shoppers.

Total searches performed ~67k
Searches containing “cheap” 11
Searches containing “quality” (high-quality) 3
Searches containing “nice” 0
Searches containing “cute” 42

 

Lakeshore Learning, an IR Top 500 company, also finds less use of natural language search from its shoppers. Lakeshore Vice President of E-commerce Sam Sarullo told Internet Retailer, “an analysis of the retailer’s top 1,000 searches revealed that consumers use an average of 1.8 words to search – a signal that consumers remain wedded to keyword search, and that natural language-type searches may not yet be intuitive. That said, I see return customers who are more familiar with our products using these natural language or long-tail searches.”

The beauty of Learning SearchTM is that if it detects shoppers’ use of longer search terms, it will “learn” and tweak its results to reflect that behavior. Learning Search continuously analyzes the terms and phrases that prove most popular and lead conversions.

Perhaps the best argument for the value of Learning Search is to let e-commerce companies’ results speak for themselves. Here are some of the results leading retailers have experienced using Learning Search:

  • Lakeshore Learning, an education supplies manufacturer: 30% increase in online sales
  • Boden, a British clothing retailer: 1.8x higher conversion rate using search
  • e.l.f. Cosmetics, an international cosmetics brand: 21% higher per-visit value using search
  • Marine Depot, world’s #1 supplier of aquarium supplies: 11% increase in revenue
  • SurfStitch, Australia’s #1 surf retailer: 30% improvement in page position for organic search

Some say “sex sells,” but in e-commerce, Learning Search sells more.

Holiday E-commerce & Personalization Among Top Themes at SLI Connect

Posted by Shaun RyanConferences, eCommerce

Shaun SLI Connect

I’ve written before about the many benefits of face-to-face meetings, and after our inaugural SLI Connect event in Seattle earlier this month, I can affirm the immense value of gathering our customers together in one place.

SLI Connect provided a full day of retailer presentations and discussions about best practices for site search, navigation, product recommendations, mobile, merchandising, SEO and more. As retailers shared their current challenges in breakout groups, many were able to help each other identify “quick win” solutions. And as SLI executives shared our tentative product roadmap, we received real-time feedback about which innovations are most important to our customers.

We all enjoyed discussing the shopping experience of the future. Plus, we had fun dining, networking and laughing together at evening events. The relationships we built or enhanced were worth the effort of gathering from various parts of the world. Many SLI customers contacted us afterward to share their enthusiasm, indicating that their time was well spent.

There were many clear takeaways, but a few themes stood out most for me:

Holiday 2014

We requested that attendees complete a survey, which asked: “Which capabilities are expected to be the biggest drivers of your e-commerce business this holiday season?” Given nine options, retailers identified the top three drivers as SEO, Optimized Site Search and Optimized Mobile Sites. The answers indicate that getting shoppers to arrive on your site is just as important as ensuring they find the products they seek once they’re on the site.

We also surveyed SLI Connect attendees about their business drivers and new initiatives for the 2014 holiday season. When we asked: “Is Omnichannel an important part of your 2014 holiday season strategy?” 85% responded “Yes,” indicating a clear priority for multi-channel retailers to optimize interactions across mobile, social, desktop and/or brick-and-mortar store channels.

Personalization

I believe e-commerce is just at the cusp of what can happen with personalization, and I am not alone. Others at SLI Connect shared an interest in enabling their customers to find (or be pushed) relevant product information or content at the right time, via the right channel. In a panel discussion, Alicia Fiorletta, a senior editor at Retail TouchPoints, explained: “All retailers just want to get closer to the customer – to get to where the customer is and interact with them in a way that relates to them.”

During her presentation about using SLI to help customers find products amid tens of thousands of SKUs, Lisa Dahlke, web operations manager at Silver Star Brands (a multi-channel retailer that includes Miles Kimball, Walter Drake, Exposures and others) said: “We are trying to understand who our customers are, how we need to treat them differently, and how our smaller brands can most stand out.”

Sam Sarullo of Lakeshore Learning shared: “We’re seeing a high trend in text/SMS messages converting, so we’re changing our strategy to do more text blasts.” His comment underscored how the strategies for reaching and converting shoppers in a relevant way across channels are ever-evolving.

Partners in Innovation

During SLI Connect, SLI CTO Wayne Munro and I offered a sneak peek into SLI’s product roadmap, with an interactive session that gave customers and prospects the opportunity to share their priorities for 2015. In addition to hearing what’s on deck, customers learned more about the products and features already available for accelerating e-commerce.

Following the event, Gavin Trippe of 2 Wheel Parts Supply said, “I attended SLI Connect knowing SLI was going to play a big part of our success in e-commerce, and I was extremely impressed with the event and the SLI team’s knowledge. It was clear that SLI really understands the future of e-commerce. The company continues to improve and invest in the product, offering a huge amount of features.”

He added: “One of the most important things SLI offers is the willingness to develop our integration past the initial installation − it shows they agree that a site will never be finished and will always have room for improvement.”

I appreciate Gavin’s comment, because I take pride in our business model; we provide ongoing innovations and advice that will continually improve our clients’ sites – not as a separate professional services or support fee, but as an included service. And I think it’s this way of doing business that makes it valuable and enjoyable for our customers to spend time with us. They know that we are genuinely listening to and responding to their requests for improvement, rather than pushing sales pitches.

I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent with those who attended SLI Connect, and I look forward to hosting the event again in the future.

If you missed the event and would like some tips on improving your holiday results, please enjoy this on-demand version of our latest webinar, the E-Commerce Holiday Playbook.

Technology Makes Back-to-School Shopping Elementary

Posted by Dawn MortenseneCommerce, 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 15July14Tea 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,” “3rd 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.