'Net Features : site search

Head-to-Head Comparison of E-Commerce Site Search Providers

Allison Howen — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:35:00 GMT

Among the most important elements of a website is its search functionality, as it has a direct impact on the end-user experience.

In fact, having good search functionality is especially vital for e-commerce sites because shoppers cannot purchase what they cannot find. This means that a search feature that turns up no results, irrelevant results or isn’t personalized may be negatively impacting a merchant’s bottom line. But with a variety of e-commerce site search solutions available on the Web, what makes one platform stand apart from the rest?

See the Head-to-Head Comparison of E-Comemrce Site Search Providers now.

Voice-Over Merchandising in Site Search

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:08:00 GMT

Differentiating the on-site search experience is important for retailers and those that take its development seriously are poised for much greater success than those that do not.

And while this essential feature of e-commerce sites has been improved over the years in myriad ways (e.g. layout, autocomplete, product ratings, richer product images, inclusion of social content, etc.), there remains further opportunities for differentiation. For example, Internet site search provider Nextopia just announced Audio Voice-Over Merchandising.

Based on the keywords used by site visitors, merchants can present a unique audio message for the purpose of optimizing merchandising campaigns or highlighting certain products and promotions. In the case of Nextopia client Primitive Home Decors, a search for “Halloween” generated an audio message about discounts and free shipping Nextopia customers interested in the Audio Voice-Over Merchandising product need only upload a sound recording or record voice-overs directly within the products control panel.

“Many of our customers already leverage keyword based merchandising to display promotional banners based on specific keywords searched,” said Sanjay Arora, CEO of Nextopia. “And now with Audio Voice-Over Merchandising, they can take it one step further by presenting both a graphical representation as well as audio messaging.”

Recent Stories on Nextopia from Website Magazine:
- Magento Integrates Advanced Site Search from Nextopia

Putting Pinterest on Site Search Results

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:57:00 GMT

Site search provider SLI Systems announced that it worked directly with ArtBeads.com to integrate functionality from online pinboard Pinterest into its site search results.

Visitors to the bead and jewelry-making supply retailer's e-commerce website can now see the number of pins that various products have received from other Pinterest members right on the search results pages, and are able to pin any items they find to their own pinboards. Pinterest's "Pin it" button also appears on videos and within educational content sections on Artbeads.com.

"Our shoppers have embraced Pinterest because it aligns with their love of craft and jewelry design -- so it makes sense for us to guide them to products that have proven popular with other customers," said Devin Kimura, CEO of Artbeads.com. "By bringing pinned products into SLI site search and allowing people to pin products they like, we can help shoppers explore our products more deeply and benefit from the recommendations of other site visitors."

As you can see in the image below from ArtBeads.com, the integration is rather straightforward, but for active Pinterest users it could prove to be a terrific way to increase customer engagement.

Related and recent posts about Pinterest from Website Magazine

Elastic Path 6.3 Delivers Subscriptions & Testing Features

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:40:00 GMT

Elastic Path Software released a new version (6.3) of the enterprise ecommerce platform. The platform now includes Subscriptions and A/B Split Testing-features which could help providers of digital goods and services stay competitive in the growing online market.

The Subscriptions feature of Elastic Path 6.3 enables enterprises to sell digital goods and services with a recurring charge as part of a bundle or as a standalone item - ideal for software and game vendors, consumer and business services, and providers of digital media such as books, publications, music, video, and information.

Elastic Path 6.3 will also include A/B Split Testing, integrating the multivariate testing capabilities of Adobe® Test & Target to combine price testing with web experience testing - giving enterprises the capability to discover the most profitable price points.

In addition to Subscriptions and A/B Split Testing, Elastic Path Commerce 6.3 also includes Advanced Search, which allows users to filter searches based on more complex criteria such as price ranges, and the exclusion/inclusion of certain brands-just one more feature from Elastic Path Commerce 6.3 to help enterprises stay competitive in the growing market of digital goods and services.

Publisher Tools Analysis from Lijit

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 03:15:00 GMT

Lijit Networks, a site search and engagement tool provider for online publishers, announced results of its 2010 Publisher Tools Analysis today.

Lijit surveyed 735,834 websites to collect data on referring traffic and on-site widget deployment (any regularly occurring functionality on a website powered by an external service, voluntarily installed by the site owner, and powered by Flash or Javascript).

Sites analyzed include all 15,000 sites in the Lijit Network as well as their extended network, which incorporates blogrolls and other linked sites. Of the sites surveyed, 84.8% have widgets installed.

Information of note from the study includes:
- Widget adoption specifically related to Facebook and Twitter almost doubled, growing from 6.96% to 11.86% deployment.
- Of referring traffic from social media sources, 44% came from Facebook, 41% came from StumbleUpon, 6.7% came from Digg, 5.13% came from Twitter, and 2% came from Reddit.
- Related content tools used to keep readers on-site longer didn’t make the list of Top 10 tools in 2009, but are now being used by 3.68% of sites surveyed.
- Online advertising services continue to track at a 20% adoption rate; however, new monetization tools used in affiliate marketing programs such as Skimlinks, Infolinks, and Amazon saw a 16% increase in 2010.

“Online publishing has become a two-way street, and those who are most successful have learned to use social media to build highly engaged, conversational communities of readers,” said Todd Vernon, CEO and founder of Lijit Networks. “Social media tools should not only be used to attract new readers, but also to engage and retain them by allowing people to post comments, receive feedback, and share relevant information.”

Rating Content from Social Graph Data

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:33:00 GMT

Site search and “engagement tool” provider Lijit Networks announced it has been granted a patent for rating content based on social graph data.

The patent covers methods and systems that query a mathematical model of a trust network of interconnected individuals and return a subjective rating of content associated with those individuals. Lijit’s network search technology, which is covered by the patent, is used on over 15,000 publisher websites.

“This patent supports and protects some of the key intellectual property used in Lijit’s service offering,” said Todd Vernon, CEO and founder of Lijit Networks. “Lijit’s Custom Site Search allows people in the online world to leverage a social network of interconnected people to find products, services and information from sources with whom they have formed a trusted relationship.”

Adobe Search&Promote Arrives in Style

Software Everywhere : feature — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:30:00 GMT

This week the site search market got a new player as Adobe has introduced Adobe Search&Promote. The site search and merchandising application aims to help marketers anticipate visitor search intent and promote the most relevant products and content...(read more)

Bigger Search Box: Small Change, Big Impact

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:27:00 GMT

Google's Inside AdSense blog has a terrific case study on a site that made a small change with a big impact as a result.

The owner of the site was using Google's SiteSearch for displaying search results on his pages. A few minor changes were made, including moving the search box to a more prominent location (from the sidebar to the center of the page - see image below) and extending it to twice its original width. In addition, some aesthetic changes were made to the search result pages, including removing the borders around the sponsored ads themselves.

The result of these small (fifteen minutes total) changes?

The number of queries increased and that ultimately led to more clicks on sponsored listings. It makes you wonder what sort of small changes you could make on your own site that would produce a positive result, doesn't it? Share with other WM readers (by commenting) the small changes you've made recently on your site and what impact it's had on the bottom line - good or bad.

Below are some before and after shots of the search box change:

Tiered Pricing for Yahoo Boss Search

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:29:00 GMT

You might have noticed that Yahoo Boss made its way into the feature article for February in a sidebar on site search options. If you're unfamiliar with Boss, it enables developers to use Web results from Yahoo's main search index within their own apps.

But as you've probably come to understand, technology moves fast. Yahoo this week announced several changes to its Boss and Search Monkey services. The search service was previously free and will remain so for those generating fewer than 10,000 queries per day, but after that, Yahoo will use a pricing model known as tiered pricing or "buckets" using much the same model as phone and energy companies of old.

Yahoo will begin charging for the service in the second quarter of 2009. Learn about the new open monetization, pricing, structured data and more at the Yahoo! Search Blog or review the Website Magazine article on the many flavors of site search.

Site Search With Quintura

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:15:00 GMT

Site search provider Quintura announced the release of some interesting new features for its Quintura Site Search solution. The enhancements will provide publishers with improvements to back-end analytics and improve the overall experience for users. The new features include:

Search Cloud in Adobe Flash – Quintura's search cloud has been enhanced with Flash technology to create a more dynamic user interaction.
Search Cloud Customization – Web publishers can now utilize new layout options and have the ability to pre-populate the search cloud with desired search terms or content.
Improved Analytics – Quintura data can now be sorted using a term or date filter, and be displayed graphically.

“These new tools make Quintura Site Search more dynamic and interactive than ever for both site users and online publishers,” said Yakov Sadchikov, founder and CEO of Quintura. “The publishers have a competitive advantage by being given up-to-the-minute analytics and control over their site search capabilities.”

Analytics-Driven Site Search from Omniture

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:06:00 GMT

Data from Retail Systems Research in August of 2008 revealed that 34 percent of retail executives (that means you) said site search would be a leading method to improving online sales. As your ecommece enterprise adds content to its website, customers are using site search functionality to find exactly what they need.

Omniture announced the availability of Omniture SiteSearch this morning to give marketers more control of the visitor on-site search experience by enabling them to target search result to visitors, manage relevancy and more importantly (ranking) and all while leveraging visitor behavior metrics to boost results based on conversion and popularity.

- Automatically promote best-performing products and content based on business rules driven by SiteCatalyst
- Lead visitors to relevant content or products through marketer-defined information categories—refining search results on-the-fly
- Dynamically change the format of search results based on the type of search, the set of results returned or the context of the search
- Automatically aggregate and display content from the SiteSearch index based on defined business rules
- Provide actionable insight through keyword reporting around what visitors are searching for—including top keywords and failed searches