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CSM of the Month: Kish Maharaj on Dog IDs

Posted by Kish MaharajOctober 26, 2012Newsletter, Rich Auto Complete, Site Search

Talk to any dog owner, and you’ll quickly find that their pet is just another member of the family. They’ll do anything they can to protect them. DogIDs sells pet collars with built-in ID tags that any dog owner would drool over (sorry!) However, they weren’t seeing the conversions on their site that they were hoping for.

They explained to me that their search was not being used by their customers and was not returning very relevant products. Search boxes are a really important part of any eCommerce site, because customers who search tend to have higher conversion rates. When you think about it, it’s pretty clear why – they have a product in mind and they are looking to find it.

Clint from DogIDs wanted to help his customers find exactly what they were looking for, which is why he came to SLI Systems. Their site was being redesigned at the same time, so I worked with the team at DogIDs to implement SLI’s Learning Search and Rich Auto Complete products and also ensure that our pages seamlessly blended with their new design. Rich Auto Complete allows products that match the search query to be displayed right below the search box, so customers instantly see products that match their search without having to navigate to other pages. The fewer clicks we can have from a search to product page the higher the conversions will be!

In the month since implementation, we’ve seen amazing results. The number of pages clicked per visit has more than tripled and the time customers spend on the site has quadrupled just by adding site search to the page. Those numbers were even higher when we added Rich Auto Complete to search queries. DogIDs also saw a 28% increase in ecommerce conversion rates with Rich Auto Complete compared to 3.5% without site search at all.

I love seeing those kinds of results, because it validates that our learning search and Rich Auto Complete features have unmistakable value for our clients. Seeing improvements and working with a client who also has the same goals in mind makes my job more satisfying. We’re here to make sure that our platform is easy to use and our clients see the conversions they’re looking for.

SLI Systems Named in Top 100 NZ Tech Companies

Posted by Kemberly GongOctober 25, 2012About us, eCommerce, Press

SLI Systems was just ranked in the TIN100 report, which catalogs the top 100 technology companies in New Zealand. The ratings rank companies by revenue, an analysis of market sectors, a New Zealand company ownership review, in depth statistics of the current financial times and the impact on the industry.

We’re honored to be part of the list of impressive companies, and we look forward to continuing to contribute to the tech industry in New Zealand. Since the company’s inception 11 years ago, the core premise behind SLI Systems has remained the same: to help businesses give their customers the best website search experience possible and to take care of them every step of the way.

We have kept that goal in focus through the years, and we think it’s paid off: we have a large group of clients who enjoy and advocate for our product and our service, and we continue to grow every year by leaps and bounds. We’re continually looking at ways to improve our products and expand into new regions so we can offer our technology to a wider base of eCommerce companies. This has allowed us to grow our engineering and product management team in New Zealand and open offices around the world to serve our customers. We just hired our 100^th employee and we’re still going strong.

The TIN100 Report is a quantitative study of New Zealand’s leading internationally-focused technology businesses in the areas of Hi Tech Manufacturing, ICT and Biotechnology. To qualify for the award, companies must meet a number of criteria, including originating in and retaining a meaningful presence in New Zealand. According to the report, in 2012 the leading 100 companies had revenues of NZ$7.2Billion and offshore revenues of $5.2Billion.

Master Mobile Commerce with our Upcoming Webinar

Posted by Terry CostaOctober 22, 2012eCommerce, Mobile/Tablets, Webinar

Mobile commerce is experiencing explosive growth as more shoppers embrace making purchases through a mobile device. Yet 79% of large online retailers still don’t have a mobile optimized site.

Where do you fall? Do you have a mobile site but want to improve it? Or are you looking to offer a mobile site, but not sure where to start? Don’t miss our upcoming webinar 20 Secrets to Improve the Mobile User Experience.

Whether you seek to enhance your existing site or are new to mobile, you’ll leave with a concrete understanding of the most important considerations that will keep customers on your mobile site longer, drive transactions and encourage repeat visits.

The bar for technology continues to rise, and mobile isn’t an exception. Mobile customers, new and experienced, expect a sophisticated interface that is streamlined and easy to use. With various applications, games, news and media available from mobile devices, it’s paramount that your mobile site keeps customers’ attention by being easy-to-navigate and surfacing the best products.

During this hour-long webinar, you’ll deep dive into the fundamentals of mobile user experience with SLI Systems’ founder and CEO, Dr. Shaun Ryan. He’ll show you the features that the most innovative mobile sites are using, including use of collapsible refinements, relevant site search and integrated ratings and reviews.

Start thinking about how you can make the most of this holiday shopping season by delighting your customers with a great mobile product that will keep your products within arms’ reach at all times.

Best workplace award

Posted by Shaun RyanOctober 18, 2012About us

Great news: SLI Systems New Zealand office has been voted one of the finalists for Best Workplaces in New Zealand!

The survey, which was completed by Kenexa, took into account answers from 33,000 kiwis from 289 organizations. Winners for each category will be announced in November, and we’re looking forward to learning the results.

This nomination reaffirms our vision for how a company should really work. At SLI we believe that a great work environment comes from surrounding ourselves with other like-minded folks: hardworking, customer focused, slightly-geeky individuals who work as hard as they play. Is it possible to be serious about work and have fun while doing it? Absolutely.

We not only pride ourselves on our work environment, but on a larger company culture that puts our customers first. We’re fortunate that through hard work and commitment to excellence, we’ve become the top SaaS provider to IR500 firms, and we take our job seriously. We have extremely high rates of customer satisfaction because we’re aligned with our customers. Our team works tirelessly to ensure successful integrations, improve and develop new features and make sure our customers’ visitors have the best experience possible. Bottom line, we just aim to be friendly, extremely effective and totally accommodating.

Sound like a great place to work? Check out these openings we have in our Christchurch office.
In the States, the UK or Australia? Our San Jose, London and Melbourne offices are pretty fun too.

eCommerce Merchandising Made Easy

Posted by Kemberly GongOctober 17, 2012eCommerce, 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.

Our Weekly Webinar Series Starts Tomorrow!

Posted by Terry CostaOctober 16, 2012Mobile/Tablets, Webinar

Just a quick reminder that the first webinar of our weekly webinar series starts tomorrow! In each 30-minute session showcasing a different top retailer, you’ll get the inside scoop about what worked, what didn’t and how these retailers augmented their site to improve conversion rates, ROI and overall site usability.

Tune in every Wednesday from 8:30 – 9:00 a.m. PDT to learn how you can start boosting sales on your eCommerce site.

How Women are Shaping eCommerce

Posted by Kemberly GongOctober 12, 2012eCommerce, Merchandising, Mobile/Tablets, Navigation, Site Search

Traditionally, men have led in purchasing in the eCommerce space, buying digital media, computers and other consumer electronics. However, as more eCommerce sites have expanded their reach to apparel, beauty and items for the kids from clothes to toys and party supplies, the number of shopping transactions by women has outpaced men in most areas.

Though women and men each make up approximately half of internet users, women today account for 58% of all online purchases, and decide 83 – 87% of consumer purchases. According to research from comScore, women spend more money online than men in all but three categories: electronics/computing, event/movie tickets, and flower/greeting cards/gifts.

Women drive the majority of purchases on many sites such as Zappos, Gilt Group, Etsy and Groupon. Additionally, eCommerce companies that focus on a female audience, such as e.l.f. Cosmetics, Boden, Stella & Dot and One Kings Lane are growing quickly.

The rise can be partially attributed the wider availability of products and shopping experiences that women want. Fashion has seen the biggest growth in the past year and is now one of the largest product segments. Other areas that have seen tremendous growth are health & beauty and food, DIY & household products.

And women in the United Kingdom are taking their eCommerce purchasing a step further and leading the market in mobile purchases. Research conducted at OgilvyAction into the mobile behavior of 1,000 UK consumers found that 56% of women own a smartphone, as opposed to 51% of men. It also showed that one in six women had made a purchase on their mobile phone, compared to one in nine men.

Though smartphone ownership among US women has now exceeded that of men, they still fall behind men in mobile purchasing. But as the rise of user-friendly mobile commerce sites continue, it will be interesting to observe the new trends that emerge.

And just as the types of products bought by men and women vary, shopping patterns between genders also vary. Men tend to prefer shorter shopping experiences by searching for what they are looking for and buying the product. Men are more likely to intensely research the product page and read all product details, while women quickly scan the product page and continue browsing other products. Women also tend to search by brand instead of searching by product.

Which prompts the question – are you doing all you can to tap this group of consumers?

To counter these differences in behaviors, it’s wise to ensure that your site is able to be searched and navigated in a variety of different ways. An effective search box that gives extremely relevant results can lead customers right to the product they are looking for. On the flip side, having a navigation that is full of useful refinements allows for a browsing experience that easily narrows down the best products but still allows for a visual and highly-engaging shopping experience. By providing multiple avenues to access products, you’ll create a shopping experience that will appeal to women and men alike.

Improved Usability & Merchandising Are Keys to Growing Mobile Commerce

Posted by Terry CostaOctober 9, 2012Conferences, Merchandising, Mobile/Tablets, Reporting and Analytics

It’s no surprise that the mobile commerce market is growing incredibly fast – and this year experts predict a lot more mobile purchases during the holiday season than we saw last year. According to studies by Forrester Research, mobile retail and travel spending will double in 2012 over 2011 — and they project the market size to quadruple by 2017, with retail being the fastest growing mobile segment. This research and the expectations for a big increase in mobile shopping activity validate the need for retailers to develop user-friendly mobile commerce sites.

With that in mind, we announced today several new enhancements to our SLI Mobile site search solution, including: mobile Auto Complete, QR code integration, mobile banners, analytics tracking and multivariate testing (see our press release for more details).The new features and capabilities are designed to give online retailers better merchandising and customization options while improving customer engagement and the overall mobile search experience.

Many of these new features have been developed to accommodate the needs of our growing mobile customer base, which recognizes the need for good usability on the mobile platform, as well as the ability to merchandise, test, and track performance of various design elements. Many of our existing clients are turning to us for their mobile site search implementations, including Dooney & Bourke, 24-Hour Fitness, Cache, MakeMeHeal.com and U.S. Toy/Constructive Playthings, among many more – and they’re seeing strong results in terms of how people interact with their mobile site and how that translates to more purchases.

This week, we’re showing off these new features and talking about best practices for mobile search at Mobile Commerce Forum in San Diego. If you’re interested in going mobile or need guidance on how to take your mobile site to the next level, stop by and visit us in booth #305, and get a first-hand view of our solution and its benefits. If you’re not in San Diego, feel free to drop a comment here.

Is Your Mobile Search User-Friendly Enough?

Posted by Terry CostaOctober 2, 2012Site Search Tips

The new iPhone 5 just hit the market, and a new Samsung Galaxy S III before that. And there will be more new and updated devices launched soon, and many more after that. Whenever new mobile devices hit the market, they offer consumers new features and enhancements that make them even easier to use for entertainment and business purposes, as well as for shopping on the go. For us e-commerce experts, this poses new challenges in making sure that our mobile sites can accommodate visitors on these new devices, and that customers can easily find products and information, even on the small screen. Here is some insight for how to make mobile sites more search- and user-friendly – you can read even more in our Big Book of Site Search Tips.

1. Show Succinct Content

Mobile screens don’t allow for lengthy product descriptions or the many site navigation links that you’d find on normal search results pages. To insure rapid load times and uncluttered pages, it is important to keep the content presented on search results concise.

7 For All Mankind gives users succinct but useful information such as Article Name, Picture, and Price. They keep search results brief while adding price discount information.

7 For All

Short product descriptions can also be added. As there isn’t a lot of room for a lot more information, though, be sure to limit content to the essentials. Number of colors available, and style code can also be added.

2. Use Small Thumbnails

Keep the pictures small so as not to slow down page loads. In the example above, 7 For All Mankind uses small product thumbnail images in order to increase download speed.

3. Use The Bottom Of The Page

Another common search feature is including sort options, pagination, and related search. The best practices for mobile sites are to include these at the bottom of the search page results. We also recommend providing another search box at the bottom of this page to save visitors from scrolling back up to the top, as can be seen in the MotorCycle SuperStore example below.

MotorcycleS

We recommend doing this so that you will have as many product results as possible above the fold, which helps users find their products quickly. Users can also conveniently access all other search options they need from one area once they’ve reviewed all the initial search results, without scrolling up and down.

If you have any ideas about enhancing the mobile site search experience, please let us know.

Site Search Performance is all in the Reporting

Posted by Terry CostaSeptember 26, 2012Mobile/Tablets, Reporting and Analytics

Do you monitor your site search reports on a regular basis to see how well your search is performing? If you aren’t, you’re missing out on valuable data that can be instrumental in ensuring relevance of results.

For example, perhaps there’s a keyword term that is used by lots of visitors but has a low click-through rate – meaning it generates poor results. Terms that deliver poor results are revealed in your site search reports, and once you identify them you can decide how to improve the results – either by incorporating the language of your visitors into product descriptions, or by configuring your search to account for synonyms, or perhaps adding additional items to your inventory.

Below are a few tips related to leveraging site search reports to improve your search performance, and ways to put the information you receive into action to enhance the overall experience. To see more, be sure to download our newest Big Book of Site Search Tips, a collection of 100+ actionable tips for giving your site search a boost.

1. Review search quality metrics — It’s important to review your site search quality metrics to ensure your search relevancy is improving over time. Some metrics you should track include average rank, click through rate, and revenue generated per person that searches. A good site search solution “learns” by tracking visitors’ search queries and click-throughs to deliver results based on criteria such as popularity. This means that searchers on your site are presented with the most relevant search results and can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Improved searches result in more satisfied customers and greater sales.

2. Review site search terms for SEO and PPC campaigns — Another best practice is to regularly review site search terms to improve your SEO and PPC campaigns. This is a great source for keyword research because the language your visitors use on your site search will be very similar to the language they use when searching the web for the same products or content.

3. Watch the keywords that are gaining popularity — Watch the keywords that are quickly gaining popularity so you’re able to continually meet increasing product demand. Again, it’s important to understand the language of your customers. Like any trend, nothing lasts forever, including the search terms used most frequently on your site. Trends around popular terms may shift with the seasons, or with popular songs and movies, or with the latest look sported by Justin Bieber. The point is, as terms gain popularity, they signal to you that the products that go along with those terms will likely also gain popularity. Be prepared for these shifts.

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