 |
|
 | |
Today we issued a press release about Hard Rock Cafe and the work we are doing with them.
The press release explains why you need ecommerce specific features in a site search solution for a site that has both an online store and significant non-product content.
I don’t normally mention our press releases on the blog but thought Hard Rock deserved a special mention.
Rock On!
Have you read the news today? If you have, you couldn’t ignore the many stories related to the current economic conditions and questions about what it means for business.
According to a recent story by Kevin Ryan at Search Engine Watch, everyone wants to know what the economic meltdown means for advertising and marketing dollars, and how organizations will shift spending and strategies to put the right amount of focus on the programs that promise to yield the most in terms of revenue or brand recognition.
Just this week we released the results of a survey that highlights some of the top technology tools marketers at more than 300 retail organizations are using to help them drive business and compete for consumer dollars. The survey shows that close to all of the people we polled (90%) rank site search, search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing as the most important e-commerce technologies helping to promote their online businesses.
Interestingly, we asked these same retailers what programs they would consider omitting from their marketing plans if faced with tightening budgets, and found that those who are minimizing spend due to current economic constraints are not inclined to diminish their core marketing programs – site search, SEO and email marketing – but would rather decrease spending on activities that are less results-driven such as podcasts, static display ads and online video.
It seems only natural that companies competing for shrinking consumer dollars would look to tools they can rely on to help them better appeal to consumers and keep those consumers coming back. We’re happy to report that site search and SEO are two best practices retailers are using to continue promoting sales and customer loyalty today, and in the future.
Related Items:
Last week we announced that Lighting by Gregory, one of the largest lighting and ceiling fan distributors in the U.S., has seen some impressive results from using our Learning Search site search and Site Champion user-generated SEO solutions. In fact, they’ve seen a 40% increase in their online conversion rate since deploying our technology.
With more than 150,000 products in their e-commerce inventory, the lighting retailer needed a robust, intelligent search solution that would give visitors an easy way to find what they’re looking for and not deliver items with little or no relevance in the search results. The company also needed something that returned results lightning quick and that could help customers further refine their searches. Their previous site search from Google just didn’t cut it. (Don’t get us wrong, we like Google and think their Internet search engine is a powerful tool (as does practically everyone else!), but site search is not their sweet spot. It IS ours, as Lighting by Gregory’s results show.)
Lighting by Gregory initially underwent a 30-day free trial, a standard offer for any new customer, and saw how quickly SLI went to work for them. They signed up immediately after the trial ended and have continued to see positive results.
As Lighting by Gregory learned, site search users usually bring in more revenue on average per visitor than those who opt to simply navigate the site. If your site search isn’t delivering the results it should, we’d love to go to work for you too.
Today we announced that we have an expanded partner program that includes a broad range of online marketing, ecommerce platform, analytics and ratings & reviews solutions providers.
Our partner program allows online retailers to further integrate industry-leading products and services with SLI’s hosted search solution… read more
|
