Without a shadow of a doubt, 2020 is the year where ecommerce has reigned. Against a backdrop of year-on-year growth in online retailing, 2020 expedited that growth as many turned to online shopping out of necessity rather than choice. In fact, according to the latest Online Retailing Index from IMRG and Capgemini, overall online retail sales in June increased 34% year on year, a 12 year high since 2008.  Studies suggest that the transition to e-commerce has been accelerated by up to 5 years in 2020 due to the current global situation.

And with restrictions ongoing across the world, whether through local lockdowns, the need to shield, or the fact that many are simply more comfortable avoiding the high street right now, online channels continue to report solid growth. This of course has to be good news for online retailers.

Or does it?

Beware complacency

Not necessarily. There is a risk that this kind of opportunistic growth as a direct result of the pandemic might be interpreted as strategic growth. That is, growth which is achieved on the back of investment in digital transformation for example, or the creation of business models designed to drive conversion rates and increase revenue.   

Overstating this kind of opportunistic growth is of course potentially risky, as while demand for some categories, such as grocery, is forecasted to have shifted online for good, it seems likely that others might slow down once physical stores can embrace a restriction-free future. Any complacency around these predictions could equate to lost revenue further down the line.  

Forward-thinking retailers are recognizing these factors and are investing in areas which stand to boost sales in the long term, irrespective of this year’s online performance.   

The search is on

The ability to deliver the right communication or product to the right person at the right time, in the right place, is of course the holy grail of any marketing strategy. And nowhere is this process more magnified, and indeed crucial, than in e-commerce search and discovery. 

E-commerce search capability has become, in just a few years, one of the most influential factors in driving online sales.  Consumers expect to search a retail website, for a “grey velvet sofa” or “orange neon sports shoes” and be presented with an array of products for closer inspection and ultimately, selection. Testament to the power of search is that the ability to deliver relevant content to consumers at the right time can improve conversion by as much as 50%, and increase revenue by as much as 30%.

However, many retailers continue to rely on the generic search capabilities contained within their existing ecommerce platforms. While these can absolutely convert some consumers, they typically don’t extend far enough in maximizing potential sales. To put it bluntly, they’re inadequate in keeping pace with consumer expectations in 2020/21, and fail to reflect the importance of search as a tool in driving revenue.  

Introducing intelligent search

The latest breed of dedicated, intelligent search platforms address this shortfall by pinpointing the specific products that a customer is most likely to buy at a very specific point in time. Using machine learning (ML) and customer data, they dynamically re-rank products to present the results most likely to convert a browser into a customer.

The search and discovery journey begins before a customer even clicks on your website. Using a patented algorithm to place the most relevant results first by using a combination of both shopper’s behaviour as well as the data provided, the best search tools will also further optimize SEO to draw browsers in from their preferred search engine, thus creating a seamless purchasing journey.

Compounding this further, they provide reports which enhance profitability through allowing users to focus on the areas which can drive the most value, helping to manage resources more effectively and optimize performance.

Crucially these platforms can work on a standalone basis, or on top of a retailer’s existing e-commerce system. Through providing the images, URLs, indexing and promotions most likely to match a consumer’s search criteria, they not only boost sales, but foster loyalty. If a consumer can locate and purchase the exact item they are searching for in a fast and efficient manner, it creates a superior shopping experience for the customer and drives greater revenue for the retailer.

Clicks versus bricks

Looking ahead, the only real certainty is uncertainty. Retailers cannot afford to gamble on potential sales and therefore must strike the right balance between investment in clicks versus bricks.  

Investing in the very best, most intelligent search tools to optimize conversion rates and build market share, regardless of the pandemic restrictions in place, is a no brainer in engaging the modern consumer, and matching products with consumer demand at precisely the right time. Those retailers which recognize the value of intelligent search, and invest in this powerful capability will inevitably put themselves in the best position to become the brand leaders of tomorrow.

For more information on how SLI can help your e-commerce business, contact us at info@avolin.com.

With behemoths like Amazon dominating the market, when it comes to e-commerce sites, retailers are looking to powerful online tools to help them claw back some market share. One of the most powerful weapons online retailers can have in their arsenal is creative content, ensuring your online presence is so much more than the products you sell.

Rather than just a one-dimensional shop window for your products, a good e-commerce site should deliver an educational experience for your consumer. By offering unique photos, videos, tools, blog posts, reviews and more, you’ll help to boost your brand power, further encouraging shoppers to choose your products. Don’t just take our word for it, either. The Content Marketing Institute found that companies who adopt content marketing see conversion rates of almost six times higher than their competitors.

Undoubtedly, developing good content marketing requires time, money and skill but this doesn’t mean it has to be an arduous process. With this in mind, we’ve identified four practical ways you can boost your content to drive-up sales.

1. Don’t be antisocial

If used wisely, social media is your friend. Arm yourself with the knowledge about which social media channels your customers use the most and align your social media strategy accordingly. For example, if Pinterest is more popular with your customers than Twitter, high-quality, ‘pinnable’ photos should be a priority for you.

Integrating favourable social media conversations into your website also helps to enhance the information you provide to shoppers. Incorporating social media posts, articles and third-party product reviews or endorsements into search results creates a vital additional level of engagement for customers when it comes to how positively they perceive your products.

2. Blog about it

A well-written blog is a brilliant way to bring in some non-product content, while providing a platform to showcase your brand’s unique voice. It’s also a great way to generate organic site traffic, improving your SEO in the process. While posts shouldn’t necessarily promote particular products, they can be a great vehicle for providing additional interesting insight or information, positioning your brand as a leader in its field.

Once you’ve crafted a blog, maximize its potential by including it in search results where relevant, below best-selling products but above the fold. While of course a blog can be a useful tool for promoting new products, first and foremost it should be an educational resource, intended to inform and solve consumers’ problems. Therefore, it’s vital to strike the right balance between promotional and educational content.

3. Top tips, techniques and tutorials

Regardless of the products you offer, retailers have the ability to provide exceptional educational value to their consumers, all while fostering a real sense of community. How-to videos and step-by-step instructions, complete with photo guidance, alongside technical documents and product instructions, all help to build excitement about products. Enabling customers to share their own tips and tricks also helps build a truly vibrant and interactive customer community, encouraging consumers to view your site as an invaluable resource, boosting site traffic and underpinning an uplift in sales.

4. Be creative with your FAQs

Your FAQ page doesn’t have to be dull. Answering questions in a creative way serves to engage customers further still, highlighting not only your knowledge but your brand’s personality too. In an age where personal interactions with brands are few, any opportunity to give your brand a personality should be maximized.

In combination with an intelligent and intuitive search function, a content-rich site will exceed customer expectations, helping them to find relevant products and supporting information in super-quick time. With these four strategies in place, e-commerce businesses can increase customer engagement and loyalty, two of the key factors needed to boost sales, delivering an informative buying experience that sets you head and shoulders above the rest.

For more information on how SLI can help your e-commerce business derive optimum value from AI tools and technologies, contact us at info@avolin.com.

While it hasn’t yet reached the outlandish Hollywood depictions, AI has definitely gone mainstream. For many retailers, AI is working hard behind the scenes, transforming businesses and delivering tangible value. With its potential to harness both big and small data, AI and machine learning (ML) in particular is vital for the online retail sector, making use of data throughout the customer journey to allow businesses to better understand consumers and to tailor their offerings accordingly.

With many business leaders unsure of where to start when it comes to AI, we’ve identified four ways e-commerce organizations can put AI to work right now, finding solutions to everyday problems through the advanced capabilities that only AI can offer.

1. Uncover actionable insight

AI is at its best when it’s used for sorting through data where there are already established rules. When you’re dealing with hundreds of SKUs, thousands of customers, and millions of online posts, AI is king, automating what would take an inordinate amount of time to do manually. So, AI can be put to good use in sorting, matching and generating the valuable insights which connect the dots between buyer profiles, product attributes and that often elusive customer experience excellence.

Where ML comes in is dealing with exceptions to predefined or preconceived rules, discovering new data ‘relationships’ and relaying this insight back to the business. This combination of AI and ML tackles both big and small data, uncovering actionable insight to inform merchandising strategy, while freeing-up merchandisers to focus on actively selling and building the brand.

2. Optimize your search capabilities

Where many online retailers really struggle is in the programming of their own search algorithms. We all know that in order to generate good, helpful search results, that aren’t just long on content and short on answers, context is key. However, this is often easier said than done. Intelligent search features such as predictive search and autocomplete are just two of the more well-established AI tools that are both accessible and available to businesses as add-ons to popular e-commerce platforms. For many organizations, opting for such tools often proves to be much quicker and easier than programming their own search algorithms, freeing-up the team to focus on other strategic priorities.

3. Small data is important

While big data is all about machines, small data is all about the people, who, let’s face it, should be the number one priority. AI can be used to streamline data collection and organizational learning, observing site visitors, reviewing the buying process, and identifying any bottlenecks that might exist. You can see what people are buying, what they like, not only by monitoring your site activity but by analyzing social media posts and product reviews.

With the right AI tools in place, seemingly innocuous customer behaviors can be seen in a whole new light, revealing new, valuable insights into customers’ buying habits and their online journeys. It’s only with this level of insight that you can build intelligent product recommendation engines into your business, turning these insights into action and informing agile merchandising practices.

4. Influence customer choices

Recommendation engines and other ‘helper apps’ powered by AI are proving more in demand with online retailers. There’s a real need to get better at steering buyers in the direction of the right option, not only for them but for you, the retailer, all while minimizing other on-site distractions, simplifying the end-to-end buying journey. Making use of any patterns identified in transactional and behavioral data can inform real-time personalization, strategically narrowing a customer’s set of options while still providing a quality, tailor-made shopping experience.

For more information on how SLI can help your e-commerce business derive optimum value from AI tools and technologies, contact us at info@avolin.com.

Black Friday 2019 saw a staggering 93.2 million US shoppers making purchases online, with 83.3 million customers internet shopping on Cyber Monday. The UK saw similar results, with a huge £8.57 billion spent online on Black Friday with 194 million visits made to UK retail online sites. In light of the global pandemic, predictions are all pointing to an even bigger shopping bonanza this year, with restrictions on the high street turning even more people to online retail for their seasonal shopping. 

For retailers, the key to success during any peak period is precision planning. For toy shops, the Black Friday weekend is their biggest time of the year, while florists see their biggest booms over Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, and Garden Centers typically in the Spring. Regardless of when the peak occurs, failure to plan is a guaranteed way to miss out on the sales opportunities that such periods provide. With this in mind, we’ve outlined the five key considerations for online retailers to bear in mind when it comes to planning for that potentially lucrative peak-season rush.

It’s imperative to match your product names to the terminology used by customers. It’s all very well giving your product its official label, but if this isn’t the same name your customer base uses, it will never show up in a search. By tailoring product titles to suit the specific naming conventions used by different customer groups, this makes for a better search experience, enhanced navigation, and a resulting uplift in sales. It’s a similar situation for images. Interesting, multi-view images provide a customer with more insight into how the product will work for them, increasing their likelihood of buying.

The same rules apply to product descriptions. Rather than focusing on the physical characteristics of the product, descriptions should center on how the product meets the particular needs and wants of the customer. Ultimately, it must explain why a customer should buy this product. Again, this will vary from group-to-group, so it’s vital to garner a full understanding of what different customers will be looking for and then tailor the product descriptions accordingly. This will speed up the decision-making process, something that’s vital in the ultra-competitive environment that surrounds peak buying seasons across all industries.

3. Eliminate dead-ends

The words ‘no results found’ are a shopper’s worst nightmare, not to mention a sure-fire way of sending a customer running to your competitors in search of what they’re looking for. That’s why it’s crucial to eliminate any ‘no results’ pages wherever possible. Add keywords and synonyms into your search functionality to support cross-selling, as well as known customer language terms, all of which help to reduce the risk of returning a ‘no results found’ search. Even with these measures in place, if a search still yields no results, it’s preferable to redirect customers to other best-selling or relevant products to optimize the window of opportunity.

4. Simplify the search

In peak shopping times in particular, customers want a smooth, fast shopping experience. Businesses need to make this happen. By reviewing your search functionality in plenty of time, you can see where the bottlenecks and barriers are. Autocomplete functionality is a valuable addition to a search capability, making suggestions in-line with your site’s most popular search terms. Searches should result in actual products being displayed too, not just product categories. The aim is to shorten the buying cycle, speeding up the decision-making process to allow your customers to benefit from a swift, efficient shopping experience. By making searches not only easier but more productive, you’re doing just that, and facilitating an increase in both sales and profits in the process.

5. Make the right recommendations

Another key aspect to check is product recommendations. Not only should you check you’re recommending the right products to the right customers, but you need to know if you’re making these recommendations at the right stage of the shopping process. For example, perhaps your conversion rates would improve if recommended products appear on product pages, or in the cart, or at checkout, or even appearing at all these steps of the buying journey? And, what are you basing these recommendations on? Suggesting products based on similar shoppers’ behaviors is shown to improve conversion rates, helping shoppers to see which other products they might want or need to complement the choices they’ve already made.

As with all things retail, forming a carefully considered, and thoroughly researched plan to maximize the opportunity in any peak shopping window, is key. By reviewing and reassessing processes now, online retailers can make the necessary changes to hit the ground running when their peak season hits, providing an enhanced shopping experience and a welcome boost to your sales figures.

SLI Systems is now part of Avolin.

Interested in finding out about how SLI can help you great ready for peak season? Get in touch at info@avolin.com or request a demo.

SLI’s reports show which search terms visitors use on your site, and which terms generate zero results or poor results (defined as those with less than a 10% clickthrough rate). This information is invaluable, because you can use it to keep site visitors engaged even when their exact search was unsuccessful. Keeping them on the site longer to consider their alternatives can make all the difference to their shopping experience and your bottom line. Here are 5 ways to improve the outcome of a ‘No Results’ search:

1. Add synonyms: See which terms your site visitors are using, and incorporate those terms (and their synonyms) into both your site and the SLI Merchandising Console
2. Create tuning rules: if a search phrase does not return any products, you can use SLI’s Tune Results module to manually add select products for that specific search phrase 
3. Expand your stock offerings: Review your SLI reporting data to look for trends and see if you need to expand your product line to help you increase sales. 
4. Show popular products: Use SLI’s basic templates to add popular products to your ‘No Results’ page quickly and easily.  
5. Use keyword-specific banners: Banners can help lead customers to related content or products that are likely to be of interest. For example, when customers search for  a product that you no longer stock, a keyword banner can cleverly relay a message that while you no longer carry the searched-for product, there are other alternatives to consider.

Like so many elements of a good shopping experience, using the ‘No Results’ page to your advantage can be subtle, but still have a big impact on how your customer perceives their time on your site. Make sure they don’t ever experience a dead-end during their browsing and shopping. That way, you demonstrate respect for their time and an earnest desire to meet their needs with whatever you do have in stock at any given moment. Customers appreciate this; it’s part of what keeps them visiting again and again. 

Arranging search results is not good enough

In essence, your search box is your revenue box. Site visitors who engage with search functionality are looking for something to buy. If you can help them find it quickly, you’ll increase conversions. An intelligent search tool can do a good job showcasing relevant items for each shopper, based on what we know about their behavior. Using that information, it’s easy to rearrange results based on clickthrough trends, popularity and some other fancy recipes.  Depending on your business, this is good, but not good enough.

Search customizations are key

Take, for example, searches for everyday merchandise like  ‘sweaters.’ Depending on several factors, a search for a sweater can take on different meanings. So much relies on a customer’s geography. Visitors from a cold climate like Chicago looking for a sweater in November are not likely to be looking for the same type of sweater that would be perfect for a person browsing from a hot climate in February, like Arizona.  This holds true not just for clothing, but also for footwear, hair care products, and beyond. Having the ability to work with your search provider to make these customizations is important if you sell anything that could be affected by a shopper’s locale. 

Explore the possibilities

Take a moment and consider both your product line and user base. Could a customization strategy help you deliver a better shopping experience? What you stand to gain are increased conversion rates and durable customer satisfaction. If this is intriguing and you’re curious to learn more about how SLI has helped other retailers, don’t hesitate to contact your Customer Success Manager.

As an e-tailer, it’s likely you have very clear goals for your business. Whether you’re focused on increasing new visitors to your site, improving your conversion rate, boosting average order values or you are interested in bettering your email marketing or retargeting ads, you stand the best chance of achieving goals for which you’ve made a plan.

Thinking Outside the Search Box

Most retailers specifically focus on improving their conversion rates. To do this, there are a  number of different approaches one can take. For example, decreasing the page load time and getting that page fully rendered in a flash will improve the customer experience and, in turn, lead to increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.  If you’re not sure where to start, there are a number of testing tools on the market that will help you identify pain points on the site as it relates to tech capabilities.  

SLI Systems can help in a number of ways. For starters, it can cache customer images to deliver them to the user on the edge. If you only have one image size and you are rendering this client-side sizing correctly via CSS, this may not be the most efficient approach and could impact the page load times. Resizing and caching could prove beneficial.  

Is yours a data rich website with a large number of facets? If so, displaying all the facets too soon can hurt page load times and therefore, your conversion rates.  By displaying facets intelligently, you can better the customer experience as well as reduce page load times. From a technical perspective, one good approach is to nest the facets and show them in groups. For example, you can decide not to show facets D, E or F, until facets A, B or C have been selected. SLI offers a solution called Smarter Facets. It can automatically optimize the faceting information returned by the search index. The goal is allow more efficient and intuitive engagement with the left-hand navigation of the results page.

Email Marketing & Retargeting

We spend a lot of time analyzing data and making adjustments to get content and products in front of our customers.

 Depending on the size of your business, you may have a fully vetted, omnichannel marketing platform or you might be working with something more simple. Either way, you are going to need to inject content and/or product, and you need to make sure it’s directly relevant to the customer considering a purchase. Does your ecommerce tool set do all it can to get you the information you need to do that?. For example, are you gleaning all the actionable intelligence you could be from e-mail messages? Need an API response showing the most popular items for “casual sneakers”?  We can handle that. Are you set up to integrate an API response?  We can help.  And once we’ve used every possible way to get a customer on the path to purchase, we can create specific landing pages to make the most of the encounter. 

Social Media

If you notice a purchase pattern that lines up nicely with your social media efforts, be sure to stay active in that space and tailor your marketing efforts to those demographics. Younger mobile shoppers need the shopping experience to be fun and worthy of sharing on social media. If you can meet the expectations of that demographic,  you are more likely to convert and pick up new users. Does it make sense to gamify the shopping experience? You know your audience better than anyone else, and we can help you make your ideas a reality.

Learning Recommendations

Whether you are setting up new mail drops, retargeting campaigns or loyalty programs, we need to be mindful of the information that we are sending out.  If your site sells furniture and you know that a customer recently purchased a sofa, be sure to adjust the algorithm to not show sofas, as they are less likely to convert. Instead, consider which “also bought” or  “complimentary items” might make sense for that shopper.

 Basics

Is your search box easy to find?Do you have top menus that open too quickly on mouse hover, and may cause frustration?

Are your alignment scripts or banners loading at the wrong time, causing the screen to shift around?

Are all of your products on the site? Check your catalog and make sure your items are showing up. It’s an easy fix. And after all,  customers cannot buy what they cannot see.

Is your checkout process quick and easy?Can you process orders over $1,000.00 USD?  Years back, we saw a site that had some coding preventing a valid checkout. Are you set up to seek out and troubleshoot these kinds of issues? Not many retailers are.

Bottom line

Beyond the search box, there are so many ways to make searching for wanted products easier for shoppers. The main obstacle is that many e-tailers are resource constrained, and don’t have the time or expertise to find the best solutions to their ecommerce challenges. You may have the best business goals in the world, but without the bandwidth to focus on them, those goals easily fall by the wayside. It doesn’t have to be like this. In fact a very specific plan can be to get expert support on your most urgent business goals. The most successful brands are those that can focus on what they do best, and partner with experts in ecommerce solutions to make sure they’re able to convert more, sell more and help customers have a reliably positive encounter with their brands.

And sometimes, an image will catch your eye. It might be the dress worn by the Duchess of Cambridge at Wimbledon, when presenting the cup to Novak Djokovic. 

It might be shoes worn by your favorite singer (who else could it be). It might even be a picture you snapped of a bluetooth speaker that you saw when sitting on the beach. 

But say that you actually wanted to buy those shoes, or that dress, or that speaker. How would you go about it? You can’t really go into Amazon, type in ‘that speaker that I saw in the house, it was red, and there was a logo of a hammer on the side’. I mean, you can get all sorts of results, which may not be quite what you imagined. 

That’s exactly where the SLI Image Search feature comes in! 

SLI Image Search gives you the amazing ability to use a photo to get a match for the actual product you’re looking for!

The Image Search feature is actually far more useful than that. It can show you the exact product you’re looking for (if it exists in the store). Or it can detect what’s in the actual image (bluetooth speakers, for instance) and show similar speakers that are in stock. So you either find what you wanted, or can choose from similar items. 

Other awesome reasons that customers would want you to have Image Search on your website:

• They are looking for a hat cap. Or is it a Toque. Or wait, it might be a Toboggan. In other words, they might not know the right name. But they have a picture of it from their last holiday. Upload that picture, and boom, they get exactly what they want.
• Kim Kardashian just debuted her new sunglasses, and showed them to all her Instagram followers. Does their favorite store stock them yet? Just upload the image, and know right away!
• They just saw a couch at their friend’s house, and want to find something just like it, because it’s just so comfortable! 

Image Search is powered by both Google’s Vision AI and our own AI. Here’s a demo of how it’s implemented on Weissman’s Dancewear website, providing their customers with the best possible visual search solution.

We’re beginning to roll out Image Search to a select group of our customers, so if you want to be part of the Beta, just let us know.

In the end, of course, the mom finally located and hugged, to a collective ‘awwww’ (or, if you are my kids, ‘read it again!’).

Search engines can be literal

So what on earth does a children’s book written a decade ago have to do with SLI? Well, if you think about it, the butterfly is a search engine. He uses the parameters that the monkey provides him with, and tries to get the closest match. ‘Look for “MOM”’, he is told, and he looks for a mother. ‘Look for “MOM” + “BIGGER”’ he is told, and he fetches an elephant. Not from malice, or because he is dumb. This is what the user told him to search for. The butterfly is providing results based on his programming.

There’s an extended trial and error (eight animals all in all) period. And only after eight animals does the monkey provide relevant information.  ‘Butterfly, butterfly’ he says, ‘can’t you see? None of these animals look like me!’. A revelation to the butterfly, of course. Because, as he points out to the monkey, HIS children look like nothing like him. As caterpillars very rarely look like butterflies, this actually makes perfect sense).

Literal search results can be frustrating

As a matter of fact, there’s no ‘can’ about it. Literal search results ARE frustrating. I’m not supposed to know exactly how to ask the question, or enter the search terms, to get relevant results, am I?

If I am looking for trousers, the search engine should damn well know that I am looking for MEN’S trousers. Obviously. I mean, look at me.

Of course, if I thought about it for a few seconds, then I’d think why on earth would the search engine know that. I might even think that I should have mentioned it in the search query. But that isn’t the best experience for me. I just want to search, find something good, buy it, and leave.

And that’s the point of the story. Providing search engines with few details can give you bad results. Adding irrelevant information won’t help you either. And it’s a rare user who says to him or herself, ‘OK, I need to phrase my search terms in a better way’. Most of us will get annoyed that the search results don’t give us what we expect. And even if we do try to search for items in a different way, that annoyance builds up. Two or three search terms in, we’ll shrug and go to shop at a different website. Even monkeys looking for their mothers only get to eight before losing their cool.

Part of the problem is Google (to take a search engine at random). Google has turned relevant search results into an art. Type almost anything into their search engine, and you’ll get a relevant result. You wonder how they knew that when searching for “rhyming guitars”, you were actually searching for this song. (Google knows everything. That’s how). And that’s the level of experience that customers have come to expect. When they come to your website, and search for, well, anything, they want relevant results.

Frustrating customers is never a good idea

During the search for his mother, you can hear the monkey growing more and more anxious. He specifically states that his mother has no wings (so she can’t be a parrot). Then he gets frustrated when the butterfly suggests a bat (“I told this damn search engine NO WINGS”). When the elephant is suggested for the second time, he finally loses his cool (“I told you she’s not an elephant!”).

The book ends well of course. After all, this is a children’s book. The monkey is reunited with his mother when the butterfly finally understands they are looking for someone, who looks like the monkey. But even then, the butterfly finds the monkey’s dad first. Because even here, the search engine was told ‘find someone like me’. And promptly forgot all about the user’s history – they were looking for a mother all the time, not a father.

SLI’s Learning Search

And that brings us full circle to SLI – in this case, the Learning Search solution. Because Learning Search isn’t a butterfly. It doesn’t accept the literal meaning of your users’ questions. Instead, it uses their search history, and indeed, other users search history. This history helps the search engine actually understand what they want to find. Be it the right clothes, the right sports gear, or even the right hardware. So with even the most basic of searches – ‘Find my mom’ – SLI can make an educated guess. In this case, that the monkey is looking for his mother. His mother looks like him. So, he is looking for (surprise!) a mother monkey.

And when the ecommerce website I’m on has a search that knows what I want as well as what I need to find – I’ll be coming back. Probably to buy the next book in the series.

Let’s start with the basics. What is a recommendation engine, and why would you want it? The answer is easy: A recommendation engine helps you offer the perfect personalized customer experience. 

Think of it as a way to harness the power of prediction – it offers you a chance to speak directly to your customers by offering them things they want. Recommendation engines take an educated guess about what those things might be, and they get smarter – and make your site stickier – as they go along.

Showing Customers You Understand Them

The mechanics of recommendation engines can vary. 

Some are based on a method called collaborative filtering, which is a fancy way of saying they guess what a person might like based on what other users have liked. 

Content-based filtering is another approach; it focuses on the attributes of your product and recommends other products that have similar characteristics. There are demographic-based recommendation engines (categorizing users based on things like geographic location, income, etc.), knowledge-based recommendation engines (making suggestions based on individual users’ interests and needs) and more. 

No matter what’s under the hood, recommendation engines are an effective vehicle for showing your customers you understand them, which keeps them happy and boosts your bottom line.

Improve Retention

The upside of recommendation engines is huge. One of their core potential benefits is their ability to improve customer retention. Because they are continuously calibrating user preferences, they improve with use. 

Think of it this way – the more Netflix shows you watch, the better Netflix will understand what you like and suggest other shows you might enjoy just as much. The end result: more time spent watching Netflix! It’s win-win because you feel seen, and Netflix gets to deepen its relationship with you and your pocketbook. With a recommendation engine, it’s just the same: Your user has a better experience, which boosts sales, drives customer engagement, enhances customer loyalty and brand reputation and, ultimately, generates additional traffic. 

Let’s return, for a moment, to the Netflix example. According to McKinsey, 75 percent of what users watch on the platform comes from product recommendations. The numbers speak for themselves.

Today’s most successful digital enterprises rely heavily on recommendation engines. Case in point: Amazon. The company uses recommendation algorithms to personalize the online marketplace for each individual customer. Amazon, of course, has transformed the global economy – and recommendation engines continue to play a critical role in its success, generating (according to a McKinsey estimate) roughly 35 percent of the company’s revenue.

Spotify is another trailblazer in its ability to leverage recommendation engines. Through Release Radar, Spotify sends out a personal playlist, every week and to every subscriber, based on a proprietary algorithm. The engine combs through more than two billion playlists created by its users, collates this information with the company’s own playlists and makes predictions by comparing a user’s listening preferences to those of other subscribers with similar tastes. Release Radar is a key part of what’s enabled Spotify to grow its number of monthly users from 75 million to 100 million – and this at a time when the company is facing off with muscular competitors like rival streaming service Apple Music.

Recommendation Works at Any Scale

Not every online retailer is going to be an Amazon, but the benefit of recommendation engines can be brought down to scale. 

King Arthur Flour, the oldest flour company in America, turned to SLI to create a smart search system – making sure visitors find everything they are looking for, from recipes and tips, to videos and products. After implementing SLI Learning Search, the company saw a spike in conversion for search users from 3.7 percent to six percent. And revenue from search users skyrocketed, from 17 percent to an astonishing 47 percent!

So why choose SLI?

Okay – it’s clear you need a recommendation engine. But which one to choose? We’re biased – but with good reason. What it boils down to is this: SLI’s recommendation engine is better. In fact, you can see your predicted ROI for yourself. 

The longer version, is that we support our customers with a superior deployment and operating experience. Our product suite is flexible, designed to fit into any e-commerce environment. And our systems are lightning fast – fast enough to help you influence your customers’ shopping decisions. We house every client’s product discovery and personalization engines in 11 separate (and highly redundant) data centers globally, which means they’re up and running 24/7 – day or night. 

At SLI, we’re also dedicated to improvement – making our products stronger so our customers can soar. We use state-of-the-art machine learning to optimize customer conversion, AOV and customer retention. We also perform all data feed preparation and platform integration. 

Our customers constantly tell us how happy they are they’ve outsourced their recommendation engines. The alternative is developing it in-house, which carries considerable costs (less efficiency, a new department to support, etc.). Simply put, investing in SLI is worth it, trimming your operating expenses over the long term and getting you set up for sustainable success.

Not sure if we’re a good fit for you? Drop us a line and we’ll be happy to chat (or just click the chat icon there on the right side of the screen). 

In order to make this question easier to answer, SLI Systems has recently launched new Enhanced Product Impact Testing functionality that allows merchandisers to quickly assess how new products will affect sales. To do this the SLI Product Discovery Platform allows merchandisers to artificially “boost” new products on a search results page to a position that they wouldn’t normally achieve to see how shoppers react to them. Historically, Product Impact Testing has looked at the “age” of products and moved recently added products further up towards the top of the results. The position of new products is determined by a combination of the boost and learning score, but the exact placement of any given new product or group of products could not be determined in advance.

Enhanced Product Impact Testing Boosting is a smarter way to define a product as “new” and provides more control over the position in the result set of where the new products will appear.

• Defining new products: A product is determined to be new based on the number of times it has been seen by shoppers. Once it reaches a certain threshold, it will no longer be considered as new and Product Impact Testing boosting will no longer be applied. The learning score (or other ranking criteria) will determine its position from then on.
• Position: Enhanced Product Impact Testing Boosting offers more control over the positioning of new products and defines available location blocks that products can occupy within the result set above the fold. The actual position of new products can change over time.  If more new products exist than available slots, a random selection of new products is shown within the slots available for new products.

The image below shows how this functionality might work on a sample product results page:

While Enhanced Impact Testing is most frequently used by apparel retailers when they post new seasonal collections, it also has great applicability to specialty retailers that depend upon repeat purchases from their most loyal customers. As long-term customers frequently already own a broad selection of a retailer’s standard merchandise, the very best way to get them to convert again is to make sure they have visibility on new items or categories of items as they appear in a store. Thus, if you’re selling archery equipment to past customers that already have a half dozen bows, lots of arrows, and a selection of targets, a retailer would want to boost new accessories, seasonal clothing items, or new technology upgrades.

[1]https://think.storage.googleapis.com/docs/the-importance-of-being-seen_study.pdf

SLI now offers two complimentary approaches to managing facets to maximize conversion rates and average order values. The first approach completely automates the process of managing how facets are presented and prioritized while the second offers merchandising teams the ability to hand tune their facet presentation based upon their unique knowledge of their product catalog and target customers. This blended automated/manual approach provides merchandisers the “best-of-both worlds” by leveraging automated machine learning while also providing very granular control of search and navigation pages.

As an example of the kind of issues SLI facet management tools address, consider the page on the right. This (artificially generated) page shows all 21 of the facet categories in use by a UK based seller of light fixtures, bulbs, switches, and accessories.

Obviously if they presented all 21 with each product search results page they would overwhelm their shoppers and probably drive many away. The question is which facets should they present on which pages and in what order should they appear?  At SLI we know from long experience that answering these questions correctly can have a dramatic impact on the results achieved by online retailers.

The easiest and most automated approach to answering these questions is to leverage the recently announced Smarter Facet functionality included in the SLI Product Discovery Suite. Smarter Facets automatically calculates optimum facet presentation based upon the behavior of previous shoppers on a store and which facets historically have the most impact on purchase behavior.

For online retailers with larger merchandising teams, SLI also offers Facet Merchandising Controls to allow retailers to boost, suppress, or even hide various product attributes (aka facet topics) based on shopper behavior. These new facet control features allow merchandisers to manually tune filters based upon their business objectives and unique shopper behavior patterns.

Thus, if a shopper searches for “fixtures” on our example lighting site, the results page (left) displayed only shows 6 of the 21 facets we know have historically impacted purchases based on that search term. SLI automatically displays 6-8 of the most relevant facets allowing the shopper to select the refinements that make the most sense to them.

Manual facet control is executed with a modern graphical drag’n’drop console shown below. When used in conjunction with the Results Tuning Console, it gives merchandisers very granular control of how and when facets affect product presentation to shoppers.

So, which of these two facet control tools should a thoughtful merchandiser use and when? The table below provides guidance on this question and if you have further questions, please do reach out to your SLI Customer Success Manager.

It’s every shopper’s dream come true.

In the not-so-distant past, highly-personalized retail experiences like this existed only for elite consumers. Upscale retailers vying for wealthy customers used personal shoppers and concierge services to ensure select clientele were shown products perfectly suited for them. But in the digital age, what was once an exception for the rich and famous is now within the reach of every shopper. And today’s consumers aren’t merely accepting personalization – they demand it.

Why the demand for personalization?

With so many product options, it’s easy for online shoppers to get overwhelmed and become dissatisfied. And when shoppers become dissatisfied, they abandon carts and brands. Personalization delivers a solution. High-functioning personalization strategies enhance a shopper’s journey and mitigate these frustrations. The result? Most consumers today (91%) opt for retailers who offer a personalized experience over those who don’t.    

Just how deep does the desire for personalization run?

Deep. Consider this – a survey by Salesforce revealed a whopping “82% of customers will share relevant information about themselves in exchange for connections between their digital and in-person experiences” and “85% of customers will share relevant information about themselves in exchange for proactive customer service.”

With numbers like this, it’s clear that growing personalization is imperative for retailers interested in getting – and keeping – customers.

And savvy online retailers haven’t failed to notice the increased demand. According to SLI System’s H1 2018 E-commerce Performance Indicators and Confidence (EPIC) Report, one-third (33%) of retailers across the globe say their companies are already giving their customers a personalized online experience and almost half (49%) plan to add it in the next year. In fact, only 7% of retailers worldwide say they are not adding some form of personalization to their e-commerce strategy.

As e-commerce professionals know, Customer Experience can either entice customers to return or drive them to the nearest competitor. And it’s clear personalization is a must in order to deliver a strong customer experience. But personalization isn’t a single-faceted entity. What’s more? Choosing the correct personalization strategies can make or break a shopper’s online experience – and the bottom line.

So how are e-commerce businesses personalizing and how do they plan to expand?

SLI’s EPIC Report indicates that with 57% of those surveyed saying it’s already in use, Emails Triggered by Online Behavior is the top way retailers currently personalize for their online shoppers. And it’s no surprise. MarketingDive explains that personalized email subject lines “can increase open rates by 50% and lead to 58% higher click-to-open rates.” The second most common way to personalize is Recommendations Based on Online Behavior (55%) followed by Segmentation Based on Demographic Data and Offers Triggered by Online Behavior, which tied for third (34%).

Underutilized strategies offer unique pathways to personalization.

Less used forms of personalization reveal opportunities to improve customized shopping experiences through a variety of alternative strategies. But which strategies can retailers use to take advantage of these opportunities? SLI uncovered that Persistent Profiling through a Data Management Platform (DMP) is the least utilized method of personalization with only 6% of those surveyed reporting it is currently in use. DMP is closely followed by Offers Triggered by Offline Behavior (7%) and Recommendations Based on Offline Behavior (9%).

To be successful, personalization must actually be personal.

Conversant found irrelevant content is the number one way to frustrate shoppers and lose sales. So how do retailers ensure their customers’ personalized experiences are, in fact, personal? Tracking and utilizing online behavior in the right ways. And e-commerce strategists are taking advantage of expanding technology in this arena. SLI discovered the top ways retailers plan to expand personalization all center on online behavior.

The top approach selected for implementation this year by 42% of retailers is Offers Triggered by Online Behavior. It was followed by Emails Triggered by Online Behavior and Category Page Results Based on Online Behavior 38% each in second place. Recommendations Based on Online Behavior took third place with 36%.

The Bottom Line

Finding out what your customers want and helping them get it through a personalized e-commerce experience isn’t just good for shoppers, it’s good for business. Sixty percent of those surveyed by SLI believe personalization will increase conversion rates. As technologies to improve personalization expand, retailers must take advantage or risk losing consumers to those who’ve embraced the growing demand for personalization.   

For more on the latest trends in e-commerce personalization, click here to download the H1 2018 EPIC Report.

Yet many e-commerce companies still don’t give mobile equal treatment.   

Not for long. As consumer trust in mobile shopping rises, faster checkout and payment options become available, and optimization increases, mobile commerce is poised to take center stage. In fact, a recent study by Business Insider Intelligence reports that by 2021, mobile commerce will catch up to e-commerce, accounting for about 45% of sales.

It’s time to give mobile commerce a seat at the table.

So how are e-commerce professionals preparing for increased mobile commerce? SLI Systems asked qualified retailers about it for our H1 2018 E-commerce Performance Indicators and Confidence (EPIC) Report. The results reveal considerable investment in mobile and high expectations for mobile-related revenue. Ninety-one percent of those surveyed report either maintaining (50%) their 2017 financial commitment or increasing (41%) their monetary investment this year, and almost all expect maintained or increased revenue.

It’s clear that when it comes to small-screen transactions, digital retailers are optimistic.

With only 1% of those surveyed foreseeing a drop in mobile revenue, e-commerce retailers are upbeat about growing consumer confidence in mobile site and app transactions. Eighty-one percent of retailers queried expect overall revenue increases from mobile sites and apps. And more retailers are expecting growth over 21% in the first quarter of 2018 compared to Q3 2017.

Investment in mobile is happening worldwide.

A look at the three most-represented regions in SLI’s EPIC Report shows close alignment in increased investments: 38% for the U.S., 41% for the UK, and 40% for the Australia-New Zealand region. And worldwide, more than half of those surveyed (54%) report an increase in the number of mobile initiatives and projects for 2018 compared with 2017, indicating retailers continue to anticipate consumer confidence in mobile site and app transactions will grow.

But regions vary in how they expect small-screen revenue growth to occur.

While globally retailers agree mobile is set to grow, there are geographic differences in predicted rates of growth. For example, when it comes to larger scale growth (over 21%), retailers from Australia and New Zealand are the most aggressive with 32% predicting larger revenue jumps for mobile site and app transactions. By contrast, 55% of U.S. respondents predict modest growth of 1-10% while that number remains closer to one-third in the UK and AU-NZ regions (35% and 32%, respectively).

Some industries are more focused on mobile than others.

SLI cross tabulated by industry to find out where retailers expect mobile to boom and where it will grow at a slower pace. Housewares / Home Furnishings leads the way in mobile investment with 65% reporting an increase related to mobile. Only 22% from Sporting Goods, by contrast, make similar plans. Representatives from Food and Beverage expect the biggest jump in small-screen revenue with 95% of respondents predicting an increase, while retailers from Sporting Goods and Media / Publishing were the least optimistic of the top five industries, with 78% and 63%, respectively, predicting an overall mobile site and app revenue increase.   

Digital retailers can’t afford to ignore mobile commerce.

It’s clear that mobile will play a large role in the future of digital commerce. What was once e-commerce’s biggest challenge is quickly becoming it’s largest asset. And the rapid growth predicted for mobile commerce means retailers need to prepare now or face getting left behind.   

For more on the latest trends in mobile commerce initiatives and revenue, click here to download the H1 2018 EPIC Report.

New Phrase Metrics

A new suite of top search phrase metrics and updates to our metrics give merchandisers more useful, actionable analytics including:
• Search phrase metrics for device types (mobile and desktop)
• Metrics that focus on search visitors
• Consistency in the way activity is counted across all metrics
• Metrics that report how many shoppers follow which redirects
Impact: The new metrics help merchandisers to understand more about how shoppers engage with their online stores. They can access data about product searches, search terms with poor results and high exit rates, and search performance and trends over time for any phrase. Merchandisers can also see the differences between how mobile and desktop users engage with a site. This information can be used to modify the shopping and mobile device experience, assess the impacts of merchandising activity, or identify opportunities to better meet shoppers’ needs.

Spider Free Metrics

Spider and bot activity can now be removed from the SLI Commerce Console reports using a combination of the International IAB/ABC Spiders & Bots List and user behavior analytics.
Impact: This new functionality will allow your merchandising team to focus their analysis and make decisions based on real user behaviour not malicious bot activity.

New Metrics for Learning Navigation, Site Champion, Learning Search and Log Data

New metrics are available and pre-existing metrics and reports have been enhanced.
Impact: New metrics increase the reporting coverage and level of detail available about how visitors engage with Learning Navigation and Learning Search. Merchandisers can also assess overall traffic with new details about which search engines crawl the site and which produce the most referrals.

Therefore, if you are in the 91% – or if you’re not, but would like to be – today’s product update is relevant for you. We’ve focused on enhancing the analytics, metrics and merchandising tools retailers need to improve both conversion rates and average order value. New elements include:

• Improved Product Filtering that allows retailers to boost, suppress, or even hide various product attribute variables based on shopper behavior. These new facet control features allow merchandisers to set up automated filtering rules based on SLI’s industry-leading machine learning and/or to manually tune filters based upon their business objectives and unique shopper behavior patterns. This blended automated/manual approach provides merchandisers with the “best-of-both worlds” by leveraging automated machine learning while also providing very granular control of search and navigation pages.
• Upgraded Metrics and Analytics that includes new reports on top trending search phrases, desktop vs. mobile search trends, and the dreaded no-results phrases. The new metrics and analytics focus on insights and actionable information to help retailers increase revenue and average order value. The new reports also filter out spider/bot-generated searches. We also now provide global reporting and merchandising functionality for online retailers running multiple sites. New global reporting provides separate, as well as aggregate, reports on all key operating metrics. New merchandising functionality enables shopper behavior learned across individual stores to be applied to multiple sites.
• Merchandising Tools that include Product Impact Testing and Analytics allow retailers to place new or potentially high-impact products “above the fold” to promote visibility and accelerate learning of shopper reaction to them. Included in this update is support for SLI Enhanced Search Personalization^TM (ESP) for our customers integrated using the SLI API. There are also new shopper segmentation tools that allow promotions and search results to be segmented based on geography, shopper attributes, and/or device.

On average SLI customers see 70% better shopper conversion and almost double the average order value compared with industry averages. With these new product enhancements, we expect that advantage to continue to grow. These new features are, however, just the tip of the iceberg of the new features we’ll be adding to the SLI Product Discovery Suite over the course of the next year.

For more information on these product enhancements, please visit our Merchandising and Analytics web pages. If you’d like to be notified of the upcoming announcements or learn more about how SLI Systems can improve online retail business results, please get in touch.

In this article, we’ll highlight the five top differences in desktop and mobile shopping. This should shed some light on how to best create an enjoyable customer shopping experience.  

1. Autocomplete is key for mobile users

Mobile shoppers don’t want to type out long search queries on small, touch screen keyboards. Online shoppers expect a robust autocomplete system that anticipates the products they’re looking for as they type in their search query.   

Implementing an intelligent auto-prediction search function on your site will quickly guide your mobile shoppers to the products they wish to see. Your desktop shoppers will appreciate this function as well, and will come to expect it if they have previously shopped on a mobile device on your site.   

Autocomplete creates a seamless shopping experience across devices, while driving customers to the products they are most likely to purchase. 

2. Mobile shoppers want advanced filtering options

Mobile shoppers want the ability to quickly jump not only to specific products, but also to brand or item-type product levels. Ensure that your site’s search functionality can incorporate smart filtering into results. This allows your mobile shoppers to efficiently navigate your site, whether they want to view a specific product or scroll through many similar products.   

For mobile shoppers operating on small screens, not having to go to multiple menus to navigate to product type or brand pages creates a more pleasant overall shopping experience that they are more likely to repeat. 

3. Mobile screen sizes are significantly smaller, and vary between devices and brands

One of the biggest differences between mobile and desktop shoppers is the difference in hardware and capabilities. Ensure your site functions similarly across devices, regardless of screen size.   

This means paying attention to whether site functionality is maintained across different brands and models of mobile devices, which can include tablets with 13-inch screens, and phones with 4-inch screens. Customers should have an optimized shopping experience on every device. 

4. Mobile wireless connections are slower than desktop broadband

Part of maintaining a seamless shopping experience is accounting for differences in loading times between mobile and desktop devices. In general, desktop devices have more robust hardware and broadband connections capable of loading image or flash-heavy sites much more quickly than their mobile counterparts.   

Mobile devices access your site from a variety of connections, including 3G, 4G LTE, and wireless broadband. Verify that your site design allows mobile devices to load your website’s pages with as little delay as possible. There is nothing more frustrating for mobile shoppers than clicking on the item they want and being greeted by a lengthy loading screen.   

Mobile customers won’t wait for slow sites. This affects customer retention and conversion rates. If your site isn’t optimally configured for a variety of connection speeds and hardware configurations, you risk losing customers and sales. 

5. Payment options

Mobile shoppers are less likely than ever to pull out their credit or debit card and type in all of their information. Incorporate a variety of different payment options on your site. Verify that your site has the ability to accept client-based payment storage options, like ApplePay and Google Pay, as well as more established alternative payment methods like PayPal.  

It’s important to determine if your checkout process is streamlined for mobile shoppers. One-click checkout has become more commonplace and allows both mobile and desktop customers to quickly complete the checkout process using existing payment, billing, and shipping information.  

For more strategies to improve your mobile e-commerce experience, download the white paper: Site Search and the Mobile Experience.  

• Mobile devices accounted for 50% or more of transactions for the first time. These numbers varied depending on the source, but highlighted a statistical trend toward mobile.
• The value of transactions during the BFCM period last year amounted to $13b – almost a 15% increase year-over-year. This is a hot market for retailers nimble enough to identify and meet consumer needs quickly.
• For online retailers, there’s no longer two separate dates. BFCM is a four-day festival of shopping.

So, what are the implications of this as we all make inventory and promotion plans for 2018?

The first and perhaps the most actionable trend is the move to mobile devices by online shoppers. Retailers must have a mobile strategy that moves beyond just a responsive site. Retailers must optimize experiences for mobile shoppers using a mobile-first website or custom app. This may mean we’ll see more retailers move to Progressive Web Apps prior to BFCM. Yes, optimizing for mobile may make the PC-browser shopping experiences something of an afterthought. But, shoppers won’t be coming back to PCs, and there are now tools that minimize the development differences between the mobile and PC platforms.

To further endorse investing in mobile, remember that Google started moving to mobile-first indexing in March. So, from a pure SEO perspective, optimizing your sites for mobile users is just sensible.

The second issue that needs to be addressed is the gap between the growth in mobile shoppers and actual mobile transactions. Adobe reported that mobile devices made up 47% of online shopping visits but only 27% of purchases during the 2017 holiday shopping period.

The browser/buyer gap highlighted by Adobe indicates we still have a lot to learn about converting mobile shoppers, but there are some lessons from the desktop world that apply, just more so because of the screen-real-estate challenge. Getting your mobile search functionality right for the 2018 BFCM shopping season really matters.

With these trends in mind, how should a thoughtful practitioner prepare for Black Friday Cyber Monday 2018? SLI Systems’ Customer Success Managers spend every day looking at retail sites and have developed the following three recommendations for 2018.

1. Omnichannel Retailers Should Optimize Local Search Behavior: Google reports 50% of consumers will visit a store within a day of doing a local search. The implications go beyond SEO strategy. You’ll want your search box to lead shoppers to compelling products and help them purchase either online or in store as quickly as possible. That means you want a search functionality that not only considers the shoppers’ search terms, but also their geo-location, season, and any other behavioral data available. Search results should include not only product options but store locations and local inventory availability when possible.
2. Personalize Product Recommendations Based on User Device: Historical data indicates that iPhone users tend to spend an estimated 30% more than Android users per transaction. This allows merchandisers to set recommendation rules that either present higher priced (and more profitable) products OR present Android users with promotional discount options tuned to their likely purchase behavior.
3. Split Your Shopper Analytics into Desktop and Mobile: Desktop/mobile aggregate analytics likely lead to merchandising decisions that serve neither audience very well. Much of the current behavioral data indicates that users (even the same users) do different things on their mobile and desktop devices. So, a mobile savvy merchandiser will evaluate the two audiences separately and look at how search terms, bounce rate, cart abandons and other key metrics affect conversion and average order value. If your current analytics tools aren’t capable of providing this degree of granularity, it’s time to look for new tools.

One final point on the trends we saw last year. Because the BFCM shopping season is no longer two discrete shopping days but a four-day window in which promotions will either succeed or fail, world-class merchandisers are placing more emphasis on monitoring shopper behavior as it happens and adapting pricing and promotions as necessary.

Without extremely robust reporting and merchandising tools, you may find yourself in a position of not “seeing” what’s happening on your store until it’s too late to respond in any meaningful way.

For more on how to be ready for BFCM, check out our e-book E-commerce Merchandising: The Ultimate Guide to the Newest Techniques.

In today’s e-commerce landscape, setting your products apart from the competition is vital to creating brand awareness and loyalty. Using a platform that your e-commerce merchandising team can leverage to spread product awareness will ultimately increase your sales and bottom line.

E-commerce merchandising today is about more than simply showcasing specific items. It should incorporate a broad social media campaign to access larger pools of prospective buyers. Additionally, it requires having the right tools to turn prospective buyers into customers, and customers into loyal, repeat shoppers.

This article will examine how merchandising has evolved and give you the information you need to effectively merchandise your products in the digital age.

Leverage Social Media to Create Awareness and Drive Traffic

The social selling of goods and services continues to be a growing trend that you need to capitalize on. Using social media to showcase your products is becoming one of the dominant methods through which your products can be marketed to potential customers.

The vast reach of social media allows you to showcase your products to more customers than ever before. Savvy e-commerce companies use social media to generate buzz around their products drive traffic to their sites. Social media allows you to generate brand awareness and reach untapped markets and cross-generational divides with your products.

Through effective social selling, your merchandising team can turn that awareness into increased traffic, higher sales, and greater brand loyalty. Ensure your merchandising team has the tools they need to create a strong social media presence. Doing so will lay the groundwork for continued growth in social selling, and allow you to adapt to changes in how social media is used by future generations.

Curate Your Products and Your Brand

E-commerce merchandising today is more far-reaching than simply placing popular items above-the-fold on your homepage or emails. Merchandising today must provide context for those products through intelligent curation.

Today’s best curating decisions are based on your unique site visitors’ behavior. But most merchandising teams don’t have the bandwidth to consistently pull customer data and manually curate item by item. That’s where automated merchandising solutions are changing the playing field. AI-powered product discovery solutions learn from customer behavior to automatically order search and navigation results based on popularity and even seasonality. Yet they won’t remove the power of the merchandiser, who can still easily curate, promote and move products with drag-and-drop merchandising controls and SEO-friendly URLs.

Curation is about more than showcasing a specific product. It is also an avenue through which you can, over time, define and sell the uniqueness of your brand. Cultivating brand loyalty will ensure a greater success rate in converting one-time purchasers to repeat customers. Think about what makes your company unique, and leverage those ideas as the framework through which you curate your specific products.

Harness the Power of User-Generated Content

User-generated content, such as ratings, reviews and customer images or videos increase sales by increasing engagement and shopper confidence.

Beyond merchandising onsite, user-generated content can also deliver powerful SEO benefits to increase your traffic from search engines. As users provide unique content for your product detail pages, their unique terms boost your rankings and provide social proof for other shoppers, making them more likely to convert.

Market to the Individual

Customers today expect a customized online shopping experience. E-commerce merchandising is an often overlooked, yet crucial, aspect of creating a personalized shopping experience for your customers. Use intelligent product recommendations to drive sales by relying on information about specific customers and their preferences.

Individualized merchandising requires a platform that can filter through shopping patterns, search history, and past purchases in real-time to generate product recommendations. In the past, your merchandising team had to do this by hand. Now, with a machine-driven e-commerce solutions, customizing your customer’s experience can be accomplished quickly and accurately.

Meeting your customer’s desire for a personalized shopping experience will ultimately result in higher AOV and a notable increase to your bottom line.

Incorporate Merchandising into your Site Design

Every aspect of your site design should be designed to maximize your merchandising. This ensures the products that you want to sell, and that customers want to buy, are always easy to find. Use a platform that allows your merchandising team to create bespoke landing pages to drive sales to promoted products.

Banners that incorporate customers’ past search queries or product views can also be used by your marketing team to further customize an individual’s shopping experience. Remember that merchandising is as much about the customer as it is about the products you are promoting.  Customers today expect to have a personalized, aesthetically pleasing user experience. Meeting these expectations is critical to your success.

Improve your e-commerce merchandising by downloading our white paper 16 Merchandising Strategies to Drive Online Revenue.

As a result, many shoppers could be leaving before they even hit the “Add to Cart” button. Fortunately, there’s good news.

We have identified three fundamental elements to a great e-commerce customer experience:

1. Performance
2. Aesthetics
3. Relevance

We even created a checklist!

We call it the P.A.R. Checklist. Our e-commerce customer experience checklist identifies the functionality your e-commerce site offers and provides simple suggestions on what you can do to improve.

Let’s break down each of those key performance, aesthetics, and relevance elements.

1. Performance – The Need for Speed

Performance is the top priority. If your site isn’t fast, your aesthetic and relevance efforts won’t have much impact at all. According the E-commerce Benchmark KPI Study, “reducing the average load time by 1.6 seconds would increase annual revenue growth by 10%.”

A delay in product page load or a search query may result in a lost customer. Forever.

Famously, back in 2006, Amazon presented one of the first studies linking a clear causation between page load time and online customer revenue. Through A/B testing, they showed every 100 millisecond delay in page rendering time resulted in a 1% loss of sales.

More recently, Intuit increased conversion rates 24% when they cut load speed from 15 seconds to 7 seconds. And they gained an additional 8% conversion boost when load time went from 7 seconds down to 2 seconds.

If that wasn’t enough pressure, Google now analyzes page speed as a key factor for its organic search-ranking algorithm.

Bottom line: You need to be fast.

Three Ways to Increase Performance of Your Site

The biggest performance killers are often the same things that make your site such a rich engaging experience. Your website is full of product images, content, Javascript, and CSS page elements. That bloats every page.

Fortunately, you have several ways you can increase site speed while keeping your online store appealing to customers.

1. Your best first step is to reduce your page size. For e-commerce sites, the best way to do this is to optimize the size of the product images you show.
2. Reduce the number of requests. Many browser requests are fired off every time a visitor hits any page on your site. Many requests ask for the same elements for each page. Speed things up by caching the elements that are repeatedly downloaded.
3. Shorten the distance to your customers by using a Content Delivery Network (CDN). The closer your data centers are to your customers, the faster your website loads. CDN services give you a global network of servers. That shortens the distance to your customers, which your website host alone cannot provide.

Google offers even more recommendations to minimize unnecessary bloat on your website.

Your Action Item: Visit Google PageSpeed Insights. Enter your website URL. See how Google rates your performance. Follow Google’s optimization suggestions to get your site up to speed.

Now that you’re up to speed, let’s boost sales with top e-commerce aesthetic best practices.

2. Aesthetics Are More than Beauty Alone

Online businesses all want beautiful websites. You want your products to appeal to shoppers. But a beautiful website doesn’t mean it’s tuned to sell.

Your top priority is to drive transactions. Your key pages need to be focused on sales and appearance. Otherwise, those shoppers are “just looking” at your beautiful website. And you’re dramatically less likely to make a sale.

The Best Place to Start Online Merchandising

Do you merchandise specific products on your homepage? If not, you need to. You want to get your visitors directly to a product page where they can purchase.

Yet, many e-commerce sites use valuable homepage real estate to promote general categories and shopping ideas, not specific products. Or online stores display big, beautiful “brand experience” images that push anything sales-related down below the fold.

As a result, visitors are just browsing. They might find the site attractive. But they typically won’t move forward toward purchase. They meander. And pretty quickly they are off your site. Nothing in their cart. Or best case, an ineffective homepage simply means shoppers need to make more clicks to maybe find what they want. That’s not good either.

Your Action: Merchandise specific products that visitors are likely to add to their shopping carts right away. Better yet, use AI to determine which products to feature.

Get shoppers in a buying mindset with product recommendations like “Top Sellers” and “What’s Hot” on your homepage.

You can apply this same beautiful, yet impactful merchandising approach to other critical shopping elements, like your navigation, category pages, product pages, and your shopping cart.

The P.A.R. Checklist gives you even more concrete actions you can take to boost sales with a better, more aesthetic shopping journey.

So you know how to increase your site speed. And you’re tuning your site to be beautiful and effective at selling.

Now let’s address the critical e-commerce factor that helps you go from great to world-class.

3. Relevance – The Secret Weapon to a Higher Conversion Rate

Fast product discovery is critical to sales. Shoppers can’t buy what they can’t find.

Your customer experience needs to be tuned to answer one question: “What is my visitor most likely to buy right now?”

That’s relevance.

Relevant product discovery is proven to increase site-wide conversion rates 19% and average revenue per visit 72%, according to sales analysis of 40 top retailers.

So you need to merchandise hyper-relevant products throughout the shopping journey.

Your Search Box Is Your Revenue Box

SLI studies have found that visitors who use search buy at a 2.7x greater rate than visitors who just browse.

Search users show a higher buying intent by indicating exactly what they want, often including the brands, specifications, materials, and colors they are looking for.

Your search results need to offer more than simple keyword matching from product feed data. You also need to factor in behavioral data from previous visitors.

The most effective e-commerce sites display hyper-relevant search results with the products shoppers are most likely to buy. You can further accelerate the path to purchase with autocomplete functionality in your search box.

Display relevant suggestions as soon as shoppers begin to type. Make sure to order those suggestions based on popularity to further speed up the purchase path.

Your Action: Turn your autocomplete into rich autocomplete. Expand the suggested terms to merchandise specific products with images. Eliminate extra browsing and make your suggestions visual to enhance conversion rates.

In fact, relevancy is crucial to optimizing many online merchandising functions. Your product recommendations engine, personalization features, and even your SEO efforts can be dramatically improved with greater relevance.

Is Your E-commerce Website Up to P.A.R.?

You understand why Performance, Aesthetics, and Relevance can have a big impact on your online sales. Now it’s time to evaluate your e-commerce website.

You’ve got a prioritized to-do list instantly ready for you. The P.A.R. Checklist provides easily actionable recommendations for each element. And each best practice is ranked in priority order.

You’ve got the core functionality in place on your Magento store. Now you need to enhance your site to increase sales and optimize your customer experience. That’s where Magento extensions help.

But there are thousands of Magento extensions to choose from in the Magento Marketplace. You can easily spend too much time figuring out what’s the right extension across different business needs.

Here’s a helpful guide that gets you right to the best Magento extensions designed specifically to drive more online sales.

How to Find the Best Magento Extension for You

The Magento Marketplace makes it easy to browse and filter the many extensions. However, evaluating which extension is right for you can still be daunting.

It’s not as simple as looking at ratings. Even the most popular plugins typically only have a few reviews.

And just going with free extensions may not be the best way to save money.

Here are few criteria you can consider when choosing a Magento extension.

Free Extensions vs. Paid Extensions

It’s easy to jump toward a free extension. But most free extensions also require a subscription to that service. Calculate your total cost before choosing a solution, including the expense for the time it takes your developer to integrate and maintain that extension. Sometimes the higher priced solution up front is actually less expensive in the long run.

Look for Great Support

Help save your development time by choosing extensions that have excellent installation documentation and user guides. Better yet, check out their support information on the vendor’s website. Evaluate how responsive and helpful they are before making the purchase. That extra contact can help you avoid getting stuck later on.

Recent and Regular Updates

Magento is constantly improving as e-commerce continues to evolve. Your extension provider should be too. Partner with vendors that are committed to the Magento community. Look for extensions with recent or regular updates for new Magento releases and for additional features and bug fixes.

Now let’s look at the detailed list of Magento extensions that can help increase your sales.

Best Magento Extensions – The 2018 List

Winning more sales requires enhancements to each step of the customer experience:

• Drive more traffic to your store
• Increase conversion rates
• Accelerate purchase with fast and easy checkout

We’ve curated a list of 13 top Magento extensions that can help you increase sales in 2018.

Let’s get started with the critical need to bring shoppers to your e-commerce site.

Drive More Traffic

More traffic means more shoppers. More shoppers lead to more sales. It’s that simple.

The challenge is winning shoppers who are ready to buy against competitors hungry for the same customers.

The following Magento extensions give you an edge and help drive more and better traffic to your store.

MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate

Magento helps your search engine optimization techniques with core functionality that Google and other search engines want.

The platform gives you the basics, like clean HTML, meta tags, simple URL structure, and automatic XML sitemap generator. These capabilities make your website easy to crawl. However, you’ll need to do more and at scale to win hyper-competitive search ranking.

Many extensions address a single element of good SEO. We recommend a single extension containing an entire SEO suite to really increase your organic search traffic.

MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate is an all-in-one SEO toolkit that manages a wide array of onpage SEO features that includes:

• identifying duplicate content
• enhanced site indexing
• canonical URLs
• optimized meta data
• auto-generated XML sitemaps
• cross linking
• SEO redirects
• advanced rich snippets

Price: $299 for Community edition, $599 for Enterprise edition

Learn more about MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate

Remarketing with adaplo

Remarketing is a proven advertising tactic to increase sales by bringing previous visitors back to your store. Product remarketing ads are displayed on Facebook and Google Display Network (GDN) that match what your shoppers have already viewed.

The challenge is automating your remarketing ads across all your visitors and for all your product SKUs. adaplo makes automated retargeting easier.

adaplo creates the retargeting campaigns on Facebook and GDN by launching dynamic product history. It can also expand your ads to more audiences and different ad types.

Price: Free, requires an adaplo subscription

Learn more about adaplo

Wyomind Simple Google Shopping

This extension is the M2 version of Wyomind’s highly rated Simple Google Shopping. You can easily sync your Magento store’s product feed with Google Shopping.

What sets Simple Google Shopping apart are features that help you synchronize accurately without spending a lot of time, including:

• Map your product categories to Google categories
• Schedule tasks to generate your data feed
• Check that your data feed was generated error free
• Verify your data feed generation stats (number of items, time and resource)

Price: $80 for Community edition, $120 for Enterprise edition

Learn more about Wyomind Simple Google Shopping

Email Marketing with Bronto

Email marketing remains a dominant marketing channel that drives more traffic and sales. Your e-commerce email marketing should be more than broadcasting your sales and discount offers.

That’s why Bronto is the perfect email platform for your Magento store. You can send targeted and personalized emails to your customers and newsletter list.

The Bronto Connector for Magento easily imports purchase information from the Magento platform into Bronto campaign manager. Using that full order history you can curate personalized email and cross-channel marketing campaigns at scale.

Price: Free, requires a Bronto subscription

Learn more about Bronto

AddThis Social Media Sharing

Let your customers spread the word about your products. You get more already-enthusiastic visitors when your current shoppers share on social media.

AddThis is the easiest way to add sidebar share buttons to your Magento store. This social media extension can connect you with over 200 social networks for easy sharing … for free.

Plus, you have control of the style to match your store in both desktop and mobile browsers. And you can pre-populate the message being shared. As a result, your shoppers are more likely to share.

Price: Free

Learn more about AddThis

Increase Conversion Rates with Better Customer Experience

Now that you have help driving more shoppers to your online store, it’s time to turn those shoppers into buyers.

The best way to increase conversion rates is to provide your visitors with a great customer experience.

Customer experience trends show the most successful retailers are executing well at every step in the buying journey.

Here are some Magento extensions that can help you do the same.

Smart Site Search with Learning Search

Customers who search for products have higher purchase intent than shoppers who are “just browsing.” You need to make sure you are delivering the search results that those must-win customers are most likely to buy right then. 

Go beyond simple keyword matching from your product feed. With SLI Learning Search, your e-commerce search box becomes an AI-powered tool designed to continuously improve query results and generate more revenue.

Further boost conversion rates with rich autocomplete functionality. Less clicks and browsing is what you want. Display specific product results while adding visual merchandising with appealing product images.

Better yet, you can leverage the same behavioral data to add AI-powered product recommendations to product pages, in your shopping cart, or anywhere on your site. Getting personalized recommendations along with higher converting search results can give you a big advantage over using separate plugins for recommendations and site search.

Price: Free, requires an SLI Systems subscription

Learn more about SLI Learning Search

Social Media Content with Pixlee

Social media content posted by you and shoppers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and other social channels can really improve engagement. In turn, that more personal social proof increases conversion rates.

Pixlee helps you identify and curate user-generated content so that you can display beautiful look books and social image galleries throughout your site. And those images are shoppable to make it easy to click “buy now.”

Pixlee also delivers the advanced social campaign features you’ll want in a single solution, including the ability to:

• Launch social contests and promote engagement campaigns
• Publish visual reviews and social posts on product and category pages
• Personalize emails with relevant social proof
• Track your social content’s conversion rate and engagement metrics

Price: Free, requires a Pixlee subscription

Learn more about Pixlee

Special Promotions Pro

Discount offers and promotions are proven to increase transactions. But managing all the different types of offers across all your SKUs can be incredibly time-consuming. Not to mention, ensuring you don’t kill your profits by discounting the wrong products or by displaying expired sales.

Amasty’s Special Promotions Pro extension reduces your headaches with a powerful promotion manager. The extension gives you access to 22 discount and offer rules for cost-effective promotions building in bulk or for individual products.

Additionally, you can automatically create personalized promotions using customer data. The extension builds one-to-one, hyper relevant deals for you using data like order history and birthdays. That level of personalization can really help drive repeat sales from loyal customers.

Price: $129

Learn more about Special Promotions Pro

Amasty A/B Testing

You should always be running experiments to discover the major and minor updates to your Magento store that can maximize sales. Amasty also provides a helpful A/B Testing extension that gives you everything you need.

You can run A/B split test and multivariate tests for particular products or product groups directly from your Magento admin panel. You can customize one or multiple tests at a time based on different goal metrics, products, and “winner” criteria.

What makes this testing extension even nicer for you is that you aren’t required to develop duplicate product pages with each test variation. No extra development time and site bloat helps you focus on improving your customer experience, not coordinating the tests.

Price: $179

Learn more about Amasty A/B Testing

Full Page Cache Warmer by Magewares

Front-end site elements and promotions get a lot of attention when improving customer experience. But site speed and page performance is also a must-have consideration.

Page caching extensions like Full Page Cache Warmer are the simplest ways and most effective ways to make sure your Magento store loads fast for your visitors. Full Page Cache Warmer automatically crawls your store to find any uncached pages or newer versions of already cached pages.

Then the “warmer” part of this extension kicks in. This extension uses a special technique warms each page as if a real visitor is hitting on that page. The result is faster page deliver when a shopper does actually does land on your site. Pretty slick.

Price: $129 for Community edition, $379 for Enterprise edition

Learn more about Full Page Cache Warmer

Win More Sales with Frictionless Shopping Cart

So far we’ve covered Magento extensions that increase traffic and then help you improve your conversion rates. Now it’s time to focus on the most critical step – ensure your customer completes their purchase with a fast and easy checkout experience.

Smart One Step Checkout

You’ve optimized your online store so that a customer clicks the “Add to Cart” button on your product. Don’t lose the sale by adding extra steps to completing the purchase after they’ve decided to buy.

Customers now expect a single page checkout process that they are familiar with from shopping on other online stores. Give it to them with Smart One Step Checkout.

Smart One Step Checkout offers all the functionality you need in a single extension, including:

• Mobile responsive design
• Customer login for one step purchase or guest checkout
• Edit items in the cart
• Apply discount codes and gift cards
• Checkout behavior and abandonment reporting

Price: $299 for Community edition, $1,499 for Enterprise edition

Learn more about Smart One Step Checkout

Subscription And Recurring Payment

Subscription models have become a popular way for e-commerce businesses to sell their products. Keeping customers buying from you month-after-month can be incredibly profitable. However, subscription purchases require a different checkout and payment infrastructure.

Aheadwork’s extension adds subscription and recurring payment functionality you need. It can become your primary checkout experience for pure subscription businesses. Or you can create trial subscriptions or automatic product re-order options.

The recurring payments integrate with your merchant services provider. This makes regular billing easy for you and your customer. Plus, it helps reduce payment failures due to credit card expirations or cancellations.

Price: $249

Learn more about Aheadworks Subscription And Recurring Payment

SimiCart Mobile App Builder

Most Magento themes already support mobile responsive design. So shoppers using a mobile browser usually have a good experience. But you may be missing a segment of customers who prefer to shop in your own branded app.

SimiCart helps you build your own iOS and Android mobile app to boost up your business through the Apple App Store or Google Play. SimiCart integrates directly with your Magento store infrastructure so that product feeds, ordering, and fulfillment are all synchronized.

You can then customize your mobile app’s design and features as you wish. Make it look like an app version of your mobile website. Or create a custom app experience with shopping features. You choose.

Price: Free, with SimiCart subscription starting at $49/month

Learn more about SimiCart Mobile App Builder

Magento Extensions that Improve Your Sales

These 13 Magento extensions are designed to increase your sales in different ways – driving more site traffic, improving conversion rates, and accelerating customers through checkout. Make sure to check out these extensions and see how you can take your sales to the next level.

MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate

adaplo Remarketing

Wyomind Simple Google Shopping

Bronto Email Marketing

AddThis Social Media Sharing

SLI Learning Search

Pixlee Social Media Content

Amasty Special Promotions Pro

Amasty A/B Testing

Magewares Full Page Cache Warmer

Aheadworks Smart One Step Checkout

Magenest Subscription And Recurring Payment

SimiCart Mobile App Builder

And now you have even more at stake. You are likely spending more and more to drive traffic to your site. You can’t let that big investment in advertising fizzle with diminishing ROI.

Good news. You have a high-impact driver you can execute against right now.

Improvement to your conversion rate is the greatest lever at your disposal. Even a small conversion rate increase can generate big revenue gains.

This comprehensive guide to e-commerce conversion rates helps you build a winning game plan for your online store, including:

• What e-commerce conversion benchmarks to use
• How to analyze your conversion rate
• How to optimize 7 critical conversion rate drivers

Let’s start by understanding how you can best measure conversion rate.

What is a good e-commerce conversion rate?

Online retailers track many conversions throughout their customer experience. Any action goal can be considered a conversion. A click on your email, a click on an advertisement, or a newsletter signup are considered conversions.

The conversion metric you really want to focus on is a purchase. Your sale conversion rate is calculated by simply taking the number of purchase transactions and dividing that by the total unique visitors to your online store during a time period.

That’s pretty straightforward. But what is a good conversion rate to set as your target goal?

This 2017 holiday shopping to date, average e-commerce conversion rates are showing growth: desktop 4.5% (up 10.6% YoY), smartphone 2% (up 12.3% YoY), tablet 4.3% (up 9.3% YoY), according to Adobe Digital Insights.

And Amazon boasts an amazing 74% conversion rate for its Prime members and 13% for non-Prime visitors back in 2015, based on a Millward Brown Digital study. In comparison, the same study showed the average conversion rate for Top 500 merchants is 3.32%.

Are those the right conversion rate benchmarks for you? Probably not.

It is interesting to set an aspirational goal against Amazon or other leaders that compete in your industry. However, you are best served by benchmarking where your own store is now. Then set a course for continual improvement to drive conversion optimization goals and strategies.

Measure your overall sales conversion rate for your entire website the past year. That’s your starting point. That’s the number you want to beat in 2018.

Then the key is to drill down into your sales-rate performance for different contributing factors and customer segments. That’s where your actionable insights really happen.

Now let’s explore the best way to analyze your conversions to enlighten your growth plans.

How You Can Analyze Your Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is a very useful metric to track. But the real impact to your e-commerce business is analyzing and understanding what is driving your performance and why.

That deeper conversion analysis helps you:

• Determine what segments are contributing to your overall conversion rate
• Identify the root causes
• Prioritize and track success of your optimization game plan

The first step is to build a dashboard that tracks and trends your conversion rate. Google Analytics and many e-commerce platforms provide a dashboard that lets you see your conversion rate over different periods of time.

SLI Systems also has a very powerful dashboard built into the Commerce Console. You get an helpful view of your shoppers’ activities and conversion rate through their shopping journey.

Or you can simply use a spreadsheet. Capture your monthly unique visitor metrics and plug in your corresponding sales transaction data to calculate your conversion rates. Again, simply divide transactions by unique visitors to get the conversion rate percentage.

Next you’ll start the drill down analysis.

What Is Driving to Your Conversion Rate?

Your overall conversion rate calculation is an average. Many different factors drive that single number. Some factors contribute significantly more than others. It’s your job to break down those key drivers to find growth opportunities.

Start by segmenting your conversion rate data into categories.

The most common way to split up your data is by different customer audiences. Different types of customers have a different relationship with your e-commerce business. They may also have different purchase intent, which directly impacts your conversion rate.

Your analysis can uncover those segments that likely have differing intent to purchase. Then you can calculate the conversion rate for each segment. And you’ll see which audiences have the greatest influence on your overall conversion rate.

Here are several helpful ways to segment your audience.

• First-time visitors vs. returning visitors – First-time visitors often make up a big majority of online traffic. But it stands to reason that those first-time visitors who may be unfamiliar with your brand are less likely to purchase than returning visitors.
• Acquisition channel – Where visitors come from can help tell you how likely they are to buy. Segment by channels like organic search, paid search, social media, advertising, and affiliates.
• Device – The device visitors use may indicate different intent as shown in the Adobe data insights mentioned earlier.
• Location – Are you a global brand or do you sell domestically? Traffic coming from different international locations may be browsers, not buyers.
• Other demographics – Google Analytics can help you analyze other demographics like gender, age, or interest affinity groups.

Other popular segmentation you can use to uncover key conversion rate drivers include:

• Product category – Conversion rates may be higher for different products based on the volume sold, price range, or deliverability. For example, you would expect the online conversion rate to be lower for expensive furniture than easily shipped lower-priced home decor.
• Promotions and seasons – Different discounting periods or traditional shopping seasons may affect conversion rates.
• Website elements – You can track conversion rates by different elements of your customer experience.

Make sure you look at your conversion rate over time. Don’t just take a single snapshot in time to make your decisions. A single data point or particular shopping season can skew what you see and may lead you to incorrect decisions.

Calculate your segmented conversion rates into monthly or weekly increments. Go back in time as far as you can. Then you can chart trends and make year-over-year and month-over-month comparisons.

Starting with one segmentation method is also recommended. Add that to your dashboard. Keep tracking that segmented data to see how you are performing. Then expand your analysis to other segment categories.

Your conversion rate analysis helps you find your growth opportunities. But it doesn’t tell you exactly why those different segments are performing the way they are.

Why Is Your Conversion Rate Increasing (or Decreasing)?

Now you can dig a little deeper to understand why your conversion rate is increasing or decreasing. Find the root cause by adding a second dimension to your analysis of a particular segment category.

What is the behavior or characteristic about a given segment that is likely causing sales to go up or down?

The best way to do this is to add one of the other segment categories as that additional dimension. For example, if your primary segmentation is based on acquisition channel, then you can drill down using product category purchased or device used or location demographics.

Analyze that data. Look for trends. Make comparisons.

Maybe your conversion rate was 6% coming from Google Adwords. But the Adwords conversion rate for desktop users was 8% versus 2% for smartphones and 4% for tablets. Now you have an understanding of how the device contributes to that channel’s conversion rate, taking the volume into consideration.

And how did that paid search channel breakdown compare to your other channels? For example, smartphone conversion rate maybe 4% from your emails and 1% from social media.

Identify big shifts and changes. Discover anomalies.

Using the Google Adwords example again, maybe starting in July you see an increase from 5% to 7%. And that higher rate seems to have continued for several months.

Then hypothesize. Ask “why?”

That increase in July may have corresponded with an increase in your PPC bids or budget. Or maybe you launched a new set of keywords for a hot brand. You could hypothesize why the increase happened and continued.

This additional lens into your primary segmentation can uncover the root cause. You are now ready to take action with that data-based knowledge in hand.

How to Prioritize Your Optimization Plan

You are armed with lots of data and valuable analysis. You can now more easily prioritize the action you want to take and build an optimization game plan.

Typically you’ll want to pick one to run every quarter. That single-focus test approach helps you isolate the incremental sales and conversion rate you’ve achieved. You also give enough time to achieve improvements, validate the results with enough traffic, and eliminate most anomalies by running the test for a longer period of time like two or three months.

Which tests should you run first?

It’s always good to start with the test you feel can have the biggest financial impact. Estimate the revenue impacts for all the top activity ideas you have identified. How much would sales increase by each incremental tenth of a percent increase in conversion rate?

Then look at the level of effort and investment cost of running the test. If an activity may have a high-revenue upside while requiring little extra work, then you’ve found a great place to start.

Let’s look at some of the highest conversion boosting opportunities you have.

5 Critical Enhancements for Bigger E-commerce Conversion Rate Optimization

The best conversion rate optimization tests consider the customer experience journey. Understand the different interactions from the first moment a shopper lands on your website, through finding and choosing a product, and all the way to checkout and completing the purchase.

You make many different enhancements to your online customer experience. Here are five design improvements proven to increase conversion rates:

1. Win More High-Purchase Intent Shoppers

Arguably one of the best ways to increase your conversion rate is to win more sales from visitors who already have a high intent to purchase. So how do you know that someone comes to your site with the intention of buying?

Shoppers signal their intent when they use your site search.

SLI studies have found visitors that use search buy at a 2.7x greater rate than visitors who just browse.

Make the act of searching even easier by enticing those visitors who have a specific purchase in mind.

Position your search box in the header and in the center of every page. Provide an engaging prompt to search in the search field. And make the box large and distinctive from other forms. Don’t tuck the search box into the corner or hide it behind a magnifying glass icon that searchers have to click.

Speed up the search by suggesting possible terms as visitors start typing the first letters of a keyword. This autocomplete functionality draws from your product feed to indicate that productive search results are available. Better yet, you can rank the autocomplete terms by the most popular keywords by clickthrough and purchase data, not just keyword matching.

Pro Tip: Enhance your autocomplete feature by presenting specific products in the search suggestions. Display the product name, image, and price for the most relevant products. Boden speeds up the purchase process doing just that.

This enhanced functionality helps your visitors identify products they are looking for even more quickly. Then send them directly to the product page. Skip the extra category page browsing. Bypass the search results page. Get high-purchase intent shoppers directly to a product.

2. Wow Visitors with Visual Merchandising

The key elements of a product landing page are designed to showcase the product so that customers can easily make a purchase decision – product title, descriptions, specs, purchase options, ratings, reviews, and, of course, pricing and discounts.

This product feed information gives shopper the facts. However, we humans actually make purchase decisions emotionally much of the time. Shoppers love the wow factor. That’s where online visual merchandising excels.

e.l.f Cosmetics shows off their eye shadow products with beautiful images and attractive videos from Instagram. These social media images inspire shoppers. Better yet, many of the pictures are user-generated content from customers.

Similarly, fashion sites often display extra images since shoppers can’t actually hold the item in their hands. Visual merchandising best practices, like model videos, product pictures from many angles, and custom images that change with color selection, can help drive more sales.

Pro-Tip: Help customers visualize what their experience will be after they make the purchase. Show action shots and product videos that depict how the product is used, what the buyer gets in the box, or how to install it.

3. Merchandising that “You May Also Like”

The top job of merchandising is to promote the products a visitor is most likely to buy. One of the best online merchandising techniques is to use a “You May Also Like” product recommendation strategy on the product page.

Showing alternative products that are similar to the product being viewed is proven to increase conversion rates.

Unfortunately, many e-commerce sites determine the recommended products using simple category and keyword matching. This approach focuses on the product feed data only.

Fortunately, online stores have massive amounts of behavioral and transactional data in addition to product feed data. “You May Also Like” product recommendations that include actual customer behavior are more likely to convert.

For example, Dancewear Solutions recommends several contemporary dance dresses on a product page. It also merchandises complementary products that go with the dresses based on what customers had made purchases in the past.

Pro Tip: Customers love a personalized shopping experience. In-store salespeople give a personal touch to help customers get exactly what they want. Now artificial intelligence is helping online stores create a similar personal customer experience.

E-commerce personalization uses machine learning to sift through massive amounts of behavioral data to quickly provide smart product recommendations. Contextual personalization can display products that customers are even more likely to buy based on gender, size, brand preference, or the shopper’s location.

4. Help Shoppers Get What They Want Faster

Smart e-commerce companies create as few steps as possible to get to checkout. Customers are more likely to complete their purchase when you allow visitors to add products to shopping carts or go to checkout directly wherever they are on your site.

Don’t limit the use of “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons to your product pages. Anywhere you merchandise products, even your homepage, is an opportunity for customers to commit to purchasing without an extra click to the product page.

Pro Tip: Include “Add to Cart” button directly in the your category pages and search results pages. That’s what Allens Boots did. This quick enhancement helps speed the conversion, particularly if your customer knows exactly what they want.

5. Eliminate Rational Roadblocks with Content

Don’t rely solely on the product description provided by the manufacturer to influence a buyer. Inform your customers about what a product can do. Offer how-to articles, demo videos, and comparisons against other similar products.

Content has a strong influence on e-commerce conversions both rationally and emotionally. How-to content helps remove rational doubts or questions that make shoppers hesitate. Video content in particular also has an emotional trigger for sales as customers can visualize themselves using the product.

Dollar Tree uses videos to show shoppers curated product ideas and demo top-rated customer favorites.

Pro-Tip: Include a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on the product product. Ask your customer service team for questions that they get about the product. Review common reasons for returns. Think of questions you would have if you were going to pay your own hard-earned money. Then create a strong set of FAQs written in the language that customers use.

There are hundreds more conversion-rate tips that you can test. Make sure to download these best practice e-books to find new ways you can improve your conversion rates:

• Get the SEO-Driven Revenue You’re Missing

• The Big Book of Site Search Tips

• Use Creative Content to Convince Online Shoppers to Buy

• The Big Book of Navigation Tips

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The pressure is on for retail businesses to deliver on big sales growth expectations. That’s in the face of slow consumer spending growth combined with the tectonic shift in traditional retail channels.

You need to turn more shoppers into buyers. You can’t afford for your investment to bring more shoppers in the door or onto your e-commerce store that leave with an empty cart.

That’s why optimizing your customer experience is more important than ever.

This retail executive brief helps you better understand:

• How customer experience strategies are evolving
• What customer experience metrics to track and analyze
• How to improve your customer experience using top trends in 2018

Let’s first dig into how customer experience is changing.

What is Customer Experience Today?

In the past, customer experience strategies focused on the discrete interactions shoppers had in the sales process. These touchpoints took on even greater importance with online retail channels simply because it was easier to track and optimize each webpage leading up to a sale.

However, this touchpoint-focused approach to improving customer experience can easily miss one critical element… the customer journey.

The journey is the customer experience.

The overall journey can still disappoint customers, even if your online store design, in-store layout and staffing are executed well on individual touchpoints.

Understand the customer journey in your shoppers’ terms. Customer journeys include many things that happen before, during, and after the actual purchase experience.

The journeys can be quite long, though the purchase decision can be extremely fast. Consider the multiple channels, devices, and, yes, direct interactions that may occur over days or even weeks.

Put yourself in their shoes. You buy products for yourself all the time. Think about your entire experience and why you made a purchase or didn’t.

Ask questions like:

• Where and when did you first learn about a store?
• What was your first impression of the brand?
• What triggered you going in the store or to the website?
• How easy was it to find what you wanted?
• How did you feel about the product price and value? Product quality? Selection for you?
• How did you feel about the shopping environment in-store or online?
• What sales help, customer service or employee interactions did you have?
• How did the purchase transaction go? Was it fast and easy?
• How did you get your product? Was shipping fast? Did you need to exchange or return?

Always be asking how you can improve that journey.

Next you need to figure out if you’re on the right path to improvement.

Customer Experience Measurements for Success

How do you know you are improving your customer experience? You’ll want to look at the numbers.

It’s very tempting to dive right into the weeds. Retailers now have so many powerful analytics tools. And data collection is getting easier.

However, direct contribution to macro financial metrics and sales trends can be difficult. Remember, your customer experience is a holistic journey. So your best customer experience metrics are more macro. They are not necessarily analyzing and optimizing discrete touchpoints.

Start by measuring key customer experience outcomes, customer feedback, and employee feedback.

Financial Metrics

The most common outcome metrics are financial. Let’s assume you are already tracking total revenue, profit, and transaction volume. Great financial indicators of your customer experience is Revenue per Customer and Average Transaction Value.

Make sure to also track Revenue per Visit (RPV) for your online channel or if you are a pure e-commerce business. This metric estimates the incremental value of each visitor to your online store. Simply divide your total online revenue by the total number of unique visitors to your website.

Customer Satisfaction

You also need to measure your Net Promoter Score (NPS) to capture how customers feel about you. NPS is a fantastic customer satisfaction metric to track over time. Customer experience and customer satisfaction are closely correlated.

But the most actionable customer experience metric in your NPS comes from the answer to the follow-up question – “Why did you give that rating?”

Categorizing the results of this open-ended “Why” question helps you measure the impact on different factors in the customer journey in your customers’ terms. For example, you may group results by broad areas like customer service, products, or pricing. Or you can go more granular into the touchpoints like checkout experience, shipping, or return policies.

Learn more by further breaking down your NPS by customer segments. You can segment by geography, gender or age demographics, order revenue, or purchase frequency or recency.

Employee Satisfaction

Lastly, you should also measure your Employee NPS. Employee satisfaction is also highly correlated with customer experience. Happier employees lead to better customer experiences.

After all, your employees are most responsible for delivering a great customer experience. All your employees contribute. Even someone behind the scenes in HR, the warehouse, or web development have an impact that trickles into the experience.

Here again, look closely at the “why” to measure and track the drivers that influence your employees’ feelings. Those feelings result in behaviors and actions that directly and indirectly impact your customer experience. Listen to what they say and recommend.

Track these financial and satisfaction metrics consistently. That’s how you will know your customer experience is on the right path.They are your “North Star” numbers.

Once you’ve established those customer experience measurements, you can then go deeper into specific success metrics for operational improvement initiatives. Use Google Analytics and e-commerce platform results for your online channel.

Now let’s look at the latest trends you can leverage to boost your customer experience metrics and sales.

3 Technology Trends that Help You Improve Your Customer Experience in 2018

Retailers continue to leverage technology to improve customer experiences. Much of the change comes from consumer technology use as a pulling factor. For the first time ever, more people say they plan to shop online (59%) than in big box stores during the 2017 holiday season, according to the NRF.

Here are three technology trends that help brands connect better with customers and improve their overall customer experience.

1. Rapid Growth of Mobile Shopping

The continued rapid growth of smartphone use is undeniably impacting retail sales. Similar to how e-commerce is the growth engine of overall retail, mobile sales are powering e-commerce.

The rising tide is driving much of that growth. Mobile traffic from smartphones and tablets peaked on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday (56% of traffic). Then leveled out to 46% of traffic, almost equivalent to desktop traffic (54%), through Cyber Monday 2017, according to Adobe Digital Insights.

However, the mobile shopping experience is a challenge for retailers. Smartphones and tablets earned a lower percentage of overall sales (30% versus 70% for desktop) and lower conversion rates through Cyber Monday.

Retailers can close more sales with mobile shoppers by continuing to improve their mobile customer experience. Shoppers now find mobile as an easy way to check emails (hopefully your emails), find store locations and hours, get product information, snap and share photos, and compare prices.

Optimizing mobile product discovery and mobile payments are the biggest opportunities for retailers to improve the mobile customer experience.

2. Personalized Merchandising with Artificial Intelligence

Customers want a personalized shopping experience. Sales people help shoppers in the store. Now application of artificial intelligence are helping online stores create a similar personal customer experience.

Online stores have massive amounts of behavioral and transactional data now. The challenge is to harness that data to power real-time merchandising decisions.

That’s where artificial intelligence excels.

Fifty-four percent of e-commerce sites have already implemented or plan to add AI in the future, according research from the Q3 2017 E-commerce Performance Indicators and Confidence Report. And 20% expect to add AI within the next 12 months.

The top application is personalized product recommendations. Eighteen percent of online retailers report they are already using artificial intelligence in their product recommendations strategies. But that number will swell dramatically in 2018 with 38% planning to implement within the next 12 months.

Artificial intelligence can parse user activity, preferences, and sales trends. The result is smart and timely product recommendations that are personal. For example, this type of contextual personalization can be tuned to gender, clothing size, brand preference, or shopper’s location.

Even better for online retailers, this personalization can be experienced by first-time visitors just as well as returning shoppers. So the shopper does not have to take any additional actions to receive the customer experience benefits.

3. Always on Customer Service with Chatbots

Chatbots were introduced as a new technology on the horizon for retailers in our 2017 e-commerce trend webinar. In 2018, chatbots are a must-have element of your online customer experience.

Think of chatbots like your online version of a sales associate or employee. Except they are always on 24/7/365.

A chatbot is an enhancement from the online chat communication channel. The old chat program still required a human sitting there typing in replies. Those employees had regular shifts. So sometimes customers weren’t getting their questions answered.

Now a chatbot is an always-on program that simulates the conversations your customers have with you. It answers questions, handles specific requests, helps shoppers choose the right product, and executes customer service procedures.

Your customer experience impact is shoppers have better and faster access to what they want when they want it. That’s a huge win. And you win more sales.

Customer adoption, and the resulting better experience and sales, is the biggest reason why chatbots are growing in e-commerce. Additionally two technology drivers are accelerating the deployment of chatbots – smartphones (again) and artificial intelligence (again).

Smartphone use is leading to speaking with a chatbot. Talking is easier than typing. Just say what you need and the chatbot tells you back. Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are all voice-enabled chatbots that are quickly growing is use.

Artificial intelligence is helping chatbots be more effective. The chatbot can repeat existing information easily and can be taught to mimic decision-making patterns. But artificial intelligence makes a difference by helping chatbots to actually learn. So your customer experience is continuously improving.

Design Your Customer Experience to Win More Sales

Planning and executing your customer experience strategies is a process of continuous improvement. Deeply understanding your customer’s journey sets you on the right path.

Take advantage of the key trends and technologies. Then test your innovations, measure, and optimize for the satisfaction of your customers and for the results that matter to you.

Ultimately, you can achieve what creative executive Loie Maxwell calls “designed serendipity”. Orchestrate the experiences that produce a customer journey that gives them a winning feeling. Your customers will love it. And you will win more sales.

Is Your Customer Experience Leaking Sales?

Most businesses are leaking online sales in at least 7 critical elements of their customer experience.

The Customer Experience Scorecard grades your e-commerce site using a 42-point checklist proven to increase sales, including:

• Quickly finding products shoppers are most likely to buy
• Personalized product recommendations
• Mobile path to purchase

Want to find your leaks? Find out your quick-win opportunities to take your conversion rates to the next level.

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) in e-commerce made headlines everywhere this last year:

• 1-800-Flowers.com launched Gwyn (a.k.a. Gifts When You Need Them). Within two months, 70% of online orders were completed through GWYN. See learnings.
• North Face’s conversational engine has the potential to run tens of thousands of consumers through its Q-and-A interface.
• A Boch Toyota dealership attributed a 60-sale increase per month to the authentic-sounding messages of Conversica “sales reps.”

But what does the future look like for AI in e-commerce?

SLI set out to answer this question by asking more than 200 e-commerce professionals in its third quarterly 2017 E-commerce Performance Indicators and Confidence Report. The responses were revealing. While more than half (54%) have already implemented or plan to add AI in the future – including 20% who expect to add AI within the next 12 months – there remain substantial opportunities for growth and education in AI.

About a quarter (24%) reported not understanding how AI can be applied to e-commerce at all, and more than one-third (39%) said that while they understand AI’s e-commerce applications, they weren’t sure how it applied to their specific business. These responses reveal a huge opportunity for online retailers to learn about emerging and existing AI applications that improve CX and the bottom line.

The Most Popular AI App in E-commerce

When asked how they’re using or planning to use AI, retailers reported the most-popular applications slated for implementation within the next 12 months were Personalized Product Recommendations (57%), Customer Service Requests (40%) and Chatbots (35%).

However, not all AI apps are popular on the e-commerce front – Virtual Reality and Voice-Activated Apps (90% each), Augmented Reality (85%) and Virtual Buying Assistants (79%) all had large percentages of respondents expressing no plans to use them in their businesses, now or in the future. Not surprisingly, VR and AR headset shipments are also experiencing slower growth than expected.

Cross analysis by geographical region exposes where AI is hot and where it’s been placed on the back burner. In the top three regions surveyed, current AI use is most prevalent in the U.S, with 17% of U.S-based respondents reporting it is already in use. This is closely followed by the the AU-NZ region (15%) and the UK (14%). However, retailers in the UK report the most aggressive plans for implementing AI with one-third (33%) expecting to leverage it within the next year, followed by the U.S. (17%) and the AU-NZ regions (15%).

In line with the cases and findings above, McKinsey uncovered that companies invested $26B to $39B in AI in 2016 and PwC found 72% of business decision makers believe AI will be the business advantage of the future. Without a doubt, the AI revolution is poised to be a boon for retailers.

But execution is always incredibly difficult.

You have different visitors with different mindsets toward actually buying. Those shoppers are engaging with different parts of your website through their shopping journey.

On top of that, you have to wrangle massive SKU quantities, constant product and pricing changes, and frequent promotions.

E-commerce merchandising is complex.

It is no longer as simple as choosing the products you want to move, setting an attractive discount, and plastering the offer all over your valuable real-estate.

You need to figure out what each shopper is most likely to buy right then.

The leading retail brands are employing the newest e-commerce merchandising techniques to successfully unlock the complex code to winning more sales. They approach effective merchandising along three dimensions:

• Understanding different customers need different merchandising strategies
• Deploying the right techniques along the shopping journey
• Delivering the right product that is most likely to be purchased

Plus, they’re using data to drive that complex decision at scale. And you can too.

Let’s breakdown what you can do to optimize these three elements… and dramatically increase your sales.

Customer-Focused E-commerce Merchandising Strategies

“Traditional” merchandisers that worked for brick-and-mortar retail stores often had a pure product buying background. They would master the data. But that mastery focused inward to the business for the purpose of increasing unit volumes, maximizing margins, and avoiding too much unsold inventory.

Yes. You still need to successfully manage your product buying to be profitable through your online channel. But you also need to understand what’s pulling through those sales and why.

Today, world-class merchandisers start from a different perspective. They think about the customer first. Then they apply their product expertise and merchandising skills to fit what their customer segments want.

You will want to incorporate specific merchandising strategies to help win these different types of customers – from visitors “just browsing” to your most valuable returning buyers.

Earn loyalty with returning visitors and customers

The first segment of shoppers you should consider are your return visitors and previous buyers. Why? Your conversion rates should be significantly higher than first-time visitors.

Better yet, you have some easily executed tactics available to boost extra sales.

Crate and Barrel promotes “Recently Viewed” items on every product page. This makes it super easy for a returning visitor to jump right back to what they were interested in, without having to browse around your site.

This product recommendation strategy also works great on major entry points into your site like the home page or in your shopping cart.

Another source of product data to use for “personalized” products recommendations is your customers’ wish list shopping cart history. These customers have already clearly indicated exactly what they want. So you should boldly give it to them.

Other uses of your visitors’ shopping history include:

• Highlight a special promotion for wish list items
• Recommend complementary products that go great with a recent purchase
• Show a reminder for abandoned cart items
• Add an easy “Order Again” button
• Create custom product landing pages for shoppers who clicked your retargeting ads

All of these online merchandising strategies can help grow loyal, repeat buyers and encourage returning visitors to buy more.

But what if someone is a first time visitor? Fortunately, there is another segment of high-value shoppers that you can convert with powerful merchandising.

Win high-purchase intent shoppers

Certain customers come to your site ready to buy. The question is: Are they going to buy from you or go to your competitor?

Who are these high-purchase intent shoppers? They are the visitors that use your site search functionality. SLI studies have found that visitors that use search buy at a 2.7x greater rate than visitors who just browse.

Search users have indicated exactly what they want. They often include a specific product option like a color, size, or material in their query. So you need to quickly get them to the product page for the best selling match.

Don’t make these folks navigate their way to what they want. No extra clicks. You’ll likely lose them even if you have a great price and an amazing free shipping offer.

In fact, there is one merchandising technology that dramatically helps you convert these must-win buyers – autocomplete.

A great autocomplete example is e.l.f Cosmetics. They go beyond simply displaying matching text keywords as the searcher types. They display specific product results while adding visual merchandising with appealing product images.

You are more likely to convert these shoppers by showing a product, not a category. Again, less clicks and browsing is what you want.

That’s just the start. Lock in more sales from high-purchase intent shoppers with other tactics that use search data to improve merchandising.

Now let’s turn our attention to another customer segment, who likely make up the majority of your traffic.

Convert browsers into buyers

Some customers have an idea in mind but may not be ready to buy. In a brick-and-mortar retail analogy, these folks are the “No thanks. Just browsing” shoppers.

They may be “looky loos.” However, your merchandising can effectively nudge these visitors toward a purchase.

Classically online retailers attempt to attract these browsing shoppers by promoting categories or themed product groups like seasonal or clearance categories. However, this approach just keeps them clicking through your site and you hoping they stumble on something that sparks a sale.

And that’s one of the big reasons why many visitors leave an online store with an empty cart. The merchandising kept them in a browsing mindset, not a buying one.

Do not be afraid to promote specific products. Smart online merchandisers are now curating and promoting sets of individual products, not general categories, on their highest traffic pages.

FTD.com gives a big portion of their home page to promote their Best Seller products. What those product recommendations do is switch the shopper to an active “Oh. I need that too.” mindframe. And out of a passive “just looking” mode.

Tap into your massive SKU list to find the top sellers, new products arrivals, seasonal products, or specific sale items. Use your merchandising data analysis expertise.

Then continually test which products are getting the most clicks and conversions.

Simply promoting specific products can help increase the possibility of an impulse purchase, or more likely, can create a desire to come back to your site when they are ready to buy.

Now that you’re thinking from a customer perspective, let’s take your merchandising strategies to the next level. You can optimize the customer experience by where those visitors are on your site.

Merchandising Best Practices For E-commerce Websites

There is a flow to how people shop.

A brick-and-mortar retail store starts merchandising right up front as you walk in the door. Then throughout all the aisles, displays, and checkout counters. The whole store experience is intentionally designed to drive more sales.

An online customer experience also has its flow. Your e-commerce shopping journey can be designed to maximize sales too.

Every part on your site is a merchandising opportunity – the home page, navigation menus, category pages, product pages and your checkout pages.

Hundreds of online site search tips and navigation best practices have been published that can have a big impact on your sales.

Here are the top online merchandising tactics for your e-commerce website that are red hot right now.

Visual Merchandising on Product Pages

Let’s start where customers most often click “Add to Cart” – the product page.

Many elements of the product page help merchandisers showcase that that this is the right product at the right price – product title, descriptions, specs, purchase options, ratings, reviews, and, of course, pricing and discounts.

This information appeals to the rational part of your shopper’s brain.

The part that usually makes the ultimate buying decision is the emotional part of the human brain. That’s where online visual merchandising excels.

You also want to show off your products. Boden uses model videos, shows products from many angles, and switches custom images by color selection. These extra images give shoppers context when they can’t actually hold the item in their hands. You want them to easily envision what their experience will be after the purchase.

To help shoppers visualize, update product pictures instantly when they select different options like color and allow shoppers to zoom in to the smallest details.

Also, show action shots and product videos that depict how the product is used, what the buyer gets in the box, or how to install it.

Now augmented reality applications are being tested too. From arranging virtual furniture in a picture of your home to trying on different outfits in selfie mode on your smartphone, this next generation of visualization is an e-commerce merchandising innovation you will want to explore.

Personalized Product Recommendations

Product recommendations have long been a valuable online merchandising tool. You can tune your recommendations strategies using best practices for each different page on your site. Now recommendations technology is getting even smarter.

Smart product recommendations are personalized to the individual shopper in real-time. The products displayed adjust automatically based on user activity, preferences, and sales trends.

Footwear etc. adds a level of personalization based on gender. Product recommendations, search results and category pages use the products or pages previously viewed by the shopper. If a shopper starts out browsing women’s sandals, then recommended product results would boost women’s shoes or accessories on subsequent pages. The screenshot above shows before and after results when a shopper searches for “leather boots”.

This type of contextual personalization can be tuned for many different facets, including gender, size, brand preference, or location.

Not only are these higher-converting recommendations displayed in real-time, but this personalization works for first-time visitors just as well as returning shoppers.

Complementary Sales in the Shopping Cart

You also want to extend those product recommendations to your shopping cart and checkout experience. Just like your grocery store places a rack of candy and magazines in the checkout line, online stores have a great opportunity to capture extra sales right at the point of purchase.

Only for online stores, this upsell merchandising strategy can be even more profitable.

Again, you can personalize the products you merchandise based on real-time data. You know what products they have added to their cart. You know the other products they have viewed.

And most importantly, you know what other products complement those items.

Swiss Colony promotes “Customers Also Purchased” at the beginning of their shopping cart experience.

Other popular recommendation strategies in the checkout experience are “You may also like” and “Complete the set.”

Just be careful to use complementary products. Do not necessarily use the exact same product recommendation logic as your product page. You don’t want to accidently promote an alternative to the product your customer has already decided to buy.

At best, that mistaken recommendation is ignored, meaning a wasted upsell opportunity. At worst, your customer stops and doesn’t complete their order because now they’re not sure if they’re buying what they really want.

So make sure that you are tuning the product recommendations in your shopping cart to complementary products that add to your sales, not disrupt them.

Now let’s use powerful data analytics and technology to deliver the best results without extra work.

Merchandise the Right Product to Win the Sale

You understand the customer. You know how to merchandise for each step of the online customer experience.

Now we can put it all together with great data and your product expertise to personalize the shopping experience… and get the sale.

Data Mining for E-commerce Merchandising

Your website analytics, your product systems, and your e-commerce platform transaction system combine to provide an astonishing array of data. That data can be mined and used to fuel your merchandising decisions.

You just need to look at what you have.

Data you know about your customer:

Your website analytics software offers useful demographic information about your customers and deep insights into what they are doing on your site.

Here are some of the most useful data types that can help your e-commerce merchandising strategy:

• Traffic Channel: Where did your visitor come from?
• History: Are they a first-time visitor or returning shopper?
• Behavior: Where did they go on your site and what did they do there?
• Gender: Are they female or male?
• Age: How old are they?
• Device: Are they on a mobile device, tablet or traditional computer?
• Geography: Where in the world are they?

Now pair that up with what you know about transactions stored in your e-commerce platform.

E-commerce Platform Data:

Every past purchase provides information that helps you understand what customers are likely to buy in the future.

• Product Sold: What product exactly is purchased?
• Options: What sizes, colors, styles, and other product options are purchased?
• Price: How much did it cost and what was the discount?
• Order quantity: How many did customers buy per purchase?
• Time/Date: When did the purchase occur?
• Payment Method: How did they pay – credit card type, PayPal, on credit/layaway?
• Shipping: How did the customer want this delivered?
• Abandoned Carts: What products are selected but never actually purchased?

Best selling products should always be at the top of your merchandising list. But there is even more product data available to you. And that’s your merchandising experience.

Data from your experience:

Lastly, your own experience and intuition adds the special sauce to your merchandising data recipe.

• Social trends:What’s hot right now with your customers?
• Brand trends: What product brands can help pull in buyers?
• Seasonality: What holiday or seasonality drives purchases?
• Inventory: How much is in stock?

Compile all of this data, analyze it, and determine what products your customers are most likely to buy right now.

However, the challenge with the plethora of available data is… there’s so much data. It’s incredibly difficult and time consuming to effectively wrangle all the valuable data to merchandise to every single visitor on every single webpage for all your products.

That’s where new artificial intelligence technology helps.

Artificial Intelligence Fuels E-commerce Automation

Automating your data processing to power real-time merchandising decisions is quickly becoming a must-have for online retailers.

Fifty-four percent of e-commerce sites have already implemented or plan to add AI in the future, according research from the Q3 2017 E-commerce Performance Indicators and Confidence Report. And 20% expect to add AI within the next 12 months.

So what is the most popular applications for AI right now?

Not surprisingly, merchandising techniques are at the top. Personalized product recommendations is number one. Fifty-six percent of online retailers report that they are already using artificial intelligence in their product recommendations strategies (18%) or plan to implement within the next 12 months (38%).

Other merchandising solutions and visual merchandising technologies are also being accelerated thanks to AI. Virtual buying assistants, chatbots, visual search, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) are all designed to help shoppers purchase the right product fast.

More automation definitely helps maximize results in less time. And in new ways.

But is artificial intelligence going to take your merchandising job away? Absolutely not.

You won’t hand over the keys entirely to your automation systems. You need to maintain a mix of merchandising techniques and always be testing to get the maximum results.

Testing Your Merchandising Strategy Mix

“Always be testing” is more than just a matra. It’s a requirement to truly maximizing your conversion rates and your total online sales.

Most every online retailer tests performance of different on-page merchandising elements. That helps determine your optimal page design. For example, a simple A/B test of your search box location can pay off big by converting high purchase-intent shoppers.

Or determine how many products should be displayed in your product recommendations. Pro tip: SLI Systems’ merchandising best practices show that 4 or 5 products are ideal. And that scrolling carousel presentation of more products doesn’t generate significantly more incremental sales.

Another high-impact test determines the best rules for your site search and product recommendation results. Keyword matching algorithms alone likely do not give your shoppers the most relevant product results, which lowers your conversion rates.

Merchandising-savvy online retailers use a prioritized mix of multiple rules to drive the most sales. They combine artificial intelligence results with pre-defined tuning rules, product and category keyword matching, and sales leader products to generate the maximum online revenues.

More E-commerce Merchandising Tips

The key to your online merchandising success is to figure out what each visitor is most likely to buy.

It’s not easy. But you can drive many more sales leveraging a deep understanding of your customers, the latest technology, and the leading edge online merchandising strategies.

We’ve shared the newest merchandising techniques here. And you have many more proven strategies and tactics available to you. Make sure to grab the hundreds of site search best practices, e-commerce navigation tips, and watch what leading retail brands are doing in these online merchandising webinars.

Sure this technology can almost seem spooky to some people, but the ubiquitous evolution of customer experience will nullify the fear and highlight the benefits. Already a generation of millennial consumers expect the ‘magic’ facet of designed serendipity to occur day to day. Why wouldn’t an e-tailer know exactly what I need when I need it? Predictive selling and service has become the absolute norm, what will be next to surprise and delight?

Planning for the future of consumer expectations requires innovative thought and above and beyond creativity.

Where will your shoppers be next? What will be driving their conversion? How will you capture their hearts and wallets? In the coming 2-5 years you will be challenged to read the crystal ball in an ever changing convergence of commerce, technology and entertainment. So what next? Invest and deploy the facets of designed serendipity where you can win. Applying the framework (a new twist, shared connection, magic, jackpot and give/get love) will help bring focus and heighten creativity. Shared connection through unique experiences and high perceived value is critical.

Get to know your audience not only as consumers of goods but as consumers of media.

An authentic ability to connect requires robust knowledge of the psyche of your most valuable consumers. What are their fundamental needs and how can you help them find solutions not only through product offerings but through original content that they value, share and anticipate. How can they get the maximum benefit from their purchase? Provide continuous learning and the latest advancements in your category. Educate them on trends and where to find them. Offer complementary lifestyle experiences in travel, beauty, fashion, cuisine, wine, decor. Even if your product is a finite tool or service, build confidence in their buying decision by sharing your brand story and why you make the difference in the causes you support, the labor you use, fair trade sourcing and new advancements in technology.

Investing in the development of a media pipeline and how to maintain one is key.

You cannot feed the content beast enough. Only a few years ago social media was taking hold. The employers I witnessed who jumped in, redirected their budgets and invested in the necessary talent to execute on this growing need are winning today. They took the risk and learned quickly. They are now the leaders in the social space. Today, the opportunity is for companies to employ content creators and strategist who can shape the conversation about the brand with your customers. Producers, writers, directors will be common place in organizations and may not report into marketing. They may be an entity unto themselves as this won’t be marketing, this will be growing connection and conversion. You must “give love to get love” and customers who are in love with your brand is good for business. There may be a “Chief Content and Conversion Officer” in the future.

In light of all the change, the focus on messaging value and deals won’t quietly go away. Loyalty programs and value propositions will be more robust and engaging through original content and advancements in technology. Your most valuable customers will be stickier if you know how to connect the dots between value, connection and service. While every brand has varying needs, the “jackpot, magic and connection” ecosystem must be built or you may be caught off-guard. Investing now in technology and talent should be on the agenda of every 2018 planning meeting and by 2019 you will either see the glowing results or be prepared to know exactly how to pivot. Exciting times require courageous actions.

For more from Loie Maxwell on how to create magic for your customers, check out the on-demand webinar, Designed Serendipity: Win Over Your Customers With a Little Luck.

Retail analysts and industry experts have debated for years now: Is Amazon a friend or foe to e-commerce merchants? It’s not so black and white, according to our data.

Back in April in our Q1 EPIC Report, we learned only 6% felt Amazon posed less of a competitive threat to their online businesses compared to the same quarter the year before. The data revealed merchants leaned toward viewing the e-commerce giant as more foe than friend.

We took a different look for the Q2 EPIC Report, asking those who sell via Amazon why they do so. The reasons pointing more toward friend than foe are many:

• 65% added Amazon as a channel to increase sales
• 47% did so to acquire new customers, which was tied with gaining visibility from a high traffic channel (also 47%)
• 33% added Amazon as a channel for fulfillment by Amazon

What’s more, Amazon Prime Day’s Christmas-in-July effect had far-reaching implications even for non-Amazon retailers. Salesforce analyzed activity from 500 million online shoppers and found online sales for other retailers grew 44% on Prime Day 2017 compared with last year’s event. The same report also found non-Amazon retailers benefited from a 34% higher conversion rate compared with the day before Prime Day.

Prime week also spiked mobile purchases for other retailers. Analyses done by Liftoff looked at mobile app activity during Prime week compared to the six weeks prior. According to Liftoff, “the percentage of users who installed a non-Amazon shopping app and made a purchase in the app increased by a whopping 46.76%”.

It would seem Amazon is clearly friend material. But then again, maybe not.

The perks of leveraging the giant come with some concern. The Q2 EPIC Report also found nearly 70% of those that sell on Amazon are somewhat or very worried Amazon will use their sales data to compete with them, further highlighting this complex relationship.

Recently, Amazon informed sellers of a new policy for refunds. According to CNBC, the rules for items shipped by merchants are now the same as those fulfilled by Amazon. This “will totally crush small businesses that fulfill their own orders,” a third-party seller told the major news outlet.

While Amazon sellers can boost sales thanks to Amazon’s massive consumer volume, the price they pay for this access is loss of control. Amazon owns the customer. And the shopping experience is tuned to drive the most sales regardless of who the seller is.

Internet Retailer recently shared this example: Rain Design has sold an aluminum laptop stand on Amazon for more than a decade. The best-selling product is about $43 and has thousands of 5-star reviews. According to Internet Retailer, “last year, AmazonBasics started selling a similar product at half the price, and sales of the Rain Design original have slipped.”

So, is Amazon a threat? Yes. 

Can Amazon also help you succeed? Yes.

Amazon is your frenemy.

Pat Petriello, senior strategist for CPC Strategy, said it best to The Washington Post last month: “Large, household brands that had previously viewed Amazon as a fierce competitor that was eating everyone alive, are now viewing them as a necessary partner. They’re saying, ‘Our customers are there, our competitors are there, so we need to have a presence there.’”

Whether you’re an Amazon friend, foe, or frenemy, the key is to develop a direct relationship with your Amazon customers so that you continue building your brand and loyal fan base.

Findings in the SLI Systems EPIC Report for Q2 2017 are based on a survey conducted between May 4 – June 2, 2017. For a copy of the full chart-packed report, visit:  http://sitesearch.sli-systems.com/epic-report-q2-2017.

Creating an excellent e-commerce user experience can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. In this article we’ll outline an evaluation and review process that highlights some of the most important and effective ways to create a unique user experience.

These five tips will push you to rethink your site design and navigation with a focus on efficiency and user experience, while also prioritizing merchandising efforts, speed, and customer outreach and support. The end result will be a user experience that places the customer at the center of every aspect of your e-commerce platform. Creating a customized, unique and seamless shopping experience will set you apart from your competition.

Evaluate your site design with fresh eyes

The first step to an excellent user experience is to look at your site through the eyes of your customers. Complete a thorough “walk through” of your site exactly as your customers would. Enter your site, search for products, add them to the cart and complete a transaction.

While doing this, take notes at each stage. You want to create the most seamless and aesthetic design possible.  Once you’re done, have others do the same thing.  Get their feedback on what they did and didn’t like. Customers want a clean, well-designed site that naturally flows throughout the shopping experience. Your design should be clean and uncluttered, and highlight rather than distract from the products.

Streamline navigation

An intuitive and streamlined navigation system is one of the most important aspects of an excellent user experience. Your site navigation should be accessible during all points of the shopping process. Your search engine should be fast and responsive. It should also incorporate autocomplete and accurate product recommendations.

Verify that your product refinements work and makes sense. Your goal is for your customers to successfully complete a transaction with the fewest amount of clicks.

Place value on merchandising

Work with your merchandising team to ensure your product splash pages are unique, engaging and dynamic. Merchandising is often overlooked when tuning your user experience. Make sure your product pages are uncluttered and highlight the key features of your products, while also allowing customers to view product features in greater detail.

Product pages should be aesthetically appealing and intuitively designed. Properly merchandising your products is a critical factor in creating a curated customer experience that feels unique.

Check your speed

Stress test your site to make sure it loads quickly and feels responsive. Speed is king in e-commerce and has a direct impact on sales. Your site should load quickly on different devices and connection types.

This means you’ll need to thoroughly test on desktop, tablet and mobile devices from wired, wireless, and 3G/4G connections. Slow loading speeds or “failure to load” page warnings, particularly on wireless or cellular connections, are a strong indicator that you need to redesign the backbone of your data delivery system. Work toward a fast, seamless shopping experience on as many devices as possible.

Integrate customer outreach during and after checkout

Customer outreach is an excellent way to create a unique shopping experience in which the customer feels prioritized and valued. Outreach should take a number of different forms, including the option to chat with staff on your site, a follow-up email after a transaction and social media outreach.

E-commerce customers today want multiple ways to contact customer service. Meeting this desire is relatively easy, but requires an engaged customer service team with the tools to do the job. Empower your customer service team to be proactive in addressing customers’ questions and complaints. Lastly, incorporate customer feedback into design changes, product descriptions and business practices. This tells your customers you care and value their feedback.

In a recent Forbes article, Retail Strategy and Innovation Consultant Steve Dennis provides a very compelling reason for brick-and-mortar retailers’ recent misfortunes. While he acknowledges the rapid and transformative impact of e-commerce, he believes those who blame e-commerce for the record number of store closings are wrong. Instead, he says:

“A far more profound dynamic is at play, namely what some have termed ‘digital-first retail.’ Digital-first retail is the growing tendency of consumers’ shopping journeys to be influenced by digital channels, regardless of where the ultimate transaction takes place… [and] when it comes to how traditional retailers need to reinvent themselves, several factors related to this phenomenon need to be better understood and, most importantly, acted upon.”

One crucial factor? “It’s a search driven world,” says Dennis.

“Sometimes consumers turn to the web for rather mundane tasks: confirming store hours or looking up the address of a retailer’s location. Other times they are engaged in a more robust discovery process, seeking to find the best item, the best price, or the best overall experience.

Retailers need to position themselves to win these moments that matter – what Google calls micro-moments.”

What’s more, research shows that shoppers that use site search have the highest intent to purchase, significantly outspending those who simply browse. In fact, searchers have 2.7x greater conversion rate, 11% higher average order values, and higher revenue per visit.

To hook these must-win shoppers and clinch the micro-moments in our search-driven world, here are five top best practices:

1. Use machine learning to power product discovery for big results.

It’s critical that retailers support shoppers conducting searches with the most relevant product results to quickly help them discover, buy, and move on. Search powered by machine learning “learns” from visitors’ behavior and activity to deliver busy shoppers the most relevant results quickly, resulting in a search function that becomes more intuitive and relevant the more it’s used.

2. Ensure searchers can find what they’re looking for with just one word.

Research shows more and more shoppers choose to conduct site searches with just a single word. In fact, a recent study of more than 1.5 billion search queries found more than half of searchers only use one word, and over 80% of site searches used two words or less. Machine learning is driving more personalized shopping experiences where just one word should be all a shopper needs to find what he’s looking for. Combining machine learning with real-time contextual personalization can identify what that particular person means in one word and deliver what they are most likely to buy in that moment.

3. Implement a search system containing rich autocomplete with graphics.

By combining intelligent phrase suggestions and product images into its autocomplete feature, Zachy’s Wine and Liquor increased conversion rate by 10x for shoppers using site search, and average order values by 2x for those same shoppers. Using a robust site search system with autocomplete has been recognized as one of the key steps in generating higher revenue.

This is especially true today with more people shopping from mobile devices. Shoppers on mobile devices expect a powerful autocomplete function so that they can easily go directly to the products they want with the convenience of not having to type out complete product names or descriptions on a small screen keyboard. Accommodating this will result in higher revenue per visit and greater customer retention.

4. Arm your e-commerce site (and site search) with creative content.

Your online presence needs to be about much more than the products you sell. A website or mobile site should be an educational resource for consumers, offering unique photos, videos, tools, blog posts, reviews and more, which amplify your brand and convince shoppers to buy. 100M+ hours of “how to” content have been watched on YouTube so far this year! To make finding valuable content seamless, include it in search results — somewhere below best-selling products or in a tab above the fold.

5. Marry site search results with paid and organic traffic sources.

If you know how people search on your site, this gives you insights into very likely search terms that people are using in search engines as well. Marry this super high-intent search behavior with your product catalog to automatically create customized landing pages that are very attractive to search engines. For retailers with tens of thousands of SKUs that could never all be manually optimized for SEO, this strategy can be very powerful, as it generates a lot of valuable traffic off of long-tail keywords. According to Jerome’s Furniture, in 2017 alone, capturing these high-converting long-tail SEO targets in an automated way has already brought in thousands of clicks and tens of thousands of dollars in sales.

To learn more about winning the search-driven micro-moments that matter, check out our e-book The Quick Guide to Better Site Search.

Bob Angus, Strategic E-commerce Consultant

Bob is a strategic e-commerce consultant and regular contributor to SLI Systems’ webinars and product marketing. He has helped merchants grow sales in his marketing roles at PayPal, Symantec, and Commission Junction. Bob has been a contributing editor at Practical Ecommerce and provides free marketing templates on his website.

Research shows more and more shoppers choose to conduct site searches with just a single word.

For its recent E-commerce Performance Indicators and Confidence Report (a.k.a. EPIC Report), SLI recently analyzed a global sample of more than 1.5 billion search queries during the last 4 years and found more than half of searchers only use one word. What’s more, over 80% of site searches were two words or less.

In fact, site searches are actually getting shorter over time. Year-over-year, the number of searches with three or more words is decreasing while the number of one-word searches is increasing. In 2013, 24% of searches included three or more words. This year, only 18% have three or more words.

SLI’s EPIC Report supports recent trends indicating shoppers expect relevant results immediately. In other words, if relevancy and personalization are not part of your e-commerce search strategy (and searchers can’t find what they’re looking for with one word), then shoppers will simply move on.

This is why machine learning is absolutely critical in search and where the magic happens. E-commerce search powered by machine learning “learns” from visitors’ search activity to deliver busy shoppers the most relevant results quickly.

The result is a search function that becomes more intuitive and relevant the more it’s used.

Machine learning is driving more personalized shopping experiences where just one word should be all a shopper needs to find what he’s looking for; without it, you risk losing shoppers to another site with a better, faster experience.

For more personalization tips, check out our webinar Predict More Sales with Personalization. The complimentary EPIC Report is available for download.

Whether friend or foe to your online business, Amazon marketplaces are shaking up retail norms globally – from personalization to fulfillment. Even with Walmart and Jet.com encroaching on Amazon’s discount market share, the online mega mall added “tens of millions” of new Prime subscribers in 2016, reports investor site

Add consumer expectations for relevance, price and fulfillment speed, and retailers face notable challenges in attracting, converting and keeping customers online as they seek to nab their share of retail e-commerce sales that eMarketer forecasts will top $27 trillion in 2020.

Findings in SLI Systems E-commerce Performance Indicators and Confidence (EPIC) Report illustrate the level of concern about various marketplaces among global online and multichannel merchants. The report provides insight from more than 200 e-commerce professionals — nearly 40% of whom sell on at least one Amazon marketplace, with 42% selling on additional marketplaces.

The key takeaway? Only 6% say Amazon is less of a threat.

“The Amazon Factor”

The e-commerce giant continues to challenge online businesses worldwide, with 11 Amazon marketplaces across North America, Europe and Asia.

Only 6% of the SLI study respondents feel Amazon poses less of a competitive threat. Thirty-two percent of U.S. respondents and 38% of those in the UK report that Amazon is more of a competitive threat compared to the same quarter last year.

And in Australia, where Amazon reportedly plans to open a new marketplace, 47% of respondents viewed the e-commerce giant as an increased threat.

Interestingly, Australian merchants chose “Advertising or Paid Search” as their top online retail initiative for the quarter, potentially indicating that the region’s merchants are gearing up for heightened online competition.

Other Mega Competitors

When it comes to Walmart and Alibaba, the “threat level” depends much more on region. Eighteen percent of the study’s U.S. respondents view Walmart/Jet.com as more of a threat. However, a majority of respondents in the UK (67%), Australia (60%) and New Zealand (62%) said the mega retailer was not a threat to their particular online businesses.

Looking at sentiment about Alibaba, the marketplace is a notable contender for APAC, where 20% of Australia-based and 31% of New Zealand-based merchants view Alibaba as more of competitive threat to their online business in Q1 2017 compared to the same quarter last year.

Whether selling on Amazon (friend) and/or competing with Amazon (foe), online retailers are having to keep pace with the giant as it sets the bar for the front office as well as the back office. When asked to select the single most important initiative for their online retail business, Customer Experience earned the top spot from 26% of all respondents, followed by Inventory, Logistics and Fulfillment, which earned 14% of the “votes.”

To learn about practical ways to combat Amazon, read the The Ecommerce Secret Weapon You Haven’t Heard Of on MediaPost’s SearchMarketingDaily.

Findings in the SLI Systems EPIC Report for Q1 2017 are based on a survey conducted between February 6, 2017 to March 6, 2017. For a copy of the full chart-packed report, visit: http://sitesearch.sli-systems.com/Epic-Report.html

I am excited to share SLI Systems’ debut E-commerce Performance Indicators and Confidence (EPIC) Report with you. The Q1 2017 EPIC Report includes findings and analyses from an in-depth survey of retail professionals worldwide and a look at consumer behavior trends based on more than 1.5 billion site search queries.

Survey findings in the first-quarter report represent a mix of retail business models, including pure e-commerce, as well as omnichannel merchants. In addition, 87% of the 200+ respondents work in a manager position or above – with 20% holding VP- or C-level positions. The responses, collected between Feb 6-March 6, 2017, come from a qualified cross-section of retailers around the world, offering a solid benchmark for us to compare retailer confidence and shopping behavior regularly.

We have included dozens of colorful charts in the 13-page report to illustrate the Respondent Overview, Confidence and Performance Indicators, Top of Mind (anticipated business impact of the new U.S. presidential administration) survey findings, as well as Search Trend Analysis, which looks at the average number of words in a site search query.

The best news? Ninety-four percent of retail professionals surveyed expected to expand their businesses during the first quarter.

Here are some other highlights:

Confidence – Eighty percent of respondents expect an increase in online revenues and profits, and 46% expect an increase in in-store revenues and profits.

Key Performance Metrics – Comparing Q1 2017 to Q1 2016, metrics include, among others, that 71% expect increased site conversion (CVR) and 76% expect a decrease or no change in their fulfillment costs per order.

Top Q1 Initiative – With 26% of the “Vote” Customer Experience earned the top spot among priorities. Inventory, Logistics & Fulfillment was second (14%), followed by Mobile Site (12%).

Mobile – An impressive 73% of respondents expect an increase in mobile transactions. Among those who cited mobile as their top initiative, the group selected “Mobile Site” six times more than “Mobile App.”

Amazon – Thirty-two percent of U.S. respondents, 38% of those in the UK, and 47% in Australia, see Amazon as more of a competitive threat compared to the same quarter last year.

Trump – U.S. retailers generally anticipate the new U.S. administration will have a positive impact on corporate taxes, a negative impact on selling internationally, and no impact on online sales taxes. Twenty-three percent of UK respondents expect it will have a somewhat or very negative impact on their online business.

As a global provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions and services, SLI is in a unique position to analyze retailer confidence and online shopping trends. We hope that EPIC quickly becomes a useful resource for you to check the “pulse” of the e-commerce sector globally.

The complimentary report is available for download. Let us know what you think at research@sli-systems.com, and be on the lookout for future EPIC surveys. We’ll send you the resulting report once it’s published.

In fact, by 2019, the global market for furniture and floor coverings is forecasted to reach $695 billion. As interest heats up, so does the competition as more retailers enter this online marketplace. Customers are harder to attract and retain with competitors always just one click away.

Savvy home furnishings companies are deploying a highly effective strategy — one that keeps competition at bay while building greater engagement and stronger relationships with each customer. But how? The answer is simple: greater website personalization.

Personalization significantly increases customer engagement with your brand on your e-commerce site – with forty percent of customers preferring to purchase from retailers that cater to their preferences. These statistics tell an interesting story, yet many home furnishings companies are still reluctant to adopt personalization, oftentimes because they aren’t sure where to start. Here are six tips to inspire greater personalization and higher revenue in the coming year.

Everything starts with a strong customer profile

When shopping for your birthday gift, a close friend has a profile of you in their mind — even if they don’t know it. They say: “Jane loves the color blue and she recently told me the pillows on the couch are wearing out. She needs new ones; in fact, I just saw her looking at some really great pillows at Crate & Barrel last week.” The friend remembers all these small pieces of data, and from this data, she comes up with the perfect birthday gift.

Creating a profile for each customer works in a similar fashion. The very first moment that you interact with the customer, you start collecting data points. But how do you capture this data? A great way is to provide a relevant offer during the first interaction.

For example, when a new person visits Crate & Barrel’s website, a pop-up offers a special coupon in exchange for an email address. The message says “Save 10% today when you sign up for up-to-the-minute offers, sales, and news.” Once you enter your email address, the retail company starts gathering various pieces of information about your search history, purchases and preferences. As a result, relevant offers can be sent via email, presented on the website and offered up with more precise timing.

However, even if your company doesn’t capture a visitor’s email address, you can still customize their experience. This is an important piece of information to consider since anonymous customers make up to 95 percent of website traffic. Personal data points, such as name, address and email address, aren’t collected, but what you can track is behavioral details, usually through cookies and other resources. As a result, customers can save items in their carts and you can customize recommendations during future visits.

Key takeaway: Track visitor data points from the very first visit, even if you don’t have personal identifying information yet. Doing this will help drive greater conversions through a personalized, more relevant online experience.

Understand customers in context

Building a customer profile for each visitor is a great start for creating more personalized experiences, but it’s also critical to put behavior in context.

For example, why is the customer interacting with your company at this exact moment? Factors constantly change based on a variety of contextual variables, such as seasonality. Home furnishings retailer Wayfair understands that as the holidays inch closer, customers expect a deal. For example, the week prior to Presidents’ Day, the company promoted a clearance sale, which featured discounts of up to 70 percent off retail prices.

While this offer is certainly appealing, it’s not personal. When clicking on the deal, you view icons, such as “Bedroom Furniture up to 65% OFF” and “Bedding up to 70% OFF.”

The offers are clearly a good value, but what if the customer isn’t in the market for new bedroom furniture — or any of the highlighted items? The potential sale is quickly lost. Instead of displaying the various icons above, this retailer could instead list deals specific to the exact customer based on recent search history.

For example, let’s say a visitor recently viewed a specific vase for their dining room table. They didn’t make the purchase, but during an upcoming sale that vase will be on sale. The retailer can then highlight items the customer recently viewed, such as the vase, that are now priced lower during the sale, as well as complementary items the customer may enjoy.

Key Takeaway: Personalization is about more than collecting pieces of information about each customer. It’s about understanding each customer in context. When you combine these two elements — personalization and relevant contextual information — you get much closer to unlocking a greater understanding of your customers and earning long-term loyalty.

Curate product picks

When visiting a mall, you may immediately walk up to the directory to locate retail stores that sell home furnishings. You then identify a few potential stores on the map, visit each store, find the appropriate department and sort through numerous products — until hopefully you find the desired item. Most shoppers know this process lacks efficiency and ultimately leads to shopping fatigue, especially if the customer is not successful in finding the desired product.

Online shopping is more streamlined than a traditional shopping experience; however, it still has inefficiencies. Curating product picks is an effective strategy that retailers can use to improve shopper satisfaction. Relevant items are displayed right off the bat — instead of forcing the customer to wade through numerous options until becoming fatigued and ultimately closing the browser.

Check out this example from Rug Studio. When displaying rugs, the home furnishings site provides additional customized recommendations based on viewing history. The “Coordinating Options” section ties in related products that complement the purchase. For example, you may see a complementary miniature rug that pairs nicely with your area rug.

Key takeaway: High-end stores have used the curated shopping experience for years. They get to know customers by name, learning their preferences and selecting items they’ll love. Curating online works in a similar way but allows retailers to personalize experiences at scale.

Personalize order shipping

Shipping can make or break the ability to convert a sale. This is why many online retailers offer free shipping. For example:

• Red Door found that adding a free shipping threshold increased orders by 90 percent.
• 2 Big Feet used a similar strategy and increased orders by 50 percent.
• ComScore found that having a free shipping day increased orders by 16 percent.

The powerful lure of free shipping is likely why programs such as Amazon Prime have become so popular. But surprisingly, the cost of shipping isn’t the only element that matters. Customers also want options for quicker delivery. These two items — free shipping and accurate and fast arrival options — are key elements to greater personalization. But why?

Shipping is an underused opportunity to personalize the buying experience. For example, your site might have a pop-up that says “Hey, Jane, it looks like you’re ordering holiday items. Do you want them to arrive faster?” At this moment, the customer feels a connection with a brand. The customer gets the sense that the retailer “gets” her pain point and has offered up a solution in the exact moment of relevance. What’s more, that faster shipping option may not be free, but that’s likely alright with Jane because she has a holiday party scheduled and getting items faster is more important than free.

This interaction can be further personalized by creating a customized “thank you” message that might read “Thanks for your order. We know you need these items fast, so rest assured they will arrive by December 15th, per your request.”

Key takeaway: Take advantage of this underutilized opportunity to personalize and forge greater loyalty with customers. As you deliver on your promises, customers will continually return to your brand to make purchases.

Create adaptive calls to action

Some home furnishings companies design one-size-fits all calls to action. For example, they may offer free shipping on orders of $50 or more. And while it often makes sense to provide free shipping, a call to action that is personalized generates greater long-term results.

For example, imagine that you’re a totally new customer of an online home furnishings store. You’re looking for decorative pillows for a new couch that you just purchased. When arriving to the online store, a “new customer” coupon appears. You think, “Wow, they understand I’m a new customer and this retailer is motivated to get my business — I’ll take a look at what they offer.” After viewing a few options, you make a selection and complete the purchase.

For example, Linen Chest offers a 15 percent off purchase coupon exclusively for new customers. After joining the email list and receiving the coupon, the offer no longer appears.

Let’s say you use the coupon, as highlighted in the example above, and a few weeks later you need to purchase an accent chair. Remembering the great deal you received prior, you visit the website again. But this time, the website offers another personalized coupon, saying “We’re thrilled that you’re back! Use this coupon as a token of our appreciation.”

Key takeaway: Personalized calls to action are an effective strategy for generating greater online conversions and moving customers through the sales cycle with less resistance. Test different offers and content to better understand what works best with your audience.

Personalize emails

How many emails do you receive each day? If you’re like most people, you receive dozens, if not hundreds, daily. This amount of email is simply impossible to open and read carefully, so a prioritization process begins, which involves skimming headlines and “bulk deleting” the majority of the emails.

Personalizing email campaigns increases open and click-thru rates significantly. In fact, according to Experian Marketing Services, personalization emails generate up to 6 times higher revenue per email than do non-personalized emails.

Marketers use personalized email for a variety of purchase situations, from enticing customers to return to abandoned carts to reminding them about items they previously viewed. For example, Amazon sends customers personalized emails that feature a recent product category in which the customer has searched. It might say something like “Customers who have shown an interest in ‘XYZ’ product might also like to know about these products” and highlight a few more options of interest.

Key takeaway: Don’t let personalization stop at the website. Integrate personalization strategies into email campaigns to ensure that customers feel known while maximizing your opportunity to cross-sell, upsell and close deals that would otherwise be lost.

Personalization: The key to greater results

Customers’ needs are changing. It’s true that people are buying more home furnishings online than ever before, but if you want to avoid becoming a commodity — easily interchangeable with your largest competitors — you need to adopt a new, more effective strategy.

Many website visitors shop several retailers at the same time, yet it’s still not only about price: Personalization is moving to center stage. Who understands the customer’s needs best? Who can offer the right product, at the right price — and at the precise moment of relevance? When your home furnishings company cracks this code, you gain an instant point of differentiation that can be leveraged against the competition.

What Is SLI?

At SLI, our machine-learning platform offers the most advanced technology available to accelerate your e-commerce and continuously delight customers at every click.

For more tips, check out our webinar: Predict More Sales with Personalization.

Every year eTail honors the best of the best retailers with eTail Best-in-Class Awards, recognizing extraordinary achievements in omnichannel, search, email, social media and mobile commerce. This year SLI customer Jerome’s Furniture took home the Best-in-Class Omnichannel Retailer Award for reinventing the furniture-buying experience and offering its shoppers a seamless omnichannel experience with two new apps: a new Augmented Reality App (to use on mobile/at home) and a new Smart Shopper App (to use in store).

While the Augmented Reality App brings the store’s furniture into the shopper’s home virtually, the Smart Shopper App brings the website’s robust content and machine-learning search to shoppers’ fingertips in the store. According to Perry, “It’s the 1-2 punch our customers are loving. The feedback is amazing!”

Congratulations to Jerome’s for winning the most-deserved distinction of eTail’s Best-in-Class Omni-Retailer!

Augmented Reality (AR) App Brings Store Furniture into Shopper’s Home Virtually

With more than 60 years in the home furniture business, Jerome’s understands buying new furniture can be time-consuming and overwhelming. Even when shoppers had measurements, imagining how their new sofa looked in their home was not easy. Until now. The new Augmented Reality App easily allows shoppers to see how an item looks in their home before buying it. The AR app takes out all the guesswork, helping shoppers avoid mistakes and making furniture buying easier than ever – from the comfort of their homes.

And the results are staggering. The Augmented Reality App’s conversion rate is 73% higher than site average, and time on site is 226% higher (more than 14 minutes).

Smart Shopper App Brings Website Content, Reviews, Videos, Search Into the Store

The Smart Shopper App includes a convenient QR Code scanner that allows shoppers to easily scan any tag throughout the brick-and-mortar showroom. Once a furniture item is scanned, the app brings up a library of online product reviews and product videos. The shopper now has a wealth of information, reviews to read, and videos to watch all at their fingertips while in store.

The Smart Shopper App also uses The SLI Buyer Engine, a machine-learning platform that power its search technology. The Buyer Engine learns from visitors’ search activity to deliver busy Jerome’s customers the most relevant results quickly – both in store or on the go. The result is a search function that becomes more intuitive the more it’s used, driving more personalized shopping experiences within the app.

The Smart Shopper App has proven so useful, Jerome’s is seeing 100-200 downloads a day. What’s more, by using machine-learning to power its search technology with SLI Systems, Jerome’s increased conversion rate 71%.

The new Augmented Reality App and Smart Shopper App enable Jerome’s Furniture to deliver its customers a seamless omnichannel experience with the highest degree of contextual personalization at home, in the store, or on the go – helping them feel increasingly understood, catered to, and apt to buy – and driving remarkable business results.

This is particularly true in the home furnishings sector, which has a number of unique challenges catering to online customers. In the past, home furnishings retailers have done most of their sales through brick and mortar storefronts. Customers prefer to see the specific items they are going to purchase. As such, home furnishing online portals have lagged behind other industries in providing personalized shopping experiences.

Yet in almost no other industry is it as important to create a personalized shopping experience in order to transition browsers into shoppers, and one time shoppers into repeat customers. In this article we’ll discuss some of the ways that home furnishing retailers can accomplish effective e-commerce personalization, while highlighting a few of the common pitfalls that can be seen across the industry.

Implement an intelligent search system with rich autocomplete and filtering options

Legacy searching systems that rely on simple text search terms fail to deliver accurate results in the home furnishing market. When using these types of systems, your customers are more likely to end up with a long list of products that they weren’t looking for. This is a particularly common problem in the home furnishing industry, where customers are more likely to have long and very specific search queries.

With the huge amount of product diversity that exists within the home furnishings market, having a personalization system that utilizes a robust search engine will allow your customers to more quickly and efficiently find the products that they are looking for.

For example, if a customer is searching for a yellow sofa, legacy systems will just pull products where the specific item description has a fabric labeled as yellow.  They could then miss out on products described by the manufacturer as marigold. An intelligent search system would pull this result and others that qualified as yellow, but were not inherently labeled as such.

Don’t ignore the transition from online to storefront shoppers

 While many of your customers may conduct searches on your website to gain some sense of product familiarity, once they narrow down which specific products they are interested in, they will most likely visit your storefront to see the product in person. It is important to cater to these types of customers by creating a multichannel shopping experience. This is a shopping experience that allows for the seamless transition between online and offline shopping.

Accomplishing this requires maintaining consistency between products, brands, and pricing both on- and offline. Commonly in the home furnishing industry, customers will also search for your products on their phones while in your store.

Some home furnishing stores have taken the step to have tablets placed throughout their storefront to serve as points of access for their customers, further collapsing the boundaries between online and in store shopping. As such, having a robust mobile site is essential to the success of your e-commerce personalization deployment.

Rely on a system that provides targeted product recommendations

Your e-commerce personalization software should be able to provide targeted, specific product recommendations. This is the backbone of any e-commerce personalization software. Intuitive product and search systems learn as your customers utilize them.  If a customer places a product in their shopping cart, your software system should be able to use that information to provide more accurate product recommendations.

The same is true for their search history.  With an intelligent, machine-driven product recommendation system in place, your customers are more likely to find relevant products and experience higher conversion rates. Additionally, your system should be able to promote certain products, or suggest related items that you carry that have the highest conversion rate from shoppers to buyers.

Successfully revamping your home furnishing website to provide a personalized shopping experience doesn’t need to be a daunting or painful experience. Utilizing these personalization tips can help you find an e-commerce personalization platform that will meet your needs.

Ultimately, the success of your efforts comes down to having the right tools for the job. Having a platform that integrates comprehensive search functionality, intelligent and machine-driven product recommendations, and allows you to seamlessly transition shoppers from online to in-store shopping will give your company the ability to provide a superior customer experience throughout.

Learn more about SLI’s Personalization technology by reading Announcing SLI ESP: Take Mind Reading to the Next Level.

Imagine that you walk into a store looking for a new shirt. You scan the clothing racks and start your search, sorting through dozens of items. “Wrong style, wrong color – hmmm, these might work.” Then you proceed to the dressing room to narrow your options even further.

After an hour, you’re exhausted but have finally found a shirt that works. Yet sometimes you come up empty-handed, leaving the store with nothing but a whole lot of frustration. Regardless, the process includes a waste of time and energy.

At its core, this is a highly impersonal experience. The store hasn’t done anything to help personalize your shopping experience, and you – the customer – are charged with narrowing down hundreds of items and creating your own personalized experience. Website personalization, on the other hand, does the exact opposite, taking much of the work off the customers’ plates by learning their patterns, likes and dislikes – and eliminating much of the waste. How can this best be accomplished in the apparel e-commerce market?

Web Personalization: A Quick Primer

Website personalization delivers a customized experience to prospective and current customers based on who they are and what they do. That visitor can be brand new or a frequent visitor to the site.

For example, think about a website that requires you to navigate and search through many pages prior to finding the item you desire. This experience is time-consuming and a far cry from delightful. Web personalization is the exact opposite, allowing you to:

• Identify specific attributes of a website visitor. For example, buying intent, location, and other important pieces of data can be isolated and captured.
• Present relevant and timely offers. Once you have behavioral data, you can present the visitor with relevant and timely offers. For example, does he or she love shopping for sandals in the spring? If so, you can display those items during the specific relevant periods.

Saving customers time and energy, however, is not the only reason to incorporate web personalization into your apparel strategy – there is another compelling reason: higher revenue. In fact, 40 percent of consumers report purchasing more from retailers who personalize their shopping experience across channels.

Personalization is no longer a “nice to have” for customers; customers demand it. A Marketo study found that over 78 percent of those surveyed said they would engage with a brand’s offer only if it were related to how they previously interacted with that brand. Which brings us to the next point – the consequences of being impersonal.

The Consequences of Being Impersonal

Not sure whether personalization is worth the rewards? If so, here is another factor to consider. Failing to personalize website content may carry serious risks, such as creating a critical divide between you and your customers.

Retail options that aren’t tailored to customers not only feel impersonal, but they also create disconnection, dissatisfaction and less engagement. In fact, 75 percent of online customers report feeling frustrated with websites when the content doesn’t have anything to do with their interests.

For example, imagine that you meet a new person at a company event. You have a detailed conversion, which includes providing this person with information about where you live, your interests and what’s going on in your life. A couple of weeks later, you meet the same person. Upon meeting again, you reintroduce yourselves. Then you realize the person doesn’t remember you. How do you feel? Probably not great.

This is the equivalent of what happens when apparel brands fail to provide in-depth, personalized experiences. In an instant, the customer feels disconnected from the company. Previously you were engaged, feeling loyal and great about a company; then in a second, all that hard work vanishes.

Many apparel companies are realizing the increasing importance of personalization, yet 95 percent of marketers are stuck in “analysis paralysis,” unsure of the next best move. Or they think that personalized strategies are for larger companies with big teams and high budgets, so they get stuck. The right strategies and tools, however, can quickly help apparel companies of all sizes get “unstuck” as they steadily grow customer loyalty and revenue. But where should you start?

4 Steps to Greater Web Personalization

With so many options for creating greater web personalization, some apparel companies aren’t sure where to start. Which step comes first, and what areas should you focus on when creating these strategies? Here are four e-commerce personalization tactics that will help you get on track!

1. Acquisition

Locating the right customers is a challenge that most companies face. When you invest valuable dollars to attract and capture the interest of potential customers, it’s critical to maximize that ROI. Web personalization ensures that you present the right message at the right time to your buyer. It’s also important to test your strategy so you can determine what works – and what doesn’t.

For example, one way that apparel companies can accomplish this is by pulling together a welcome message for the first-time website visitor. You don’t know anything about that customer – no geographical information, previous buying patterns or preferences. But what you do know is that it’s the customer’s first visit to your website. As a result, you can create a welcome message based on where the customer originated. For example, one company experienced three times the revenue and a six fold boost in leads after launching a welcome message for visitors who came from Pinterest.

The welcome message can also provide an incentive for providing an email address. Instead of a “subscribe message,” the retailer could provide a “welcome message” along with a coupon offer once it has identified the person as new to the site. For example, two minutes into the shopping session, high-end retailer Superette pops up an offer for new site visitors to receive $10 off when they provide their email to sign up for the Superette newsletter.

Once the customer inputs his or her email address, Superette starts sending personalized content and offers to create greater engagement.

2. Engagement

Personalization is the cornerstone of effective engagement. Providing true personalization, however, requires you to capture relevant information and details from your customers. For example, consider the media company Netflix. From the moment you subscribe, they start collecting details about your preferences. After you have watched a movie or television episode, they ask you to rate it. When you do so, they start to truly understand your likes and dislikes and can make more accurate recommendations and boost engagement. Plus, the media provider allows you to create profiles that distinguish your preferences from those of other members of your family, such as your spouse or children.

Distinguishing the various likes of all family members is something that apparel companies can fine-tune in the future if they don’t serve just one demographic but several. For example, go back to the Chef Works example. This retailer sells clothing for men and women. Greater personalization could help determine whom a customer is shopping for so they can serve up relevant offers. Not sure what data to collect? Here are a few items to consider.

• Search terms used. What search terms is the prospect using to arrive at your site? Cataloging these terms will help you understand the types of products and services the person is seeking.
• Referral source. In the example above, a welcome page was developed for those new prospects arriving from Pinterest. Understanding the referral source will help you view customers in context. For example, maybe they arrived from Facebook. If so, that may be how they prefer to receive coupons and offers from your apparel company.
• Number of visits. How many times has the customer visited your website? When arriving at the website, what does he or she do? Perhaps the person adds several items to their cart, then leaves to comparison shop before returning (or not returning if he or she finds something better). All of this data is valuable in understanding customers’ behaviors in context and their buying journeys.
• Pages viewed. Pages viewed provide valuable information about the types of clothing that interest the prospective customer most. For example, do they always search dresses? If so, you can send email alerts when new dress inventory is added, creating higher engagement and personalization.
• Location. Even for online retailers, geolocation data is very useful. For example, let’s say that 50 percent of your customers reside in California, and those customers also include a highly profitable segment. If so, you can offer free shipping to customers by geographic location.

Web personalization allows you to tell your customers “We know you and care about your preferences.” As a result, these customers become more informed about and engaged with your apparel products and offerings.

3. Conversion

Web personalization is a critical stepping stone to closing the deal. When you attract and start engaging with your customers, you’re training them to recognize your apparel brand, feel more loyal and move toward action. And remember, conversions don’t always have to be sales. It can be a customer signing up for your email list or using a website coupon provided as a special offer.

For example, perhaps you created an offer for a specific demographic based on a variety of factors, such as number of purchases, value of purchases and shopping frequency. Maybe it’s a segment of customers who made one large purchase in the past but haven’t shopped since. When they visit your website, you present them with a compelling offer: 50 percent off one apparel item when it is purchased in the next 24 hours.

These types of offers can drive greater conversions and sales through subtle but impactful website personalization.

4. Retention and Cross- or Upselling

Online retailer Amazon is perhaps one of the most well-known examples of retention and cross- and upselling. First of all, the website includes a plethora of personalized cross- and upsells.

Amazon remembers your interests and includes related items in “Inspired by your shopping trends.”

But the site does not stop there. It includes other items, such as:

• More top picks for you
• Items inspired by your shopping trends
• New items for you
• Items recommended for you in specific departments

Plus, they allow you to scroll back in time and check out items you recently viewed. Apparel companies can take a page from Amazon’s playbook and use the above categories to create more in-depth shopping experiences for their customers. For example, even if customers don’t purchase, they can keep track of recently viewed items or view related suggestions in the future.

When you accomplish this, you instantly create a one-on-one conversation with the shopper. You can ask him or her to rate products and then provide even greater personalization in the future based on those details.

Personalization Creates Advocacy

Web personalization puts apparel companies in the perfect position to create long-term loyalty and advocacy. Engaging with customers from the very moment they learn about your company, and throughout the sales cycle, helps you speak to them in a way totally different from ever before. The conversation is no longer one-sided, and customers feel “talked with” rather than “talked at” by the brand. Instead, they’re having a two-way conversation, where the customer is truly heard and understood.

The divide between company and customer is greatly reduced, as the apparel company transforms into a “trusted advisor” that shoppers rely on to make their shopping experience more efficient and delightful. As a result, the “mediocre” shopping experience of the past gives way to experiences where the customer truly feels known by the brand.

What Is SLI?

At SLI, our machine-learning platform offers the most advanced technology available to accelerate your e-commerce and continuously delight customers at every click.

For more tips, check out our platform guide, “SLI Advanced Technology and Infrastructure Overview.”

In this article I’ll outline a few of the best practices for website personalization in the apparel industry. In particular, I’ll highlight some of the top features of website personalization software, and how you can leverage those features to create a dynamic, engaging shopping experience.

Dynamic product recommendations

Providing a personalized shopping experience for your customers is largely centered around one thing: accurate product recommendations at the right times. To accomplish this, relying on an e-commerce personalization software program that is automated with machine learning is the only true viable option dynamically merchandising as your customers shop.

Consider using merchandising banners to provide targeted product recommendations to your customers throughout their shopping journey. Based on what they are viewing, what’s in their cart, and past search queries and purchases, your software can generate tailored product recommendations.

Product recommendations generated in this fashion have a higher conversion rate from browsers to buyers, lead to larger purchases per visit, and increase transitions from one-time shoppers to repeat customers.

Brand continuity

One critical, but sometimes overlooked aspect of creating a custom, unique shopping experience is maintaining brand continuity throughout your site. From search result to landing page to product page, your site should have a consistent look and feel throughout.

This approach is more aesthetically pleasing while giving your customers seamless transitions between pages. Prioritizing brand continuity throughout your personalization implementation is an important step in cultivating both brand awareness, and ultimately increased brand loyalty.

 Intelligent search functionality

Merely placing a search box with a magnifying glass on it in the corner of your site is no longer adequate for e-commerce markets. Users require an intuitive, self-correcting product discovery layer which begins as the first few characters are entered.

Automatically incorporate trending and seasonal products into search results, then configure your search to act as a personal shopper for your visitors by curating a relevant selection in real-time based on their activity.

Lastly, your search engine should include navigation assistance such as product filtering by brand or type, so that users can quickly and easily navigate to broad or specific categories.  Each of these features is critical to transforming your customer’s shopping experience from bland to unique.

Geolocation for products

In the apparel industry, geographic differences in fashion trends can have a measurable impact on your bottom line. Customers in the Northeastern United States during December may want significantly different products than their counterparts in the Southwest.

Ensuring that your personalized shopping experience accounts for these differences in location requires enabling geolocation for your products. Geolocation can also take into account regional differences in price, style, or preference.

With geolocation enabled, your intelligent searching system will recommend products based on where the customer is conducting the search from. This will allow you to always provide the most relevant search results, and more accurately predict the products that customers are searching for.

Bespoke landing pages

Creating unique and engaging landing pages for your products is not only a personalization best practice in the apparel industry, it is also an important aspect of Search Engine Optimization. With the right website personalization software in place, creating dynamic, unique landing pages for products can be accomplished easily and effectively.

Customized landing pages offer a cost-effective way to create a unique, personalized shopping experience that will help your apparel company stand out from the competition. Further, by using this technique you can integrate your merchandising team into your website personalization efforts. The result is a more aesthetically pleasing, customized shopping experience.

Download the SLI ESP product brief to learn more about how website personalization can help grow your e-commerce business.

In the online retail environment, delivering on this expectation can mean the difference between success and failure. But choosing the right e-commerce personalization software for your company can be a daunting process. With so many options on the market that offer varying degrees of features and support, it’s worth taking a hard look at what you need, and what you’ll get out of personalization software.

In this article we’ll discuss some of the key features you should consider when choosing e-commerce personalization software. While this list will by no means be exhaustive, it will help you zero in on critical features that your personalization software package should include, and hopefully lead you to make a more informed, intelligent decision.

 Robust, machine-driven learning

Is the foundation of your potential e-commerce personalization software based on an intelligent, machine-driven learning system? If not, it won’t be able to deliver search results and product recommendations tailored to your shopper and that continually improve without your intervention.

Machine-driven personalization software can more quickly and accurately assess your customer’s needs and provide dynamic search and navigation results, as well as product recommendations based on past shopping history, search history, and seasonal trends.

Machine-driven analytics are necessary to provide the unique shopping experience your customers’ desire in real-time.

Customizable for your needs

Your website personalization software should be customizable for your specific industry and needs. One-size-fits-all software packages fail to deliver the customizability that allows consistent application in different markets.

A customizable software package allows you to tune your personalization software in the ways that best serve you. The result is a sleeker, more tailored software package that offers better support for your products and brand.

Powerful navigation options

Simply having a search function on your site is no longer adequate for providing the customized shopping experience your customers demand. Seek out e-commerce personalization software that includes smart site navigation tools to help your customers quickly and efficiently find the products they want. Intelligent search functionality that provides targeted, personalized product recommendations is a key feature that will allow you to step past the stale search functionality of your competitors.

Additionally, website personalization software that offers smart filtering options will increase ease of site navigation, both for desktop and mobile users. Filtering options should not only include filtering by product, but also filtering by brand or similar products, which will result in larger transactions per visit and higher customer retention.

Desktop and mobile support

It is critical that your e-commerce personalization software includes support for both desktop and mobile shoppers. With more shopping being done on mobile or handheld devices than ever before, it is imperative that your E-Commerce platform taps into these markets.

Having one personalization software provider for both also creates greater continuity between shopping experiences on both types of devices. This allows your customers to have a consistent, customized shopping experience regardless of the device they are accessing your content from.

Ensure that your personalization software platform includes navigation tools that aid both users. Autocomplete is especially important, as screen sizes and on-screen keyboards become smaller and smaller, and shoppers are less likely to type out lengthy search terms to find the products they want.

Cloud-based systems

Seek out an e-commerce personalization platform that relies on cloud-based infrastructure.  Cloud-based software analytics and hardware provides additional redundancy in case of hardware failures or system outages. This ensures that your e-commerce site will have greater depth and breadth of coverage, and that you are less likely to be affected by local issues such as a power outage or ISP failure.

Secondly, cloud-based systems give your personalization software the ability to easily expand with your company’s needs.  If you experience a pre-holiday rush of sales, cloud-based systems can meet the demand for short-term expansion. If you are experiencing rapid growth as an e-commerce site, you will be secure in knowing that your personalization software will be able to keep up with your growth over time.

Both of these factors combined result in a greater continuity of service for your customers, both on a day-to-day basis and in the years to come.

As you search for the e-commerce personalization software that is right for your business, look for one that provides robust site search based on machine learning. For help, read our white paper, 10 Top Considerations for Choosing a Site Search Provider.

After all, marketing with content pays off. The Content Marketing Institute found that companies that adopt content marketing see conversion rates that are nearly six times higher than their competitors. In fact, content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times more site traffic than nonleaders.

While content marketing requires an investment of time, money and skill, here are four practical ways any online business can provide shoppers with useful content that drives commerce:

1. Get seriously social. Be sure to align your social media strategy with the way your customers use it, applying resources where they matter most. Find out which channels your customers use most with tools like BuzzSumo and others that do the in-depth research for you. If you have more fans on Pinterest than Twitter, then cater to those users with high-quality photo content that’s perfect for pinning.

You can also integrate content from your social media networks into your website to deliver more information to shoppers and get them excited about buying your products. For example, with more than 26,000 Facebook likes and nearly 5,000 Twitter followers, Adore Beauty knows that it makes sense to bring its social conversations into its product search. When you use the search box on the adorebeauty.com site, you’ll see related product results along with social media posts, discussions and articles related to the same search term.

2. Bust out your blog. A blog is an excellent way to incorporate non-product content while showcasing your brand’s individual voice. It can also generate some great organic traffic to your site and naturally improve your search engine optimization.

The e.l.f. Cosmetics beauty blog offers a prime example. Posts share a wide range of beauty topics, from tips and how-tos to the most up-to-date seasonal beauty trends. Many of these posts don’t actually promote e.l.f. products, but provide fun insight or helpful information. The celebrity-inspired looks, with links to the products needed, are powerful for driving conversion.

To make finding valuable content seamless, include blog content in search results — somewhere below best-selling products but above the fold. Keep in mind that while a blog can be an impactful tool for posting information about new products, it should first be an educational resource. Balance promotions with content that’s purely meant to educate and help solve readers’ problems.

3. Serve up tips, tutorials and recipes. Whether selling fishing rods or casserole dishes, specialty retailers can offer great educational value and a sense of community to their customers online. Step-by-step articles with photos or video instructions build excitement about the products needed for a task.

For instance, for every product search, Andersen Windows’ site serves up results with support information and technical documents, including spec sheets, installation guides and how-to videos. As a one-stop shop for the products and instructional information its customers need, Andersen has become an invaluable resource.

Catering to food fans? King Arthur Flour, a popular site for bakers of all levels to purchase baking products, has made it easy for customers to share recipes, read reviews, shop for ingredients, and link to related videos or blogs. By connecting users with ingredients and products that can be bought right on-site, King Arthur Flour increased its conversion rates from 3.7 percent to almost 6 percent, and search-based revenue from 17 percent to nearly 50 percent.

4. Get real with FAQs. The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page doesn’t have to be dull — it can be a great tool for content marketing. By answering customer questions in a creative way, the FAQ page can help engage your customers, demonstrate knowledge and show your brand’s personality. Customer questions can also fuel ideas for other content, such as a new blog post or a helpful how-to video. Then, when people search for answers, they’ll find even more of your content to help.

REI is one retailer that makes great use of FAQs. The outdoor retailer fields actual questions from its customers and turns them into how-to and advice videos on its “REI Find Out” YouTube channel. The effort positions REI as an authority. When people look online for answers to questions like how to fix a bike flat, REI’s content will pop up in their search.

These four strategies, among others, increase customer engagement, loyalty and, ultimately, sales. To be effective, content-rich sites must ensure shoppers can quickly find relevant content. Be sure that you provide site search that exceeds expectations with an advanced autocomplete function (i.e., makes suggestions as you type) and intuitive navigation. A search box drop-down with thumbnail images, mini descriptions and prices are eye-catching features. After all, your customers may not even know you offer a particular product until you show them.

This article first appeared in Total Retail on January 7, 2017.

Website navigation is something that most companies know is important, but far too many don’t spent enough time optimizing it for maximum results. When shoppers arrive and find navigation that isn’t friendly, they click away, often straight into the arms of competitors.

Even small changes can have a serious impact on the bottom line. Here are seven strategies for improving navigation and maximizing conversions.

Draft “A” Players to the Menu

Most navigation menus are created logically based on what companies believe customers will search for without much consideration about the impact of quantity. When it comes to the number of choices available on the menu, less is always better. But why?

Psychological experiments show that a person’s short-term memory holds only a limited number of items. When you pass that limit, you start forgetting items. But what is that perfect number?

There are seven days in a week, seven colors in a rainbow, seven seas and a seven-number limit on what people will remember (it can be plus or minus a couple of items, depending on the individual). So start thinking about your navigation menu as the “A team.” There are a limited number of spots, so reserve those spots for the very best performers.

For example, check out PetsPyjamas website. The company has narrowed down its navigation menu to four items.

Key takeaway. The navigation menu should contain no more than seven items. Test different items to discover which combination produces the best results.

Order Items with Purpose

When creating the navigation menu, consider what is known as the “serial position effect,” which explains the tendency of people to recall the first and last item on a list. All those items that appear in the middle are generally lost.

For example, the last time you visited the grocery store you may have asked your significant other, “Hey, do you need anything?” He or she then rattled off several items, which you tried to commit to memory. The first few items stuck and the last items stuck — but everything else in the middle was lost. This is the serial position effect in action. But how does it apply to optimizing your navigation?

The answer is simple. Take the two most important items from your navigation list, and place those in the prime spots, which are the first and last navigation positions.

For example, if your most profitable category is shoes, you should list it first on the navigation menu, followed by another highly important category. Contact Us should be placed last. Number each page that will appear on the navigation menu by importance and place as appropriate.

Key takeaway. Ordering your navigation menu intuitively is a good start, but if you want to drive greater results, you need more. The most important items should always go first and last in the lineup.

Use Descriptive Words

Visit any website and you’ll often view general navigation headers such as Products, Services or About Us. These labels get the job done, but if you want to drive greater conversions, you need to get descriptive.

Most customers start by searching something specific, not “products” or “services.” So when you find a way to incorporate the descriptive words that customers search into your navigation headings, it creates optimized results.

For example, perhaps a customer searches for “winter boots” and locates several retail stores that offer that category of product. If you have a navigation category titled “winter boots,” that will help optimize your website and conversions.

If you aren’t sure which terms are being searched, check out the Google Keywords tool, which reveals the keywords that customers are searching to find similar products and services. There are also various analytics tools that will uncover this information.

Key takeaway. If you have a choice between listing “services” or a specific service on the navigation menu, always opt for the latter. Being specific results in a website that is instantly more optimized and relevant to customers.

Break Down Search Barriers

Site search does not get enough credit. Shoppers who use site search are some of your most profitable customers, with order values 11 percent higher than non-searchers’ order values. Evaluate your existing site search and ask, “Could it work better?”

Start by placing the search bar strategically. For example, make your search bar more noticeable by changing the color so it stands out. WebUndies.com created an off-white navigation bar to ensure that users can easily find it.

Party Supplies Delivered includes a colored button next to the search feature to make it stand out.

You can also place text inside the search bar to encourage visitors to use it. For example, you can include text such as “enter keyword or item number” to get customers started. And finally, it’s always important to ensure that your search functionality works properly and customers don’t turn up empty-handed when searching your products.

Key takeaway. Customers who use search are more likely to purchase. If your website navigation strategy does not optimize search, consider revising it. Shoppers who search are proven to convert and spend more on average. Capture these shoppers and you can quickly improve your bottom line.

Create Strategic Navigation for Different Audiences

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice says, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” The Cheshire Cat replies, “Well, that depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” Alice says, “I don’t much care where.” And the Cheshire cat replies, “Well, then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.”

Like Alice, customers need direction. They have a general sense of where they’d like to go, but need companies to illuminate their path and make it easy. Some companies have two or more very different segments they serve. As a result, the content they need to view is distinctly different.

For example, clothing company Aeropostale serves both men and women. They must provide relevant experiences for both audiences, but first and foremost they need to get them headed in the right direction.

The company accomplishes this with a choice on the home page, “Shop Girls” or “Shop Guys”, which helps people navigate in the right direction.

Key takeaway. If you serve two very different segments, navigation should be optimized to lead each group quickly to the right path. Accomplishing this results in far fewer lost visitors, decreased bounce rates, and higher online conversions.

Create Fat Footers

Navigation fatigue is a real thing. To combat it, use all of your website real estate, especially that footer. This is a place where you can provide a bird’s-eye view of the site and allow users to zoom in and find what they need most.

This is also a huge SEO opportunity, because you can include commonly searched words to drive more traffic. Plus, since the footer is neatly tucked away at the bottom of the page, it doesn’t clutter up the user experience.

Justin Boots uses this strategy. The company, which sells high-quality boots for men and women, lists relevant SEO terms with links to their pages at the footer.

Key takeaway. Include your most important navigation terms in the header of the page, but don’t forget about the footer space. This commonly unused space can provide additional navigation and SEO opportunities.

Monitor Customer Behavior

Reach your customers and generate greater results by understanding their behavior on your website. For example, analytics tools provide insight into a customer’s journey through your website, ranging from where they originated to the various pages they visited.

Tapping into this data can help you understand overarching themes in customer navigation and behavior. For example, you may discover that a large percentage of customers are exiting your website on the same page. Why are bounce rates for this page so high? Could it be an issue with the navigation, or does the content need revising? Make changes and test the results to uncover the problem.

Key takeaway. Understand customer behavior to optimize navigation. These patterns tell a story and allow you to make changes to enhance the customer experience and drive greater impact.

Delight Your Customers

Navigation is about decreasing bounce rates and driving conversions, but at its core it’s about the customer. Strategically optimizing navigation is a time commitment for companies, but to the customer it must always feel simple. Navigation menus, search boxes, and all pieces of the puzzle must work together effortlessly to create experiences that eliminate friction.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said, “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little better.” When you start thinking like a host rather than an e-commerce company, you naturally create more delightful experiences — and the conversions quickly follow.

What is SLI Systems?

At SLI, our machine-learning platform offers up the most advanced technology available to accelerate your e-commerce and continuously delight customers at every click. SLI Learning Navigation® builds dynamic navigation based on shopper behavior to guide shoppers to what they want in the fewest amount of clicks.

For more tips, check out our e-book The Big Book of Navigation Tips.

Adapting your SEO strategy to support your e-commerce site can be a daunting process. This is particularly true for companies that are just beginning to venture into e-commerce. Consistently achieving high rankings on search engines is vitally important to the success of your e-commerce business.

High rankings equal more traffic, which, in turn, results in larger sales and a higher bottom line.  But staying on top of the rapidly shifting algorithms search engines use to rank websites can seem nearly impossible at times. In this article we’ll go over some basic tips that can help your company effectively transition your SEO strategy to better support your e-commerce goals.

Adopting some of these basic guidelines can help ensure that traffic to your site, and consequently sales, don’t dip as search engine algorithms change.

Use a Platform That Integrates SEO

While this tip may be obvious, many companies still attempt to implement effective SEO in-house. Although there are varying degrees of success with this, it is important for many companies seeking to expand their e-commerce site to build their SEO strategy around a flexible platform that incorporates a robust SEO functionality into its framework.

By using a platform to streamline your SEO efforts, you are able to better focus on two other areas of e-commerce that matter: your products and your customers. Platforms that integrate SEO have the inherent advantage of being able to apply seamless changes across the framework of your site to adapt to changing search engine algorithms.

Additionally, a platform that incorporates support for SEO will allow you the flexibility to make quick and effective adjustments to your landing pages and internal linking so that you continually rank high on search engines.

Create Smart Landing Pages

Creating smart landing pages for your products should be an integral part of your SEO strategy.  Your platform should be flexible enough to allow you to create landing pages based on the products that your customers are searching for.

These landing pages will then be crawled and picked up by search engines, resulting in higher rankings and more traffic. Ensure that your landing pages can be created dynamically, so that you can quickly and effectively adapt to both your customer’s changing shopping patterns and changes to search engine algorithms.

Make Your E-Commerce Site Mobile-Friendly

Although ensuring that your site can be accessed easily and quickly from both mobile and desktop devices should be a cornerstone of your e-commerce strategy, many companies fail to account for mobile accessibility in their SEO efforts.

Having responsive pages that load quickly on mobile devices will result in higher rankings on search engine results. When designing or making improvements to your e-commerce site, make sure that each page is optimized for mobile.

Prioritize User Experience

Adapting your site design to enhance user experience should also be a cornerstone of your SEO strategy. Ensure that your site is easily navigable and searchable. Include robust search and autocomplete functionality that will allow your customers to easily find the products they’re looking for.

Also implement intelligent structuring into your site, and verify that search queries end up where they are intended to go. Focus on curating quality content over quantity. Lastly, respond to feedback from customers, whether it be through direct feedback or analysis of usage patterns, to ensure that your site is structured and designed for optimal usability.

Don’t Forget About Security

Utilizing SSL or HTTPS security on your site is a necessity in todays e-commerce world. Not only will your customers feel more secure, but your rankings on search engines will also be positively impacted. Failure to use SSL or HTTPS on your website will result in search engines labelling your site as “not secure,” which will impact both your rankings and the traffic generated to your site.

Ensure that your SEO strategy includes shoring up any security vulnerabilities on your site, and verify that your site is utilizing SSL or HTTPS. Your customers will appreciate it, and your rankings will improve.

For more help improving your SEO strategy to better support e-commerce, watch our webinar How to Get the SEO-Driven Revenue You’re Missing.

As Easter draws near, online retailers around the world should be prepared to maximize every dollar they can from the increase of shoppers they’ll have over the holiday.

In 2016, more than 8 in 10 Americans celebrated Easter, according to an NRF survey. Those who celebrated spent an average of $146 per person on planned Easter purchases—a 3.8 increase over the previous years’ spending.

In some locales, Easter is a much larger shopping holiday than it is in the U.S. In the UK last year, planned Easter purchases rose 4.3 percent, when compared to sales in April 2015. Easter shoppers in the UK spend more since the UK declares the Friday before Easter Sunday and the Monday after, bank holidays. Also over Easter, schools in the UK close for two weeks, prompting many families to increase spending not only on traditional Easter goods, but also on travel, sporting goods and DIY projects.

Online retailers whose markets cover areas where Easter celebrations are pronounced can benefit from taking proactive steps to prepare their e-commerce strategy for an influx of customers in the coming months. Here’s what e-commerce companies need to know.

Industries That Should Be Prepared for Easter Shoppers

While all e-commerce retailers will do well to prepare for Easter shoppers this year, it’s more critical in some industries than others. Apparel, sporting goods, travel and home improvement retailers should be prepared for larger-than-average sales numbers this Easter season, as should retailers selling movies, books and magazines.

Personalization: The Key to a Successful E-Commerce Presence

Today, customers shopping online have more opportunities than they could ever hope to redeem. Thousands of online merchants provide products that are similar to or duplicates of one another, and it’s harder than it’s ever been to get noticed online.

Fortunately, e-commerce merchants still have one secret weapon: personalization.

In a world where the possibilities are limitless and customers can have anything they want, whenever they want it, personalization can serve as the added “boost” that helps differentiate one company from another.

Personalize Your Shopping Experience with Smart Recommendations

Today, there are dozens of different solutions for e-commerce retailers who want to make the shopping experience more personal for customers. Tools designed to “learn” from customer behavior and make recommendations based upon it are a great place to start. In addition to providing a more personalized shopping experience, these tools can also do the following things:

• Boost E-Commerce Sales. Tools that learn from customer behavior can take a great deal of the guesswork out of your merchandising strategies. By automatically adapting to your customers, they make it easier for your company to cycle products according to customer desire, which allows for more (and simpler) e-commerce sales.
• Create Cross-Sell & Upsell Opportunities. Companies that already have customers on their website over the Easter holiday want to do everything in their power to enhance the order value of each shopper. The right recommendations can provide compelling cross-sell and upsell opportunities. When this is done efficiently, it can help boost a company’s bottom line.
• Provide Tailored Recommendations. When a tool can learn from a customer’s shopping and browsing behavior, it can display products that are likely to appeal to a given customer. This makes the shopper feel understood by your company, and will lead to repeat sales.

Better Easter Sales Start Here

While many merchants struggle to prepare their sites for sales booms over the Easter holiday, machine learning, cloud-based tools are the perfect place to turn.

Recommendations that are powered by cloud-based machine learning reduce site managers’ legwork and make it easier for companies to deliver a highly personalized, targeted shopping experience to each and every customer, naturally leading to happier shoppers and higher Easter sales.

To learn how you can maximize average order values on a cloud-based, machine learning platform, read the SLI Systems Learning Recommendations product brief.

Additionally, shoppers that search for items are more likely to be converted from browsers to buyers, and less likely to move on to other vendors. While site search functionality can be found on nearly every e-commerce site today, many sites fail to capitalize on the power of search because they don’t incorporate a powerful autocomplete feature in their search design.

First, let’s cover some of the top reasons why autocomplete is essential for site search functionality, particularly in the changing e-commerce landscape of 2017. Finally, I’ll discuss how autocomplete can be enhanced to provide a rich shopping experience that leads to even higher conversions.

More Mobile Shoppers Than Ever Before

For the first time ever, more people are shopping from mobile over desktop devices. This trend is expected to continue throughout 2017 and beyond. Autocomplete is essential for catering to mobile shoppers on your site. Many shoppers on mobile devices expect a powerful autocomplete function so that they can easily navigate between different products.

Shoppers desire the convenience of not having to type out complete product names or descriptions on a small screen keyboard. Accommodating this will result in higher revenue per visit and greater customer retention.

Seamless Desktop to Mobile Shopping Experience

Autocomplete functionality for both desktop and mobile devices allows you to deliver a consistent shopping experience across all devices. Users on mobile devices have begun to expect a similar shopping experience regardless of the device they access your site through, and it is up to you to deliver on this expectation.

Autocomplete assures desktop and mobile users that they can quickly access whatever product they are searching for without having to deal with lengthy search terms or search filtering options that may be unwieldy on mobile devices.

Easier Site Navigation

Intelligent site design, with a focus on simple navigation, has always been crucial to shaping a satisfactory online shopping experience. Incorporating autocomplete into your site’s search tool is an essential aspect of overall site design. Although smart site layout, menu options, and filtering tools are important aspects of ensuring shoppers can find the products they desire, autocomplete adds another dimension to these tools.

Autocomplete enables your customers to quickly and easily find the products they are looking for, without having to scroll through pages of similar products first. If customers are confident they can find products quickly and efficiently, they are more likely to be converted from one-time shoppers to repeat customers.

 A Richer Autocomplete Experience

The benefits of autocomplete are not limited to quick and easy navigation, however. While this is the core function of autocomplete, it can also be configured to learn from shopper’s behavior and offer dynamic product recommendations based on a customer’s shopping and purchasing history.

This will allow shoppers to quickly access products they repeatedly purchase, or products similar to those they have already searched for. Additionally, if a shopper is using more general search terms, autocomplete can offer category recommendations by brand, product type, or department level – allowing shoppers to quickly navigate to the level they want to browse.

Zachy’s Wine and Liquor capitalizes on the converting power of autocomplete by enhancing their standard functionality with search suggestions based on user behavior, made visually appealing with product images and short product descriptions.

By combining intelligent recommendations and product images into its autocomplete feature, Zachy’s increased conversion rate by 10x for shoppers using site search, and average order values by 2x for those same shoppers.

These aspects of predictive autocomplete create a more customized shopping experience for your customers, and can result in higher revenue per transaction through recommendations. Leveraging a rich autocomplete platform on your site is crucial to generating greater revenue online. Autocomplete allows you to easily offer a more customized shopping experience for nearly every site visitor.

Autocomplete is an essential tool for catering to mobile shoppers by giving them the tools they need to quickly and conveniently navigate through your site to the products they want.  Autocomplete also allows you to cater to both desktop and mobile shoppers – giving shoppers the seamless shopping experience they desire regardless of the device they are using.

To learn more about autocomplete and how to improve the search functionality on your site, take a peak at our e-book The Quick Guide to Better Site Search.

Travel back a century, and personalized experiences weren’t the exception but rather the norm. When you entered a department store, the clerk would know your name, remember recent purchases and make personalized shopping recommendations.

A few items from the most recent store shipment may have even been held for you because the clerk truly understood your preferences. Fast-forward several decades, and brands today are creating these same experiences — but they’re doing it much differently.

Retail e-commerce sales are forecasted to reach almost $1.92 trillion this year, with double-digit growth expected through 2020. At the heart of this growth are personalized experiences. Gartner predicts that by 2018, B2B companies with effective personalization strategies will outsell their competitors by 30 percent.

But where should you start? Here are five personalization tactics to leverage in your e-commerce strategy.

Personalizing Email: Going Beyond First and Last Name

People frequently receive emails from retailers that include first and last name personalization. But think about it. After reading these emails, do people really feel a personal connection with the brand? Probably not. This “first and last name” tactic was the earliest form of personalization, but marketers today are taking this one step further to achieve excellent results.

A study by Experian revealed that personalized email promotions resulted in a 29 percent open rate and a 41 percent click-thru rate when compared to emails that do not have personalization.

But it’s important to note that customers aren’t just reading and opening these emails at higher rates. They are also making purchases. In fact, 41 percent of customers report purchasing more from retailers that send them personalized emails. But where should you start?

If you want to optimize your email campaigns to drive greater open rates, click-through rates, and sales, consider segmenting your customers into carefully selected categories so that each individual receives more relevant emails.

Start by examining the behavior of each customer. For example, you could evaluate how frequently customers have purchased in the past and segment them into three different categories – one-time buyers, three-time buyers, and buyers who are no longer engaged.

Once you have these segments, you can create messaging designed to resonate with each group based on that group’s levels of engagement. This means that emails sent to frequent purchasers will be much different than emails sent to those with low engagement levels. For example, you may choose to send the disengaged customers a “we miss you” email with a special offer or other incentives to shop again.

Implementing triggers is another great way to reach and engage with customers on a more personal level. Begin by carefully tracking the behavior of customers on your website. You can set up triggers that will send off emails based on this behavior. For example, let’s say that a customer abandons her shopping cart. Within seconds, she could receive an email focused on reengagement that includes a discount if she purchases within the next 24 hours. drives her to make a purchase (more on that in a minute).

Key takeaway. Use data about your customers’ behavior to drive personalization efforts. Segment groups of customers with the same behavior to create targeted, personalized campaigns, such as email campaigns to reengage shoppers and drive sales.

Webpages: Add Relevancy to Your Pages

Most companies have a standard website that greets all customers. Maybe you’ve even evaluated the performance of your website through A/B testing. But your home page could be converting an even larger number of visitors with some simple tactics in personalization.

Footwear etc. was able to leverage past customer data to display personalized products on its home page in real time. While this may seem like a small change, they saw a 10% increase in revenue per visitor as well as a 5% increase in conversion rate and average order value (AOV).

Key takeaway: Get customers to the products they want faster by delivering personalized experiences in real time.

Ramp Up Relevancy with Real-Time Offers

Real-time personalization is one of the most innovative strategies for e-commerce companies to deploy. This technology creates a highly personalized experience for every visitor. But how does it work?

Real-time data is collected from visitors on your website through cookies and other tools. Logic rules match the visitors’ data and segment them into groups. For example, you may show a targeted pop-up to a visitor who arrives from a certain website. Here are a few more methods used to create real-time offers and experiences.

• Past content: Some companies are capturing details about content the customer has viewed in the past. In fact, 48 percent of marketers use this type of data to create real-time offers.
• Geographic location: Forty-five percent of companies use location to create contextually relevant offers.
• Time on site: Thirty-six percent of companies use this type of data to create relevant offers.
• Site navigational behavior: Thirty-five percent use data about how a customer is navigating the site to provide relevant offers.

The payoffs for personalizing content in real time are large, with nearly three-quarters of companies citing increased visitor engagement as a main benefit and 54 percent saying it improved the customer experience.

When you collect information about each customer on an individual level, a higher level of personalization is available. For example, from where did they enter your site, and how many times have they visited your site? If the customer is a repeat customer, you could send a coupon to his or her mobile device to increase loyalty and close the deal.

Key takeaway. Ask customers to buy lunch right after they’ve eaten — and they won’t buy. They aren’t hungry. But target the customers as they’re walking into the food court at a mall — and now you’ve hit the sweet spot. Achieving the highest level of personalization is all about timing. When you tap into this timing element, sales will drastically improve.

Serving Up Recommendations Like a Friend

If you’re shopping with a friend at an electronics store, he or she might call out, “Hey, didn’t you say you needed batteries? AAA batteries are down this aisle.” Providing personalized recommendations is all about acting like that friend. First and foremost, it’s about being helpful. Once you accomplish that, along with understanding what that “friend” needs most, sales will naturally follow.

Personalized recommendations are welcomed by your customers, and some even look for them on your website. In fact, 77 percent of shoppers say they find recommendations extremely useful, and nearly one-third of customers report having purchased products based on recommendations the company has shown during the sales process. Here are a few tips for creating these types of personalized experiences for your customers.

• Target customers based on pages visited. Harnessing data from pages that customers have visited allows you to include specific product recommendations based on interests. For example, you can provide suggestions with terms such as “people also viewed” or “people also bought.”
• Review previously purchased items. The items that your customers have purchased in the past may tell a story about their future needs. For example, perhaps they purchased a printer or a water purifier—something that needs refills frequently. Based on this history, you can display relevant replacement items at the precise moment of relevance.
• Serve up location-relevant content. For example, let’s say that you’re walking toward a coffee store. As you get closer, your mobile phone delivers a message and provides a coupon. As a result, you enter the store, use your coupon — and the store derives higher revenue.

Key takeaway. Personalization is about becoming your customer’s trusted adviser and friend. If you consistently serve up relevant recommendations, the customers will begin to listen more intently. As a result, customer relationships will become much stronger.

Personalization on Devices

Mobile accounts for one out of every six dollars spent online. Plus, 40 percent of consumers say they purchase more from retailers that personalize their shopping experience across all channels. As a result, when you are thinking about personalization, it’s critical to address mobile devices.

Customers expect the same shopping experience across all platforms, whether they’re interacting through your website, social media — or a mobile device. Plus, it’s important to note that over half of all searches take place on mobile devices. Real-time personalization, as discussed above, helps you push out relevant offers through the devices your customers are using in the moment.

For example, Apple uses this strategy by integrating the mobile experience with physical store locations. Upon entering the store, customers are greeted by Apple on their mobile devices and shown relevant details about products as they move through the store. Unifying all channels helps create the personalized experiences that customers today demand.

Key takeaway. Personalization can no longer happen through just one channel. It’s about creating consistent and relevant experiences across direct mail, email, desktop, mobile, and any other channel where you can reach your customers.

Personalization: Moving Forward with Greater Impact

Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon, said, “A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.” Personalization isn’t new; marketers have used it for years. The depth at which personalization is achieved, however, is rapidly changing.

Focus first and foremost on the customer. When everything is viewed through the lens of the customer, you instantly become that “trusted advisor,” and results will naturally follow. Using personalization, you create those unexpected moments of serendipity when authenticity is felt and true loyalty is achieved.

Personalization at SLI

At SLI, our machine-learning platform offers the most advanced technology available to accelerate your e-commerce and continuously delight customers at every click. SLI Enhanced Search Personalization instantly and dynamically personalizes the shopping experience for both your first-time visitors and loyal customers in real time.

For more tips, check out our webinar Predict More Sales with Personalization.

Consumers increasingly expect greater ease and personalized experiences from their online interactions. Online retailers are faced with new challenges for engaging with, and adapting to, the demands and expectations of their customer base. Below, I’ve outlined six of the most important e-commerce trends that should be on your radar as you plan your strategy for 2017.

Incorporate these market shifts into your business model to stay on the forefront of the industry and lay the groundwork for future growth. You’ll provide a top-notch online shopping experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

Real-Time Analytics

Online retailers have access to unprecedented amounts of data on their customers. The challenge is not in the gathering, but in how to filter and translate data in real time into usable and actionable insights. Delays between collection and action can be costly.

In 2017, closing this gap will be critical for the success of online retailers. Those who measure in real time can act in real time to optimize their performance. Integrate a robust analytics platform to capture real-time performance, gain immediate insights, and compare them against your goals or KPIs. Your customers will be delighted with their instantly customized shopping experience.

Equal Expectations from Desktop and Mobile

Of all e-commerce trends, probably the most notable is the continued move to mobile. Mobile accounts for over half of all e-commerce traffic. No online retailer can afford to ignore it. Online shoppers in 2017 want a responsive, streamlined experience from mobile and desktop alike.

Consumers will fully expect every functionality and customization they encounter on their desktops when they shop on their mobile devices. Live-chat services, relevant product recommendations, intelligent auto-complete searches, and smart filtering options will all be necessary if you want to expand and retain your mobile consumer base and keep them coming back for more no matter how they choose to shop.

Personalized Shopping Experiences

Smart retailers realize that the same search term doesn’t mean the same thing to every customer. In 2017, both repeat customers and first-time customers will expect a bespoke experience whether they are searching, navigating or being presented with recommendations. Retailers who tap into the power of machine learning to create contextual personalization across their sites will win higher conversions.

To capitalize on this trend, integrate responsive software that learns from customer behavior to present custom-tailored search and navigation results and intelligent predictive product recommendations.

In addition, expand product recommendations beyond the scope of your site. Integrate them into emails, social-media and web banners to enable broad customer engagement in all corners of the Internet.

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

AI is already changing the online retail playing field through predictive search, personalized recommendations, the use of digital shopping assistants and visual product discovery, which allows users to take pictures of items they like, conduct a visual search for the item online, and get personalized recommendations.

Consider how 1-800-Flowers is using AI to power their GWYN (Gifts When You Need) service. Acting like the shopper’s own personal assistant, GWYN asks the shopper a series of questions in order to learn and predict the product that would be most appropriate. If a user types “I’m looking for a gift for my mother,” GWYN will use natural language processing abilities to interpret the search phrase, ask qualifying questions about the occasion, and make smart product recommendations.

With intelligent machine engines running behind the scenes, retailers will be able to deliver to their customers the highest degree of adaptive personalization possible, helping them feel increasingly understood, catered to, and apt to buy. Retailers who ignore this fast-moving trend will be left playing catch up.

Same-Day Shipping & Free Returns

Flexible delivery and return options will be required of online retailers in 2017 and beyond. Services like Amazon Prime’s free two-day and expanded same-day shipping options have shifted customer expectations toward rapid, cheap, or free shipping. Retailers need to be ready to meet these expectations in order to expand and retain their customer base.

Customers also want a painless returns system. Free returns mitigate the risk of online shopping and encourage customer loyalty. Online retailers such as Zappos have been offering free returns with no questions asked, and consumers have begun to expect that service on other sites.

Customer Engagement: Focus on Social Media

Providing seamless customer service across social media platforms will continue to be a big trend in e-commerce. Retailers who engage with customers on diverse social media platforms enhance the user experience, and give their customer multiple venues through which they can directly speak with customer service representatives.

The delocalization of customer service will allow retailers to reach their customer base across a broad network of platforms. At the same time, responsive customer service across social networks helps convert one-time purchasers into return shoppers. Not to mention the fact that this type of customer service drives increased traffic to your site by demonstrating to first-time shoppers that their questions won’t fall through the cracks.

These six e-commerce trends for 2017 demonstrate the need for online retailers to accurately predict their consumers’ needs, while expanding the base with which they engage with customers and potential customers alike. Capitalizing on these trends will require online retailers to expand their e-commerce deployment to include robust systems that offer real-time analytics, intelligent predictive product placement, and a customized user experience, regardless of whether consumers are on a desktop or mobile platform.

To learn how to capitalize on e-commerce trends with predictive search, download this e-book: The Big Book of Site Search Tips.

In 2011, mobile commerce made up only 11.6 percent of the total $303 billion in U.S. e-commerce business. However, this percentage is forecasted to reach 45 percent by 2020. Trends clearly illustrate that mobile commerce is at the forefront of some amazing growth, so how can companies more effectively win over more mobile shoppers in the coming year?

Many customers rely on mobile to shop, but not all customers are having a great experience. Identify the trouble spots, deploy strategies to fix those areas, and serve up experiences that delight customers – and you will create unshakable customer loyalty. But where should you start? Here are some common problem areas to target.

Payment: Create Trust and Simplicity

One of the top reasons that mobile shoppers abandon their carts is concern over payment security. In fact, a survey conducted by eConsultancy discovered that 58 percent of respondents left the checkout page due to concerns about security.

As a customer, when you shop major retailers such as Amazon.com, you already have a relationship established, and your payment details are safely stored online. When shopping with a new retailer, however, you may wonder if your payment is truly safe.

As a retailer, you will capture more shoppers and sales by handling this objection upfront. Start by offering a variety of payment options, including some that are alternative forms of payment, such as PayPal, ApplePay, or Google Wallet.

Forty-three percent of commerce companies already offer these payment alternatives. Using them allows customers to complete the transaction on your site, but payment details are handled through the customer’s favorite alternative payment provider, which offers the shopper additional peace of mind. Here are a few tips to simplify the mobile shopping experience and capture more sales:

• Don’t require account sign-up. Mobile users complete transactions on the go. They are waiting for coffee, riding the train to work, or waiting at the airport. They don’t always have time to create an account. So let users decide whether they want to create an account or “check out as a guest.” Check out this example from Apple, which provides customers with both options:

• Require the fewest steps possible to check out. Look at your existing form. Does it include anything that is unnecessary or that could be streamlined? When it comes to checkout, the fewer steps, the better. Sometimes this involves deleting steps entirely or consolidating steps to provide fewer screens overall. Carefully securitize everything that you require, and ask, “Do we truly need to ask customers for this information?”
• Anticipate customers’ questions. What types of questions does the customer service team commonly receive about the mobile ordering process? Capture this data. Then use it to create a more seamless and intuitive experience for customers.
• Make payment errors easy to fix. Did the user forget to enter something or miss a few digits? If so, make correcting those errors fast and easy. Eliminate potential frustration by ensuring that the customer does not need to re-enter data.
• Ask for only essential information. Customers already feel uneasy about providing payment information to a new retailer. In fact, 11 percent of U.S. adults abandon an online purchase because the site requests too much information, so ask for only the bare minimum.

Key takeaway: Mobile customers move at a much faster pace than desktop users. As a result, commerce companies must continually work to match the rapidly changing needs of these customers. They must continually ask, “How can we simplify the shopping process for the customer?” and “How can we require less from people to complete their transactions?” Asking these questions often enough will help remove potential roadblocks between you and the sale.

Create a Seamless Design

First, it’s important to understand which pages mobile visitors use the most (more on this in a minute). Don’t rely on assumptions, because understanding which pages they use most is one of the most powerful ways to improve the customer experience and capture more sales.  

Once you collect this data, apply the insights directly to the navigation menu. For example, if users visit pages X, Y and Z most frequently, those pages should be the easiest to locate from the home page. Here are a few tips for prioritizing navigation:

• Identify exactly which pages mobile viewers use the most.
• Group these pages by commonalities. If you sell cloud services, for instance, group the most commonly viewed pages related to the cloud in a single category.
• Place the categories (which are driven by the most commonly visited pages) on your mobile navigation menu.

As with any strategy, you’ll want to revisit navigation frequently. The pages that are most popular today may change 12 months from now, and if they do, navigation should be adjusted as well.

When you make a change, measure the results. Are visitors staying on the site longer, and are more of these visitors converting to sales? Understanding this information will assist with driving greater success. Here are a few more tips:

• Delete large graphics and photos to cut back on the time it takes for mobile pages to load.
• Increase the size of call-to-action buttons so they are easier to tap.
• Evaluate existing text. All text should be as concise as possible.

Key takeaway: Provide a great mobile commerce experience with strategies that are fluid. The needs of mobile users change fast, so when you implement a change, measure it. Then continue to track progress and be willing to quickly adapt if those changes shift in the future.

Focus on Speed and Performance

Mobile users expect a fast online experience. Check out these statistics:

• Forty-seven percent of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or faster.
• Pages that don’t load fast enough are abandoned. In fact, 40 percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.
• A one-second delay in page-loading time results in a 7 percent reduction in conversions.

These statistics highlight why the mobile commerce experience needs to be fast. But also consider this: 70 percent of mobile searches lead to action within a single hour. So if pages don’t load quickly enough, the impact on revenue could be significant.  

For example, if your e-commerce site earns an average of $50,000 each day, but a technical issue results in pages that load one second slower, your company could lose over $1.2 million each year – all because of a one-second delay in loading time. So what can you do to speed up performance?

Part of the answer is design. For example, removing clunky graphics that take too long to load is a good start. But often the problem is the actual technology that delivers the mobile experience. Test your site and set a timer. How long are pages taking to load? If there’s a problem, dive into the potential causes to get it resolved quickly.

Key takeaway: The key to capturing and converting more mobile customers is speed. Pages must load fast. What strategies can you use to help pages load more quickly? Generate and deploy these strategies to maximize results in 2017.

Leverage Location-Based Services

Location-based services help shoppers use mobile devices as they shop at brick-and-mortar retailers. This typically works by delivering targeted data to the user’s mobile device when the device travels into a location with an enabled app.

Apple introduced “iBeacons” to its retail locations in recent years. When customers enter the store, they are greeted via their mobile device. The mobile devices then show visitors relevant product information and related promotions as they walk through the store. Visitors even have the ability to pay without getting into a traditional line.

Macy’s recently tried this mobile technology as well. This video shows how it works:

As the customer enters the store, the beacon technology reminds her to open the appropriate mobile application. As she moves through the store, it provides information about specific offers and deals based on the customer’s movements. The device also helps track any products the customer likes and may want to purchase in the future.

Key takeaway: One major advantage of mobile commerce is that companies can finally understand customers in context. Timing is everything, especially when customers are busy and using mobile devices. Location-based technology helps commerce companies get the timing right.

Understand Mobile Customers Better Through Analytics

Mobile analytics is the key to truly understanding your customers, providing insight into such customer behavior as total visits, usage, location, types of devices being used, and any errors that are interrupting the mobile experience. But using analytics starts with asking the right questions. Here are a few suggestions:

• What trends are evident in this segment of mobile commerce customers?
• What pages and features do mobile customers engage with the most?
• What are customers doing (or not doing) through mobile?
• What actions would you like customers to take through mobile? And how can you change the experience to influence those behaviors?
• Are there ways that you can provide more personalized messages or experiences?
• What role could geolocation play in creating better and more engaging mobile commerce experiences?

Once you start asking these questions, you can truly understand existing customer behavior and tailor the mobile experience to better fit customer demands and needs.

Key takeaway: Commerce companies have no shortage of data. But mobile analytics is about taking that data and turning it into actionable insights to elevate the customer experience.

Deliver More Relevant Search Results

When customers arrive at your site through mobile, they are likely searching for something specific. Search plays a critical role in converting these customers into buyers. If they come up empty-handed after searching, revenue takes a hit.

Examine your existing platform and look for errors in search capabilities. What happens when you search for a specific product by name and product number? Does it come up? What happens if you use a different name, such as “blow dryer” instead of “hair dryer”? Or, equally important, what happens when you misspell the product? Can customers still find what they want, or do they hit a dead end?

Key takeaway: Mobile search must be just as good, if not better, than searching on a desktop. With the growth of mobile commerce, increasing numbers of customers are doing searches through mobile. Seek out potential flaws, and develop strategies to fix them.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the customer. How can you provide a mobile commerce experience that won’t disappoint the customer and won’t just make them happy, but will truly delight them? Identify critical weak spots, such as the ones listed above, and create strategies to proactively resolve any issues.

Bounce rates will decrease, more shoppers will convert and your number of repeat customers will increase. It all starts with faster, more authentic and more engaging mobile commerce experiences.

To learn more about creating a seamless mobile experience, download our e-book Site Search and the Mobile Experience.

Your e-commerce conversion rate depends on a variety of factors, including whether your site:

• Is optimized for mobile
• Uses advanced site search
• Offers product recommendations
• Has a quick and easy checkout process

…among others.

Are you doing everything you can to maximize your conversion rate through an unforgettable online shopping experience? Take this short quiz, and let us take a guess!

Navigating the E-commerce landscape can be daunting for businesses that have been stuck in the brick-and-mortar mentality. But it doesn’t have to be. Below are a few key mistakes online businesses make that may be affecting their bottom line. Correcting these mistakes will result in a more streamlined e-commerce site, and an expanded, engaged, and more loyal online customer base.

Not Optimizing Your Site for Mobile

With over half of online shopping being conducted on mobile devices, it is imperative that your e-commerce website is optimized for mobile. Doing so requires software that has excellent support for both desktop and mobile shoppers. When you choose an e-commerce software provider, pay particular attention to how customizable the shopping experience can be.

Customers want a shopping experience that is tailored to them, regardless of which platform they use to access your content. Ensure that the transition between desktop and mobile is seamless, so that both first-time and returning customers can use the most convenient option for them.

Ignoring Your Analytics

One of the biggest differences between traditional shopping and online shopping is the sheer amount of data that can be collected about your online customers. Use this incredibly powerful tool to your advantage. Invest in deep analytics software that utilizes metrics to highlight key performance indicators. This will allow you to generate more actionable insights that can drive change within your organization.

Ensure your analytics software can provide real-time analysis of the data that you need most, and has the ability to filter it down into a usable and intuitive format. Real-time analytics can help take your e-commerce business to new levels when it comes to customer service and engagement, as well as give you greater depth and breadth of knowledge about your customers.

Using Manually Produced Product Recommendations

In the past, online retailers used staff to manually merchandise their product recommendations, but this is no longer the most efficient or accurate way to recommend products. Instead, implement machine-driven, intelligent, product recommendation software to automate your recommendations strategy.

One of the primary benefits of this approach is that it provides more accurate product recommendations based on customer search history or product views. In these cases, more accurate recommendations lead to more sales.

Additionally, machine-driven recommendation software works more quickly and efficiently than manual merchandising. This can free up costly manpower to work on other forms of customer engagement, while providing a more tailored and relevant shopping experience for your customers.

Not Taking Advantage of Social Media

The myriad of connections between social media and online shopping shouldn’t be ignored or downplayed by your organization. Leverage a robust and far-reaching social media presence to engage with your customer-base across a variety of platforms.

Responding to customer reviews, offering product recommendations, and responding to customer questions or concerns on social media platforms will help you provide a superior level of customer service.

This, in turn, will encourage new customers to navigate to your site. In addition, a strong social media presence transitions a higher percentage of customers from one-time shoppers to returning customers. Social media should also be leveraged as part of your overall merchandising plan to disseminate information about promotions or new products.

Using social media to stay in contact with your customer base can create a better customer experience where consumers feel engaged and important, while also giving you multiple avenues to provide proactive customer service.

Ignoring SEO

Good SEO ensures shoppers can find your site without slogging through pages of search engine results. Develop a comprehensive SEO plan to guarantee your site will consistently rank high in search results.

In the past, this was done primarily through targeting specific keywords. However, search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated over time. Adapting to complex search engine algorithms will require you to use a broad approach to SEO.

The most efficient way to maximize your SEO footprint is to adopt SEO optimization software. You’ll free up time for other projects and automate your rankings for relevant keywords. Make sure to use an SEO solution that is flexible enough to adapt over time to changes in search engine algorithms. Doing so will allow you to stay ahead of the curve every step of the way.

To learn more about creating an online experience that can rival the in-store experience, watch our webinar Merchandising Matters: Mimic the In-Store Experience.

Tailoring a seamless shopping experience for both desktop and mobile users is crucial to the success of online retailers today. Currently, over half of e-commerce sales are being conducted on mobile devices, and this number is projected to increase in the coming years.

Ensure that your mobile customers have the same personalized shopping experience as desktop users so that you can tap into this market more effectively. Below are some tips that will allow you to cater your shopping experience to both mobile and desktop users, allowing you to provide top quality service on both platforms.

Utilize a Flexible Platform

The software platform you deploy should incorporate support for both mobile and desktop shopping experiences. Whether you generate more sales from one group or the other, having a platform that includes a robust set of tools for both mobile and desktop will allow your customers to have a seamless shopping experience between the two.

Both systems should utilize intelligent predictive search. This is particularly true in mobile applications, where users typically don’t want to spend the time typing an entire search query. Additionally, the platform should incorporate smart product recommendations for both mobile and desktop users, allowing them to more easily navigate to products they may be looking for.

Ultimately, this will increase the size of your transactions and your bottom line. Be wary of using two completely different software systems for mobile and desktop. Customers want a consistent shopping experience when they navigate to your site on a mobile device, not a surprise.

Keep Navigation Simple

Your site’s navigation should be simple and intuitive. While this tenet has a long track record of success when it comes to desktop sites, user-friendly navigation on mobile has experienced slower implementation. Mobile users should have access to collapsible menu buttons that allow them to quickly navigate between different areas of your site.

Mobile e-commerce sites also benefit greatly from easy-to-use and intuitive filtering options. Collapsible and easily understandable filters help your mobile users avoid scrolling through pages of items they aren’t interested in.

Lastly, mobile shoppers operate on a number of different devices with independent needs. Ensure your software will allow users with smaller screens or slower loading times to access your content in a responsive and easily navigable manner.

Continuous Support is Required, Not Optional

The rate at which both desktop and mobile shopping patterns change over time demands using a system that has continued support. This will allow you to continue to fine-tune the experience for your users, regardless of how they access your content.

And it is important to remember that mobile shopping behavior is always evolving based on new mobile technologies. Features that you may not use now might prove crucial by next year. Make sure you have the support you need to continue to customize the shopping experience for both users. This will allow you to stay competitive, while increasing customer return and retention.

Rely on Real-Time Analytics

Utilize real-time analytics software to track how customers are using your site. This information will allow you to tailor their shopping experience quickly and efficiently. Ensure you are using software that has a robust set of analytics metrics, so that you are armed with the information you need to gain insights into shopping patterns.

Also, use analytics software that provides the data you need in real-time, so that you can act on information that is current rather than outdated. By doing so, you will be able to quickly respond to changes in customer patterns, as well as customize user experiences for both mobile and desktop users.

Incorporate a Variety of Payment Methods

While desktop shoppers may be happy to type in their credit card information to complete a transaction, mobile shoppers often prefer a more streamlined approach to the check-out process. Ensure that your system has a variety of payment options for users, including support for mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Paypal. These systems offer the flexibility for mobile users to pay how they would like, even if they don’t happen to have their card on them.

For more tips on creating a seamless mobile shopping experience for your customers, download our e-book Site Search and the Mobile Experience.

Email is still the preferred channel for marketers and consumers alike. But with 84% of consumers finding less than half of the emails they receive to be relevant, you need to be doing more to add value to your communications.[1] As humans, if we’re privy to irrelevant conversation, we tend to switch off quickly. It’s no different in the inbox. The window of opportunity to appeal to your consumer is small; one in three consumers delete marketing emails after reading the subject line.[2]

There’s no ROI to be made in irrelevancy. But those that strategise to deliver relevant marketing campaigns will achieve the highest open and click rates, and the greatest sales growth. This blog post looks at what it takes to be relevant to your consumers, so you can win the battle of the inbox.

5 tactics to make your marketing communications relevant

1 – Timing

There’s no right or wrong day or time to send email, but there ARE some that are better or worse, and these depend on your audience. What behaviours can you identify in your customers? One of dotmailer’s current retail clients has recently seen success by extending its abandoned cart program and optimising by send time. Through testing, the company identified that its best conversion time for abandons was Sundays, between 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm, which is now when it sends the final email in its campaign.

You can use your own data to work out the best send time for your business. As always, be sure to split test your campaigns regularly to maintain the accuracy of your strategy.

2 – Message

A relevant communication will convey a message that adds value to the consumer’s day. In December, for example, a relevant message could be details of the last order and delivery dates for the holidays. What’s more, the message needs to be relevant to the recipient’s stage in the customer lifecycle; existing customers should not receive a first-purchase incentive, but might be much more interested in joining a loyalty program.

Getting your messages as relevant as possible means using your consumers’ past purchase history and likely buying patterns. The best messages will use data from your brand’s various channels to predict and send targeted content based on what a consumer is likely to purchase in the future.

3 – Segmentation

Segmentation is one of the most powerful tools to drive relevancy, and, when used effectively, it can monetise your data like nothing else. To be useful, your segments should enable you to provide your contacts with more relevant messages; for example, a useful segment to have is a ‘newly acquired contacts’ segment, which is built upon a simple communication idea, like “Thank you for signing up.” Simplicity is key – remember that the more niche your segments become, the fewer customers will receive your emails, which depletes your chances of a healthy ROI.

4 – Stage in the lifecycle

Practising strategic lifecycle targeting will ensure that your company avoids the pitfalls of the batch and blast approach. Different customers are (clearly) at different stages in their relationships with your business, and should be communicated with accordingly. From the enquirer, to the first-time buyer, to the repeat purchaser, each stage requires a different set of engagements to drive relevancy.

5 – Recency

The sooner you can react to consumer behaviour, the more likely your communications are to be successful. This is where an email marketing automation platform like dotmailer comes into its own; setting up automated programs allows you to react to behaviours on mass scale.

Abandoned cart campaigns provide a great example of this: an email alerting someone to their abandoned items within minutes (rather than hours), returns significantly better results. dotmailer’s client, the vintage British brand Cabbages and Roses, has a three-part abandoned cart program. The first email is sent just after abandonment, and achieves an average conversion rate of 19%, compared to the second email which is sent 24 hours after abandonment and only achieves 6% conversion.

Achieving Relevancy

Let’s look at how you might put these ideas into practice.

There are three evergreen follow-up campaigns that should be triggered by customer behaviour:

• Welcome sequence – triggered each time someone joins the database
• Abandoned cart alert – triggered by a customer leaving the site with products in their cart
• Post-purchase follow up – triggered by a successful delivery

Each of these programs can be built from a single email and scaled up as you progress. No excuses!

Where’s my data and how can I use it?

Retail makes available a gold-mine of data for the marketer to capture. Remember that the good use of data is what drives relevancy.

Data that might trigger communications:

• Interactions with communications – e.g. opens and clicks
• Buying behaviour – e.g. a purchase
• Personal data – e.g. date of birth, due date, anniversary etc.

Data that might influence messaging or personalisation:

• Product data – purchases; items a customer has viewed or saved
• Website behaviour – frequency of visits; items viewed
• Buying behaviour – how many times a customer has bought; average spend value; time of purchase (time of day; day of the week; time of the year)
• Personal data – e.g. name, address, date of birth, due date etc.

The key to successful relevancy in email is to start small and scale quickly. Relevancy is not about identifying every customer action from which you can trigger a sequence of communications. It’s about working out the most powerful and appropriate sequences to build for your customers, and then perfecting these communications.

Email marketing automation supports time-poor marketers

So, you know what data you need to get working for you, but you don’t have the time or people-power available to tailor and hand-deliver every relevant email marketing campaign to each of your contacts individually. Who has? An email marketing automation platform like dotmailer is the most cost-effective, time-effective way to gear up for the race to retail relevancy. Drag and drop your way to on-brand, personalised campaigns that meet every requirement your business has. Then set up programs that trigger emails based on your customers’ behaviour. Relevancy doesn’t have to come at the price of your resources. When prioritised, it’s the easiest tool to bag you the top spot in the inbox.

Want to know more about driving relevancy with email marketing automation? Take a look at our top tips for 2017.

Rohan Lock has more than 10 years’ experience helping e-commerce brands optimise their digital marketing. After heading up dotmailer sales and account management and subsequently as group sales director based in the UK, Rohan, a dotmailer veteran, has recently moved back to Melbourne as a means to develop the brands presence in Asia-Pacific. Now as dotmailer’s regional director, Rohan works with local integration and agency partners, as well as key global relationships and integrations, including Magento, Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, to bring dotmailer’s technology offering to local organisations.

[1] DMA Consumer Email Tracker Report, p.13.

[2] Ibid., p.17.

Then something terrible happens. Your customer searches for what she want and receives nothing but the message:  “No results.” Frustrated, she quickly navigates away from your site and straight into the arms of your competitors. Game over.

Shoppers who use site search are your most profitable. In fact, their order values are 11 percent higher than non-searchers’ order values. If your searchers bounce more than they buy, what can you do to recapture this lost revenue? Start by finding out where your search function is going wrong.

Red Flags … When Search Is Not Working

Turn on your coffee maker in the morning, and if it’s not working, you’ll find out fast. Your car tells you there’s a problem with disconcerting sounds. But what happens when the search functionality on your e-commerce site isn’t working well? Complete silence. No terrible noise, no overflowing liquid on the floor – no  dramatic symptoms. The red flags of poor search functionality are much more subtle. What signs should you look for? Here are seven places to start:

Search by Product Name and Number

Many customers arrive at an e-commerce site through a defined buying journey. For example, they might come from a Google search. If a shopper Googled “best wiper blades for Honda Pilot,” he would likely find a Honda customer forum in the search results. On the forum, one user recommends PIAA wiper blades and indicates the manufacturer’s part number. Naturally, this shopper’s next step would be to search for that product and part number on his favorite auto parts retail site. This is where site search becomes critical.

If this shopper had chosen to search for the part on Tire Rack’s website, which supports searches by product name and part number, the exact match would be presented.

Sixteen percent of e-commerce websites do not support searches for product name or model number, and as a result, customers reach a dead end.

Key takeaway: Bill Gates said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” In this case, your unhappy customers are leaving quietly. Test your existing search features to determine if it is possible to search your site by product name or number.

Fine-Tune Autocomplete Suggestions

Have you ever known someone who finishes other people’s sentences? Sometimes they are correct, but other times, they are aggravatingly wrong. Autocomplete works in a similar way. The majority of websites, 82 percent, use this function. When the results are wrong, searchers get annoyed. And annoyance is not good for business.

Most of the annoyance stems from usability issues, as the autofill feature delivers suggestions that are repetitive or lead the customer to dead ends. For example, the autosuggestion may be based on prior searches or old catalog content that is no longer relevant.

So what’s the remedy? There are a couple of potential fixes. First, leverage a platform that learns from shoppers’ real-time buying behaviors to ensure all suggestions are as relevant and helpful as possible. Second, test query suggestions on a regular basis, and make sure to weed out those with no results.

Key takeaway: Guy Kawasaki, Alltop co-founder, said, “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” Autofill is a great idea, which is why so many e-commerce companies use it. Examine the usability of your autocomplete to be sure it’s not negatively affecting your bottom line.

Don’t Ignore Product Jargon

Potential customers likely have a specific  product in mind when they arrive on your site. But as they start searching, the functionality of your search technology may be driving a wedge between them and your product.

For example, consider a visitor who is searching for a hair dryer. If they type “blow dryer” into the search bar, the site search functionality should be configured to support that common synonym. But if the search comes back with the dreaded message “No results were found,” the shopper is apt to get frustrated and leave the site for a competitor.

Search capabilities need to be smart, not rigid. Search technologies must allow users to get relevant results from a variety of search terms related to the product. This problem is more widespread than e-commerce companies might believe.

Only 30 percent of e-commerce search engines included keywords from each product’s parent category, which means the user has to use the exact language of the parent category to locate the product.

Doing this well requires deep knowledge of your products and your customers. For example, Bevmo knows that some members of its worldwide customer base use the terms “Scotch” and “whisky” (spelled with a “y”) interchangeably, while others use the terms “bourbon” and “whiskey” (spelled with an “ey”) interchangeably. Bevmo has configured its search to capture this nuance. A search for “whisky” returns results for Scotch (while still returning some results for “whiskey” to account for those who may have just misspelled).

Key takeaway: Potential customers are using a variety of words to locate the products you sell. Design your search to be flexible enough to return excellent results from all potential synonyms a user might type into the search bar.

Don’t Expect Searchers to Be Perfect

An article published by The Washington Times reported that nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed thought that the spelling abilities of U.S. adults are on the decline. Many search functions, however, expect users to spell with absolute accuracy.

Eighteen percent of websites handle phonetic misspellings so poorly that users would practically need to pass a spelling test to be successful. Often this occurs when someone hears about a product from a friend but has never seen the product name in print. So when they search for the item, they understandably misspell it.

Every e-commerce company should put their site to the test. Think about which products may be misspelled, and then type those terms into the search bar. What happens? Does the product appear, or is the searcher left with no results? If it’s the latter, broaden the scope of the query so it accounts for similarly spelled words – or words that are related.

Key takeaway: Great customers may be terrible spellers (just ask Albert Einstein, who was a brilliant scientist and mathematician, but a notoriously poor speller). Even customers who spell well make mistakes when they are in a hurry. Never make customers work hard. Support searches for misspelled words to create an easy experience that delights your customers.

Account for Abbreviations and Symbols

Abbreviations and symbols go hand in hand with today’s digital communication (think LOL and the whole host of emojis). Yet searches that include abbreviations and symbols are not supported by 60 percent of e-commerce websites.

Take, for example, a search for #2 pencils. Office Depot’s search successfully returns the same results whether users type “#2 pencil” or “2 pencil” into the search bar.

If your site is missing this functionality, take stock of the symbols and abbreviations your users are most likely to use and incorporate them into your supported search terms.

Key takeaway: Stand out by giving customers the ability to search using abbreviations and symbols.

Understand the Intent of Searchers

Search is evolving and becoming more advanced. For example, just a few years ago long-tail search queries could not be supported. Today’s technology is able to pull little bits of information from long-tail terms to read the searcher’s intent. Let’s look at an example:

A customer searching for “boy shirts” has a much different goal than a person searching for “boy’s short-sleeve white shirt.” One will be content with a wide selection of products, while the other has a more specific product in mind, and therefore, higher expectations from search results. If your search is configured to understand the second shopper’s intent through these detailed keywords, you can serve up more relevant results, improving the likelihood of conversion.

In fact, websites with semantics-based search engine results have a shopping cart abandonment rate of only 2 percent, compared with rates as high as 40 percent on sites without this capability.

Key takeaway: Search capabilities should account for long-tail searches to reduce shopping cart abandonment and boost profits.

Leave Helpful Bread Crumbs

Like Hansel and Gretel finding their way out of the woods, most websites leave a breadcrumb trail to help shoppers go back without clearing their search results. Breadcrumbs that link back to previous search or navigation results pages allow shoppers to easily navigate back and forth, filtering and unfiltering results.

Boden, the popular UK retailer, allows users to, in essence, navigate backward through results with its clickable breadcrumb trails.

Key takeaway: Don’t force users into a limited search. Allow them to filter by checking and unchecking their search terms to get a perfect result.

The Results… When Search Is Improved

The above discussion highlights red flags and common search challenges, but what happens when a customer’s search goes right? When customers quickly locate the items they’re looking for, more shoppers become buyers. Delighted with their experience, they’ll return to your site again and again. Here are a few examples of online retailers who’ve put their site search to work providing seamless customer experiences that generate tangible results.  

King Arthur Flour

King Arthur Flour has an engaged community of bakers. These bakers frequently visit and search the company’s e-commerce site.

Providing recipes, tips, videos and products is an important part of the company’s strategy for engagement. Poor performing site search was keeping visitors from these resources. After improving its search, the company saw these results (among others):

• Conversion rates for search users rose from 3.7 percent to 6 percent
• Revenue from search users increased from 17 percent to 47 percent

Once the site’s search challenges were fixed, King Arthur Flour saw results that directly impacted the bottom line.  

Paul Smith

The retail company Paul Smith has shops throughout Europe, Asia and North America, with 200 stores in Japan alone.

The company set out to improve both the mobile and traditional search experience. Results included:

• A 39 percent rise in conversions from search
• An 11 percent increase in overall site revenue

Improvements in search ability provided an online shopping experience that exceeded customers’ expectations because they located the products they wanted more quickly.

Your Chemist Shop

One of Australia’s leading online pharmacies struggled with slow-to-load search results, which frustrated customers and led to high bounce rates.

By improving the site’s search results and search functionality, the company was able to:

• Increase conversion rates threefold from customers using the improved site search
• Lower the bounce rate for search users by 3.5 times

Customers can now quickly find the products they need and complete their purchases with less resistance.

Moving Forward

Aesthetically, a good search looks just like a bad one. At first glance, you can’t tell them apart because search is influenced by many factors that you cannot see. But once you identify these issues, you can quickly resolve them and greatly improve usability.

Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy, said, “Anything that is measured and watched improves.” When you watch, measure and track the journey of searchers, you can create experiences that bring them delight. As a result, they will feel understood by your company and feel engaged as overall relationships and revenue grow.

To learn more about the importance of site search and to discover tips for improving your site search, download our e-book The Quick Guide to Better Site Search by clicking the button below.

Good brick-and-mortar merchandising can:

• increase traffic by offering attractive visual experiences
• increase sales by featuring products through promotions and displays
• build loyalty through appealing, easy-to-access settings

The same principles apply to online merchandising; it’s just the implementation that’s a bit different. As you build out the merchandising functionality on your site, keep these best practices in mind.

Let Your Data Drive Programs

Knowing what your shoppers are interested in helps you respond to current trends and anticipate future promotional opportunities. When customers search, they’re telling you exactly what they want. Leverage data from search keywords and browsing behavior to power your search, navigation, email and advertising campaigns. With customer-generated data behind you, you’ll get the most traction for your time and money.

Everlast uses customer data to create highly relevant search and navigation results, as well as personalized recommendations. Once a personalized list is generated, the company uses it in targeted email and advertising campaigns. Techniques like this have brought Everlast 6x higher conversions site wide.

 Make Discovery Easy

Isn’t it helpful when you enter a store and a sales associate helps you find the exact item you’re looking for? Make the same true for online experiences. You can do this in a few ways: first, offer search that provides the most relevant products in the first couple rows. Second, show the most relevant products visually as the search query is entered. And third, tie the most popular keywords to promotions that you feature on your home page.

Pet360, an online retailer of pet supplies and pet health products, uses patented Rich Auto Complete technology from SLI Systems to not only give searchers suggestions based on the first few letters they type, but also show images, descriptions and prices for the most popular products based on those letters, right in the search box drop down menu. Rich Auto Complete tehnology has made discovery so easy for Pet360 shoppers, that they’ve seen a 20% increase in revenue from search.

 Roll out the Banners

Merchandising banners are the perfect way to highlight specific offers and time-sensitive messages. As you’re planning a banner strategy for your site, consider trigger banners that that load when certain search conditions are met. Use shopper’s most popular keywords to trigger the display of highly relevant messages or calls to action. Banners on search results pages can highlight specific brands, seasons, holidays or other specials promotions.

Enhancing merchandising with relevant product banners on search results pages has paid off for UK clothing retailer Boden. For example, a search for “coats” returns a highly relevant results page where product tiles are preceded by a banner shown only when customers search for coats, cleverly utilized as an additional, easy-to-use navigation menu.

Including dynamic product banners on search results pages has increased Boden’s sales by 10%.

If your site sells multiple brands, appeal to your brand-loyal customers by making your top-selling brands stand out. Brand-specific banners can be configured to appear automatically when a customer searches for that brand, giving your customer just the shopping experience he or she is looking for.

Give Shoppers a Soft Place to Land

Enhance seasonal or brand promotions further with curated landing pages based on shopper’s likely search terms. For example, if you would like to promote a series of special holiday products, create a landing page that loads whenever the word “holiday” is searched. Landing pages give you more control over the way products are displayed, allowing you to give your shoppers what will feel like a custom-tailored shopping experience.

Landing pages aren’t just useful for site searchers, either. You can drive users to your landing pages through your email marketing and social media campaigns. That way, if you want to promote different sets of products within different channels, you’ll have full control over what users see the minute they land on your site, making conversion much more likely.

Merchandise Across Channels

As you’re building out your merchandising functionality, don’t forget the mobile experience. A streamlined mobile experience that works around the physical constraints of a mobile device will make it easier for shoppers to find (and buy!) what they want. For instance, keeping your search box front and center on every page is critical to keeping shoppers on your site so they don’t waste time navigating an entire site. Additionally, adding refinements in large, tap-friendly dropdowns lets shoppers narrow down to the most applicable results. And don’t forget to creatively use banners on every page to highlight promotions.

Currently, about 30% of e.l.f. Cosmetic’s online traffic comes from mobile devices. So creating an optimally merchandised mobile experience is essential. e.l.f.’s mobile site is designed for easy search and navigation, and simple, relevant banners appear on every search results page to increase the likelihood that mobile shoppers will convert.

Focusing merchandising efforts on site search is working for e.l.f. Currently, conversion for mobile visitors using site search is four times the rate of mobile users who don’t use search. Mobile sites that neglect merchandising opportunities around site search are missing out on higher sales.

Manage Your Merchandising

All online retailers want to merchandise in ways that work. It’s the time commitment that brings us down. We know how you feel. Merchandising can be your team’s biggest time suck. Analyzing data, constant tweaking, and sending requests back and forth to your IT department can be a full-time job…or multiple full-time jobs. What could your team accomplish with that time and manpower if merchandising could be automated?

With the right tools, much of it can. E-commerce software powered by machine learning, with a user-friendly interface, allows e-commerce managers to easily spot trends in user behavior, then capitalize on those trends with custom banners and landing pages for use on their websites, mobile sites, email campaigns and pay-per-click campaigns—all without the need for IT. Products can also be easily moved and highlighted to respond rapidly to shopper behavior and promotional opportunities. Your merchandising console should put the power to create and curate at your fingertips, with the data and tools you need to drive sales and stay ahead of the curve.

Hear how Jamie Buroff, digital merchandiser, uses many of these techniques to make merchandising work for Frontgate in this short video.

According to PwC’s 2016 Holiday Outlook, pet owners will spend an average of $62 each this year on dogs, cats or both. We analyzed 3.5 million site searches that took place across eight different pet sites that use SLI Systems Learning Search^TM. The study focused on searches from the beginning of November through Cyber Week, but excluded searches for pet supplies like food or medicine in order to focus on likely gift items.

Here are some of the interesting things we found:

• Dog gifts are 2x more popular than cat gifts – Searches containing the word “dog” were 2.5x more common than those containing “cat.”

• Dogs all set for slumber – Across the globe, site searches for “dog bed” were nearly 2x more common than the second most popular item: “dog collar.” The remainder of the top ten, in order, were: toys, treats, coats, bowls, sweaters, crates, chews, and bones.

• Cats want to play and scratch – Sixteen percent of cat-related searches were for “cat toy,” earning the leading spot among the most popular cat gifts this season. Also clawing their way into the top ten, in order: “scratch” items, beds, catnip, collars, treats, carriers, bowls, trees, and of course, condos
• Diggin’ for Deals – Searches for dog products accompanied by the word “sale” were 16% more common within dog-related searches than when “sale” was used within cat-related searches, indicating dog owners are more likely to seek discounts.

U.S. Highlights – California and New York Into Pet Gifts

• Top Five Dog-Loving States – Dogs are living the dream in California, where 9.2% of all dog-related site searches originated. Grabbing 7.7% of dog item searches was New York State, followed by Florida (5.8%) and then Pennsylvania and Texas, which virtually tied with 5.7%.

• Top Five Cat-Loving States – Cats also find the most comfort in California. More than 10% of U.S. searches for cat products originated in the Golden State, with New York (8.9%) close behind, followed in order by Pennsylvania (6.5%), Florida (6.1%) and Wisconsin (5.8%). New York and California also virtually tied for top searches for “kitten” items.

It’s understandable that the highest percentage of searches for pet gifts came from California, since it’s the most populous state in the U.S., with more than 39 million residents, followed by Texas (27.5), Florida (20.3 million), New York (27.5 million) and Illinois (12.9 million) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). Wisconsin, with about 5.8 million residents, however, ranks 21st in population, making the state’s love of furry felines especially notable.

To learn more about how SLI Systems addresses the e-commerce acceleration needs of pet retailers, take a look at the Pets industry sector page on our website.

We have compiled a snapshot of how the long weekend played out in the U.S. so that online merchants can prepare well in advance for the 2017 Holiday season. Here are key takeaways, by the numbers:

Thanksgiving Day – Savor, Search, Shop

• 5% of consumers say they shopped online while actually at the Thanksgiving table
• $1.93 billion in sales, up 11.5% YoY (Adobe)
• Mobile sales alone reached $449 million between midnight and 5 pm, a 58% YoY leap (Adobe)

Black Friday – Deepening Discounts

• $3.34 billion in sales, up 21.6% YoY (Adobe)
• Online sales reached $490 million on Black Friday morning, with mobile generating 57% of visits and a hearty 40% chunk of sales (Adobe)
• Black Friday deals among top 10 U.S. retailers were 5% greater than last year – painful for profits (FORTUNE)

 Cyber Monday – Mobile All The Way

• $3.45 billion in sales, up 12.1% YoY (Adobe)
• $1.19 billion of those sales, or a whopping 35%, were conducted via mobile
• $139 average order value; $21 less than on Thanksgiving Day, given deeper discounts (Adobe)
• 7% increase in online sales YoY (IBM)

Thanksgiving-Cyber Monday Weekend (Nov 24-28) – E-commerce FTW!

• 10 million more Americans shopped online than in stores; 108.5 million vs. 99.1 million (NRF)
• 6% of Millennials (ages 18-34), 35.5% of those 35+, made a purchase via smartphone (LivePerson)
• Mobile revenue increased 30% YoY and desktop increased 6% YoY (Branding Brand)

FORTUNE Editor Phil Wahba recaps the weekend best: “To compete with Amazon, traditional retailers have been pouring billions into their e-commerce offerings. That includes upgrading shopping apps, equipping stores to handle pickups for online orders as well as ship e-commerce orders, and introducing mobile payment apps. The efforts have led to sharper e-commerce performance for many.”

The key to e-commerce sales and success this year was readiness. It is clear that retailers have stepped up their game online across their websites, mobile sites, and mobile/tablet apps.

What the data doesn’t show us, however, is potentially lost sales. How many mission-focused shoppers “bounced” when unable to find items they were looking for using site search and navigation? How many sales were lost when a shopper browsing on a smartphone or tablet had to wait for a page to load or scroll for far too long? After all, while conversions were higher over holiday averages, smartphones only saw 1.9 percent, tablets only 3.7 percent, and desktops were at 4.3 percent – indicating there is still much work to be done to streamline the mobile experience.

Here is a great place to start. The SLI Site Search and The Mobile Experience paper is an invaluable guide for ways to provide mobile and tablet shoppers with an amazing user experience. Get started, now…

Companies know that providing an excellent customer experience is at the heart of their success. Seventy-eight percent of marketing professionals say they try to differentiate through customer experience. A major element of a stellar customer experience is a frictionless search process. Better search communicates to your customers, “We value your time, so we’re going to make shopping with us super easy.” In fact, 77 percent of U.S. adults say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service.

The best way to value your customers’ time is to predict precisely what they are searching for and serve it up at exactly the right time. Over the past 25 years predictive search has advanced and evolved toward the goal of giving customers a perfectly predictive shopping experience. Sergei Brin, co-founder of Google, recently said, “My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn’t have to have a search query at all.” Advancements in predictive search are turning this vision into a reality. Let’s take a look at the evolution of predictive search and see what  the future holds.

The Early Days of Search

Today the Internet is full of digital natives. If you’ve ever seen a 5-year-old ask his parent, “Why are you typing into Google? Hit that button and talk instead — it’s faster,” you know the progression.

Travel back in time, though, and you’ll find search features that would feel prehistoric today.

Archie was the very first search engine, launched over 25 years ago. Back then, locating pages through search required that you type the page name exactly how it appeared. Spelling mistakes? No results. Using different words to describe the page? No results. Missing a single word? You get the point. The phrase had to be an exact match or the searcher was left empty-handed.

Fast-forward, and today’s technology has advanced significantly. But companies are still working toward providing even more relevant and contextually engaging search experiences — especially with the advent of smartphones.

Mobile Arrives in Full Force

Mobile phones weren’t new in 2007, but that was the year the smartphone took customers by storm. The Academy Awards got a sneak peek into the technology when Apple ran its first ad, titled “Hello.” Check out the ad to see how far we’ve come.

But even Steve Jobs couldn’t anticipate how that single innovation would forever change not only mobile, but search.

As the new technology took hold, people were no longer searching for products and services only on their desktops or laptops. They were searching while waiting in line at the local coffee shop, sitting at the airport, or riding the morning commuter train. This amped up the potential rewards for companies who could crack the code on search.

If brands could predict what customers wanted to search for next, this could have a serious impact on the customer experience. For example, what would happen if companies could present search term suggestions before a person even thought to search?

The Early Days of Predictive Technologies

Thus began the advent of predictive technologies, such as  Google Suggest, which in 2008 began predicting what customers were likely to type into the search box. It took inventory of all the searches a person performed online, then meshed that data with popular search results. As a result, a search for “dogs” on Google, would now auto-suggest breeds of dogs that you’d searched for in the past, or the most popular breeds. It was a small change that made a large impact.

Prior to Google Suggest (which became Google Instant), it took from nine seconds to as long as 90 seconds to manually key in search requests. After the launch of Google Instant, search times got much faster. Google estimates it’s saved searchers 3.5 billion seconds each day with this method of search.

Today many companies use similar search functionality on their e-commerce sites. A good example is Amazon. Let’s say that you type “toy” into Amazon’s search box. Amazon auto-suggests commonly searched phrases such as “toys for 1 year old” and “toys for 2 year old boy.” Suggestions take shoppers where they want to go faster, and as a result, conversions and revenue are greater.

Link: http://www.amazon.com/

Sporting goods retailer, Everlast Worldwide, has a similar feature on its e-commerce site, but using patented Rich Auto Complete technology from SLI Systems, Everlast takes the power of predictive search one step further. As you begin typing the word “shorts” into the search box on the Everlast website, not only are you offered immediate suggestions of “men’s shorts,” “women’s shorts” and “MMA shorts,” you’ll also see pictures, descriptions and pricing of relevant, popular products displayed right alongside the search suggestions. Although the visual autocomplete technology was launched in 2010, SLI has been improving it for over 6 years to enhance the power of prediction with visual cues. Since implementation, Everlast’s revenue from search grew from 1% to 10% of total revenue.

Link: http://www.everlast.com/

Location Awareness: Understanding Customers in Context

When location services became available on smartphones, it provided another opportunity for predictive search to produce even smarter results.

For example, using location, Google can now answer questions in context at the exact moment of relevance. So if you’re shopping at a local mall, it’s getting late, and you want to know what time stores are closing, you can simply ask your smartphone, “What time does this mall close?” Prior to location services, this question would have been too vague to retrieve an answer through regular search capabilities. How could the phone possibly know what mall you were referring to? But with location awareness, the search query can be processed because the search engine knows where you are located.

Seventy-four percent of adults use their phones to get directions or other information based on their current location. In addition, many people are using applications that rely on location to share information with friends. For example, the popular application “Find My Friends” allows you to find a friend’s exact location when both of you are connected through the app.

Location awareness provides additional power to predictive search capabilities by giving customers access to the products and services they need at the exact moment of relevance.

Predictive Search: What Is It?

Predictive search helps users find results faster and discover answers to questions they haven’t thought of yet (but likely would in the future). For example, Google Now launched in the summer of 2012. It was coined a “predictive personal assistant for Android and IoS,” but this technology is basically using predictive search to generate answers to customer questions in context.

The technology leverages all Google products that a person uses to learn more about them. It harnesses behavioral data from Gmail and google calendars, for instance, to predict what you want next.

The system learns where you live, work and travel, what television shows you like, what music you enjoy, and other critical details to serve up relevant experiences through e-commerce personalization. Essentially, Google is searching before you even think of it. But how does this type of predictive search work?

For Google Now, programmers create what they call “cards.” They use these cards to continually gather details about your life so they can produce better search experiences. So when you get in the car to head to the airport, the Google Now app automatically pulls up directions and estimated travel time to the airport before you even make the search inquiry.

The result? You just saved time, as Google  accurately understood your search needs in context.

If you’re traveling to another country and need to know the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar, the moment you land, the app will welcome you and provide the weather, the exchange rate, and other details you may need. It has effectively anticipated your needs at the moment of relevance.

Predictive search can also track previous behaviors to predict future search needs. For example, if you typically view movie listings every Friday after work, predictive search will automatically deliver movie listings at 5 p.m. each Friday — before you make the search query yourself.

Behind the Scenes: A Quick Look

Predictive search will continue to evolve, but here’s how it’s currently working for search applications such as Google Now. The technology pulls data from several critical sources, including:

• Location. Where are you located right now? What is the history of your locations? The technology leverages this information to predict what you’ll want to search for in the future.

• Search details. What have you searched for in the past? This data may provide answers on what you want in the future, so predictive technology stores that for later use.

• Email. Google Now recognizes flight confirmations in your email. The example above showed how the app knew at the exact time of relevance when you would need travel time and directions to the airport.

• Calendar. When you mark events on your calendar, the technology can anticipate that you need to shop for upcoming events, such as birthdays, anniversaries or holidays.

All this data is inventoried, stored and used in conjunction with location-relevant data to anticipate your needs quickly and accurately.

Predictive Search: Does Your Company Need It?

The examples above show how people are using search technologies, such as Google Now, to find the information they need. But how does this work for e-commerce? Predictive customer analytics technologies are critical to forging stronger and authentic connections with customers.

For example, a customer could be visiting a brick-and-mortar store and looking for a product that’s out of stock. Predictive technology would know that the product is out of stock, immediately ask if the customer wants it sent directly to his or her home and offer expedited shipping to get it there the next day. Additionally, predictive technology gives you the insights to suggest relevant alternatives to the out-of-stock item.

Or, if a customer shopping online is getting close to the checkout process, predictive technology can pull up data showing this person ordered a birthday gift for a family member at the exact same time last year. The search technology could ask if they need to shop for that person again, or whether he or she wants the items in their cart gift-wrapped at a discounted price. Creating these hyper-personalized experiences through predictive search is powerful for e-commerce.

Moving Forward With Greater Accuracy

Predictive search is helping companies tap into their customers’ needs with increased  accuracy. Combining historical, current and geographical data allows companies to serve up contextually relevant results before the customer thinks to make the request.

In the future, search will transform as machine learning continues to use the infinite data points that it collects to get smarter. As Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said, “If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.” Companies that adopt this technology early will become stronger as they facilitate these targeted moments of serendipity with customers.

SLI Learning Search^®

SLI Systems accelerates e-commerce with an easy to use, predictive product discovery platform that learns from customer behavior. With a more direct path to purchase, SLI helps global e-commerce retailers create a truly extraordinary buyer experience by predicting which items each shopper is most likely to buy. To learn more about how our platform grows sales and delights customers, download The Quick Guide to Better Site Search.  

After spending time and money (and blood, sweat and tears) building up traffic to your category pages, you might be hesitant about making any changes that would sabotage your SEO value.

If you are considering a new navigation solution, but concerned about losing traffic to your category pages, there are a few things you can do before moving to the new solution that will help preserve the SEO effort you’ve put into these pages.

Read on for some common SEO concerns we’ve heard and the tips we’ve followed and tested to make sure SEO value is preserved when moving to a new category page solution.

Set up redirects and preserve page authority

SEOs and Google Webmaster Trends Analysts agree that one of the most important things you can do is set up permanent redirects from your old category URLs to the new category URLs. When done correctly, this is a great way to preserve page authority and pass it on to the new page. Make sure that these redirects remain active for at least a few months after the solution is live.

Clean up old URLs so they are de-indexed by search engines

There might be a few old category pages that you do not want to redirect. Some of these pages might just not be valuable enough or maybe they are pages created from refinements such as sort order and pagination. If these ended up indexed, and you do not want to redirect them to a new page, you should make sure these are de-indexed.

Manage bot access so the correct pages get crawled and indexed

While implementing the new navigation solution, you want to make sure that the new navigation pages are not accidentally indexed. Avoid this by configuring the robots.txt file accordingly and then updating again after going live.

Get picky with the categories you index

It isn’t a good idea, or even necessary, to index any and all refinements that you are including on your category pages. For example, if you sell furniture on your site, you might want to index category brand, but not price range.  While moving to your new category page solution, keep in mind that every refinement you allow to be indexed, basically multiplies the amount of indexable pages.

Double check canonical tags

This is also a great opportunity to double check that you have the appropriate canonical tags set up. In particular, you should check that proper canonicalization is in place for URLs and pagination in order to avoid the indexation of duplicate content. Click here to learn more about the canonicalization of pagination.

 Migrate or add rich content

If you included rich content such as banners and descriptions on your old category pages, make sure this content is migrated over to your new pages. This is also important for maintaining SEO value. If your category pages were content deficient, take this opportunity to do it right and consider adding banners, rating information, reviews and relevant product descriptions.

Choose a solution that gives you SEO control

Having control of the SEO as much as possible on your new category pages is crucial. With SLI Systems Learning Navigation®, you are able to decide which pages are indexable, which can help you avoid spamming Google with duplicate content. You are also able to access an easy-to-use interface where you can customize the URLs, titles, descriptions and meta tags for these pages.

Good quality SEO on category pages is valuable because it drives organic traffic to your site and provides a crawl path to your product pages. When your transition to a new system is handled correctly, the right navigation solution will not only preserve the SEO value you’ve already built, but will continuously improve the SEO value of your category pages long into the future.

To learn more about SLI Learning Navigation®, click here.

Today, buyers expect brands to deliver more. And e-commerce companies have to work harder than ever to meet those demands, but the payoff is worth it.

By 2018, it’s expected that online sales in the U.S. will grow to $414 billion, a 57 percent increase over just three years ago. And by the year 2020, customer experience is expected to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.

The capabilities of your e-commerce platform affect your ability to engage customers more deeply and create a truly extraordinary buyer experience. Some retailers find that the right e-commerce technology partner can help them overcome the limitations of their platform. Other retailers find the need to switch to an e-commerce platform that can meet their growing needs.

If you’re in the market for a new e-commerce platform, where should you start? Here are nine factors to consider before adopting a new e-commerce platform.

Reporting and Analytics: View Customers with Clarity

Today there is no shortage of available data. Transforming that data into valuable insights is where most companies get stuck. Max Levchin, PayPal co-founder, said, “The world is now awash in data and we can see consumers in a lot clearer ways.”

But insight is not enough. You must have the right tools to turn insights into action.

Here are a few questions to consider as you evaluate the reporting and analytical capabilities of a new e-commerce platform.

• Does this platform allow you access to historical and behavioral data? If so, how can you transform that data into actionable insights to fuel more authentic and engaging customer experiences?
• What specific insights can you learn from the searches that your customers are conducting through the platform?
• What types of data-rich tools does this platform offer? Does it provide reports, dashboards or other resources that can drive greater performance?
• Will this platform help you monitor key business metrics, for example, conversation rates or average order values?

Your goal is to create the experiences that your customers demand. Be sure your e-commerce platform offers the analytics to get you there.

Integration: Does It Play Nicely With Others?

A major factor that sets e-commerce platforms apart is third-party integration. Most companies are using a variety of third-party applications in their daily workflow, so it’s critical to select a solution that will seamlessly integrate with your existing applications.

For example, maybe you use an application that targets customers by geographic location. Or perhaps you leverage an application that helps to discover customer shopping habits and generates personalized emails based on those behaviors. Here are a few questions to ask to ensure your new e-commerce platform supports  the third-party functionality you need.

• Where is customer data stored in the e-commerce platform, and can that data be harnessed by third-party applications?
• Which application owns pricing? Can it integrate with other applications?
• How are credit card details authorized and fraud detection handled?
• Can existing and future promotions be synchronized with other channels, creating a consistent omni-channel experience for customers?

Depending on the complexity of your existing environment, integration may be a key factor for your business. Before you buy, get an in-depth understanding of how existing applications and applications you may need in the future will integrate into the platform.

Scalability: Find a Partner That Can Grow With You

The word “scalability” is used all the time when it comes to technology. But in the case of selecting an e-commerce platform, it’s especially important. Why?

E-commerce is growing, which means in five years your business needs may look much different. Switching platforms is a large undertaking, which requires internal resources, time and money. Considering scalability today will save time and headaches in the future. Here are a few questions to consider.

• How many visitors does this solution currently support?
• What is the average number of orders per hour, day and week this platform can support? How does this compare to your company’s current volume and future forecasts?
• Can this solution support a complex product catalog? How many SKUs can it support?

It’s tempting to purchase only what you need, especially if there are budget concerns. After all, some of the features won’t appear relevant to today’s business. But when you weigh today’s needs with future needs, you can strike a healthy balance that ensures future success.

Product Catalog: Display the Right Products at the Right Time

Your product catalog is at the core of your e-commerce business. You can’t afford to lose customers at this step in the buying cycle. So, when selecting a new platform, what should you think about in regard to your product catalog? Here are a few questions to consider.

• What types of products can the platform display? Can it display the products that you offer today as well as what you may offer in the future?  
• Can you easily present related accessories and product bundles to clients? For example, if your customer is shopping for dresses, can you present matching sweaters, shoes and jewelry?
• Are there any limitations to the way this platform displays products? And if so, are those factors critical today or in the future?

Every customer will engage with your product catalog. It’s where they’ll decide whether to purchase from you or go elsewhere. The right platform helps you get this piece of the puzzle right and drives higher conversion rates.

Search Ability: Find, Seek … Delight

Nothing is worse for a customer than searching for a product – one that you offer – and coming up empty-handed. Customers’ attention spans are shorter than ever, so you must deliver what they want at the moment of relevance. Otherwise, they are lost forever.

Select an e-commerce platform with robust search capabilities that deliver without fail and support a dynamic search experience.

If you’ve located the perfect e-commerce platform, but the search functionality is lacking, don’t worry. This isn’t a huge problem – so long as the platform integrates well with leading search providers. Here are a couple questions to consider:

• What does the e-commerce search experience look like for this platform? Ask for a demo so you can better understand how it works and uncover any potential flaws and integration capabilities.
• How easy is it to integrate with leading search providers? Does the process feel intuitive to users?

For example, e-commerce platform Magento provides flexible integration with leading search providers, making it easy to offer users a more seamless e-commerce experience.

Another good example is SAP Hybris, which allows you to provide a consistent omni-channel experience for customers along with seamless search integration and capabilities.

Customers come to your e-commerce site with high expectations. When you deliver and exceed those expectations with the right e-commerce platform and robust search integration, you create strong relationships and increase customer loyalty.

Design Flexibility: Deliver an On-brand Experience

The majority of customers are visual. It’s how they learn, process information and prefer to engage with the world. In fact, 65 percent of people are visual learners. So what’s the connection between visual learners and your e-commerce business?

The answer is simple. You need to capture attention, hold on to it, and use it to generate interest. Flexibility in design makes this possible. The average e-commerce site’s bounce rate is 33.9 percent. That means that nearly a third of all people visiting an e-commerce site are leaving right away. Agile design helps you decrease bounce rates.

When looking for a new e-commerce platform, ensure that site navigation is easy, the page layout is intuitive, and the steps required to complete the shopping process are visually engaging. Here are a few questions to consider.

• What options are available for page layout?
• How flexible are the design options?
• Can you use an outside designer to create pages, and if so, does the platform make the process easy?

The right platform is all about simplicity, flexibility, and agility. You need it to be customer-friendly and simple for your internal team and outside partners to customize.

Site Security: Lock It Down, Protect Your Customers

Security is a key component when selecting the right e-commerce platform because it’s critical to the success of your business. You don’t need to look far to see what happens when security is weak. Target, Home Depot, and Anthem are prime examples.

In addition, those collecting customer payment information must also use a PCI-compliant processor. So the provider that you select should offer a platform that works easily and securely with your preferred payment processor.

Ask any potential partners about the security of their offerings and how they integrate with PCI-compliant processors.

Support and Service: More Than a Vendor, a Partner

With any new platform, even the most user-friendly, you will likely have questions. What will happen if your team gets stuck? If the answer includes being sent to voicemail or waiting on hold, you may want to keep looking.

Start by asking what resources are available online. Some providers offer how-to guides, FAQs or, even better, video tutorials for common problems. In other cases, online resources aren’t solving the problem and you need real-time assistance from a person. How hard is it to speak with someone? What are the average wait times?

Deploying a robust e-commerce system is great, but all the features aren’t worth it if you can’t get the help you need quickly. Support and service are key differentiators for e-commerce platform offerings, helping you to better serve customers and operate with greater efficiency.

Pricing and Budget… Never Sacrifice on Quality

We can’t talk about selecting the right e-commerce platform without addressing budget. Regardless of your company size, you likely have a limit to what you can spend. While cost is important, avoid making it the center of your search.  

There are many costs to implementing a new e-commerce system that are not included in the initial price. For example, maybe the provider doesn’t offer great support, so employees are wasting countless hours troubleshooting problems – and even worse, the customer experience is suffering. You won’t see these costs in the price tag, but they’ll show up later as lost sales or diminished productivity.

If you purchase a platform based on price and then later discover that it’s missing critical features, expenses can add up fast when you’re forced to purchase new tools or modify existing tools to make it work.

Consider price, but don’t make it your focal point.

In the End … It’s all about the Customer

The best e-commerce platform is the one that helps you provide a stellar customer experience. It helps you exceed your customers’ expectations with shopping experiences that flow easily and naturally. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said, “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

When you select the right e-commerce platform for your business, you’re on your way to creating lasting relationships and loyal customers – the Holy Grail in a highly competitive marketplace.

What is SLI?

At SLI, our machine-learning platform offers up the most advanced technology available to accelerate your e-commerce and continuously delight customers at every click.

For more tips, check out our platform guide, SLI Advanced Technology and Infrastructure Overview.

“Search boxes — models of design simplicity comprising nothing more than a text input field and submit button (and, sometimes, a magnifying glass icon for flair) — are fixtures of virtually every content-rich website, enabling consumers to pinpoint anything and everything they’re seeking in a matter of keystrokes.”

Quick translation: Smart site search shows shoppers exactly what they want before they even finish typing their search phrase. Great site search can also boost conversion rate and revenue by 19 percent or more.

But here’s the catch – even with mobile sales on track to surpass a record $123 billion this year, 35% of consumers are still generally dissatisfied with mobile site search and 38% complain they receive worse search results when shopping on their mobile device (RichRelevance). Given today’s widespread use of mobile, this is unacceptable.

If They Can’t Find It, They Can’t Buy It

To boost your mobile customer experience (CX) and resulting revenue, make sure your shoppers can find what they’re looking for on their mobile devices by keeping these best practices in mind:

1. Center the search box.This might seem a tad obvious by now, but a search box should be front and center – at the heart of every mobile page.

2. Autocomplete searches.Convert shoppers at twice the rate and boost AOV by 17% or more with an autocomplete feature so users only have to type in a few letters to find the search term they want. Include graphics to make their search even easier.

3. Refine refinements.Use large, tap-friendly dropdowns that list only the most popular refinements so shoppers can easily narrow results down to the perfect product. Consider color, brand and price for your refinements.

4. Always show results.When you don’t have the item a shopper searches for, admit it, but don’t just serve up an apology. Use the screen space to recommend similar products, and you might still capture a sale.

5. Relevance is the most important feature.With smaller screens, your mobile shoppers need to see what they want in the first three-to-five results — or they’ll bounce. Ensure your search results are accurate and relevant.

6. MAKE IT PERSONAL. Provide results that match the shopper’s needs in real time – for both first-time visitors and loyal customers. Find a tool that continuously learns from user behavior and accurately predicts which products to present shoppers.

This last tip is crucial to reduce friction for mobile shoppers. Personalized results streamline product findability, which is increasingly important as shoppers’ patience declines.

With just a couple weeks until the biggest shopping weekend of the year, it’s time to give your e-commerce site the gift of smart mobile search. From November through December 2015, mobile sales increased 59% (ComScore). For holiday 2016, make sure you’re speaking the right language to your growing share of mobile shoppers.

For more tips, check out our guide to Site Search and the Mobile Experience, or find out more about how SLI ESP adds contextual personalization to site search and navigation.

Revenue from online shopping is expected to surpass $1.5 trillion this year, representing a huge opportunity for online retailers. Improvements in the mobile experience and the increasing convergence of online and in-store shopping are fueling the rise of e-commerce.

Even though the opportunity is immense, many online retailers still struggle to increase conversion rates. Customers are shopping, but how can retailers drive more shoppers to complete their purchases?

Here are seven powerful tips that will increase your conversion rates and transform more “window shoppers” into buyers.

Shopping Cart Abandonment: Creating a Strategy

Once the customer reaches the checkout page, they’ve completed nearly all the required steps in the purchase cycle. Then, they slip through your fingers. The customer stops, leaves the page and never returns. What went wrong?  

Shopping cart abandonment is not uncommon. In fact, 89 percent of shoppers have at one time abandoned their online shopping cart, according to a report published by Forrester Research. If you want to increase conversion rates, you must understand why.  

For starters, consider that shoppers are constantly “comparison shopping” during their online experience. As they reach the end of the buying cycle, they may quickly compare your prices with other retailers’. In fact, 71 percent of shoppers say the reason they shop online is to find a better deal.

Before hitting the “place order” button, they must first answer the burning question, “Does another retailer offer a better price, free shipping or a coupon?” These are just a couple of the potential reasons why customers are leaving their carts. Here are a few more to investigate.

1. Checkout is too hard. There are too many steps, or you’re requiring them to give too much personal information before they can complete the purchase (more on this a little later).
2. Checkout is not optimized for mobile. Mobile accounts for over 50 percent of all e-commerce traffic. A non-responsive mobile interface can lead customers straight to your competitors.
3. Shipping isn’t free. Many online retailers, such as Amazon Prime, have set a precedent for free shipping. At checkout, customers get sticker shock when they see the total price after shipping is added. Suddenly, the purchase seems like a bad deal.
4. Customers are stuck. Maybe they have a question, but simply don’t have time to call and speak with customer service to get an answer. Many companies are solving this problem with live chat.

To truly understand why customers abandon carts, it’s important to test. Make one change, such as offering free shipping on orders, and measure your conversion rates. Are more customers converting? If so, you may have found a key contributor to your poor conversions.  

Create Better Search Capabilities

The ability to search and quickly find relevant results is a critical need for customers. About 30 percent of e-commerce visitors use internal site search, yet only 15 percent of companies have dedicated resources to optimizing the site search experience.

Focusing on search has serious payoffs because people who use search functions tend to spend more money. One company found that only 10 percent of customers used search functionality, yet close to 40 percent of the site’s revenue came from those searchers.

Tools such as Google Analytics offer insight into the search terms the majority of your customers use. For example, you may find there are thousands of searches on your website for coffee tables, but if you haven’t configured your search to support that term, the results will not be relevant. Or worse, the only result will be a “no results” page. That’s when your shopper walks away  without converting.

Consider: Are the results of your existing search function configured around the terms your shoppers are most likely to use, and are those results highly relevant to your shoppers?

Not sure where to start to improve your search functionality? Here are a few simple tips.

• Put More Emphasis on the Search Bar. Make it easier for shoppers to find the search bar. Put it at the top of the page, give it a bold color, and make it stand out. Then measure your results.
• Fine-tune Search Results. Let’s say someone is searching for blue couches. After completing the search, analytics show that you have a 40 percent exit rate. Find out what went wrong. Maybe the product is discontinued or maybe it’s out of stock. If so, rather than sending your searcher to a “no results” page, provide your customer with other relevant options and recommendations. For example, include pictures and descriptions of related products to improve your conversion rate.
• Isolate Underperforming Terms. Are customers using search terms that aren’t performing well? If so, find and isolate these terms. Make changes to recapture and convert some of those searchers who would have previously moved on to competitor products and sites.

Reach Customers at the Exact Point of Relevance

Surprisingly, the majority of customers who abandon shopping carts get no follow-up communication from the retailer. Not only does the customer slip through the cracks, but so does a large chunk of revenue. In fact, only 14 percent of top web retailers use e-mail campaigns to retarget shoppers who abandon their carts online.

Sending these prospective customers targeted e-mails may result in higher conversions. Using this strategy, Smileycookie.com improved conversion rates by 263 percent. In a three-part e-mail series that targeted customers who abandoned their shopping carts, SmileyCookie enabled customers to quickly return to checkout to complete their transaction. Here’s what they did.

• Sent the first email immediately. Within the follow-up message, “Oops … was there a problem checking out?” customers found an easily accessible link to return to their carts.
• Followed up with a discount. If the customer did not respond, within 24 hours another e-mail would arrive to their inbox. This e-mail offered the customer a small discount to complete the purchase (10 percent off, for example).  
• Provided a larger discount. If the customer still did not respond, a final e-mail was sent, offering an even larger discount if the customer completed the purchase (up to 20 percent off).

On average, the above strategy recaptured 29 percent of abandoned shopping carts and transformed those previously lost sales into conversions. The e-mail open rates were also high. The first email received a 54 percent open rate, the second 50 percent and last 23 percent.

Build More Trust with Customers

Some shoppers are nervous about providing their personal details and payment information to a company they haven’t yet done business with. You can recapture these lost sales by building customer confidence in the security of your business. But how?

Check out Groupon’s website. You’ll see a sidebar that includes payment FAQs to reduce any concern about the security of your credit card or payment method. They also include a “promise to you” section and a “trust certificate.”

Review your checkout page. Does it assure shoppers that their personal information and payment details are safe? If not, make some changes, then watch your conversion rate for an increase.

Offer Free Shipping

There is a good reason why over 50 percent of merchants offer free shipping. Free shipping drives higher conversion rates. A study conducted by an e-tailing group found that free shipping is the number one factor that drives customers to make a purchase. Moreover, the lack of free shipping is the number one reason that customers are not happy with their online shopping experience.

In another study, 93 percent of respondents said that free shipping on orders would encourage them to purchase more products – and data backs this up. Orders with free shipping had an estimated 30 percent higher value than those without.

When you offer free shipping, not only will more customers buy, but the average order value of each purchase will be higher. This alone could generate huge results for your company.

It worked for online retailer 2BigFeet. They decided to test out free shipping and measure the results. When they offered shipping at no cost to orders over $100, conversions increased by 50 percent!

Checkout Versatility: Provide a Frictionless Experience

Customers shopping online want the experience to feel easy, smooth and fast. However, some companies require customers to create an account before completing a purchase. For some customers, that’s asking too much. You’ve created friction (and cart abandonment). Instead, try a different approach to drive higher conversion rates.

Nike gives users three options to complete their purchase. They can sign into their account, checkout as a guest or use their PayPal account.

Also consider Tom’s Shoes. They give users three checkout options: one for registered customers, one for new customers and one for customers who want to login with a social media account for a faster checkout process.

Check out your checkout. Are there any points where customers may be facing resistance? If so, make some changes and measure the impact on conversion rates.

Test Simple Changes … Such as Buttons to Drive Greater Conversions

Have you heard about the $300 million button story? One company had what they thought was a simple setup, yet the setup was preventing many customers from completing their purchase.

The company used a checkout form that was straightforward, one that customers encounter all the time. It included two buttons: Login and Register. So how could these two buttons lose the company millions in sales? The problem wasn’t actually in the form itself, but instead, where users encountered it in their buying journey.

Customers reached the form after filling their shopping cart with items and clicking on the checkout button. Now they were stuck. They couldn’t complete the purchase without first logging in or registering. At this point, customers abandoned their carts in droves.

The company solved this problem by removing the Register button and replacing it with  a “Continue” button with a message that explained that customers didn’t need to register to make a purchase.

The results were remarkable. Customer purchases rose by 45 percent, resulting in $15 million in additional revenue the first month. After the first year, the company increased revenue by $300 million. The lesson? Don’t require users to register to complete their purchases.

Don’t Just Meet Customer Expectations, Exceed Them

Online customers are demanding. Retailers work hard to meet those demands, providing the minimal amount of friction during the online shopping experience. When you achieve this, customers will visit you with more frequency and you’ll build greater loyalty.

Ultimately, conversions are driven by relationships. When you carefully observe customer behavior, identify where you’re losing customers and understand why. Then you’ll have the insights you need to create relationships that drive higher conversion rates.

For more ways E-commerce retailers are increasing their conversion rates and  revenue, check out  40 Retailers Results Using SLI.

Dozens of e-commerce companies, thought leaders and SLI partners convened this fall at Carnegie Hall in New York City for our third annual SLI Connect event. During packed presentations and breakout sessions the group tackled many issues and opportunities for online retailers today. Among the over-arching themes were strategies to compete with Amazon, ways to offer a personalized experience, and best practices in quickly connecting buyers with the products they are most likely to buy.  Here are some highlights.

Many Ways to Compete with Amazon

 E-commerce is growing 12%, offering many opportunities to grow sales. As SLI Systems CMO, I shared ways that online merchants can seize the greatest share of sales, particularly when competing with Amazon, which is “ruthlessly efficient in selling online.” SLI’s goal is to give everyone else the tools that the big players have, so that they can increase traffic, turn shoppers into buyers, and sell more to each buyer. SLI enables a virtuous cycle of predictive product discovery: increased site traffic powers the SLI Buyer Engine to improve user experience; this converts more shoppers into buyers and increases AOVs; then, analysis of user behavior drives new site traffic. It’s the beauty of processing data streams in real time.

eShopportunity Founder Fahim Naim offered methods for retailers to expand sales, using examples from e-commerce trailblazers Jet.com, Boxed.com and Enjoy.com. Offer membership and subscription options to drive engagement, use sample boxes for trials and awareness, and add marketplaces to expand the share of wallet. He also explained key trends to watch, such as:

• Showcasing video on mobile; customers are 64% more likely to buy after watching a video
• Increasing personalization via emails; Jupiter said relevant emails drive 18x more revenue
• Personalizing the site experience, including search, recommendations and displays
• Ensuring site search considers out of stocks, smart autocomplete, trending items, location
• Making use of augmented/virtual reality, like apps from IKEA and Converse

 Jeff Fox with SLI partner Feefo shared how customer reviews and ratings provide invaluable business insights for teams, service and products functions across industries. He net out best practices in capturing the customer experience to drive sales, including engaging genuine customers, evaluating feedback and responding, expanding content reach, driving traffic to the website, sharing reviews across social platforms and generating Gold stars to increase Google QS. In fact, Google rewards you for having an improved quality score by lowering your Adword spend – and in some instances, good ratings can cover your ad spend.

From Site to Paid, #SearchIsSexy

 SLI Chief Innovation Officer Shaun Ryan recapped the evolution of e-commerce and site search, beginning in 2001, covering the rise of user-generated content, social media – from Myspace to Pinterest, e-mail marketing, SEO and paid Search/Google Shopping, mobile, personalization, video, and marketplaces. He explained that the future of site search is about perfecting cross-channel selling, buying for profiles (implicitly OR explicitly letting users specify who they are buying for), and for non-Amazon merchants, exploring the (controversial) opportunity to collectively use preferences to offer a better experience for the shopper.

 Panel session moderator Melissa Campanelli, with Total Retail publishing, who earlier spoke on the state of retail amidst digital disrupters (notably the presidential election) (watch video here), asked the panel whether search has lost its edge, like email, the group agreed that search remains important given the strong value/intent to buy when someone uses a site search box. One panelist explained “Amazon is great if you know what you want but it sucks if you just want to browse. Think about how can people browse and find things easily. Not many sites do this well.” Another panelist added, “Search is sexy” – and a new hash tag was born: #searchissexy.

Greg Bauman of e-commerce paid search management firm ROI Revolution shared Google Shopping strategies, including tracking keywords, spending where the cost for CVR is less (such as with umbrellas in AZ vs. OR), and not using up your daily budget before peak hours. It’s important to leverage the data Google gives you when defining your strategy. Optimize your titles with the most impactful keywords at the front of a description (using brand or manufacturer; not company) and descriptions using the fewest number of keywords that will increase views. And, use Custom Labels to make use of best sellers or clearance based on seasonality, price, profitability, and stock location.

Make it Easy and Personalized

SLI customer Everlast teamed with SLI partner Bronto to share a results-packed case study about their use of Bronto’s software for email management. The duo provided a detailed playbook with strategies for list growth and customer segmentation, as well as how lifecycle messaging drives revenue. By executing on a series of well-timed – yet unpredictable – personalized email messages, Everlast has seen 13% list growth in less than one year.

On the future of e-commerce, panelist Marc Lippmann, Managing partner with Debra Lippmann cosmetics, stressed the value of providing shoppable content. That is, enabling shoppers to buy an item, in the moment, while they are looking at commerce content and video. Delivering frictionless mobile checkout is also critical for future success. Marc explained that Apple Pay is revolutionizing mobile commerce, with users calling the feature “delightful!”

To learn more about e-commerce personalization, read how SLI Enhanced Search Personalization instantly and dynamically personalizes the shopping experience for both first-time visitors and loyal customers in real time.

Evidence from 2015 suggests that record-breaking numbers of holiday shoppers will make their 2016 purchases online. (Click here to Master 2015 Holiday Trends to Clinch 2016 Holiday Sales.)

Trends show a steady shift from the majority of online purchases being made from a desktop to more purchases being made on mobile devices. While computers still brought the highest average transaction size at $114 (over $89 for tablet and $70 for smartphone), for six of the days leading up to Christmas last year, traffic from smartphones surpassed that of desktops.

Savvy online retailers are preparing to harness the “runaway power of mobile” (NRF) to close more sales than ever during the holiday 2016 buying season.

Here are four strategies to optimize the mobile experience and drive higher sales this holiday and beyond.

Drive Conversions with Interactive Content

Four times as many consumers would now rather watch a video about a product than read about it (NRF). Further, one in four consumers will lose interest in a company if it doesn’t have video. This is great news for retailers who want to capitalize on the rise of mobile for holiday shoppers. Since mobile users are turned off by lengthy text, videos create a clean and attractive design that enhances the user experience. Videos and other interactive content, such as blogs and reviews, can be embedded right into the search results to increase the likelihood that busy holiday shoppers will convert.

Create a Personalized Search and Navigation Experience

Personalization is the next big thing. Customers are increasingly coming to expect a personalized online shopping experience. Nowhere is personalization more important than mobile sites. With long lists of family and friends to buy for and limited time to do it, mobile shoppers this season will want relevant products served up fast, which is a challenge for retailers, given the limited real estate of small screens.

Mobile search and navigation results will win higher conversions when they are automatically fine-tuned on critical facets personal to each shopper, such as gender or size. (See how SLI Systems is personalizing the entire shopping experience.)

Help Searchers Find Your Site

While mobile has yet to surpass desktop for actual purchases, the majority of search is now mobile. Fifty-six percent of searches that resulted in a click to a top retail site during November and December 2015 were conducted on either a smartphone or tablet (NRF).

Mobile users, even more than desktop users, are unlikely to scroll through the first couple of results. While you may not be able to compete with Amazon or other giant online retailers’ rankings for the most commonly used search terms, you can win by capturing long-tail search terms from your shoppers and using them to create dedicated landing pages that are crawlable by search engines. Then, when searchers type those long-tail terms into Google, your landing page will pop right up where mobile shoppers are likely to click.

Use Creative Omnichannel Strategies:

The retail store is not dead. It remains a mecca of holiday spending. Innovative retailers are using the capabilities of mobile to enhance the in-store experience, and vice versa.

To be successful, go beyond what shoppers expect (such as seeing in-store availability for products they see online) and delight them with the unexpected. Offer Wi-Fi during the holidays to make it easier for shoppers to make comparisons and read ratings and reviews on their smartphones. Allow mobile shoppers to set up in-store appointments for services (great for busy holiday shoppers). Or take it another leap forward to create a virtual shopping experience as described in the Forbes article: Virtual Reality Coming Soon to a Clothing Store Near You.

Harnessing the power of mobile for higher holiday sales is all about tailoring the entire shopping experience, from search to purchase, to the wishes of your shoppers. After all, happy holiday shoppers purchase more, and that will make your days merry and bright!

Enter SLI ESP

In supporting more than 17.5 billion search queries this year (a 12% lift over last year), SLI has a wealth of insight into delivering a personalized experience for shoppers around the globe. The new SLI ESP instantly and dynamically personalizes the shopping experience – for both first-time visitors and loyal customers – providing results that match shoppers’ needs in real time.

Powered by the patented SLI Buyer Engine, SLI ESP adds contextual personalization to the industry-leading relevancy SLI is known for. We understand the same search term means different things for different people, which is why SLI ESP delivers different results to each shopper in real time. By continuously learning from user behavior and accurately predicting which products to present shoppers through their buying journey, SLI ESP acts as a personal shopper for your visitors, shortening the path to purchase, delighting customers and increasing revenues.

When personalized by gender, SLI ESP beta customer Footwear etc. saw a 10% increase in revenue per visitor to personalized search and navigation pages. They also saw a 5% increase in conversion rate and average order value (AOV).

Redefine Personalization as Relevance

Shop.org Summit Chief Artemis Berry sums it up well: “There’s not much better than a friend who ‘gets’ you. An e-commerce retailer that does can be a close second. You know the type: Anticipating your needs. Knowing your style. Giving you what you want, before you even know what it is (Medium article).

Berry wisely reminds retailers that while the task may seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be. Her suggestion? Redefine “personalization” as “relevance.”

This concept is more powerful than you might think. Rather than being overwhelmed by the personalization hype, it means you can start making it a reality right NOW.

Talbots executive Rob Schmults says, “If the value of personalization is achieved by relevance, that means personalization is a range rather than an absolute. So rather that being some binary state where either you are or you aren’t, we quickly got to a place where movement across a range was how you made progress… Personalization is not out of reach (NRF Think Tank).”

At SLI, we could not agree more. Not all shoppers are the same and neither are personalization solutions. It is time to delight your customers and keep them returning with the shopping experience that’s as unique as they are.

• Non-store sales (mostly online) grew 9%, compared to 1.9% in-store sales growth (NRF)
• Sales from desktop surpassed $1 billion on 16 days during Holiday 2015 (Comscore)
• The average transaction size via desktop was higher than mobile and in-store. More than half of consumers increased the amount of shopping they did online this year (NRF)

It’s no time to panic though. You’re right on time. Instead, let’s reflect on key trends from 2015 to ease back into and clinch holiday sales this year:

#1. Consumers actively shop online on Thanksgiving Day (and earlier that week).

This is no longer in question (or taboo). In 2015, online sales increased 21% over Thanksgiving 2014 (IBM). For perspective, this is 58% over the 2012 holiday. On Thanksgiving 2015, AOV was $123 (surprisingly on par with Cyber Monday) and estimated web sales were $1.73 billion (Adobe). Other top revenue days to keep in mind this season include (Custora):

• Cyber Monday: 6.3% of holiday revenue, $3.07 billion in web sales
• Black Friday:2% of holiday revenue, $2.74 billion in web sales
• Sun, Nov 29 (3%), Sat, Nov 28 (2.8%), Tue, Nov 24 (2.7%) and Wed, Nov 25 (2.2%)

PRO TIP: Arm your site with strong promotions early in the holiday season. Last year, Amazon offered Black Friday deals an entire week early. Macys.com Black Friday deals started the day before Thanksgiving, and Walmart.com followed suit offering deals early on Thanksgiving Day. U.S. consumers made 47% of their online purchases by the end of Cyber Monday (Comscore).

#2. Consumers shop heavily on their mobile devices.

While we all know this at this point, the numbers really drive the message home. During the 2015 holiday season, U.S. mobile sales increased 59% to $12.65 billion, which is 18% of U.S. holiday e-commerce sales; and mobile traffic exceeded desktop traffic every day during the season (Comscore). What’s more, based on research from 8,000 brands and 35,000 e-commerce shops, IBM found 31% of Nov/Dec web sales occurred on mobile.

PRO TIP: If they can’t find it, they can’t buy it. Given the space and speed challenges of smartphones, a prominent search box can be the best gateway to quickly finding and buying products on mobile sites and apps. The most important site search feature is relevance. If you provide relevant and fast search results, visitors are more likely to find what they’re looking for and make a purchase (e.g. push the most popular results for a search term to the top of the list).

#3. Consumers are coming to and buying from your site via Search.

Search brought in 29% of retailers’ online sales during the 2015 holiday season, second only to Affiliates (Adobe). Other acquisition methods include Direct (22%), Email (15%) Display (2.5%) and Social (1.4%). What’s more, 56% of searches were conducted on a smartphone or tablet during the 2015 holidays (NRF). Fortunately, if your site meets the following five criteria, you have an excellent starting point to succeed with your search engine rankings:

1. Your products and content are relevant to the search phrases shoppers actually use
2. Your site is mobile-friendly
3. Many highly credible sites link to yours
4. Your page load times are sufficient
5. You score well in engagement signals such as bounce rate, time on site, and pages visited per session

PRO TIP: It’s no secret that Amazon wins broad keyword searches. It’s imperative to understand the importance of more specific keyword searches, called long-tail terms. While 70% of search traffic is long tail, most retailers just focus on the top 10-20% of keywords. To find these valuable long-tail terms, review your top site search terms, map these keywords to the products you sell, and then create keyword-optimized landing pages. Shoppers who find your site via long-tail search terms are more likely to find and buy exactly what they want.

Now that you’ve eased back into holiday planning and mastered just three (of many!) takeaways from the 2015 season, here’s some more good news: there are two more shopping days this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. That’s 48 more hours of opportunities to provide your customers with amazing, personalized online customer experiences to clinch 2016 holiday sales. So recline (for a bit longer), start planning, and enjoy the last few days of summer!

For more tips, check out our guides to Site Search and the Mobile Experience and How to Get the SEO-Driven Revenue You’re Missing.

The fact is, SLI is a global team of e-commerce innovators and expert consultants with unparalleled experience. Since 2001, our team has pioneered apps designed to generate more traffic, convert shoppers into buyers, and maximize orders for B2B and B2C e-commerce leaders worldwide – whether selling 500 or 500,000 products, whether in English, Arabic or 18 other languages, or whether specializing in high fashion or high tech.

At the epicenter of SLI’s flexible and powerful e-commerce suite is machine learning technology, which – until today – remained nameless. The SLI Buyer Engine is a cloud-based, machine-learning platform that powers all SLI apps and answers the single most important question: “What is your shopper most likely to buy right now?”  

This means our customers’ bespoke search, navigation, recommendations, mobile experience, merchandising tools and user-generated SEO apps are driven by the same patented technology that makes really smart use of big data in real time.

Machine Learning in Action – A Virtuous Cycle

Our Buyer Engine continuously learns to improve the performance of all SLI apps and make their results more relevant, whether a shopper is a new user or frequent customer. It can consume in real time a vast array of data streams today, as well as those to come tomorrow.

• Behavioral data (what someone is clicking on and not clicking on)
• Transactional data (what someone is buying)
• Product data
• Non-product data (blogs, reviews, articles, videos, etc.)
• Social data (including the shoppers own social graph, and what they have been up to)
• Contextual data (where are they, local weather, device type being used)
• Third-party data (e.g. FICO scores)

This is where big data meets personalization. The SLI Buyer Engine drives personalized shopping experiences for first-time visitors and loyal customers. It continuously learns from user behavior, improving the performance of all SLI apps over time by making their results more relevant. By accurately predicting which products to present shoppers through their buying journey, the Engine shortens the path to purchase and makes it easy to delight customers and increase revenues.

Performance-Driven Commerce

Gartner’s 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies puts machine learning at the cycle peak, noting that “This Hype Cycle specifically focuses on the set of technologies that is showing promise in delivering a high degree of competitive advantage over the next five to 10 years.”

A recent InformationWeek article explains that machine learning is often used to make predictions through improving search results, anticipating movie or product selections, anticipating customer purchasing behavior, or even predicting new types of hacking techniques.

SLI provides clients with competitive advantage and clear results by addressing most of these use cases today. Search is indeed high-value. Our customers see 2.7x greater conversion rate when site visitors use search and those using the SLI Learning Recommendations app, which provides contextually relevant product suggestions while increasing upsell and cross-sell opportunities, see 5-15% average uplift in conversions.

So while the automotive industry awaits self-driving cars, companies in the retail sector that are using SLI machine learning technology are already seeing business impact.

Performance-driven commerce will remain the mission for SLI Systems as we strive to continuously deliver the most relevant solutions for customers, and the most relevant results to their buyers. We will continue to invest in machine learning and big data in order to support other emerging technologies that may be applied to e-commerce, such as conversational commerce, augmented or virtual reality, etc. This will help ensure clients are able to provide the best possible and most relevant experience within new shopping paradigms as well. And at the heart of incrementally better e-commerce performance will be the SLI Buyer Engine.

To learn more about results that B2B and B2C e-commerce companies have achieved with the SLI Buyer Engine, download the report detailing how 40 Retailers Have Transformed Their Online Business Using SLI.

In 2000, fresh-faced 21-year-old Kate Morris took this challenge into her own hands and launched Adore Beauty, an online beauty boutique that now boasts more than 150 brands and 10,000 products.

Adore Beauty stands proud today as Australia’s leading e-commerce beauty brand. And with thanks to the support of SLI Systems, it provides a glowing example of a retailer that has navigated the journey from pure play to omnichannel to international success story.

The changing face of e-commerce

Adore Beauty has been an online-only brand from the outset, but it wasn’t until the world of e-commerce took off in a big way that the team sought out the help of SLI Systems.

As search functions like Google developed in sophistication, the expectations of consumers grew, and Adore Beauty knew it had to up its game to keep shoppers happy and continue to convert sales.

A digital make-over

“We partnered with SLI Systems in 2010 because of its deep commitment to customer service,” said Adore Beauty E-commerce Manager Gareth Williams. With SLI Learning Search Connect for Magento, Adore Beauty is able to guide its shoppers to the right products from the moment they type in the search box. “The SLI Learning Search Connect extension for Magento was easy to implement and the results speak for themselves. We know when shoppers use search, we’ve got them,” Gareth said.

Shoppers who use Adore Beauty’s search tool now spend four times longer on the site than those who don’t – soaking up the relevant beauty tips, blogs and user reviews that SLI serves up in addition to visually tempting products.

“As an online business, it’s important to remember that each online session is a person, and each person is a potential customer,” said Gareth. “With SLI, we are able to constantly tune search results and ensure the customer is served the best result at that point in time. This type of service coverts sales and keeps our customers coming back for more.”

Success that speaks for itself

From humble beginnings, Adore Beauty has experienced 73 percent growth in the last 12 months alone and now generates around $16 million in turnover. The award winning e-commerce beauty brand attributes 30 percent of site revenue to the power of SLI.

But not content with its phenomenal success at home, Adore Beauty is now in search of a new challenge.

“We recently decided to expand into the Chinese market. With cultural differences, a language barrier and additional paperwork and red tape, it has certainly been challenging. But with SLI Systems on board, we are confident we have the right technology in place to help us make a success of this exciting opportunity,” Gareth said.

For more information, check out our Adore Beauty case study.

In many ways, we were ahead of our time.

We were selling our software as a service before SaaS was even a word. The way our learning works draws upon neural network architectures that are now gaining a lot of attention from a VC world enamored by everything machine learning and artificial intelligence. We quickly started dealing with massive amounts of data before big data was the big thing. And at the time, most sites didn’t have search, or if they did, it was an extremely poor experience.

In 2003, we focused on e-commerce because we saw those selling online had the clearest benefit from better search: They sold more. As e-commerce evolved, so did SLI to better meet the needs of retail leaders and their buyers. Our offerings expanded well beyond search and now include navigation, recommendations, user-generated SEO, mobile and easy-to-use merchandising and reporting tools. We are now a world leader and a global company (with Kiwi roots).

It’s been a fascinating journey, and I’d like to thank all of those who have been part of it. In particular my co-founders: Wayne, Mike, Geoff and Jamie and our families, but also all of the employees both past and present, our customers, partners and investors.

E-commerce continues to get better and so does SLI. We’ve only scratched the surface. As technology continues to change, I’m looking forward to what’s next.

If you noticed far more people engrossed in their smart phones while walking through neighborhoods or strip malls this weekend, it wasn’t just your imagination – it was Pokemon Go, the new augmented reality game that uses location-based technology to allow users to catch, train and battle with Pokemon as they walk through their real-world environment.

Just 5 hours after its release on July 7, Pokemon Go became the most popular iPhone app in the United States. According to July 10 data from SimilarWeb, it will only take a couple more days before Pokemon Go hits as many Daily Active Users as Twitter.

This is a phenomenon anyone who does anything online should pay attention to. After watching my kids, their friends, and even my husband get caught up in the real-world Pokemon hunt over the past 96 hours, I’ve noticed some of the basic elements of the game that are making it very popular, very fast. And I think that these same principles are key to succeeding in retail.

1. Connect People with Their Favorite Things. Pokemon were already one of kids’ (or kidults’) favorite things. Smart phones are another. And this new game allows them to interact with both in a unique way. Technology is appealing when it helps people connect more with what they love. It’s the same with online retail – allowing customers to better engage with and experience what they love is always going to deliver positive returns.

2. Make It Fun. All around the country, strangers are suddenly collaborating in parks or at storefronts about how and where to catch the local Pokemon. Most people get an endorphin boost from acquiring something new – especially something rare – as well as from achievements and prizes, no matter how small. I think this same principle gave rise to the term “retail therapy.”

3. Everyone Loves a Treasure H Pokemon Go is proof of this – it’s turning into one of the biggest hunts in history. Good merchandisers know how sometimes, making something a bit harder to acquire can increase demand. Secret sales or specials to those customers “in the know” are often effective.

4. Getting People Active Is a Win. Whether playing online games or shopping, we love our computers and mobile devices and spend an ever increasing amount of time sitting in front of screens. Most of us want to get more active, but we don’t want to give up our technology. Any app that causes us to do the things we love online while also getting the exercise of moving around the real world naturally gains quick support. (I know my kids got more exercise this weekend than they have all summer!)

Beyond these basic principles, there are other reasons for retailers to pay attention to Pokemon Go. Many store fronts have Pokemon assigned to their GPS coordinates, and you can only catch these Pokemon by walking near the store. Imagine the possible tie-ins with promotions.

We’ve said this is the year of virtual reality, and that online shopping experiences will soon involve more of it. Pokemon Go is yet another way that the online world is merging with reality, and the possibilities for retailers are exciting.

The below infographic is based on the new report: “How 40 Retailers Transformed Their Businesses Using SLI Systems,” which tells the stories of retailers like Everlast, Boden, Paul Smith and e.l.f. cosmetics. These retailers have implemented advanced site search and other e-commerce acceleration solutions from SLI and have shared their results with us.

As you read the infographic and report, start imagining what’s possible for your commerce site!

Entering the world of e-commerce

Keen to tap into a rapidly expanding online retail market, Superette launched its first e-commerce site back in 2010. Initially, the company used its e-commerce platform’s default site search function, which required that each product be configured for search. But with 3,500-5,000 products offered online at any given time, the task quickly became daunting for the resource-strapped team. More importantly, the default search function was delivering irrelevant results and low conversions.

Delivering fashion at your fingertips

Superette E-commerce Director James Rigden quickly recognised that if the business was to grow, it needed to improve its online experience and help customers find what they wanted with ease. In 2013, James set about exploring more advanced site search options and SLI Systems came out on top.

“After speaking with SLI Systems about their capabilities and resources, it was clear that they were the professionals and knew what they were doing. They were also here in New Zealand, offered one-on-one expert service and were doing some great things in the market, so we jumped on board,” said Rigden.

SLI Systems implemented SLI Learning Search®, which learns from visitors’ site search activity and clickthroughs to deliver the most relevant results. The move had a rapid business impact, resulting in an average of 3x higher per-session value for those using site search. In tandem, Superette deployed SLI Site Champion® and gained high-quality organic search traffic by dynamically creating SEO-optimised landing pages that are indexed by Google and other Internet search engines.

The solution has extended Superette’s SEO footprint and made more content findable. Today, Superette has nearly 2,000 site pages indexed in Google, comprising approximately 10 percent of the brand’s entire search engine footprint.

Results that stand out

Superette has seen significant growth as a result of employing SLI Systems technology. The company has been able to identify customer trends and deliver highly relevant results, lowering bounce rates by nearly 50 percent and increasing per-session value. This change in its e-commerce strategy has meant Superette has been able to grow its business by an impressive 57 percent year on year.

To learn how your company could benefit from improved site search, set up a site search analysis with our team.

Offer More Products to Your Visitors

Often shoppers will enter your site through a product link from a search on Google or Bing rather than directly from your home page. When visitors land on a single product page, you run the risk of showing them an item that’s not the most relevant to their search, and you may miss out on letting them know you offer other products they might like.

You can solve this problem by presenting a merchandising banner that shows products relevant to their original search term. These merchandised landing pages can keep customers engaged and drive more page views and conversions.

Use Synonyms for Global Reach

Using synonyms is a great way to improve the relevance of your search results and avoid pitfalls like “no results” dead ends. Synonym groups are usually created by gathering words together that are correlated. The result is that a search for any of the words in that group will also trigger a search for the corresponding synonyms.

Synonyms allow you to adapt to the different words that people use to search, and keep your search results relevant. Even when different countries speak common languages, not everyone uses the same words to refer to the same products.

Make Search Results Highly Visual

When it comes to presenting search results in a simple and engaging manner, product images are indeed worth a thousand words. Displaying one search result image that’s significantly larger than the other thumbnail images is a merchandising practice that improves conversion and boosts sales. Larger product images that convert well include results from top searches, highest-rated products, best sellers and high-margin products.

Showcase Your Products’ Social Status

Today’s shoppers respond well to social validation from others. You can provide this support by showcasing social approvals, ratings, reviews and recommendations. Encourage your customers to share the best products from your site across their social networks by integrating social media buttons onto your pages.

Additionally, showing the recommendations of other influencers (e.g. top editors, celebrity curators, popular or emerging stylists) within search results is another merchandising practice that taps popular opinion to build community and grow sales.

For more tips, download our popular e-book Use Site Search Data to Improve Merchandising.

When site visitors search for a product, they are telling you what they want in their own words. This direct understanding of customers’ intent enables you to deliver compelling merchandising messages, provide relevant information and offer the right products to your shoppers all while enhancing the user experience.

Data mined from site search activity allows you to anticipate market changes and trends, so you can align your merchandising practices accordingly. The proper merchandising controls let you easily and quickly test and refine product assortments, promotional messages and the placement and presentation of non-product content on your search and navigation pages.

In this post, I’ll share tips from our popular e-book Use Site Search Data to Improve Merchandising.

Drive Impulse Buying with Ribbon Overlays

Ribbon overlays are digital stickers you can apply to individual search results to visually accentuate something special about the product, such as best-seller status, out of stock, free shipping, top-rated products, limited availability, newly added products or videos.

Online videos are a popular way to boost site conversions. You can use ribbon overlays to highlight when product videos are available. These overlays offer an additional incentive for customers to click the product because seeing the product in action may convey tangible information such as fit and size faster than reading product specifications. Managing ribbon overlays should be straightforward. For example, once the ribbon is designed, your merchandising tool should allow you to flag the applicable products in the data feed with the specific information you want to display, such as sale, free shipping or video.

Tune Results for Perfect Promotion

There are times you want to promote certain products to your customers on a search results page. Conversely, there may be results you wish to push to the bottom or hide for that particular search string. Tools to create tuning rules should be easily accessible in a merchandising console so you have complete ability to promote or demote particular products based on your desired outcomes. While tuning is an important component of merchandising, it can interfere with the placement of learning-based results and push relevant results below the fold.

Curate a Custom Experience with Landing Pages

You can also use merchandising tuning rules to create curated landing pages. If you would like to promote a series of special holiday products, for example, you can create a landing page that loads when the word “holiday” is searched. At the same time, you can create a dedicated PPC link that directs users to that page. When you use the same PPC link in email marketing campaigns, you can track the success of your campaign in Google Analytics.

For more tips, read our popular e-book Use Site Search Data to Improve Merchandising.

Online sales for hardware and home improvement retailers continue to grow, and it’s no wonder.

The Internet boasts an endless supply of project ideas, before-and-after galleries and video tutorials. Most recently, Nifty’s “stuffed animal zoo” video made the rounds on my Facebook feed, and it was enough to make me want to try my hand at building something. (I didn’t but I still might.)

Customers with varying levels of expertise (me versus a professional) is one of the challenges retailers in this space face. Another issue is that certain products – appliances versus building materials, for example – are searched for in different ways. Appliance or décor purchases may be driven by price, brand or appearance, whereas those looking for a tool or part need to match a particular specification, such as gauge, thread size or dimension.

However, the right e-commerce solutions can help you overcome these hurdles and deliver an exceptional shopping experience.

Provide Highly Relevant Search

If shoppers can’t find what they want in the first page of results, they are likely to believe you don’t carry the item and abandon your site. Show customers the most relevant items first and you’ll increase the likelihood that they’ll make a purchase. Automatically present relevant products, images and other information as soon as visitors start typing letters into the search box.

Search by Various Measurement Units

Are your products specified by measurement in fractions or decimals? Site visitors don’t always search for products using the same unit names or symbols. Whether they search “8.5 x 12.375” or “8 ½ x 12 3/8,” your site search should accommodate searches with standard or metric units so customers are always presented with the right products.

Match Full or Partial SKUs or Part Numbers

Many tools and building materials are referenced by a SKU instead of a product name. Additionally, customers visiting your site may only have a manufacturer’s part number as a reference for what they need. Make sure your search can match full or partial SKUs, making it easy for customers or customer service teams to find a product quickly.

Target Your Customers by Location

Your customers’ needs and your ability to deliver might be different based on geography. Make sure your site search can integrate geolocation services to allow deeper segmentation of products by location. This allows you greater control over regional variations in price, function or other attributes. Additionally, you can point them to the closest store.

Index Educational Information & Specs

Whether you target B2B or B2C customers, education is an important factor in your e-commerce site. New homeowners may want basic information on how to make repairs, while contractors or architects may need technical specifications. Keep all of your documents, online articles, video tutorials, reviews and other non-product content easily searchable, so customers always find what they need.

For more tips, check out the SLI industry brief Do It Yourself: Hardware, Appliances and Tools.

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!

According to the recent Forrester Research report “Must-Have eCommerce Features,” it’s critical that retailers support “spearfishers” – or shoppers who already have a specific product or brand in mind (versus those aimlessly browsing).

To achieve this, Forrester suggests casting one’s hook with easy-to-use site search, including autocomplete, and clear categories to support spearfishers who want to find, buy and move on. Additional research upholds Forrester’s findings as:

• 8 seconds is the average time visitors spend before deciding whether or not to remain on a site (MarketingSherpa)
• 43 percent of visitors immediately go to the search box (MarketingSherpa) and searchers are 2-3x more likely to convert than non-searchers
• 50 percent of users prefer to use a site’s internal search engine, as opposed to navigating the site (E-Commerce Times)

It’s clear that many online shoppers are spearfishers, which is why it is important for retailers to quickly serve up the products they are looking for.

Top Tips to Hook Spearfishers with Smart Site Search

Here are our top tips to help you provide your most focused shoppers with a satisfying search experience that leads to improved conversions and sales:

Autocomplete with Graphics – Type Less, Buy More

A critical feature for speed in site search is the ability to show product results with images from the first letter a searcher types. It gives shoppers one-click access to products they want to buy, reducing the number of clicks from search to purchase.

For even better guidance, also show search suggestions based on category, brand or department to let shoppers quickly jump to the right section of results. For example, a search for wine at Fortnum & Mason immediately shows popular choices and categories for wine gifts, wine glasses, wine and cheese, etc.

Moreover, allow users to preview products of interest right within the autocomplete box. For instance, update products displayed when users hover over search suggestions to give them more choices and increase engagement.

Jump Directly to a Results Page When You Know the Answer

Use redirects when you want to take visitors to a particular page on your site, rather than showing search results for a query or class of queries. For example, if there is only one result, it may make sense to take the visitor directly there, rather than showing them the search results page. When visitors type in a specific product or SKU numbers, take them directly to the product page.

Create Landing Pages Related to Specific Keywords

For some popular search terms, you may want to redirect users to a specific site search page tailored to that search keyword. For example, you may already have landing pages dedicated to particular brands. When visitors search for specific brands, you can send them to the related brand page instead of a generic search results page.

For example, Sports Unlimited serves up a landing page for any Under Armour brand searches. We recommend examining your site search reports to identify the most popular searches. Then consider whether you can provide a better experience by having dedicated landing pages for some searches.

Optimize the Mobile Experience

Speed and ease are especially critical for mobile “spearfisher” shoppers. Ensure your autocomplete helps you capture sales from your small-screen shoppers with dedicated mobile and tablet designs that automatically display options correctly regardless of device size and orientation.

As John Tomich stated in a recent article for Multichannel Merchant, “A successful mobile interaction with your customer is one in which everything is obvious, easy and fast.” He cites that mobile shoppers overwhelmingly prefer social logins for ease of use. Express checkout and easy payment options are as critical here as with any shopping site.

Learn more about supporting “spearfishers” to accelerate your e-commerce sales by reading our Quick Guide to Better Site Search and Rich Auto Complete solution brief.

Change is constant in the e-commerce industry

Consumer purchasing habits are changing. Smartphones and tablets now account for 55 percent of time spent shopping online. And we no longer make purchases through one channel alone.

As Tim Davies, known in the industry as “Mr. eBay” explained, “sometimes we begin buying on one device and then move onto another before making a purchase. Brands need to respond with an omnichannel approach.”

Importantly, it’s no longer just millennials who are digitally savvy. The older generation, those known as digital dinosaurs, are now taking their shopping habits online. And with more disposable income, they offer a new opportunity for e-commerce retailers.

Retailers embrace new technology to remain competitive

Despite acknowledged challenges from international competitors, there was a real sense of optimism in the room. Retailers are taking steps to remain competitive, with nine out of 10 having updated their e-commerce strategies in the last year and adopting new technologies, such as optimising for mobile.

One of our keynote speakers, Krispy Kreme’s Digital Business Manager, Richard Schulman, emphasised the role of e-commerce tools in providing a high-quality customer experience and, ultimately, driving sales.

“It’s no secret that e-commerce retailers need to streamline their websites and make sure that they are easy to use for the average punter, but the secret is how,” he said. “Most businesses don’t realise how easy it is, or how important it is.”

It’s time to go mobile

The importance of mobile was a key theme throughout the day. Mobile commerce now accounts for 11% of e-commerce sales – and this figure is set to rise.

The growth in mobile has huge implications for e-commerce. No retailer wants to provide a poor mobile user experience as it creates friction for shoppers in finding and buying.

More than half of the retailers at SLI Connect had optimised their website for mobile and tablet – and those who hadn’t, have made it a priority for 2016.

No “silver bullet” for long-term success

Looking to the future, Blair Cassidy, VP of product management at SLI Systems, painted a compelling vision for the role of virtual reality in the future of e-commerce. He challenged innovative retailers to take the lead in implementing this promising technology.

But while virtual reality and other online retail technologies have much to offer e-commerce in the future, a key takeaway from the event was that no single approach or tool holds the key to success.

“There is no ‘silver bullet’ for success,” said panel member, John Menagh, director of sales at eStar. “Retailers must ensure their online and offline strategies are in harmony, so that consumers receive a consistent, high-quality experience of your brand, where ever they are.”

So that’s it for this year’s SLI Connect Sydney! A big thank you to all who attended, guests, speakers and sponsors, and for making our second SLI Connect such a success. The next SLI Connect event is planned for September 15, 2016 in New York City at the magnificent Carnegie Hall! Save the date and stay tuned – registration will open soon. Click here to view survey results from SLI Connect UK, which was held in March.

While you’re prepping for Holiday 2016, you can still please plenty of shoppers (and boost your business’ bottom line).

Spring is the perfect time to refresh your site. It is the season of spring cleaning and tax refunds, both of which can motivate consumers to treat themselves. Speaking of, I think I have some space for a new pair of shoes. …

So how can you attract and convert these shoppers?

Curate aesthetically pleasing landing pages

First impressions are everything. Impress and attract shoppers by curating unique landing pages for specific audiences. For instance, create pages that showcase your new spring inventory of sunglasses or patio furniture. Include links to these pages in your email marketing campaigns. (You can send me the one with the spring sandals.)

Use high-quality product photos and lots of them so shoppers really get a sense of your items. Seeing products from all angles, or clothing on a real person, will make shoppers feel more confident about adding items to their carts and checking out.

Lure shoppers deeper into your site with eye-catching banners that boast relevant content. After shopping for sandals, I will want to look for a new spring bag too.

Optimize for different devices (if you haven’t already)

Don’t be that online retailer that shows shoppers desktop results on mobile. Nobody has time for that! There is nothing more annoying for shoppers than having to zoom into desktop results on their mobile devices. In fact, they probably won’t bother and will instead move on to a site easier to use.

Shoppers are coming out of hibernation and no longer sitting at desktop computers or curling up with their laptops in bed. Make sure they can still enjoy a seamless shopping experience on your e-commerce site when they are out and about using mobile or tablet devices.

Set up your site search for seasonality

If I search for “sunnies,” I expect search results that contain (hot) sunglasses. Set up your site search to handle seasonal synonyms like “sunnies” and “sunglasses” so that shoppers don’t instead run into pesky no-results pages.

It should go without saying that your search should return relevant and popular items based on the search term. Consider conducting a site search audit and make sure the items that you would expect to be returned are coming up in search.

While you’re getting your site ready for winter code freeze, make sure you aren’t ignoring eager spring shoppers and spring clean your site.

For more recommendations on how you can improve your site, set up a site search analysis with our team.

It’s that time of the year again! On Wednesday, April 6, SLI Systems will hold its second annual SLI Connect event at the Sydney Opera House.

At the one-day e-commerce summit, you will hear from leading retailers who will be discussing, exploring and learning from each other’s e-commerce opportunities and challenges.

The day will include keynote speakers, presentations and an interactive panel from prominent online retailers and will end with an exclusive reception – all of which will provide quality networking opportunities.

This year, agenda highlights include:

• Opening keynote: A Future of E-commerce – Virtual Personalisation given by Blair Cassidy, vice president of product management for SLI Systems
• ChannelAdvisor customer presentation with Nisbets
• E-commerce expert panel with ShopBot, eStar and Braintree
• Joint presentation given by Temando with Krispy Kreme Australia: Making Dough(nuts): An E-commerce Success Story
• Bronto customer presentation with 2XU
• Closing keynote address given by Mr. eBay himself, Tim Davies, president of the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance in Australia (PeSA Australia)

The 2015 SLI Connect had a number of key takeaways including how Australian retailers can be more competitive with international entrants taking market share. This year’s SLI Connect will take a look at how brands have responded to this in order to remain competitive in an ever-growing global market.

We hope to see you there, register here!

Good for them, I say. But luck is not everyone’s lot in life.

What about the unlucky ones. The ones who can’t find a parking spot let alone a pair of Jimmy Choo’s for a screaming discount in the exact right fit and shade.

Yes, I know this is a first-world problem. But life is hard enough for the I-never-catch-a-break crowd. Shopping shouldn’t be a burden too. I can hear them muttering, “Why bother looking for a new dress. I never find anything I like anyway.”

Online retailers, you have the power to make even your most unlucky shoppers feel like they’ve won a million bucks.

First of all, I’m going to assume that if you are reading this blog you value site search. Hopefully, you are already delivering amazingly relevant search results based on what shoppers are most likely to buy. (If you have any questions about this, feel free to call us.) OK, moving on.

Give good recommendations. Almost every site has recommendations these days. That doesn’t mean they are any good. Don’t clutter the shopping experience by displaying random products. Smart recommendations provide a personal shopping experience. For instance, people who bought that lipstick also bought this blush. It’s like a knowledgeable salesperson is walking your shoppers through your store, and that makes shoppers feel cared for and understood.

Build buyer confidence. If you think you are unlucky, you might be hesitant about making an online purchase. After all, you might want to see the product in person before deciding to buy. Help shoppers overcome this mental hurdle by showing them every angle of the product in easy-to-view photos. In addition, catwalk and customer videos provide that almost in real life experience. This can be helpful when selling everything from clothes and accessories to dirt bikes and motorcycles.

Provide a seamless experience from any device. Don’t even try to ignore this one. We are a society addicted to our phones and tablets and phablets. Make sure your shoppers can shop at any time from any device. In addition, if your site is not mobile-friendly, it will hurt your site’s ranking in Google’s organic search results. (By the way, you’re invited to the upcoming Internet Retailer webinar: Mobilegeddon: Not Over Yet.)

The bottom line is this: The smarter your site is, the luckier your shoppers will feel. And who doesn’t like feeling lucky?

For more tips on improving your shopping experience, check out our Big Book of Site Search Tips.

You don’t have to have a dedicated site for baby products to win these valuable customers. Many health and pharmacy retailers are catering more to the “parent and baby” demographic. Even lifestyle and outdoor retailers are adding infant and toddler items to their product offerings.

Here are a few ways that any online retailer with baby or toddler products can gain a greater share of parents’ and grandparents’ spending.

Focus on Mobile

Browsing the Internet with both hands free is considered a luxury for new parents. Swaying back and forth with a tiny infant in arms and a smartphone in hand is a much more common scene. Consider your site new-parent ready if the desperately sleep deprived can find what they are looking for while only using their thumbs. You’ll want to enhance the real estate of smaller screens while delivering relevant results with speed.

In addition, think about how best to streamline the purchase process for mobile shoppers. The fewer clicks, the better. Make sure shoppers have the option to save payment and shipping information so they only have to enter it once.

Make the Experience Highly Personal

A few months make a world of difference when it comes to what a baby needs and what parents want to buy. For example, moms and dads of newborns are searching for the perfect swaddle while parents of 6-month-olds are introducing solid foods and encouraging their babies to sit on their own.

When parents sign up to receive emails, gather the dates of birth, sex and names of their children. Tailor email campaigns and curate landing pages with products that match the baby’s age and each exciting developmental stage. In other words, send emails specific to celebrating a baby’s first birthday when the child turns 1, but avoid cluttering up your customers’ inboxes with irrelevant messages about newborns when their baby is already a toddler.

Your clickthrough rate on emails will be higher when parents know you are giving them valuable information specific to their kids. Also, keep in mind that parents will open a majority of those emails on a smartphone or tablet, so make sure both the email and the landing pages are tailored for the mobile experience.

Is it a Binky, Paci, Dummy, Soother or Comforter?

Does your site speak Baby? The pacifier alone has more than 100 pet names. Learning your customers’ language means they will more likely find the products they had in mind. Alternatively, ignoring synonyms, misspellings and popular pet names could lead to search queries ending in a “no results” page by mistake.

In-Store or Curbside Pick Up

Out of diapers and wipes? Need a humidifier for baby’s first cold? Sometimes even overnight delivery isn’t fast enough. If you are a retailer with brick-and-mortar locations, consider allowing customers to complete their purchases online and pick up products the same day at the store. Or even better, deliver their orders curbside to their cars. This will save parents time and keep them from having to wake a sleeping baby.

Cater to Moms

Babies aren’t the only ones who need special care. Retailers can gain brand loyalty before the little one even arrives by helping moms-to-be navigate fertility issues, morning sickness, stretch marks and postpartum preparation. These categories are often labeled “conception,” “pregnancy” and “maternity.”

For more tips on delivering an exceptional online shopping experience that will win over parents and grandparents shopping for baby and toddler items, take a look at our E-commerce Baby Boom industry brief.

The creative use of content can give e-commerce customers a unique and memorable shopping experience – one that creates brand loyalty and convinces customers to buy.

There are many types of non-product content you can use to enhance your shoppers’ experience, and ultimately lead them to a purchase. Some of the top content types used on retail sites are social posts, blogs and how-to articles.

Showcase social posts

A social media strategy is a given for any online merchant today. When you integrate content from your social media networks into your main website, you can deliver more information to buyers and get them excited about purchasing your products. Show that your social pages offer reliable, valuable content and it will compel users to keep coming back for more.

Social content is especially important because it gives the consumer a window into how others are using the products they’re considering purchasing. Some photos, videos or blogs might appeal to a consumer’s practical decision-making by showing the quality and price of the item. Other posts might strike an emotional response, creating a desire for the item because it’s fun or in-fashion. Either way, social content can be a strong influencer in motivating shoppers to buy.

To take your social strategy to the next level, you can also tune in to the Tuesday, March 8 PracticalEcommerce webinar: 5 Ways Social Listening Can Drive Ecommerce Sales.

Be a blogger

A blog is an excellent way to incorporate great non-product content into your retail site while also showcasing your brand’s individual voice. It can also generate some great organic traffic to your site, since search engines like Google and Bing rate quality, consistent content higher in the rankings. A relevant blog naturally improves your SEO. As search engines increase in sophistication, the days of stuffing blog posts with relevant keywords are over. When you create posts that are relevant to your brand, they will naturally place high in search rankings. It also follows that other sites will want to link to this useful content, increasing the reach of your blog posts.

Giving customers insight into your company helps shoppers feel like they can get to know your brand and what it stands for, which helps to create loyalty that will drive future sales.

Offer how-to articles and videos

Inform your customers not only about what your product is, but also about what it can do. Offering how-to articles, particularly in the form of nicely edited videos, display your brand’s expert knowledge to users. When shoppers see that your company is an authority in the field, they will return to your site as a reliable resource again and again. Maybe they’ll come for those valuable instructions, but they are also very likely to come back to make purchases.

Make it Easy to Find

Whichever type(s) of content you integrate into your retail site, you have to be sure users will see it. Be sure it shows up in your search and navigation results. Then feature it prominently using tabbed results pages.

For the full set of tips and examples of integrating content into your e-commerce site, download our e-book: Use Creative Content to Convince Online Shoppers to Buy.

Never mind the polar vortex hitting the East and Midwest. Easter and its Bunny are arriving Sunday, March 27 – a full three weeks earlier than last year when it hopped onto the scene April 20.

With this year’s abbreviated shopping season, every merchandising day matters. Whether your shoppers celebrate Easter or just long for spring, this is the time to remind them that warmer weather is on the horizon.

Easter is historically the fifth largest spending holiday of the year (after Valentine’s Day but before Father’s Day, Super Bowl, Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day), according to the National Retail Federation.

Even if you’re boasting the most beautiful in-store displays, there’s good reason to focus your attention on winning online spring shoppers. Last year, online Easter shoppers planned to spend an average $221.39 – a whopping 58 percent more than brick-and-mortar Easter shoppers, according to the National Retail Federation.

What will shoppers put in their baskets? Food, clothing, gifts, candy and flowers are the top five spending categories for Easter. But don’t make your visitors hunt for what they want.

Read their minds. If shoppers type “Easter” in your site’s search box, make sure your site returns relevant results right away. Candy Warehouse is crushing this by instantly showing search suggestions and product results.

Curate a collection. Boden is using a banner to prompt shoppers to “Make room for new-season dresses.” But the merchandising doesn’t stop there. Clicking on the banner takes shoppers to a collection of spring dresses.

Show the love. Harry & David’s search results not only showcase the most relevant products, but shoppers can quickly see which items have the best and most reviews. This is a great to give browsers the social proof they need to make a buying decision.

For more tips on improving your e-commerce merchandising, download our free white paper Use Site Search Data to Improve Merchandising.

Another way you can give love a nudge and fuel romance is to follow the tips and tricks in the infographic below from The Shelf. (Hint: If you aren’t marketing to men between 25 and 34 years old, you are missing the mark.)

The webinar was jam-packed with examples from the recent 2015 holiday shopping season (including how to gracefully opt out of Black Friday without killing your sales).

While Amazon is undeniably a Goliath, you can beat the e-commerce giant by turning its weaknesses into your strengths. Here are a few key takeaways:

Help shoppers find what they are looking for. Amazon isn’t the easiest place to shop. It can feel like you are wandering through a huge warehouse without a soul in sight to help you. You have little choice but to base your purchasing decisions on price and reviews.

Fahim advises, “Do a better job of helping customers engage and find relative products.”

An effective way of providing a more satisfying shopping experience is by delivering relevant site search results. Engage customers further by offering a product or gift finder, which suggests a collection of products based on a series of questions. This level of personalization is impossible to deliver via the Amazon interface and it allows you to build brand loyalty.

Treat shoppers differently. Amazon is one-size-fits-all. There is no room to massage your message for different audiences. As a result, you miss the opportunity to create tailored offers for different shoppers, like first-time buyers and loyal customers. You can outshine Amazon in this area by leveraging your email marketing with content and offers designed to reach specific shoppers.

Own long-tail search terms. It’s OK if Amazon wins broad keyword searches. Shoppers who find your site via long-tail search terms are more likely to find exactly what it is they want to buy. You can build landing pages specific to these keywords. (To learn more about this, check out the webinar Advanced Data Mining.)

For more competitive strategies, watch the Internet Retailer webinar. To see how SLI Systems can help you implement these strategies, join us for our next live demo on March 8.

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.

Recently we undertook a project to create a new dashboard for the SLI Merchandising and Reporting Console. With more than 100 metrics already available in our console, it would have been easy to present some of these and call it a day.

But we decided it was time for a fresh start. We talked to our customers about what was most important to them. Then we went further – all the way back to the basics. We examined our underlying calculations to ensure the way we tracked data considered customers on their shopping journey and not just purchases.

Many existing reporting systems, including our own, count events like transactions and compare them to other events like page or session counts. But tracking events in isolation doesn’t always reflect how shoppers behave. Consider a shopper who starts browsing in the early evening, breaks for dinner and returns to make a purchase after putting the kids to bed or the shopper who has a late-night browsing habit and completes her purchase after midnight. Many analytics simplify and examine activity based on a set time period. As a result, each of the previous examples would likely be considered as two sessions – one that failed to convert and one that succeeded – when in actuality each was a single shopper.

A session-focused versus shopper-focused model can cause e-commerce sites to worry needlessly about conversion rates when in actuality the trouble is with how their analytics views the data.

Another example of analytics skewing reality is when a customer completes a transaction and then realizes he forgot something and makes a second purchase. Should one customer be treated as two just because he completed a second transaction? When considering conversions, is a shopper who transacts twice buying one item each time really more valuable than the shopper buying two items in a single transaction? We don’t think so.

The new SLI Dashboard now includes shopper-focused attribution. As a result, SLI looks at all of a shopper’s activity in the 24 hours leading up to a transaction, regardless of when it occurred. A site visitor with activity before midnight that continues into the next day is counted once, and multiple conversions from a single customer are treated as one successful conversion.

Conversion rate and average order value are critical measures of your e-commerce site. You need them to be an accurate representation of how many people successfully found what they were looking for, how many items people bought and how much they spent. The new SLI Dashboard provides a real-life view of how your customers are interacting with your site. In a world of numbers and calculations, let’s remember our customers are people too.

There are some simple ways you can deliver an exceptional shopping experience through your refinements.

Consider a Color Palette

Color palettes provide a visually appealing way to show color options for a particular product. Plus, it takes the guess work out of identifying colors with names like vermilion (a reddish orange) or verdigris (a yellowish green). Color palettes are often displayed on the left column with other refinements.

Show Products in the Right Color

Display products in the color shoppers requested. For example, if the default image for a shirt is red, but it is also offered in blue, show the blue shirt when shoppers refine the category to blue.

If your product is available in several colors, let visitors see the color options from the navigation page. One effective way of doing this is to allow visitors to hover over the color palettes directly under the picture of the product. The color of the product changes, while other products on the page remain unchanged.

Use Images

The human brain processes images faster than text. Consider using images to signal certain refinements, such as apparel type (dresses, shirts, pants), brands, ratings, colors and shapes. Of course, images won’t work for some refinements, so use your judgment. Make sure the images you use are clear and simple, so your customers won’t be left guessing.

Use Easy-to-understand Navigational Images

If you use navigational images to identify subcategories, make sure they are easy to understand. You want to make sure shoppers don’t accidentally confuse the subcategory images for the product selection.

Provide the following visual cues:

• Show products as well as subcategories
• Include the number of results for each subcategory
• Label the subcategory images clearly
• Distinguish between the layout of your products and subcategories

Offer Multiple Ways to Unselect Refinements

Let visitors easily change and remove refinements. Customers may want to navigate to the top or up one or several levels within a category. Use a Show All link or a breadcrumb trail to enable a quick link back to a category page or higher navigation levels. Breadcrumb trails help visitors see
 exactly where they are on the site and what refinements have been used.

Another best practice is to use an X or checkmark beside the selected refinements. This allows visitors to easily remove a refinement selection without deleting all the selected refinements and gives shoppers the flexibility they need to find the item they’re looking for. A Clear All option offers a quick “back-to-the-top” navigation alternative.

For more tips on how to improve your site navigation, download our Big Book of Navigation Tips.

The right use of refinements can make the shopping journey easy and intuitive. From broad category pages, you can break down choices into more specific subcategories. On a furniture site, for example, shoppers might start with the Living Room category then navigate to Sofa and Armchairs, Coffee and Side Tables or Living Room Lighting, depending on what they need.

In addition, providing refinements for brand, price, style and color can help shoppers pinpoint the products they had in mind. In my next two blog posts I will outline some practical ways refinements can help you improve your site navigation.

Don’t Show Too Many Refinements

Instead of showing every possible refinement (which can overwhelm shoppers), examine your analytics to see which refinements are used the most and which are hardly used at all. For example, do you really need the option to refine jeans by the number of pockets? If it is useful to your visitors, then show this option only when it’s relevant. A simple list of refinements versus a convoluted one increases your chances of improving your conversion rates.

Only Show Refinements with Results

Show relevant refinements for each category and make sure each refinement option contains results. You may be tempted to provide general refinements across your site for all category pages, but this can lead to a frustrating shopping experience. For example, you wouldn’t want to provide a refine-by-color option if an item is only available in one hue.

Show the Number of Products for Each Refinement

By indicating the number of products for each refinement, shoppers quickly understand how many results they can expect to find under each option. This guides them to consider other refinements if necessary and assures them they have seen all possible products.

Provide Different Ways of Ranking Products

Let visitors easily re-rank the criteria for how products are shown. Shoppers might want to view products by best sellers, highest rated, new arrivals, most expensive or least expensive. As a default, show products in order of most relevant or most popular. Once a visitor chooses a new order, remember the preference to spare him or her the hassle and frustration of re-ranking products on each category page.

For more tips on how to improve your site navigation, download our Big Book of Navigation Tips.

People noticed that the malls weren’t quite as manic on Black Friday. Maybe because “Black Friday” deals stretched into early November or perhaps because significantly more people were shopping online.

Like many, my holiday shopping included a combination of in-store and online purchases, gifts for others and items for myself. I shopped with my phone in hand, often checking both prices and reviews when I was in a store or late-night browsing before bed.

Without a sleigh of my own and with family scattered across the country, the convenience of buying online and shipping directly to recipients provided an added bonus of skipping the lines at the post office to mail presents.

Yet, hours before the clock struck Christmas, there was strong doubt that retailers would hit the 3.7% rise forecasted by the National Retail Federation for in-store and online sales.

On Christmas Eve, Reuters reported “U.S. retailers at risk of missing modest holiday sales goals.”

Santa must have needed some last-minute gifts because the numbers reported this week – with Christmas Day behind us – reveal a sort of spending miracle (and proof that I wasn’t the only one shopping).

“Holiday spending is up, and online shopping was a winner,” declared the Boston Globe.

Retail sales were up 7.9% – more than double what was expected – according to data released by MasterCard SpendingPulse, which does not reveal dollars spent.

Not surprising, online retailers ended up on the Nice List with a 20% surge in sales compared to the same Black-Friday-to-Christmas-Eve timeframe as last year, according to the SpendingPulse report.

It seems Santa likes the convenience of online shopping, too.

For the latest in e-commerce news, trends and best practices, explore the SLI Knowledge Base.

“Customer engagement has become a key focus for retailers striving for success in today’s omnichannel world,” said Retail TouchPoints Editor-in-Chief Debbie Hauss. “The award winners are ahead of the curve and are achieving business success in this increasingly competitive marketplace.”

Among the winners this year, Dressbarn joins retail giants AT&T, Barneys New York, Kate Spade, Kohl’s, Payless ShoeSource and Pep Boys.

Dressbarn Uses SLI Learning Search to Create Great Omnichannel Customer Experiences

A major priority for Dressbarn is to always provide a great customer experience, regardless of the channel. One way the retailer continues its mission is to use SLI Learning Search® (and search data) to offer its customers a unified, seamless experience, making it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for across all channels.

Online

Dressbarn pays close attention to online trends, monitoring site search activity and on-page analytics, to optimize landing pages, PPC ads, email campaigns, site search and more. For instance, this past summer, Dressbarn saw a spike in search volume and conversion on the keyword Camryn dress. Dressbarn used its top-performing keywords report to identify the Camryn dress as a product to feature across channels to take advantage of its recent popularity.

Dressbarn quickly created a landing page using SLI Landing Page Creator just for the Camryn dress and then promoted it via the home page, email campaign and PPC ads. With search data in hand, Dressbarn also was able to fine-tune the page’s meta tags for better SEO. Conversion rates and sales soon skyrocketed.

Mobile

Dressbarn also provides its customers with a mobile-friendly experience. To adapt to the physical limitations of the mobile user experience, the retailer implemented SLI Mobile’s prominent search bar (vs. tiny magnifying glass) and easy-to-select refinements on search and navigation pages (e.g. color, size), speeding the shoppers’ path to purchase. The retailer also resizes all images into thumbnails, increasing the page load speed and customer engagement.

On its mobile site, Dressbarn has seen noteworthy results engaging customers and increasing conversion with SLI Rich Auto Complete. Rich Auto Complete delivers a search experience with fast, visual and dynamic results. Shoppers are able to type less and buy more. With Rich Auto Complete, the time it took a shopper to find a product and complete a purchase decreased significantly, and mobile site search usage increased by 25 percent.

In-Store

At Dressbarn brick-and-mortar stores, the retailer offers associates and shoppers an endless inventory of products and information via iPads on display. If a product isn’t on the rack at the time, customers are able to use site search to look up the product, review the product description and get a clear idea of how it would look. This was a unique opportunity to use Dressbarn’s digital properties to make its stores more effective and its customers more informed and engaged.

For Dressbarn, it’s not all about making the sale right at that instant, but about building a seamless and delightful omnichannel experience that creates loyal customers who love Dressbarn and want to have a life-long relationship with the retailer.

Congratulations again to Dressbarn for a well-deserved win.

To learn more about Dressbarn’s winning merchandising strategies, view recent SLI webinar with Dressbarn E-Commerce Marketing Manager Sri PV: Merchandising Matters.

In my opinion this won’t be the case. I really don’t think that people need a gender facet when searching for toys. The blogger that wrote this article agrees: “My Son Likes Barbie. That Doesn’t Make Him a Girl.” On the other hand, I suspect it will have little impact on changing the behavior of toy buyers.

In fact, this change may actually improve the user experience. It really has nothing to do with gender-based stereotypes but instead with user design. If the gender filter is indeed not necessary for finding the toys you want, then removing it will simplify the search and navigation pages, meaning the user can spend slightly more of their cognitive load on making a purchased decision, rather than on assessing which, if any of the filters they should select.

Assuming Toys R Us has personalized recommendations, it will be interesting to see if the machine learning algorithms behind these will reinforce the gender stereotypes. I suspect, to the disappointment of the pressure groups and Toys R Us, this will be the case.

Curious to see how search query volume stacked up this year, SLI analyzed more than 340 million queries across 500+ North American online stores. We are thankful to report that people were still mostly focused on family and food this Thanksgiving, as this Turkey Day (and the following Saturday) brought in the least amount of online activity during the 2015 Thanksgiving-to-Cyber Monday holiday timeframe. Family time FTW!

Of course all bets are off once folks wake up on Black Friday. Aligned with the day’s online sales surge, SLI data showed that Black Friday is spilling into the e-commerce world in a big way! While Cyber Monday still experienced the most online activity – nearly double that of Thanksgiving – SLI found Cyber Monday only brought in 11% more activity than new online heavy-hitter Black Friday.

According to the NRF, nearly 102 million people say they shopped in stores on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, BUT more than 103 million say they shopped online during this two-day stretch. Internet Retailer reported that “e-commerce accounted for $822 million spent in the first 11 hours of Black Friday, and discounts were mounting as online retailers jockeyed for position.” Ultimately, shoppers spent a whopping $2.72 billion online during Black Friday (14% more than in 2014).

In addition, much like our 2014 holiday study, night owls are consistently e-retailers’ most active shoppers. The peak online shopping hour was Cyber Monday at 10:00 p.m. EST. On Thanksgiving Day, the peak shopping hour was also 10:00 p.m. EST. Year-over-year, the exception has been Black Friday with a peak shopping hour of 12:00 Noon EST.

For e-commerce retailers, being ready for these shifting trends in peak days and hours is crucial to ensure they can reach their buyers and avoid site stress. This year Neiman Marcus, Target, and PayPal suffered extended outages that negatively impacted both sales and customer loyalty. Based on this year’s performance, we expect Black Friday to be neck-and-neck with Cyber Monday in 2016. Make sure your site is ready for this surge, and don’t forget to time-critical promotions for all those late-night shoppers out there.

For a 30-minute course on how better site search can keep your shoppers happy (and spending) through the rest of the holiday season and beyond, see our latest video presentation, Best Practices for E-commerce Site Search.

With Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up, SLI expects to serve more searches in the next seven days than any other week of the year. Thanksgiving is very much an American holiday, but the retail events surrounding it have become an international phenomenon. Retailers around the world take advantage of the opportunity to boost their holiday programs. Last year we saw large query volumes from our Brazilian retailer customers. UK retailers are jumping on the trend with £1.9 billion forecast to be sold in Black Friday sales.

The SLI team has been working to ensure we have plenty of capacity to meet the peak query volumes across the more than 1,000 sites that we power. In measuring search activity during Thanksgiving weekend last year, we found the highest day during this surge in shopping resulted in about 2.7x the normal number of queries. But the real peak is when the sales first open, the emails are sent and people rush to get the best deals. During a recent pre-Black Friday sale we saw the per-minute query volumes hit 200x their normal level.

Especially at this time of year, it’s vital that retailers’ infrastructure is ready to handle these peaks. SLI customers can rest assured: we are ready and waiting.

According to NOAA, this year’s El Niño is one of the strongest on record. Parts of California could see 40-50% more rain than average while Florida could get 70% more rain.

While some might wait and see, the wise will no longer ignore long-neglected winter chores.

What does this mean for retailers? Folks have a legitimate weather-induced excuse reason to shop. (You think I’m kidding, but I just bought myself three pairs of boots.) Here are some ways you can capture the attention of shoppers preparing for El Niño:

Treat El Niño like its own retail season. Look at your products with fresh eyes and think about what people might need to buy during an extra rainy season. Yes, people might want boots, hats, gloves, jackets, umbrellas and waterproof socks. But they might also need floor mats, windshield wipers, rain barrels, tarps, sand bags, heavy plastic sheets, generators and sump pumps. Parents will need activities for kids who are cooped up inside for days at a time. And let’s not forget the best in rain-proof beauty products, such as waterproof mascara and anti-frizz hair products.

If you sell anything your shoppers might want to weather the upcoming storms or make cabin fever more manageable, make sure they know what you’ve got. All the best practices of merchandising apply. Highlight special deals on El Niño-related items. Recommend products based on what shoppers are searching for. Curate landing pages to showcase your entire El Niño-related product selection.

Provide how-to guides. The Los Angeles Times offered readers 28 things to do to prepare for El Niño rains this season. The list includes must-do tasks for your home, garden and car. Many are DIY projects. For example, No. 18 on the list: Plant winter vegetables in raised beds or elevated rows. If you specialize in home improvement, garden or auto supplies, share your expert advice and provide shoppers with an El Niño checklist or direct them to already existing how-to guides so they are ready for the rain. They will appreciate that you are looking out for them.

Keep an eye on your popular search terms. The more it rains, the more people are going to realize they need certain things they hadn’t thought of. Make sure you are reviewing your most popular search terms. (If you are an SLI customer, make sure to look at your Poor Results report too.) Keeping in tune with what shoppers want will help you better merchandise the products you have. In addition, user-generated SEO will help your site be found as new, seasonal long-tail search terms gain in popularity.

Stay dry, friends. And for more merchandising tips, check out the SLI Knowledge Base.

Each holiday shopping season, I find myself initially surprised at why retailers continue to send catalogs when more people are buying online instead. But then, as my kids start to flip through the catalogs to build their wish lists and I find myself earmarking pages over breakfast, I see why catalogs still work: Even though fewer people today will pick up the phone to make a catalog order, these colorful, glossy merchandising tools catch our attention in our homes, when we’re not intentionally thinking about shopping, and they drive us to the online or retail stores where we’ll make a purchase.

In this multi-channel (and increasingly omnichannel) world, there’s no reason for retailers to give up one form of merchandising that works, even if the actual purchase point for the customer changes. There are, however, many reasons to make sure that your different merchandising channels are working well together.

Here are a few tips for making sure that your catalogs are effective in driving shoppers toward a final purchase:

Know what actions you’re driving customers toward. Is your catalog a purchasing vehicle, an advertisement or both? Do you want people to have the option to place a phone order? If so, then the usual catalog best practices apply (a customer code on the back, a toll-free number on each page, clear color choices, item numbers, etc.). Or are you simply using your catalog to drive people to your online or brick-and-mortar store?

Each year I see more “catalogs” that promote products without providing a way to actually shop from the catalog. Learning Express doesn’t list item numbers or a toll-free number because they don’t offer shopping by phone; their catalog is simply a driver to their stores and web site.

Think about what will make shoppers buy from you versus a competitor. Special offers and promotions can make a big difference in whether your catalog encourages shoppers to go to your site or to a competitor’s site to complete a purchase, especially for products that are available through multiple vendors.

I have three learning-toy catalogs in a pile by my computer, each from a different retailer and each containing products that are available in at least one of the other catalogs. When I go to make my online purchases, I’m going to buy from the store that has advertised an offer I can’t refuse. If the offer is not compelling enough, I’ll just skip all three stores that sent me catalogs and buy the item from my favorite local-based online toy retailer.

Make sure shoppers can quickly find catalog items on your site. Once your catalog has done its job of making a shopper want an item that they carry, you’d better make sure that shopper can easily find the item in your online store. Don’t overlook the importance of having top-quality site search: if you don’t show the most relevant items first, whether the customer searches by item number, item name or a descriptive name, you’re not going to make the sale. Features like Rich Auto Complete, faceted refinements and smart mobile navigation are now expected.

Remember that shoppers often go to their computers or tablets to finalize a purchase because of the speed and convenience of buying the item online rather than making a phone call. Other shoppers will use your catalog or web site to browse before walking into a store to try something on. But all shoppers need to easily find the products they’re looking for on their computers, phones and tablets. If you don’t make your products easy for them to find anytime and anywhere, then you’re not going to succeed in an omnichannel world.

Here are some tips to help make sure your site navigation is ready for the mobile-and-tablet holiday rush.

Mobile Navigation

The limited space on smartphones and tablets magnifies the importance of intuitive navigation.

To best orient users and guide them through a mobile site (without cluttering the screen), use a simple design. Here are some main best practices:

• Use drop-down menus with buttons or simple text so you can offer as many drill-down levels as needed while freeing up valuable real estate.
• Use subpages to expand using familiar icons such as +, – and >. This allows shoppers to easily navigate through categories to exactly the products they are looking for.
• Give category pages a look and feel similar to search results pages. This gives users a consistent experience across search and navigation.
• Include a thumbnail image, product title, brief description, price and additional information such as ratings and discounts.

Include Refinements

Just as on your desktop site, refinements make navigation easier for mobile visitors. Since mobile devices have a lot less space for navigation, using a drop-down menu can be a good design choice. Presenting refinements this way saves screen space by hiding them when they are not in use. This helps reduce visual clutter on the mobile site and allows visitors to view more products and content without needing to scroll down.

Offer Infinite Scrolling

You may find that shoppers spend more time on your mobile site if you provide infinite scrolling.

Instead of requiring shoppers to click to the next page, infinite scrolling automatically loads more search results as the user nears the bottom of the page.

Make Links and Buttons Touch-friendly

When designing for touch-enabled devices, keep in mind the size of the human finger and thumb. The touch target for an index finger is 57 pixels and for a thumb it is 72 pixels. Making touch targets smaller than that can lead to user frustration and incorrect clicks. Moreover, don’t require users to pinch and zoom in order to navigate pages as these actions also lead to a negative user experience.

Direct Mobile Users to Mobile Pages

If you have a separate mobile site with a different URL, make sure to automatically send your mobile users to the correct site. You also need to direct search engines to this alternate site in order for your mobile pages to rank well in mobile search results. If you’re using responsive design, this shouldn’t be an issue.

Don’t Assume Desktop Features Will Work on Mobile Devices

A common mistake in mobile development is attempting to port desktop features directly to a mobile device. With a touch-enabled device, the user is not navigating the page with a mouse cursor so functions like hover don’t translate into a positive customer experience. At best, the user will attempt to click the item multiple times to activate the link; at worst, the user will be unable to click through at all and may abandon the site in frustration. Instead, optimize your development for the unique features and uses of each device type. Smartphone users and tablet users may use your site differently so consider both types of users.

For more tips on how to improve your site navigation, download our Big Book of Navigation Tips.

Data from SLI Systems found Star Wars is an unmatched force with nearly 37% greater interest than Minions – the next closest film. In fact, this Halloween season, consumers conducted twice as many costume searches for Star Wars characters than Frozen characters, which were the most-searched costumes in 2014. Anticipation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is clearly attracting new generations, adding to decades of loyal fan numbers.

The top 5 most-searched movie-themed costumes of 2015 were:

1. Star Wars (combines searches for Leia, Darth Vader and other characters)
2. Minions (includes searches for Despicable Me)
3. Frozen (includes searches for Elsa, Olaf and other characters)
4. Marvel Universe (includes Hulk, Thor, Ironman, Spiderman and other characters)
5. Maleficent

As noted in a recent Multichannel Merchant article, SLI studied site search activity across e-commerce costume retailer websites based in the U.S., Canada and Australia, analysing a total of more than 10 million consumer searches taking place between Sept 1 and Oct 20, 2015.

The SLI data team compared the most popular site search terms across costume retailer websites using our Learning Search® service and found interest in current events as well. For instance, searches for ‘Trump’ increased significantly, with 33x more searches than the same timeframe in 2014. The data also revealed, the search term “Trump” was 38% more popular than “Ironman”!

Here are some of the additional findings from SLI’s 2015 Halloween Costume Site Search study:

• The top three most popular non-movie searches in order were: witch, pirate and zombie
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-related searches remain popular but missed the Top Five movie-themed list, coming in 6^thplace
• Supergirl (and Superwoman) was 3.5x more popular than Trump and nearly 5x more popular than Ironman, the least popular Marvel super hero this season
• Spiderman was the most popular Marvel super hero
• Maleficent saw 3x the searches compared with (Princess) Leia

So if you haven’t already bought your Halloween costume for Saturday, there is still time. You can either buck the trend or join the legion of fans who will pay homage to the Star Wars franchise.

May the force be with you!

At SLI Connect last month, Jim Davidson, Head of Research at Bronto Software, shared his latest findings on what retailers believe shoppers want versus what consumers actually expect for the 2015 holiday season. Following are a few interesting points from his presentation, “Creating Holiday Perfection Online,” which he will share in an SLI webinar next week.

Highest Converting Holiday Promotions
Bronto surveyed retailers and shoppers to learn which holiday promotion messages work best for online buyers versus in-store buyers. One of the discoveries was that 38% of shoppers will not buy if free shipping isn’t offered.

Mobile Shoppers: Browsing or Buying?
We know there’s an increasing trend toward using smartphones or tablets to shop online. However, because some retailers are slow to make their sites mobile-friendly, many mobile shoppers still turn to their desktops or go to a store to make the purchase. Bronto found that 22% of shoppers plan to actually make a purchase on their smartphone this holiday.

Even with holiday merchandising in full swing, there are plenty of digital promotions yet to be executed and much fine tuning to be done in the next two months of 2015. Listening to the retail analysts, along with optimizing your site search and mobile search, can help you achieve perfection.

Learn more by registering for the webinar “Creating Holiday Perfection Online” on Tuesday, October 27, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

1. Unique content for product detail pages: The language used by reviewers is different than the language used in product descriptions. When you include this unique “review language” in product detail pages, you create unique content. Your pages can no longer be considered duplicate to any other page on the internet.

2. Rankings boost from unique terms used in reviews: Internet search engines understand the language used by reviewers is not the same as the language provided by manufacturers. Search engines use review language to reinforce the topic of the product detail page. As a result, pages might rank better for phrases they already ranked for and they might rank additionally for phrases introduced via reviews.

3. Social proof: Favorable reviews and ratings act as social proof. Studies show that products are purchased more often when there is proof that other consumers liked those products as well.

Keep in mind that ratings and reviews only help your page rankings if they are part of the pages themselves. For maximum impact they must be visible as part of initial page loads, without use of iframes and without hiding the information behind tabbed or accordion-type controls.

We recommend showing rating and review information only after several reviews have been collected. Otherwise a low review count might negatively impact the perception of desirability for the products on your site.

Ratings & Reviews Partners of SLI include Feefo, Reevoo, Bazaarvoice, Power Reviews and TurnTo.

For more tips on improving your SEO, download our white paper “How to Get the SEO-Driven Revenue You’re Missing.”

In 2008, SLI Systems launched Auto Complete. As soon as users started typing their search query, a search box dropdown instantly displayed search suggestions. In 2011, we were the first site search provider to add images and product suggestions to this experience, which gave birth to SLI Rich Auto Complete^TM and allowed shoppers to find relevant products faster. Each improvement to our Auto Complete experience has increased conversions and customer engagement.

The E-commerce Evolution Continues

Today, we are excited to announce industry-leading enhancements to Rich Auto Complete^TM. Our new Rich Auto Complete experience has been designed from the ground up to speed the path to purchase and engage shoppers on any size device.

After considering a number of usability factors, best practices and client requests, we redesigned the entire experience to increase e-commerce sales, enhance product discovery and reduce the risk of returning “no results.”

Great for Shoppers

Our latest version of Rich Auto Complete provides better guidance to shoppers as soon as they engage with the search box. We added the ability to show search suggestions based on category, brand or department, which lets shoppers jump to the right section of results. For example, a search for jeans at a large department store might show options for jeans in Women, jeans in Men and jeans in Kids.

Our new dynamic content feature allows users to preview products of interest right within the Auto Complete box. We do this by updating products displayed when users hover over search suggestions, which gives them more choices and increases engagement.

In addition, the new Rich Auto Complete helps you capture more sales from your small-screen shoppers. We’ve created dedicated mobile and tablet designs that automatically display options correctly regardless of device size and orientation. As a result, shoppers can type less and buy more.

Powerful for Retailers

Rich Auto Complete uses patented SLI Learning Search® technology to continuously re-rank product suggestions based on user activity. This allows you to showcase the most relevant products to your shoppers, and you can tune the results to control the order in which products appear.

SLI Systems has always customized the look and feel of our solutions to match your e-commerce site. Our new Rich Auto Complete now includes a variety of design options so that you can choose an experience that fits your brand and delights your shoppers.

Our SaaS platform allows your site to evolve alongside our e-commerce solutions. Existing Rich Auto Complete customers will enjoy these new features at no additional cost. New customers can look forward to combining the power of Learning Search® with industry-leading Rich Auto Complete to create a premium search experience

Learn more about accelerating your e-commerce by reading our Rich Auto Complete product brief.

Great site navigation helps visitors avoid wrong turns and dead ends, but poorly designed navigation has the opposite effect: Shoppers lose their way and their patience, causing them to abandon the path to purchase before the journey even begins.

As an e-commerce retailer, you don’t want your visitors to fall into even a second of frustration, or they could be lost. A staggering 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience (Econsultancy).

One challenge of creating intuitive site navigation is accounting for different shoppers’ preferences. Some visitors are familiar with your site and others are new. Some will start at your home page, while others enter your site through a product page or landing page. Certain users always start at the search box, while others strictly navigate or use a mix of search and navigation. No matter the path, all visitors want you to bring them to the exact products or information they are looking for as quickly as possible.

The design of great site navigation is both an art and a science. After more than 14 years of helping the world’s leading e-commerce retailers turn shoppers into buyers, experts at SLI Systems have gathered an array of best practices to speed the path to purchase for shoppers in every industry, which we share in our “Big Book” series.

Our newest release of “The Big Book of Navigation Tips” includes more than 50 site navigation tips to help you lead your shoppers straight to their desired destinations.

Topics include best practices for:

• Overall site design
• Integration with ratings and reviews
• Refinement display
• SEO
• Merchandising
• Smartphones and tablets

Download your copy today and stay tuned to this blog for more articles about site navigation in e-commerce.

Site Navigation as a Tool for Merchandisers, Content Marketers and SEO Pros

Originally we launched SLI Learning Navigation® in 2006 to provide a consistent experience across a site that also uses SLI Learning Search®. Learning Navigation® has always leveraged our patented learning technology to continually re-rank products based on user activity. Over the years, our navigation solution evolved based on customer feedback.

Today we are excited to introduce the next generation of SLI Learning Navigation – completely rebuilt for improved SEO and better merchandising. The newest version of Learning Navigation is designed to give you more control over your SEO while creating a better user experience based on industry best practices.

Our revamped navigation solution dynamically generates clean, search engine-friendly URLs, making it easier for shoppers to find your products during an organic search. Our new interface allows you to quickly edit URLs, titles, headings, meta tags and page descriptions, giving merchandisers and content marketers more direct control over factors that affect their SEO.

Learning Navigation also helps you avoid SEO issues with duplicate content by controlling which pages search engines index. The navigation pages provide refinement and filtering options for the whole product catalog.

Bring Your E-commerce to the Next Level

Adapting to the evolving e-commerce experience and expectations of our customers is at the core of SLI – to continuously enhance our offering, accelerate your sales and provide these improvements seamlessly via our SaaS platform. We are excited to help you bring your e-commerce to the next level with this newest version of Learning Navigation.

For new customers, we recommend signing up for Learning Search together with Learning Navigation to gain the maximum benefits of SLI learning technology. For existing SLI Learning Navigation customers, our SaaS platform allows us to easily upgrade your Navigation for no cost at your discretion.

To learn more about Learning Navigation, click here.

The Wall Street Journal article “The New Face of Face-to-Face meetings” cites an Oxford Economics study showing that every dollar invested in business travel results in $12.50 in added revenue and $3.80 in new profits. Face-to-face meetings are necessary, and even profitable, for reasons both obvious and research-based:

• A handshake tells a lot about a person, and you can’t shake hands with a monitor
• Facial expressions and other body language can communicate more than the words we use
• Non-verbal cues help us predict a person’s trustworthiness (Science Daily)
• In-person meetings are usually more casual and more likely to be considered “off the record,” so it’s possible to get more done in less time
• Sharing a common experience is a building block of a long-term relationship
• In-person meetings are simply more memorable than digital conversations

Connecting with Customers

Knowing the importance of connecting in-person, we hold SLI Connect events each year in North America, Asia Pacific and the UK. It’s a unique opportunity to mingle with our customers, other retailers and industry leaders to discuss current e-commerce topics, explore future possibilities and learn from each other’s experiences.

Our SLI Connect event is Thursday, September 24, at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and there’s still a couple days to register. Our agenda, speaker list, venue details and sign up form are available at www.sli-connect.com.

If you’re already scheduled to attend, you can follow real-time updates on Twitter using the hashtag #sliconnect. We can’t wait to share some non-verbal cues and build some common experiences (i.e. shake hands and have some fun together).

This latest infographic by SLI Systems was also published in Multichannel Merchant on September 10.

The business-to-business industry is rarely considered glamorous. But don’t let its reputation fool you. Think of the almost-invisible wallflower who shows up to prom transformed and looking like a knockout. That’s B2B, and based on the numbers, it should stand for Big and Beautiful.

With more B2B buyers expecting to find what they need online, a growing number of B2B companies are embracing e-commerce. According to a survey by TradeGecko Pte. Ltd., 41% of wholesalers said e-commerce would be their top sales channel in 2015, up from 31% in 2014. In addition, 24% said they will sell online for the first time in 2015 (TradeGecko).

B2B Shoppers Have Higher Expectations

Shoppers have come to expect a customer-centric online experience, and B2B sites would be wise to step up their game. The addition of Amazon Business to the e-commerce scene only increases the pressure to act more like B2C. Why should shopping for work be any less efficient (and fun) than shopping for yourself? B2B buyers want a seamless online experience – even though the B2B path to purchase is usually more cumbersome.

The B2B buying process often requires in-depth research, approval from multiple stakeholders and possibly price negotiation. This combination of complexity and great expectations means your site has more chances to hit (or miss) the mark.

Here are a few ways you can do this:

Showcase Your Expertise

Nothing against your sales team, but your corporate web site is the first choice among executives for learning about business products and services, according to the 2015

Sullivan survey “Executive Buying Behavior.” Make sure potential buyers can easily find the information they desire, whether it’s demo videos, case studies, consumer guides or blogs. A superior site search experience will deliver product results and non-product content, so your visitors find everything they are looking for and more.

Go Anywhere, Be Everywhere

Work-life balance often means blurring the lines between both – and getting tasks done when you can. Research is no longer constrained to the dual-screen desktop at the office. Your customers might be traveling for business or couch surfing from the comfort of their home. Either way, go with them via their smartphone or tablet. As a bonus, the more mobile friendly you are, the higher you will rank in Google’s search page results.

Be Supportive

Set a gold standard for customer service. While today’s B2B shoppers want to independently scope out what you’ve got, they also want to know you’re there when they need you. Make it easy to place orders, track orders, make payments, get answers to frequently asked questions, find technical documentation and talk to a real person.

For more tips on creating an exceptional online shopping experience that will win loyal customers, take a look at this B2B Industry Brief from SLI Systems.

Positive signals to watch and improve include:

Mobile friendliness – The degree to which your site is mobile friendly will affect your SEO. In April 2015, mobile friendliness became a significant ranking factor for Google in determining a page’s position on the SERPs for Google visitors on mobile devices. Use Webmaster Tools (WMTs) such as Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools to monitor and improve your site’s mobile friendliness. As a separate tool, Google offers a quick test that reviews your URL and reports whether the page has a mobile-friendly design.

Keyword rankings – When your site contains relevant, quality content related to search phrases frequently used by visitors of Internet search engines, then these are positive signals for your SEO. Use WMTs to see which keywords and pages rank highest; use this information to determine which content on your site is most influential. Avoid the temptation to pack more of those high-ranking keywords into every page of your site – this could backfire and send out negative signals. Instead, use the keyword data to guide your content development and focus.

Links from other sites to yours – The links you naturally earn from sites with high domain authority (like when you’re mentioned in an e-commerce industry article) equate to positive signals that increase your rankings. However, resist the urge to outright ask publications or associations to add a link to your site – Google has mysterious ways to discern whether a link is simply requested or actually earned. Instead, create standout blogs and provide valuable industry news through social media and PR efforts. When you deliver information that others want to share, you truly earn links that boost your overall SEO efforts.

Structured Data – Structured data improves the bots’ understanding of the entities (products, organizations, blog posts, video objects, etc.) referenced on your site. You can improve the visibility of your pages by marking up the main entities and ensuring organizational markup is present on all pages. Check that structured data used on your side is understood correctly using the tools provided by Bing and Google. Keep in mind that incorrectly implementing structured data might do more harm than good.

Negative signals to watch and minimize include:

Crawl errors – A common crawl error that triggers a warning from WMT is a soft 404. If search engine bots pick up on pages that no longer exist and a no-results page is shown but not accompanied with a 404 http return code, this is a negative quality signal against the domain. To be clear, showing no-results pages is not a bad practice in itself – there are even possibilities to engage with visitors on them. However, they always need to be accompanied with a 404. On spotting soft 404s, you should immediately engage with your web designers to ensure the no-results page behaves as expected. Once the fix is in place, you might choose to “fetch” or “fetch and render” the no longer existing page to ensure it is returning the desired 404 response.

Large number of URLs on site – WMTs will send you warnings if you use too many URLs on your site, which could negatively affect your SEO. To correct this problem, you need to take a hard look at the pages that are already found. The WMT warning message will contain some example URLs; go through the list and confirm whether you want all of these URLs to be indexed. In addition, check for canonicalization issues. Ensure you have blocked access to your site search so that the bots cannot crawl your search. Even if someone links to a result page of your local site search, you don’t want Internet search engine bots crawling the page and adding it to their indexes.

Also think about indexation depth within your site navigation so you can avoid too many pages getting indexed. Generate an impressions/clicks report from the top pages to understand how much attention your deeper pages generate. Limit access to deep pages and consider not allowing all navigation refinements to be indexed.

HTML signals for missing, duplicate, too long or too short meta descriptions or title tags – Meta data still matters, and it’s easy to add any missing meta descriptions or title tags. WMT offers HTML improvement suggestions to show you any meta data that needs correcting. Simply add a description or title that is relevant to the topic and content of the page, within the provided character limits, and then you’ve resolved your problem.

If these tips were helpful, feel free to download our SEO Guidebook, “How to Get the SEO-Driven Revenue You’re Missing.”

“Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.” —

The time-honored tradition of buying new clothes, shoes, backpacks, pencils and notebooks in anticipation of the school year is a serious retail event – second only to the winter holiday season.

The National Retail Federation predicts the average back-to-school family will spend $630 while the average back-to-college family will spend $899 for an industry total of $68 billion this year.

But the tradition is changing. Shoppers are shifting how and when they will buy back-to-school supplies, according to recent surveys by the National Retail Federation and Deloitte.

Regarding the when, there is a trend toward procrastination. Deloitte’s 2015 Back-to-School Survey reveals 31% of consumers won’t complete their shopping until after school starts this year. Many are reusing supplies and restocking as needed.

How parents and students are shopping is also changing. Brick-and-mortar stores are still the main place of purchase. But for the first time in the Deloitte survey, online shopping was the second most common response when participants were asked, “In what types of retail environments do you plan to do your back-to-school shopping?”

In 2012, only 20% of respondents said online sites were among their top five back-to-school shopping destinations. This year, that number was 44%.

The top back-to-school spending categories are clothes, electronics, shoes and school supplies such as notebooks and backpacks, according to the National Retail Federation. Deloitte’s survey broke spending down even further to find that electronics are more likely to be bought online than other back-to-school purchases.

As online shopping gains popularity among the back-to-school crowd, the use of smartphones and tablets is also increasing. More than 40% of back-to-college shoppers are using mobile devices to research and price compare, and more than 30% plan to make purchases via their smartphones or tablets, according to the National Retail Federation.

Free shipping is a big selling point, but so is the option to buy online and pick up at the store, which will be used by almost half of back-to-school shoppers, according to the National Retail Federation.

Mobile shoppers are also using smartphones to find store locations and locate in-store products. Meaning retailers that want an A from parents and students should focus on providing a strong omnichannel experience, including mobile-friendly sites with geolocation services and accurate in-store inventory.

Good brick-and-mortar merchandising can:

• increase traffic by offering attractive visual experiences
• increase sales by featuring products through promotions and displays
• build loyalty through appealing, easy-to-access settings

Likewise, good online merchandising can increase traffic, increase sales and build loyalty with the same techniques, but with slightly different implementation. As you build out the merchandising functionality on your site, keep these best practices in mind.

Let Your Data Drive Programs

Knowing what your shoppers are interested in helps you respond to current trends and anticipate future promotional opportunities. When customers search, they’re telling you exactly what they want. Leverage data from search keywords and browsing behavior to power your email and advertising campaigns to get the most traction for your time and money.

Use shoppers’ behavioral data Pet360.com Rankings for the top-searched or top-purchased products rise to the top of results, and it is easy to spot any unusually high results. With Landing Page Creator, we can easily create campaigns and pages that target specific customers with specific deals.

Make Discovery Easy

Isn’t it helpful when you enter a store and a sales associate helps you find the exact item you’re looking for? Make the same true for online experiences. Again, it all begins with data. Track your shoppers’ search terms and browsing behavior to discover which products are most popular for top search terms on your site. Then, when customers search for those terms, display the most popular products in the first couple of rows. You’ll be more likely to show shoppers exactly what they want right away, which means fewer clicks, higher sales, and repeat customers.

Go above and beyond your shoppers expectations by tailoring search results to your shopper’s personal preferences. For example, implement tools that learn from individual shoppers’ behavior to automatically refine search and navigation results based on gender, size, or brand preference.

Since personalizing search and navigation results to individual shoppers, Footwear, etc. saw a 10% increase in revenue per visitor. They also saw a 5% increase in conversion rate and average order value (AOV).

You’ll give shoppers the feeling ofSecond, show the most relevant products visually as the search query is entered, through rich autocomplete. And third, tie the most popular keywords to promotions that you feature on your home page.

Zachy’s Wine and Liquor provides an enhanced customer experience using patented Rich Auto Complete technology from SLI Systems. As shoppers begin typing into the search box they are immediately presented with pictures, descriptions and pricing of relevant, popular products displayed right alongside the search suggestions. Since implementation, Everlast’s revenue from search grew from 1% to 10% of total revenue.

Merchandise Across Channels

Don’t forget the mobile experience! A streamlined mobile experience that works around the physical constraints of a mobile device will make it easier for shoppers to find (and buy!) what they want. For instance, keeping your search box front and center on every page is critical to keeping shoppers on your site so they don’t waste time navigating an entire site. Additionally, adding refinements in large, tap-friendly dropdowns lets shoppers narrow down to the most applicable results.

Management and Analytics

Sound like a lot of work? It doesn’t have to be. Thanks to the power of machine learning, you can automate all the best practices mentioned above, freeing up your time for other strategic projects. And with little to no intervention required from your IT department.

These ideas just scratch the surface of making your site a super-powered merchandising machine. We recently spoke with Sri PV, E-Commerce Internal Marketing Manager at Dressbarn, about how he puts these online merchandising fundamentals (and many more) into practice every day. You can hear the full discussion here.

For baseline measurement of your site traffic and SEO performance, not only should you have a GA account, along with Google and Bing WMT accounts, but you need to ensure they are set up correctly. They will provide valuable insight on your site’s performance and monitor the factors that affect your site’s SEO.

This blog covers offers tips on getting the most out of GA and WMT, as well as suggests third-party tools that are helpful to improve your SEO. This is part of our blog series on SEO.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) offers all the basic knowledge you need to track your site traffic and evaluate factors that affect your SEO. When set up properly, GA provides analytics on:

• Search Traffic – amount and quality of traffic coming from search engines, including visitor demographics and how they found your site
• Keyword Effectiveness – which keywords are driving traffic and conversions
• Content Performance – which site pages and landing pages are driving the most traffic
• Sales and Conversions – which search results and pages users click on that result in a sale
• Engagement Metrics – which parts of your site have the best/worst engagement metrics
• Rich Segmentation of Traffic – specific segmentation of metrics (e.g. segmenting metrics by device type)

To get the most out of your GA reports, Google offers a setup checklist that includes steps for installing a tracking code, identifying goals for what you want to track, linking to AdWords and/or AdSense, optimizing keywords, and tracking e-commerce performance against keywords and marketing campaigns.

There are a number of common mistakes made with GA setup that can significantly skew your results – and therefore, the quality of the data you’re using. For Google Analytics to be effective, you need to make sure you filter out fake traffic from botnets and avoid using too many profile filters. Also, it’s a good idea to use other analytics tools to double check your GA numbers. For more on common mistakes to avoid when setting up Google Analytics, watch this SLI recorded webinar.

Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools are both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools (WMTs) provide you with important information needed to monitor factors that will influence your site’s SEO. WMTs go beyond Google Analytics to provide insight on how your site is viewed by search engines. It will notify you of broken links, crawl errors, HTML errors and other potential problems. You’ll most likely want to set up Google Search Console first. With recent changes to traffic distribution, however, Bing’s Webmaster Tools (showing data for both Bing and Yahoo!) should not be ignored.

To decide which WMT to focus on first, check your GA statistics for insight into which organic search sources drive the most traffic to your specific site. Then set up your WMT account. SEO expert Bruce Clay has a free online newsletter that goes through the WMT set up process in detail. Or you can get yourself started with Google at www.google.com/webmasters/tools.

Once your analytics, Webmaster Tools, site pages and URLs are properly set up, it’s time to monitor, tweak and repeat on a regular basis. Your Webmaster Tools will become your best friend, as they offer insight into how you can increase the positive signals and reduce the negative signals that will affect your site’s SEO

Third-party SEO Tools

There are hundreds of third-party tools available to further improve your SEO. Take a look at a few of these resources to see what might work well for you. Also, don’t forget to look at what third-party tools your direct competitors are using – if they’re more successful than your site in SEO, it’s a good idea to know what they’re doing to get there.

Here are a few third-party SEO tools that are popular:

1. Moz, SEM Rush, Search Metrics: Several inexpensive, powerful tools that track your ranking of keywords over periods of time include Moz, SEM Rush and Search Metrics. These tools can also show you when a competitor started a campaign that targets your keywords.
2. SpyFu: For between $79 and $1,000 per month, SpyFu shows you your competitors’ most profitable keywords and ads. This offers insight into their success so you can build a strategy to beat them at it!
3. Screaming Frog: This low-cost tool crawls your site and provides an onsite SEO audit so you know where to improve SEO elements like URL, page title, meta description or duplicate page issues. Screaming Frog can also reveal issues with your site navigation and discoverability of content.The free version may be sufficient for spot checks. Make sure your site can sustain the load the tool might generate.
4. Google Instant Search: For an incredibly simple, free tool for keyword discovery, start typing a keyword into a Google search box to see which suggested, common search phrases pop up first. As an example, when you type “pants for,” you’re shown different suggestions than when you type “jeans for.”
5. Ubersuggest: Another easy-to-use tool for keyword generation, Ubersuggest.org is a free resource where you can plug in keywords, choose a language and source, and receive further keyword suggestions.

For more on improving your site’s SEO, please download our free white paper, “How to Get the SEO-driven Revenue You’re Missing.” Also take a look at SLI Systems’ solution for improving SEO, SLI Site Champion.

Now with Walmart and others joining the frenzy, Wednesday will be a must-not-miss shopping day. Just like that, the power of the words “Black Friday” have magically created a shopping holiday on a normal weekday in the middle of the year surrounded by no real shopping occasion.

Of course, Christmas in July sales aren’t new, and there’s a reason they work. We aren’t feeling the pain from last year’s holiday purchases and we aren’t yet concerned about saving for the upcoming holiday season, either. In fact, it’s the perfect time to buy something you’ve been eying for yourself.

While many retailers have mid-summer sales, the idea of many retailers having them at the same time creates an event – and compels shoppers to buy. (Think of the original Black Friday and Boxing Day.)

But why should Amazon and Walmart have all the fun? It’s not too late to ride the tide of Prime Day with your own better-than-Black-Friday sale. The beauty of online retailing is merchandising can be changed quickly based on what’s trending. In this case, it’s a mid-summer sale, and I say, the more the merrier.

For more merchandising strategies, check out this blog post or download our white paper “Use Site Search Data to Improve Merchandising.”

MTM charged Amazon with infringing on its trademark by creating “a likelihood of confusion” when customers search Amazon for “MTM Special Ops Watch,” which is the name of a military-style watch sold by MTM. Amazon uses the MTM Special Ops name multiple times on search results pages, even though they do not sell MTM watches.

Now MTM is entitled to a new trial, or Amazon may try to settle. Either way, it’s time for Amazon to stop fooling its shoppers. Whether they win or lose the case, Amazon should think more about site search best practices that will win loyal customers.

Here’s some advice on how Amazon and other retailers can expertly handle searches that turn up zero results:

1. Be honest. Search results should never be tricky. The search box is the one area of your site where customers get to tell you exactly what they want. Smart retailers either give customers what they ask for or apologize for not having it. If you mislead customers into looking at other items, they’ll soon realize that you aren’t showing what they want. They’ll feel fooled and will leave frustrated.

2. Think of the customer experience first. Online businesses depend on repeat customers. You’re not a temporary pop-up shop trying to get quick impulse buys without the concern of having buyers return to your store. When you show customers that you understand what they’re requesting and you’re doing your best to help them find it, it builds lasting respect.

3. Be smart about merchandising on no-results pages. When you don’t have the specific product or brand that a customer requests, you can still offer alternate items without insulting his or her intelligence. There are a number of possible responses, like “We’re sorry we don’t carry items from that brand, but the following brands are popular with our customers.” In the case of MTM watches, Amazon should state up-front: “We don’t sell MTM watches, but here are similar products you might like.”

4. Give suggestions for better search results. Sports Authority handles the no-results page by offering a “Did you mean _____” suggestion, along with the text: “You may have typed your word incorrectly or are being too specific. Try using a broader search phrase or try one of our most popular search phrases,” followed by a word cloud of popular searches.

5. Reduce the number of no-results pages. Be sure your site search provider includes synonyms and alternate spellings in your search to reduce the number of “no result” searches. After implementing this practice with SLI Systems Learning Search®, Sports Authority saw a 300% reduction in no-results searches.

6. Study the search terms that end in no results. In its Big Book of Site Search Tips, SLI encourages clients to review their Top No-results Search Report regularly to see what customers look for that does not come up in search results. Paying attention to no-results searches often uncovers opportunities for new items to add to the inventory. It also allows businesses to craft creative responses to a specific no-results result.

UK clothing retailer Oasis handles a search for maternity clothes with the message: “Whoops, we’re sorry we don’t cover bumps – shop our accessories instead.”

Beyond potential legal ramifications, Amazon should change the language on its search results pages for the sake of delivering what customers want. Other retailers can follow best practices from the start, and not have to worry about trademark infringement.

For e-commerce businesses wanting to capitalize on the surge of online shoppers looking for items related to gay pride and same-sex weddings, below are my recommendations:

1. Watch and respond to top search terms: Pay attention to changes in shopper behavior over standard baseline behaviors prior to the Supreme Court ruling.  In particular, look at search keywords for new or increasingly popular terms.  For example, a jeweler may see a sudden spike in a phrase like “men’s engagement ring.”  Because the search box is the one place on your site where shoppers can articulate their shopping missions without being channeled by your site navigation, search terms are strong early indicators of changes in shopper intent.

2. Consider which products are a fit. The types of products you offer will vary based on your industry segment.  The above example cites a change in jewelry preferences, but a florist may see an increase in desire for rainbow floral arrangements or a party supply retailer might sell more rainbow-colored decorations. You may decide that none of your products logically tie in to this current event, in which case you’ll want to wait until you have related products or skip this merchandising opportunity entirely. Shoppers are less likely to respond to a promotion that seems forced.

3. Look at top search terms with poor click-through rates. Search terms with low click-through rates can identify recent demand that your site and inventory are not meeting.  Sometimes you can solve these shortcomings simply by adding synonyms to your database. Other times you can address them with special promotions or merchandising information.  In the long term, these terms may reveal new areas for inventory expansion.

4. Create just-in-time merchandising campaigns. Create campaigns for products expected to be popular among supporters of gay marriage.  Use custom banners and landing pages or even tune search results and recommendations to more ably direct shoppers to the products they are likely to want in this area.  For example, a retailer may create a custom landing page around a phrase like “Pride party” with a themed banner and curated product results.

5. Remember SEO/SEM. Keep your SEO/SEM team apprised of top trending terms to ensure your keyword strategy is up to date.

Among the SLI Systems customer base, we have noticed the word rainbow coming up as a term with poor results so far this week.  We advise appropriate retailers to examine the word rainbow specifically to see if it is a trending term that deserves one of the responses detailed above.

Current events, as well as holidays, seasons and trends, are great positioning points for retailers. If you keep an eye on what your shoppers are already searching for online, you’ll find an endless number of ways to merchandise your products.

For more merchandising strategies to drive your online revenue, download our white paper “Use Site Search Data to Improve Merchandising.” Also, take a look at this video to see what you can do with our latest merchandising solution, SLI Landing Page Creator.

Is there anything quite like bathing suit shopping? Or should I say, is there anything quite like purchasing undergarments to wear in public in front of friends, their husbands and their children?

Traditionally, beachgoers could look forward to the following shopping experience:

1. Drive to the store.
2. Locate the ever-disorganized bathing suit selection.
3. Find a print and pattern that isn’t revolting.
4. Rifle through racks for the correct size.
5. Head to the fluorescent-lit dressing room walled with multiple, full-length mirrors.
6. Try it on. Hate it and deeply regret not sticking to those lose-weight-get-in-shape New Year’s resolutions.
7. Exhaust all options at that store.
8. Repeat the entire process, losing hours (and a good portion of self-esteem) in the black hole of bathing suit shopping.

Could someone please bring me a mai tai? I’m having anxiety just thinking about this.

Luckily, we live in the era of online shopping. Smart and thoughtful online retailers have the opportunity to transform the bathing suit buying experience into something that feels like a vacation. Here’s how:

1. Showcase your summer selections with editorial-style landing pages. You can create an entire poolside look – hat, sunglasses, bag, skirt, sandals and bathing suit – and drive potential shoppers directly to the tailored landing page by using dedicated URLs in email campaigns, social media posts or pay-per-click advertising.

2. Guide visitors to the perfect suit with a product finder that feels like a personal shopper. By asking a series of questions, you can lead shoppers to a great selection based on budget, style and even body type. For instance, one shopper might want a bikini under $80 to show off her athletic frame while another might want a one piece that will make her look 10 pounds slimmer regardless of the cost. Either way, your shoppers will appreciate your expert guidance.

3. One swimsuit definitely does not fit all. Make sizing simple and boost buying confidence by including measurement guidelines. Taking Shape does this right with an easy-to-understand sizing chart on its website tsplus14.com.au.

4. At a minimum, visitors should be able to search by style, color and size. But make sure they can also easily see what’s in stock along with ratings and reviews. No point in falling in love with a suit that’s not available in your size, and a rave review (“I look so good in this thing it’s all I wear!”) can help seal the deal.

5. Save the day with in-store pick up. As an online retailer with brick-and-mortar locations, giving shoppers the ability to shop online and find the item at the nearest location is a serious convenience, especially for those who may have delayed shopping until the day before the big swim party.

Let your shoppers save the mai tais for the beach by giving them a bathing suit buying experience that’s truly relaxing!

Identify the Top Keywords to Use – In the actual URL, use keywords that summarize the topic and content of the page. These are often the same keywords as used in the page titles. Making URLs SEO-friendly starts with the discipline of creating quality content where each page is focused on one main topic that can be described in 1-3 words.

Keep the URL Short – Use a few keywords only to keep the URL as short as possible. Any keyword required to state the page topic should be in the URL but nothing else. This not only helps in SEO, but also makes it easy for users to copy and paste or even remember the URL.

Use Real Words – Avoid use of numbers, special characters (with the exception of hyphens, which are recommended to separate words) or made-up words – unless they are a key component of your brand. Only use words that someone might search for. Try to stay clear of URL query strings (URL part following a “?” towards the end of the URL) entirely.

Remove Articles – Take out unnecessary words like “the,” “and” and “an.”

Use Hyphens – A simple hyphen is the best way to separate words; they’re found to be easier to use and to read than an underline mark, period or white space between words.

Use a Consistent Case – Be consistent in whether you use lowercase, uppercase or camelcase words in your URLs. Whichever you choose, follow the same style for all.

Avoid Canonicalization Issues – These issues can arise when multiple URLs direct to the same webpage. Most home pages, for example, can be called up by using any of the following structures:

• http://sitename.com
• http://www.sitename.com
• http://www.sitename.com/index.php
• http://www.sitename.com/index.htm
• http://www.sitename.com/index.html

However, you want to choose one preferred URL for each page and have the others use a canonical tag. Otherwise, your page authority for these pages can diminish, which negatively impacts your SEO. In addition, you are wasting crawl capacity that might prevent some pages from getting crawled.

Generally speaking, canonicalization issues are considered bad website design, and once they are spotted by Internet search engine bots, it will negatively impact the rankings of the entire site. It is common for duplicate content issues to be canonicalization issues in disguise. If content moves, you should set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the current page. By grouping the duplicate pages together in this way, their combined ranking signals work together for better overall search engine ranking.

We will continue with this blog series on Improving Your E-commerce SEO. Please subscribe to our blog to ensure you are informed about new posts. Also, download our free white paper, “How to Get the SEO-driven Revenue You’re Missing” for more best practices on improving your e-commerce site.

The SLI booth was buzzing with activity – and with the enjoyment of free margaritas during the Tuesday night cocktail hour! Throughout the show, we offered live demos and taped podcasts with customers including Dollar Tree, Yarn.com, Carolina Rustica, Steiner Tractor and Zachys Wine and Liquor. Subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed to be sure you don’t miss these podcasts, which offer advice and success stories from top retailers.

Hundreds of retailers approached us, seeking to understand how SLI can help them increase top-line revenue. Many wanted to hear about SLI Landing Page Creator, which makes it easier than ever to create SEO-friendly landing pages that display learning-based search results. Retail Touchpoints offered a nice write-up on how 2 Wheel Parts supply is using Landing Page Creator in PPC campaigns and other promotions.

We had many discussions about the increasing importance of video and other non-product content for retailers; there was a great deal of interest in how we integrate this content into the rest of the online purchasing experience. (We happen to have an e-book on this topic, “How Creative Content Convinces Online Shoppers to Buy.”)

Other retailers were interested in SLI Mobile, especially after seeing the effect of Google’s “Mobilegeddon” algorithm change in April. We also met up with long-time industry partners and established new partnerships at the show.

In short, IRCE 2015 was a great success. We look forward to working with both our newest customers and our long-time fans to ensure the rest of 2015 is filled with rising revenue.

We built SLI Landing Page Creator with merchandisers in mind: it’s simple to create, schedule and deploy custom landing pages that power your omnichannel marketing – through social media, email, pay-per-click ad campaigns and in-store applications. Additionally, merchandisers can create clean URLs and fine tune SEO with custom keywords, page descriptions and social media meta data, all within a simple drag-and-drop interface.

We’re also excited to let you know that landing pages utilize SLI’s Learning Search technology to include product lists that automatically update to reflect real-time changes in pricing, availability and product attributes.

You can offer shoppers unique, curated product sets that will appeal to their interests, new trends or other promotions and ensure that they are accessible to the way they shop – from mobile, social and email. Empower your merchandising team to make quick merchandising decisions and track the success of campaigns with real-time reporting and analytics.

If you’d like to learn more about SLI Landing Page Creator, click here.

SEO Terms You Should Know

Bot – also referred to as a spider or crawler, a bot is a piece of software used to crawl your site. Internet search engines use them to gain an understanding of your entire site and its individual pages. There are desktop-specific and mobile-specific bots. Well-behaved bots identify themselves with a unique “user agent” string that is logged as part of the page request in your web server’s access logs.

SEO – search engine optimization – the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of the traffic that you earn through the organic results in Internet search engines. (Rand Fishkin, “What Is SEO,” Moz).

SERP – search engine results page – the page on which Internet search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo!) show search results after a visitor submits a query.

Ranking Factors – there are many ranking factors that search engines consider to determine your SERP position, including basic document relevance (relevant terms, word count, proving words), number of backlinks, site speed, anchor texts in internal and external links, engagement signals (bounce rate, time on site, pages visited per session), support for mobile devices, domain authority, etc.

Index Size – the number of pages you have listed in Internet search engines. There are two index sizes – the number of pages an Internet search engine knows about and the number of pages it has actually crawled and can send its visitors to. The first number is significantly higher (in particular for e-commerce sites) than the second and can result in unfavorable “large index size” messages sent to your Webmaster Tools account.

Snippet/Rich Snippet – the listing shown on a search engine results page below the title is a snippet; other details added to the snippet (e.g. review stats, price, availability, etc.) make it a Rich Snippet. A Rich Snippet causes your listing to be larger and appear more predominant on the SERP. In addition, the larger your listing the further it pushes down your competitors’ listings and the more likely it is to catch the attention of a searcher.

Rich Snippet Markup (RSM) – code elements that are added to the HTML of the webpages showing product or other information. RSM allows the Internet web engine crawlers to better understand the information shown on the webpages. If the information on the page is well understood and the page itself is considered RSM-relevant, the search engine might honor this with a rich snippet on the SERP or it might improve the ranking of the page containing the RSM.

DA, or Domain Authority – this term was coined by Moz but is widely used in the SEO community. DA is the best prediction for how a website will perform in SEO rankings. It’s used to compare one site to another or to track the strength of your site over time. The collection of domain-level ranking factors determine a site’s domain authority.

PA, or Page Authority – this term was coined by Moz but is widely used in the SEO community. PA is a metric predicting how well a webpage will rank in Google’s search results for a particular search phrase. A collection of page-level ranking factors determine a site’s page authority. The same page will have different PAs depending on the search phrase for which the page ranks.

Penguin / Panda / Hummingbird / Pigeon – a series of major algorithm updates from Google focusing on different aspects of ranking webpages.

• Penguin focused on identifying and rewarding sites with a high number of legitimate inbound site links, while also identifying and penalizing sites with spammy “black hat” inbound links.
• Panda focused on interpreting which content is of high quality. It allows Google to reward pages that have highly relevant content and penalize those that use black hat practices such as content spinning or keyword-stuffing to try to give a higher SERP ranking to irrelevant content.
• Hummingbird focused on measuring the semantic relevance of webpage content in relationship to search queries. It focused on “intent” and not so much on exact keyword matching. It is less about what searchers are asking for and more about what they actually want.
• Pigeon focused on identifying localized content and giving higher rankings to localized content searched for from a corresponding region.

Meta Description Tag – an HTML attribute that describes a webpage’s content and is frequently used on SERPs. A well-written meta description is important for gaining high clickthrough rates, as it sums up the information on the webpage. The meta description tag should be unique for each page on your site to improve its efficiency (Moz).

Title Tag – an HTML attribute often used on SERPs to provide an accurate and concise description of a page’s content. One popular format is to include the following three elements, in this order:

• 1) primary targeted keyword 2) secondary targeted keyword 3) | your brand name
• Example: Fashion Jewelry | JewelsRUs

WMT, or Webmaster Tools – Google (Google Webmaster Tools – GWT) and Bing (Bing Webmaster Tools – BWT) provide tools that allow webmasters to check the performance of their sites, monitor any crawling and indexation issues, test certain aspects of their sites affecting indexation and apply configuration to the way the search engines treat site information. Understanding the information provided within WMT is crucial to understanding the performance of your site.

Types of SEO Activities

There are various SEO disciplines or activities, each of which has a number of significant subdisciplines. Here’s a brief summary of each discipline and how it may be used to improve SEO on e-commerce sites. Not all activities need to be executed all the time, but it is a good idea to consider these items as a checklist when working toward optimizing your website.

On-page and off-page SEO: On-page SEO is any activity, on individual pages or the entire site, which is completed in an effort to boost ranking in Internet search engines (e.g. optimizing h1 tags). Off-site SEO is not related to the site but will cause ranking improvements indirectly (e.g. link acquisition, brand management, etc.).

Technical SEO: This encompasses any activity performed to ensure the site is technically sound so that bots can crawl it efficiently and effectively. Technical SEO is mostly on-page SEO and excludes content creation.

Local and international SEO: Local SEO focuses on ensuring high rankings for searches with local intent. International SEO focuses on sites with multiple geographic locations and possibly different languages. The aim is for the site to rank well in each target market and to avoid duplicate content issues.

Content creation and marketing: This discipline focuses on identifying relevant topics, creating highly engaging site content and ensuring this content is reaching target audiences. Content creators should keep in mind that great content doesn’t always yield immediate SEO results. As an example, it can take years of quality blogging to establish a new site’s domain authority. Content must be created and marketed to reach its audiences and provide an SEO benefit.

Site analysis/audits: This includes looking at specific metrics to identify why your site or competitors’ sites are ranking or not ranking well for particular phrases or topics. Site audits also typically focus on technical SEO and link profiles.

Competitive analysis: This includes the practice of understanding why competitors’ websites rank well for particular phrases or topics. This information is valuable for identifying how you can rank higher than your competition. It might also help you understand the level of effort required to outrank your competition on particular phrases or topics.

Brand management: This is the practice of ensuring your own brand is perceived well in all target markets or market segments. The higher the brand awareness for your business, the stronger your domain authority.

Come Back for More

Return to this blog in the coming weeks to learn specific ways you can use SEO to increase your e-commerce revenue. Also listen to our recent Webinar: How to Get the SEO-driven Revenue You’re Missing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just one practice out of many in your tool belt. Unless SEO is your full-time job, it’s nearly impossible for you to fully keep up with the details of constant algorithm updates that affect your site’s rankings, like the recent mobile-friendly updates from Google and Bing (a.k.a. “mobilegeddon”).

Plus, it can be difficult to know which SEO-related activities can drive more revenue without causing damage to your site’s rankings.

To help, I’d like to present our new SLI Systems white paper, How to Get the SEO-driven Revenue You’re Missing.

The easy-to-use 22-page guide will help you identify what’s possible with SEO and start on the path to improvement. Whether you have an in-house expert, use an outside agency or need to learn how to do basic SEO on your own, this paper will help you know where you want to go with SEO and outline the main steps to get there. Topics covered include:

• Why you need to pay attention to the changing SEO landscape
• A review of the basics: Top SEO principles
• Two SEO tools you need to set up correctly before doing anything else
• Six steps to improving the SEO of your e-commerce site
• Major SEO “no-no’s” that can damage your site’s reputation
• New streams of SEO-driven revenue most retailers miss out on
• How user-generated SEO increases traffic and conversions without negative SEO

At SLI Systems, our search and SEO experts continually monitor and improve the on-site search of more than 1,000 client sites in the e-commerce industry. With more than a dozen years in business, we have gained unique insight into SEO best practices and opportunities, and we’re happy to share them with you.

Enjoy our new white paper now, and stay tuned to this blog for more articles on the topic of SEO in e-commerce.

But here’s the thing: If you aren’t making it lightning fast and super simple for your customers to find and buy what they want, somebody else will. Somebody named Amazon. As Amazon launches “Amazon Business,” B2B sites would be wise to step up their game. Here’s how to get started:

1. Start with search. Compared to non-searchers, searchers have an 11% higher average order value and a 2.7 times greater conversion rate, so it’s important and revenue-boosting to listen to what they say. Site search is key. If people quickly move from search to navigation or leave your site altogether, your site search isn’t doing its job. Good site search delivers relevant results fast.

2. Showcase your expertise. You’ve created a virtual library of case studies, blogs, consumer guides and videos – all with the hope of educating and converting your prospects into customers. But can they find any of it? Andersen Windows is a good example of how to deliver search results with a wow factor. Type “French doors” in the search box, and you’ll get products along with support information, technical documents, photos and videos. Using SLI Learning Search^TM, Andersen Windows makes all of its non-product information incredibly easy to find.

3. Be open to possibilities. At Spectrum Chemical, the search box invites users to input “Product Name, Catalog Number, Manufacturer, CAS #” – a confidence-boosting move that makes users feel they can’t go wrong. Smart search will allow you to create appropriate synonyms and tune your results so that visitors find what they are looking for, even if they type it in slightly different ways. Technical specifications and measurements are a great example. For instance, if someone typed 2.5, 2 ½ or 2-1/2, you’d want them to get the right results. In addition, features like SLI Rich Auto Complete^TM help people know they are on the right track by showing results as soon as they begin typing.

Remember, your search box is where your customers tell you exactly what they want in their own words. Advanced site search will give you the ability to easily pull reports and spot trends, like your site’s top search phrases and those ending in “no results.” Use this data to tailor your merchandising efforts and make it easier for visitors to find what they want to buy. Because being B2B is no longer an excuse for not delivering the very best to your customers.

Many people think of interactive marketing as a priority for B2C e-commerce organizations, but not as relevant for B2B. This is not the case. The essentials of interactive marketing are just as applicable to B2B e-commerce as B2C, and in fact, the interactive marketing strategy should not differ between the two markets.

Just as in B2C, there is a tendency for B2B e-commerce companies to focus on solely SEO and SEM, which our e-commerce delivery lead, Gian Genovesi, equates to a sports team focusing exclusively on scoring as many points as possible. Increasing the points your team scores, similarly to the traffic your site obtains, is a factor of success, but in no way the end-all-be-all in e-commerce success. After all, of the top ten scoring offenses in NFL history, only one has won the Super Bowl.

While SEO and SEM are effective ways to drive traffic, traffic is only one variable in the e-commerce equation and should not be the sole focus. There are four aspects to consider when creating tactics for increasing the revenue of your e-commerce site, and paying attention to all of them together is far more impactful than honing in on just one.

1. Traffic

In its most basic sense, traffic is simply visitors to or hits on your website. However, it is important to consider where this traffic is and should be coming from just as much as its volume. Are you attracting the right kind of traffic? You want visitors coming to your site from related or otherwise beneficial sites, which helps turn visits into conversions.

Some B2B-specific tactics to ensure that you are getting views from the right places include:

• Organic SEO
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising
• Content and Inbound Marketing
• Online Display Advertising
• Social Media Advertising and Networking
• External Link Building
• Off-Line Advertising

2. Conversion Rate

This is, of course, is the number of people becoming customers or clients out of the number of people visiting your site. The industry standard is 1%-3% of visitors becoming customers, but it is also important to consider who is converting and what is incenting them to convert, not just the percentage alone.

User experience is always the first factor in the conversion rate of a site. The employees purchasing for their company during the workday are the same people who go home and shop online for themselves in the evening, and they deserve a consistent and user-friendly experience no matter which context they are in. Important factors to keep in mind are:

• Pertinent Search Results
• Relevant Layered Navigation
• Ratings and Reviews
• Automated Email Reminders
• Online Chat and Immediate Customer Service

3. Average Order Value (AOV)

Now that you have your site visitors becoming customers, how do you entice them to buy more? In B2B, there is often more involved in someone increasing his or her order value than just adding another item to the cart. Business purchase decisions often require more time and input from more people than the typical B2C purchase, so it is important to keep B2B-specific tactics in mind, including:

• Personalized Marketing based on Customer Segmentation
• Cross-Sells and Up-Sells
• Pricing and Promotions
• Search Results and Weighting
• Product Subscriptions and Bundling

4. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

If a customer has trusted you enough to purchase from your e-commerce site once, how do you get them to convert again? They chose your product or service and gave you their payment information, so how do you entice them to keep coming back?

The best way to increase CLV is to reward customer loyalty. When attempting to re-engage with a previously converted customer, you want to be memorable, but not annoying. Some resources to use to increase CLV in B2B are:

• Favorites Lists
• Reward Points
• Newsletters
• Special Offers and Private Sales
• Social Media Broadcasting
• Frequent Buyer Programs
• Recurring Orders

Focusing on these four pillars of interactive marketing, instead of developing a singular focus on one, will significantly improve the chances of your B2B e-commerce site seeing success in the online marketplace.

Need more information about interactive marketing? Feel free to contact Briteskies. Briteskies is a partner of SLI Systems.

About the Author: Gian Genovesi is the e-commerce Account Manager for Briteskies. He has a fiery passion for serving and aiding clients in fully leveraging the value, features, and functions of their e-commerce systems. With a myriad of experience in leveraging e-commerce systems and their wide array of supporting systems and strategies, Gian constantly strives to put his clients in an optimal position for success in the online channel.

About Briteskies: Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Briteskies is a full-service solution for e-commerce, enterprise software, iSeries, and the integration of these business-critical systems. We assist our customers in bringing their brands, products and services to the online marketplace. We’re a Magento Silver Solution Partner, Premier IBM Business Partner and a JD Edwards Gold Partner with iSeries Application Specialists and an in-house JD Edwards practice.

Well aware of the growing mobile masses, on April 21^st Google expanded its mobile-friendliness ranking signal to reward mobile-friendly sites with higher search rankings and demote those that fail its test. (a.k.a. “mobilegeddon,”). While the full results are still to be seen, action by many online retailers is still needed. To guide developers, the search giant also provided them with the top things to know when building a site for mobile devices. Here’s how e-commerce site search fits in and can help contribute to your mobile success.

#1: Make It Easy

Google’s #1 recommendation for building a mobile-friendly site is: Make It Easy For Customers. Heavily contributing to the ‘mobile-friendly’ signal is whether or not visitors, after landing on a mobile page, can easily complete the tasks they want to accomplish by solely using the mobile site. For instance, when visitors using smartphones search for new running shoes on Sports Authority, the company’s mobile-friendly site helps them easily find and buy the shoes they want, which in turn will now help Sports Authority fare better in Google smartphone rankings.

Mobile-optimized site search helps retailers connect shoppers with the products they’re seeking, making it easy for mobile visitors to find, research and/or complete a purchase (their main objective). Given mobile’s space and speed challenges, the search box is the best gateway to finding products and content on mobile sites. That in turn has a big impact on engagement metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates, average time on site, average pages requested per session and more, which affects its ‘mobile-friendly’ signal and mobile search ranking.

Helping site visitors easily complete their objectives now has a direct impact on mobile search rankings, making good site search more important than ever before.

#2: Measure Effectiveness

Google’s second recommendation for building a mobile-friendly site is: Measure The Effectiveness Of Your Site. Optimized site search is a vital part of delivering a satisfying shopping experience to mobile users as it helps visitors quickly and easily engage with the site – often increasing conversion rates and average order values, and lowering bounce rates. Leading e-commerce companies, including international cosmetics brand e.l.f. Cosmetics and specialty retailer WebUndies.com, have experienced impressive measured results with mobile-optimized site search.

Lesley Klein, director of e-commerce at e.l.f. Cosmetics, reported: “Conversion for mobile visitors using site search is four times the rate vs. mobile users who don’t use search. With 30% of our online traffic coming from mobile devices, we’re providing a seamless shopping experience no matter how or where people come to e.l.f.”

Terri Hunsinger, co-owner at WebUndies.com, found: “Mobile site search has been very effective in bringing 2,500 products to the forefront for customers who are trying to search on small devices where it can be difficult to see our broad product selection. People are spending more time and more money and are more engaged because of the accurate search results they are seeing.”

As with sites like e.l.f. and WebUndies.com, optimized mobile sites make it easy for customers to shop. Whether Mobilegeddon ends up significantly impacting SEO or not, your optimized mobile search will strongly contribute to better online shopping experiences and conversions.

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.

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.

The Global E-commerce Index ranks the top 30 countries for market opportunity in online retail. Rankings are based on nine variables including macroeconomic factors, consumer adoption of technology and shopping behavior.

According to the A.T. Kearney report, global online sales from mobile and desktop will reach $995 billion this year and $1.1 trillion next year. That’s good news for all retailers in the e-commerce space. But some significant opportunities are being uncovered in the Americas.

Making the list from the Americas:

An improved economy and continued growth helped the U.S. go from third to first and trump China as the global e-commerce leader. E-commerce sales worldwide rose to $840 billion in 2014 with the U.S. accounting for more than a fourth of that number at $238 billion.

Mexico, which has never been ranked before, debuted at spot 17 on the Global E-commerce Index. The A.T. Kearney report credits a young and connected population for Mexico’s much-higher-than-average 32% year-over-year growth in online sales. Mexico’s total online sales hit $6.6 billion in 2014. And the news continues to get better with similar growth expected over the next five years.

Even though Brazil slipped to 21^st place on the index, the country grew about 18% year-over-year and e-commerce sales were a strong $13 billion in 2014. “Online retailers still find Brazil to be a growing e-commerce market that is impossible to ignore,” the A.T. Kearney report states.

The Nielson Global Survey of E-commerce, released in August 2014, also put a spotlight on Latin America, noting that the emerging region has the highest online browsing rates.

“Latin Americans are enthusiastic online shoppers, but the online retail infrastructure has not yet caught up with offering conversion opportunities,” said John Burbank, president of strategic initiatives for Nielson.

Latin American shoppers are most often browsing online for electronic equipment, mobile phones, clothes, cars and motorcycles, and tour and hotel reservations, according the Nielson report. The highest buying category in Latin America is airline tickets and reservations, which historically is a starting point as consumers gain confidence in the online shopping experience.

Worldwide, e-commerce grew more than 20 percent in 2014, according to the A.T. Kearney report. But online sales overall remain less than 10 percent of total retail sales—so no matter what corner of the globe you’re in, your e-commerce market has room to grow.

The Aussie E-Commerce Boom

According to SLI Connect speaker Mark Gray, managing director at ChannelAdvisor, the Australian e-commerce market is growing at a breakneck rate. Mark said: “Australians spent $16.4 billon on online retail in 2014! This level is equivalent to 6.8% of spending at traditional brick and mortar retailers” (source: NAB Feb, 2015).

Moreover, Testivate Founder and Principal Analyst Steven Noble, who also presented his findings at SLI Connect, reported that Australian retailers are adopting global e-commerce best practices and meeting U.S. and EU competition head on.

Aussie Retailers’ Biggest Worry

Even with business booming, we learned via an SLI survey at the show that half of these leading Australian retail brands worried about losing business to international competitors in the past year. SLI Systems Regional VP Mark Brixton said: “The results show local retailers are concerned by the increased willingness of Australian shoppers to interact with international retailers.”

In response to this pressure, the vast majority of Aussie retailers have taken action to ensure they remain relevant in a increasingly competitive market by implementing advanced e-commerce solutions, including sophisticated site search (80%) and mobile and tablet optimization (67%).

SLI customer and presenter Duncan Brett, general manager of e-commerce at Bras N Things, shared how learning-based site search, navigation and recommendations solutions from SLI are helping Bras N Things tailor product searches for customers and increase sales from top search terms over time.

The Omnichannel Future

Similar to our experience at SLI Connect UK, retailers discussed moving toward omnichannel retailing as fast as possible. Neil Thomas, general manager at ShopBot, wisely suggested in his presentation that “it is time to think about dropping the ‘e’ from ‘e-commerce platform’ and calling it what it is really becoming – a commerce platform.”

Duncan of Bras N Things further emphasized that the brick and mortar store and e-commerce store should be “a joint force and not another source of competition.”

As the buying journey becomes more complex, so too does the competition. It’s inspiring to see so many retailers in Australia and across the globe using learning site search as a competitive advantage to drive conversion rates and sales worldwide.

The next SLI Connect event is planned for September 24, 2015 in New York City! Save the date and stay tuned – registration will open soon.

To meet these quickly changing usage patterns, Google is again adapting its algorithms to help users discover more mobile-friendly content. On April 21, Google will expand its mobile-friendliness ranking signal to make it even easier for users to find ‘mobile-friendly’ websites in search results.

According to Google, “This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.” And if anyone wants to test mobile web pages, Google provides a handy tool: The Mobile Friendly Test.

Mobile-Optimized Site Search Boosts SEO

Heavily contributing to the ‘mobile-friendly’ signal will be whether or not visitors, after landing on a mobile page, can complete the tasks they wanted to accomplish by solely using the mobile site.

For instance, when visitors using tablets search for new running shoes on Sports Authority, the company’s mobile-friendly site helps them easily find and buy the shoes they want, which in turn will help Sports Authority fare better in Google rankings after the April 21 algorithm change.

Mobile site search is a vital part of delivering a satisfying shopping experience to mobile users as it helps visitors quickly and easily engage with the site. Given mobile’s space and speed challenges, the search box is the best gateway to finding products and content on mobile sites. That in turn has a big impact on engagement metrics such as conversion rate, bounce rate, average time on site, average pages requested per session and more, which has a direct domain-wide impact on its ‘mobile-friendly’ signal and mobile search ranking.

For a complete guide to providing mobile shoppers with a great user experience, download the new white paper Site Search and the Mobile User Experience.

Mobile 101 – New Webinar!

Join us on Tuesday, March 24 at 10:00 a.m. PDT for a new SLI Webinar, Mobile 101 – Best Practices, to learn more about how to convert mobile shoppers with an engaging mobile user experience (and in turn, boost your mobile search ranking!). Registration is open until 8 a.m. PDT on March 24, plus an on-demand version of the webinar will be available soon.

Earlier in March, we had our most successful SLI Connect UK yet. With an unprecedented 200 attendees from 150+ leading retailers such as Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Tesco, Jigsaw London, Warehouse, Chemist Direct and Paul Smith, we could not have asked for a better or more expert turnout. I want to thank all who attended and presented for your invaluable participation at the show.

At the end of the month, we will hold our next SLI Connect in Australia – SLI Connect AU.

Through discussions with customers and colleagues at SLI Connect UK, it was clear that the future of e-commerce is flush with opportunity. We’ve all heard the buzzword ‘omnichannel,’ but the reality comes down to this: true ‘omnichannel’ means the channel becomes totally invisible to the customer. To make the omnichannel experience seamless and successful, the retailer must subtly meet shoppers at all points in their user journeys in a personalized manner. Here are two real-world examples I was fortunate to learn about at SLI Connect.

Fashion Retailers Move Toward Omnichannel

Top clothing retailer Jigsaw is positively moving toward omnichannel retailing. Jigsaw’s Head of E-commerce Kate Holt presented at SLI Connect, where she revealed that Jigsaw was experiencing a massive rise in smartphone traffic. She informed us that 55% of traffic and 44% of sales came from mobile devices! Jigsaw uses SLI Mobile to ensure its mobile shoppers are quickly finding the items they want to buy. Kate reported that the results to date have been staggering, with revenue up 47% and conversion rate up 30%.

Leading clothing retailer Warehouse is also working toward omnichannel retailing by executing a robust personalization strategy, according to SLI Connect presenter and Warehouse Digital Trading Manager Liam Price. Through Warehouse’s popular blog ‘Tales of the City’; various payment, delivery and returns options; product recommendations (via SLI Learning Recommendations); and advanced site search (via SLI Learning Search), the retailer’s e-commerce site is experiencing a 7% increase in visitors and 3.4% increase in conversions.

In fact, a test run by Warehouse found that when SLI Learning Recommendations were removed from the product page, total revenue fell by 2%!

Multichannel, Omnichannel – It’s Just Retail!

E-commerce industry analyst Linda Bustos says it best, “Whether you refer to it as multichannel or omnichannel, the ways in which your consumers are researching, purchasing, and interacting have evolved, effectively backing most brands into a largely-reactive corner…organizations must realign with experience-driven systems to build relationships with, and sell to, the modern consumer.”

The two savvy retailers mentioned above are personalizing the e-commerce experience, making the ‘channel’ virtually unseen, to meet the needs of their modern shoppers and drive e-commerce sales. SLI Connect attendee Jon Woodall from Space48 summed it up nicely: “Forget omnichannel, it’s retail!”

SLI Connect Australia – Less than Two Weeks Away!

There’s still time to register for SLI Connect Australia, which is coming to Sydney on 31 March 2015 at the Quay West. More retailers and e-commerce professionals will gather there to discuss and explore the future of e-commerce, with speakers from ChannelAdvisor, Shopbot, Bras N Things, Appliances Online and more. We hope you can be part of this powerful event!

1. Learning-based Site Search

Speed shoppers are likely to go straight to the search box and expect relevant results within the first few items displayed. To deliver such on-target results, a site search provider needs to offer technology that learns from multiple aspects of user activity and continually re-ranks items that are most relevant. The smarter the technology, the better the accuracy and speed for shoppers.

2. Autocomplete with Graphics

A critical feature for speed in site search is the ability to auto-populate product results and images from the first letter a searcher types, as offered by SLI Rich Auto Complete^TM. If I want to quickly find polo shirts and I start typing “polo,” I appreciate a retailer who shows me “polo” shirts after just typing “po.”

In this example, the retailer also uses SLI Learning Search^TM technology, which intelligently infers that by typing “po” I was most likely looking for a polo shirt and not a “pocket tee” or “popover hoodie.” Smart – and fast.

3. Social Content and Reviews Integrated Into Search

Keep in mind that not all speed shoppers know exactly what they want when they search. A last-minute gift-buyer, for instance, may search for “makeup set” at e.l.f. cosmetics, but before clicking “buy” the giver wants to make sure it’s a quality product. Since e.l.f. incorporates a special “As Seen In” feature into its search, the gift shopper can see that this item has been featured in magazines like O and Woman’s Day. And if that doesn’t instill enough confidence to click “buy,” the shopper can see that it’s a 4-star product with more than 61 reviews. This quick-reference information, placed on the product page, can make a speed shopper giddy about the efficiency of it all.

4. Easy Payment Options