With the holiday shopping season well underway, there is talk of recent ecommerce site failures and anticipation of how these failures will impact online businesses during this season’s shopping frenzy. Nearly one year ago, Internet Retailer reported on major site failures experienced during Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) – two of the busiest shopping days of the season. Often, these outages are caused by the high volume of site visitors during peak shopping times and servers that can’t keep up. Or, they may be caused by natural disasters, power outages or software glitches. When entire sites go down there is tremendous impact: business is lost, customer loyalty suffers and a brand’s reputation is seriously compromised.

While site failures are extremely costly for online retailers, there are also individual aspects of a site that can lose functionality and also impact the online experience for shoppers; for example, site search, the shopping cart, product videos, etc. For these functions, it makes sense to entrust your site to a hosted services (or SaaS – software-as-a-service) provider so you can offload that traffic to a 3^rd party – particularly one that has built-in redundancy in its architecture and implemented business continuity policies, to protect you from these types of failures. For example, SLI Systems has implemented redundant servers in multiple data centers around the world to ensure that if a server goes down for any reason, another will step in to take over.

The Internet Retailer article from last year indicates that according to web performance measurement firm Gomez, Inc. the top 50 retail sites have an average of 97.60% availability, and an average site response time of 2.25 seconds (Gomez also says research shows there is a 2-second “standard” – referring to the length of time the average person will wait).

Like most retailers, you’re probably turning up the volume on your marketing efforts to drive as much traffic to your sites as you can in the coming weeks. But are you certain your site will be able to perform – and respond quickly? It’s not too late to offload your site search to a 3^rd party expert if that’s an area you have concerns about or haven’t looked closely at. Have questions? Feel free to comment below.

One of the best things about site search is that almost everyone is familiar with the concept of being online and starting their journey with a keyword search. The search results page is one of the most frequented pages of a website and yet all too often is the case that you’ll perform a simple search only to be shown ‘product not found’ ‘article doesn’t exist’ or be served a page of totally irrelevant results. Today’s internet user has very little patience when it comes to this kind of user experience and will usually be off to a competitor’s site within seconds.

In the current economic climate it is crucial that you invest in areas of your online business that can deliver and deliver quickly. Furthermore, anything that assists the innovation of your site whilst engaging existing customers and attracting new ones gives your brand the opportunity to rise above the competition and improve the performance of your online business. Of course there are a number of technology areas worth considering but I’d strongly advocate that you consider investing in a dedicated site search solution for two simple but very important reasons: the effects are tangible and immediate.

There is no doubt that site search is one of the most important ways to understand the shopping behaviours of your visitors. Users who type a search phrase are more likely to convert versus a user who browses (typically using navigation) the site. Site search users are ‘objective focused’ – that is to say they are looking for something specific and are telling you in their own language what they want. If you show them what they are expecting to see (relevant results) they are much more inclined to add the item to their shopping basket.

This is proven through another important area of site search – the data. To be sure your investment is working for you the ability to measure the impact via site search analytics and online analytics is vital and will provide genuine insight into how your site performance is improving as measured against your KPI’s (key performance indicators).

Site search needn’t be difficult to implement either (SLI Systems use a product data feed) so you shouldn’t have to employ a development team or change your ecommerce platform to accommodate it. On the contrary, the site search solution should easily bolt into your existing ecommerce infrastructure and run seamlessly with the site you already have. If you opt for a SaaS (software as a service) model there are no hardware implications either so why not test your own site search to see if the results are what you were expecting to see. If the results are not relevant then you are very likely losing out on the opportunity to improve your conversion rates and other vital metrics.

For more information on how to improve your site search please contact SLI Systems on 0800 032 4783 in the UK and (866) 240-2812 in the US. Alternatively please click here for a free Site Search Critique. The SLI Systems Christmas Guide (UK version), the SLI Systems Holiday Guide (US version) and Big Book of Site Search tips can also be downloaded free of charge.

Lately, we’ve been beating the mobile drum pretty loudly. A few weeks ago, we announced our new SLI Mobile solution to help retailers quickly create a mobile version of their websites. And just last week, we announced that one of our customers – Century Novelty – worked with us to create its mobile site in a matter of days, in order to capture the growing numbers of mobile shoppers the company was already seeing.

Some in the industry think it’s just too early for companies to be worrying about mobile. That’s not our take, based on the experience many of our customers have had in seeing a steady growth in numbers of visitors to their sites from mobile devices. As Ian MacDonald of Century Novelty explained to us, over the past year they noticed a small percentage of sales actually coming from mobile devices. The amount wasn’t significant, but it was enough that they couldn’t ignore it.

Last week, the results of a recent NRF survey on mobile shopping were published by Evan Schuman in StorefrontBacktalk, showing that our thinking is correct – as many American consumers say they expect to shop by mobile device this holiday season. According to StorefrontBacktalk, exact numbers are hard to pin down due to the possibility that respondents may not have answered the questions in the same way (e.g. some may have treated social networking recommendations or texting friends as “conducting research” while others may not have), or because some people may not think today that they’ll shop via mobile device but come December they might. Still, the data is compelling. Of 8,767 consumers surveyed, 26.8% said they would use their smartphones to either research or make a purchase during the holidays this year; and of those in the 18 to 24 age range, 45% said they would.

Evan also mentions that his site conducted a survey with Forrester Research that showed an “alarmingly high percentage of retailers (21.3%) who said they have no plans for any M-Commerce programs in the next 18 months. And almost half of those surveyed choose ‘none of these’ when asked if they allow customers through a mobile site or a dedicated application.” In our own M-commerce survey from earlier this year, we found that 80% of retailers surveyed say they have no mobile commerce strategy in place, while at the same time, 83% of those surveyed said that between 1-10% of site visitors come from mobile devices.

While the numbers vary from survey to survey, one thing is clear: there is an audience today on the mobile platform, and that audience will only continue to grow in the months ahead. Retailers who choose to sit on the sidelines until this market is more mature may miss out on an opportunity to garner more sales, and possibly lose customers along the way.

For retailers who are eager to get started but are reticent to spend a lot of time and resources on a mobile site, a solution like SLI Mobile is ideal – it can help you create a site in a week or less, with minimal involvement from your team. And the expense is nominal. If you’re hesitating, don’t. We’re ready to help you today. Contact us now.

Each year it seems the online holiday shopping season starts earlier than the year before. Consumers are already flocking to the web to get a jump on their holiday shopping, yet many retailers are still getting their sites ready or are altogether unprepared. If you’re one of them, register to attend our free webinar – “Seizing the Remaining Season: Find out What’s Selling and How to Sell Yours” – taking place next week, featuring online customer experience expert Susan Aldrich of the Patricia Seybold Group.

During the webinar, Susan will offer insight into what consumers are search for and buying this season, across several categories, including apparel (men’s & women’s), electronics, jewelry, cosmetics and more. She’ll also discuss ways you can take advantage of these buying trends and improve your site’s search and navigation to increase customer engagement and conversions on your online storefront – for example, by incorporating social media content into site search, and extending the search experience to mobile devices.

The 30-minute webinar takes place on Wed., Oct. 27 at 8:30 a.m. PDT / 11:30 a.m. EDT. When you register , you’ll receive a copy of SLI Systems’ Holiday Guide : 10 Steps for Preparing Your Online Retail Site Search for the Holidays.

If you haven’t yet developed a mobile version of your website, it’s time to put this task at the top of your list. The mobile device market is growing at exponential rates, and your customers are quickly becoming comfortable with buying products and content on their phones and tablets – in fact, the Coda Research Consultancy says that U.S. mobile commerce sales in 2010 will reach $2.4 billion.

To help you get up and running in this new mobile commerce world, we’ve introduced SLI Mobile, our hosted solution for creating mobile sites with fast and easy-to-use search and navigation functionality. We create the product pages for mobile sites using customer product data that we already have on hand, and we optimize the pages for mobile searching – which is very important given the limitations of browsing on mobile devices. We’re also offering thumbnail product images for fast delivery on mobile devices, and we can integrate the pages with your product rating and review solutions, as well as social media content.

We can deploy these mobile features for all of the major mobile device platforms and devices, including iPhones, BlackBerries, and Android phones. To find out more about SLI Mobile, read our press release, or contact your Customer Success Manager or our sales team at sales@sli-systems.com.

To give you even more guidance on getting ready for the mobile commerce market, we’ve just published a new white paper, Site Search and the Mobile Commerce Revolution. In it, you’ll find advice on developing your mobile commerce strategy, how to create mobile-friendly site search, and your choices for implementation. The guide is free, and can be downloaded here.

Come visit us at our Shop.org booth (#807), and we will give you a free site critic review. We’ll let you know how you can improve the search and navigation experience of your users, and run a few tests with you to determine how accurate your site search is. We’ll also be able to demonstrate some of the search techniques our customers use, which can be the perfect way for your etail site to capture more conversions during the holidays. While you’re there, you can enter our drawing for a new iPad.

Many retailers feel their online storefronts are all dressed up and ready to go for the holidays. If you’re not one of them – or even if you are, but you somehow didn’t include a dynamic site search in your plans – we would love to talk to you. We can discuss with you the many features and enhancements, such as Rich Auto Complete, AJAX-based site search and incorporating social media content into your site search results, that can dramatically help your site performance.

Please also check out our “Big !dea” session on Wednesday at 1:30pm, where our own Ed Hoffman will discuss the importance of understanding the language of your customers to increase sales and conversions online.

We hope to see you in Dallas!

At 4:30am on Saturday morning Christchurch, New Zealand was hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. This is the location of our New Zealand office. Amazingly no one in the city was killed and there were very few injuries, despite there being widespread damage. Our staff are all well and, with one exception, have escaped major damage to their houses.

Our core services were uninterrupted by the earthquake. We did experience approximately a 10 hour outage of our email and our merchandising console. I apologize for that and we are working to build more redundancy into these systems.

Our office is on the 10th and 11th floors in a building in down town Christchurch. We had staff in the building at the time and they had a terrifying experience. Luckily they escaped unscathed. The office was a mess with bookcases toppling over and everything being thrown around. However our building is sound and  there was very little damage, so we were able to quickly return things to normal.  Our staff have been working from home but we expect them to be back in the office in the next day or two.

Approximately 60% of houses in Christchurch have been damaged and many buildings in the city will need to be demolished. We are lucky that as a company we have escaped relatively unscathed. The team is still in shock at what has happened – made worse by the continuing aftershocks. I expect it will take us a while for us to return to normal.  Thank you for your understanding as we work through this.

Here are a few pictures:

This is typical of what our offices looked like after the quake. Although, to be fair, this guy was always pretty messy.

This is the road outside of the house of one of our team.

This is the roof of my house after the quake. One Chimney fell down during the quake and the other one had to come down soon after. This is common across the city.

Earlier this week we announced our new Learning Search for Publishers, a new variation of our hosted site search product aimed at the online publishing/digital media industry. The value proposition of a good site search in online publishing is similar to that of e-commerce: it improves the visitor experience, increases page views and can result in more sales. For publishers, our offering takes it a step further by providing useful data about search terms and resulting items clicked on to advertisers, giving them an opportunity to deliver more targeted ads to visitors.

Take our customer Dilbert.com (which we also announced yesterday). Dilbert.com recently added our site search to the popular cartoon strip site, making it much easier for fans to search the 20-year archive by character name or theme/topic (warning: if you engage in this activity you may find yourself wasting a LOT of time).

Dilbert’s previous site search didn’t allow for this, so people either had to know the exact date of the cartoon strip or search by character and hope they found it. Since the Dilbert.com site is supported by display ads, as well as licensing revenues (people license the comic strip for use in books, t-shirts, company newsletters and other things), a good site search is important to its business. Since deploying our site search, page views are already up 3 percent (a substantial number given that the site sees more than 1 million visitors a month), and the company says they also expect licensing sales to also increase.

Another benefit of an effective site search on a digital media site is the ability to drive visitors to the variety of content available – for example, videos and blog posts, and revenue-generating content, such as subscriber-only articles (some of our customers have also seen revenue increases from more people clicking on articles behind the pay-wall). Without the ability to refine and help narrow down searches to find the desired content, visitors are not likely to remain on the site or make return visits. And higher page views mean that online publishers can set higher advertising rates.

We’re excited about entering this new market and see lots of opportunity among media sites in need of better, more impactful site search. We’ll be talking more about the challenges publishers face and how site search can address them in the coming months, as well as some of the unique benefits our customers have gotten from using Learning Search.

The race is on for websites to offer as engaging a customer experience as possible – through fast and relevant site search, multimedia content, customer reviews and other tactics designed to keep visitors on the site longer. Along with raising the bar on the customer experience comes the need to serve visitors early in the shopping process and keep their attention until they turn into serious shoppers who’ll actually buy.

Today, I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion on “Smarter e-Commerce” with Paul Sondregger of Endeca at the Gilbane Content Management Conference in San Francisco (Hadley Reynolds of IDC will be moderating). We’ll be discussing, among other things, how to engage buyers who have different intentions in terms of making a purchase on your site, depending on where they are in the buying cycle. For instance, someone who’s merely trying to gather information – if they’re shopping for an expensive product and need to know more before they commit to the purchase – needs to be impressed by the quality of information, and great customer service. This will encourage them to return when they’re ready to buy.

On the other hand, if visitors are ready to buy today, they’re much more likely to use site search, which means your site search feature needs to be fast and relevant if you want to convert that customer. And since we know that people convert at a higher rate when they use site search, it’s especially important that your site is designed in such a way that site search is rich and engaging and readily accessible.

If you’re attending the Gilbane conference, please stop by our session and discover more about what it takes to turn browsers into buyers. The session, “Smarter e-Commerce,” takes place at 3:30pm today as part of the Customers & Engagement track.