We’re always excited when one of our customers gets recognition for something innovative or unique that they’re doing – and even more so when that recognition involves our search technology.

Century Novelty is one such customer. The online party supplies retailer recently won a Silver Award from Multichannel Merchant magazine, recognized as one of the stand-out sites in e-commerce. As stated by the publication’s editors, Century Novelty received the award because it:

“…has an intelligent search engine mechanism and logical up-sell recommendations integrated with the shopping experience. When an item is unavailable in the desired quantity, recommended substitute products are displayed both on the item page and the basket page. Said one judge: ‘I like that they use the left nav for promo space’ such as same-day shipping and testimonials. The carousel on the entry page is well done, and ‘the perpetual cart is great,’ said one panelist, ‘as is the recently viewed items.”

Such an intelligent site search solution has obvious impacts on customers’ shopping experience by enabling them to find what they seek more quickly, giving them a positive view of your site and making it likely that they’ll return again rather than visit a competitor site. In the case of Century Novelty (and many of our other customers), the site search offers several options for refinements to better help customers hone in on the item(s) they’re looking for. It also offers suggestions for alternate search terms – based on others’ search activity – that might generate better results. And it allows shoppers to sort results by various criteria: lowest price, highest price, popularity, new arrivals, highest rated.

This type of search experience is great for your customers, and it’s great for your business. Not only do companies like Century Novelty see better click-throughs and conversions from an intelligent site search, they also get lots of useful data in activity reports that help them make decisions about products to sell, keywords to include in product descriptions and what terms to use for SEO and paid search campaigns.

Are you interested in creating an award-winning search experience on your site too? Feel free to contact us and we’ll see what we can do.

Shop.org Annual Summit
We will be exhibiting at the Shop.org Annual Summit next week September 21-23 in Las Vegas. If you will be attending, stop by booth #623. Or, if you haven’t already registered and would like to attend we can offer you a discount of $100 off a full conference pass or a FREE exhibit hall only pass. When registering, enter the code 1332 to received the discount.

Ed Hoffman, VP of Worldwide Field Operations, will be giving a 30 minute presentation in the Big !deas Theater in the exhibit hall. This presentation, Preparing for the Holiday Hurricane – Identifying Trends, will focus on how you can understand what your customers want as well as how to increase the customer experience. Join Ed on Tuesday September 22nd from 2.45 to 3.15 to find out more. Also, SLI along with our partners Certona, ExactTarget, PowerReviews and Acadaca will be giving away a MacBook Air. Visit these participants at their Shop.org booths to receive your entry card.

Shop.org provides keynote presentations by some of the retail industry’s leading companies that can give you great insight on how to better direct your business goals. And they will provide afternoon sessions focusing on specific tactics to improve your ecommerce business with topics such as social marketing, mobile commerce, SEO and more.

For more information on the Shop.org Annual Summit, visit www.shop.org/web/summit09.

LENSER 09 Summit
SLI is a sponsor of next week’s LENSER 09 Summit, September 23-25 in San Rafael, CA. If you will be attending, stop by our table and find out how you can improve your site search with SLI.

Visit www.lenser.com to find out more about how LENSER can help you with your multichannel marketing efforts.

This week we’re making the journey to Foxwoods Resort & Casino, Ledyard, Connecticut for the NEMOA fall conference – September 16th – 18th. The event is focused on “Beating the Odds” and has some of the best minds in the industry teaching online retailers how to win against the tough economy.

We’re sponsoring the Thursday cocktail reception with our partner LENSER so if you’re in the area please come by and have a cocktail on us.

Chris Tucker from SLI Systems is hosting a roundtable on Thursday morning where you can have breakfast and share ideas with other industry peers.  Chris’ table topic is “Creative Uses of Site Search and Navigation”, so if you’re attending the event, please join Chris and friends for breakfast and learn how industry leading online retailers are optimizing their Site Search and Navigation to create the best possible experience for their customers.

Don’t miss this opportunity to “Walk Away a Winner”. To find out more about the event visit.

We hope to see you there!