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Fighting for Better E-commerce, Everlast Finds Its “Big Win” in SLI

Posted by Dawn MortenseneCommerce, Site Search, Success Stories

Everlast Image for Blog 10May16

Each time I interview an SLI customer for a case study, it’s a privilege to hear firsthand how our solutions make a significant impact on retailers’ growth. One of my most recent interviews was with Everlast E-commerce Director Mike Ebert, who told me that site search was one of the first things he looked at when he joined Everlast in mid-2014, and that implementing SLI was one of the biggest “wins” he’s had in the changes made since.

“I’ve known about SLI forever and wanted to work with you guys since I was on the agency side,” Ebert said.

“At Everlast, one of the first things I looked at was how easy it was for people to find things on the site. I typed in red boxing gloves and didn’t get any boxing gloves, which was a problem! Only 1% of traffic was engaging with search and only 0.15% of that traffic was converting. It was a blip in what it contributed to Everlast’s revenue,” he said.

Everlast, whose brand is older than the zipper (the company was founded in 1910), controls about 85% of the boxing products market, according to SportsOneSource LLC. Mike knew it was time Everlast.com became a larger revenue-contributing part of the global business, and he set out on a number of new projects to make that happen.

Search First

First, Mike worked with SLI to implement SLI Learning Search®, SLI Rich Auto Complete™ and SLI Learning Navigation®. Moving from Yahoo site search to SLI, Everlast immediately resolved the problem of customers not being able to find the products they were looking for. The results were clear: with SLI, conversions for site search increased 6x.

“I knew I could get SLI up and running quickly and deliver benefits right away,” Ebert said. “It didn’t take much and it produces results.”

Everlast’s success is showcased in an SLI case study.

Replatforming Second

After solving the problem of product findability, Ebert next tackled the job of looking for a new platform and a design agency to create a modern, mobile-friendly site.

Ebert chose the Magento platform, then worked with e-commerce site development specialists Blue Acorn to create a sleek new fitness-inspired site, based on Magento Edition 1.14’s native responsive functionality. The new design makes use of Everlast’s stunning product photography, creates a better user experience and makes administrative management much easier. Read more about this process in Blue Acorn’s case study with Everlast.

Merchandising Third

Everlast also solved its need to showcase products in unique ways with the SLI Merchandising Console. With the ability to create banners on results pages and promote specific products, Everlast is now able to merchandize to two separate customer groups – its longtime customer base of boxing enthusiasts, and a new group of customers looking to add boxing to an overall fitness routine.

For additional promotional efforts, Everlast began working with Bronto to improve its email communication. Now when new customers come to the Everlast site and sign up for emails, they receive a “Welcome” series of emails – these drive 38% of total email revenue, while accounting for only 2.3% of email sends.

“SLI is our big win,” Ebert said, “Now revenue from search represents 10% of Everlast’s revenue.”

He added: “You guys and Bronto are the best tech implementations we have.”

We’re glad to hear it, Mike. Keep fighting for better e-commerce!

EASY – A Deciding Factor for E-commerce Technology

Posted by Dawn MortenseneCommerce, Navigation, Site Search

Easy to use technology for E-commerceEasy is a critical feature for today’s technology solutions – easy-to-implement, easy-to-use, easy-to-measure and easy-to-update. Of course solutions need to be effective and results are the number one point of comparison. But if you’re in the position of choosing technology and you’ve narrowed your options to those with proven results, you’re likely to choose the one that will make it easier for you or your team to achieve the results you want.

After all, there’s only so much you alone can do – you need technology that expands your abilities, rather than giving you one more thing that requires your expertise.

This is how Michael Schuler of the Minneapolis-based Schuler Shoes felt about the company’s website. A year ago, he was the only one who could customize merchandising banners and SEO since it required going into the code to make modifications. He knew this process wasn’t sustainable as the business expanded its product catalog. He needed a merchandising solution that was straightforward enough for anyone on his team to use – he needed it to be easy for his employees to edit promotions and optimize SEO.

Michael Schuler also needed a site search and navigation solution that would provide a consistent product-finding experience for shoppers. He wanted to make it easy for shoppers to find and buy what they were looking for.

At the same time, Schuler was moving the business to a new e-commerce platform and he needed a hosted site search and navigation provider that would easily integrate with the latest version of Magento.

Of course Schuler wanted the solution to work well – choosing a vendor with a solid history, reliable infrastructure and clear, proven results was a given. But easy was a key theme in his search for the right vendor. In the end, he chose SLI Systems as the best fit to achieve his goals. As stated in a case study on Schuler Shoes:

“We chose SLI because it fits well with Magento and offers the features we needed. SLI Learning Search Connect easily plugged into our Magento platform, quickly improving the shopping experience and simplifying merchandising and promotions,” said Schuler.

In fact, yesterday SLI Systems announced it’s the first and only Magento Gold Partner to offer a site search extension for Magento 2.0. Our commitment to “easy” meant that we wanted to have our plugin for Magento 2.0 ready as soon as our customers needed it.

Schuler also achieved his goals of making it easier for his team to manage merchandising and SEO, along with making it easier for shoppers to find the products they wanted.

“With SLI site search, navigation and refinements, we have seen 20% fewer bounces and a 7.5% increase in the time visitors spend on the site, indicating the solutions are helping customers in the ‘pre-shop’ phase before they buy from us in-store or online,” Schuler said.

If you’re in the position of choosing a new technology vendor, look for easy – easy-to-implement, easy-to-use, easy-to-measure and easy-to-update. Add easy-to-show results to this list (as we’ve done with our latest SLI Dashboard), and you’ll be set. Michael Schuler found a solution that was all this, plus provided better results than his previous solution. For him, it was an easy choice.

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.