SLI Systems is exhibiting at the Ecommerce Expo taking place at Earls Court, London on October 20 – 21, 2009. Ecommerce Expo is in its third year and is the largest ecommerce event in the UK. Entry to the expo is FREE of charge so it’s a fantastic opportunity to catch up with the latest thinking and developments in online retailing and meet the companies who can provide the solutions you’re looking for without spending a penny.

If you’re visiting the expo, stop by SLI’s stand, #514, we have an Acer Netbook (Windows XP, 160GB HDD, 10.1 inch) up for grabs so leave us your business card to go in the draw to win. We’ll also be performing FREE site search reviews at our stand so if you’d like someone on our team to review your site search please click here and we’ll arrange a time.

Osric Powell, Business Development, SLI Systems & Rob McNair, Ecommerce Manager, Tiso UK will be presenting at the Customer Conversion & Retention theatre between 2:45pm – 3:15pm, Wednesday, Oct 21. Please come along to this case study based presentation and learn how Tiso improved their revenues using advanced on-site search.

For more information about this event, visit www.ecommerceexpo.co.uk

We look forward to seeing you there expo!!

Today we posted an interview with Lee Brown from Online Golf on the ecommerce podcast. One of the really interesting pieces of data that Lee shares during the interview is that people who view a video on their site are 85% more likely to buy than people who don’t. This is one of the strongest endorsements for online video I’ve ever seen. Online golf use the videos as a sales pitch, providing more information about a particular product.

As part of our proactive outreach (that we do for all of our customers) we suggested that their videos be incorporated into their site search. The products that have a related video now have a link that allows the videos to be played directly from the search results page. Over half the videos that are watched are now viewed from the search results page.

Is search really the new navigation, as the CEO of DMV.org (an SLI customer) said last year? Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital seems to think so: the firm now features a large search box as the sole element on it’s home page – no photos, no standard navigation, just search. Visitors must enter a search term to get further into the site – although once they do land on a page they will find limited navigation options.

There are various reasons why Sequoia would reduce its website to a search box, according to this write-up in VentureBeat.  Regardless of the reasons behind it, you certainly have to wonder if the company that backed Google in its early days might be on to something. Or just on something.

Patricio Robles at Econsultancy says the search box-only page “is a nightmare to use efficiently,” since you have to know exactly what you’re looking for, and you can’t simply browse top-level navigation categories. On the other hand, other industry watchers liked the no-fuss look of the search box, and the fact that it doesn’t distract visitors from the critical goal of finding information.

I agree with Patricio. Despite being a huge fan of site search, I think you need more. To make matters worse the search interface here is non standard – the results are shown (with a very short title) as you type – you have to click on the link at the bottom to see a standard search. I definitely wouldn’t advocate a search only home-page for anyone. What do you think of the idea? Would your visitors embrace it, or hate it?