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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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