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.

On Wed., July 28 we’re hosting a free webinar featuring Forrester Research Principal Analyst Brian Walker. The webinar, “Unlock Powerful Customer Information to Generate Higher Conversions with Site Search,” will cover a variety of topics, among them –  how site search data can reveal valuable information about customers and their research and purchasing intentions, and what you can do with this data to improve other marketing efforts and ultimately, your business. Brian is a reputable expert on e-commerce technologies and the user experience, and he has great insights to share about how retailers can make more effective use of site search to deliver the type of content and information people require to make a purchase.

In the webinar, Brian will discuss things like how you can discover from site search information whether customers are finding products in stock (or not) or if they’re looking for products not available on your site that you might want to add, and what products are trending in popularity. Site search data can also reveal long-tail keywords that are useful for SEO and paid search campaigns, and can help you determine how best to guide shoppers to items they seek through behavioral features like Related Search suggestions and Auto Complete.

The webinar will also discuss how you can incorporate site search data into other marketing activities, like personalized emails; on-site merchandising, banner advertisements and promotions; and content development, and the role site search plays on the mobile platform.

We hope to make the webinar interactive, so if you plan to attend please come prepared with questions and comments. You can sign up to attend this webinar at http://www.sli-systems.com/brian-walker-forrester-site-search-webinar.php.

SLI Systems will be hosting a webinar in August on the anatomy of a great ecommerce site search and improving the user experience.

The 30-minute webinar will be held on Thursday August 13, 2009 at 1pm PDT.

Ed Hoffman, VP of Worldwide Field Operations will:

• Discuss recent trends in site search
• Explain how implementing these features can improve the user experience and in return increase sales and conversions
• Conduct site search critiques – to be considered, indicate your interest on the registration page
• Have a short Question & Answer session

If you were unable to attend our webinar on Thursday you can watch the recording from the Merchant Advantage website.

Best Practices for CSE Marketing and Site Search
Michael Lambert, CEO, Merchant Advantage & Shaun Ryan, CEO, SLI Systems
The 30-minute webinar was held on Thursday Feb 19, 2009.

By watching this webinar you will learn:

• How Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE’s) can bring you new customers – without bringing you tech hassles.
• How to select the most effective CSE’s for YOUR business out of the hundreds out there.
• How to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of your CSE choices and make changes in real time.
• How to improve customer satisfaction by reducing the time it takes a site visitor to find what they’re looking for.
• How to implement a system that learns from your visitors’ behavior over time so that you can better meet (and anticipate) their needs.
• How to list products in their predicted order of popularity and automatically optimize pages for search engine spiders.

Watch Webinar Now

Merchant Advantage and SLI Systems are hosting a webinar this week on Best Practices for CSE Marketing and Site Search.

The 30-minute webinar will be held Thursday Feb 19, 2009 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern.

By participating in this webinar, you will learn:

• How Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE’s) can bring you new customers – without bringing you tech hassles.
• How to select the most effective CSE’s for YOUR business out of the hundreds out there.
• How to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of your CSE choices and make changes in real time.
• How to improve customer satisfaction by reducing the time it takes a site visitor to find what they’re looking for.
• How to implement a system that learns from your visitors’ behavior over time so that you can better meet (and anticipate) their needs.
• How to list products in their predicted order of popularity and automatically optimize pages for search engine spiders.

Register Now

There is no question that search drives revenue: it brings customers to your site, it connects customers to products, and it can be used to trigger relevant offers on your site. Making the most of your search opportunity isn’t simple: you have SEO, paid search, paid inclusion, advertising, site search, and site merchandising. All seem to have different paradigms, tools, reporting and lingo, and making trade-offs can be a challenge. But there are steps you can take to optimize your customers’ search experience, and reap increased and more profitable revenue as a result.

Watch this free webinar to hear:

• How marketers manage their search campaigns and tools, based on a survey of marketing executives

• How a leading retailer achieved 10x expected incremental revenue through automated user-generated search optimization

• The impact of recommendations and personalization on revenue

• A practical approach to testing online campaigns

• Whether search results pages convert better than category pages.

Takeaways: At the close of this session, you will:

• Compare your own search-driven revenue results to our benchmark (Sue is presenting her survey results)

• Understand better how to automate search optimization for the long tail of searches

• Be able to apply proven tactics for testing email and PPC campaigns

• Gain useful insights on your products and services based on the language of your visitors and customers

Speakers

• Ed Hoffman – VP of Worldwide Field Operations – SLI Systems

• Sue Aldrich – Senior Vice President, Senior Consultant/Analyst – Particia Seybold Group

• Jay Greenberg – Director, eCommerce – Spencer’s

Watch Now

There is no question that search drives revenue: it brings customers to your site, it connects customers to products, and it can be used to trigger relevant offers on your site. Making the most of your search opportunity isn’t simple: you have SEO, paid search, paid inclusion, advertising, site search, and site merchandising. All seem to have different paradigms, tools, reporting and lingo, and making trade-offs can be a challenge. But there are steps you can take to optimize your customers’ search experience, and reap increased and more profitable revenue as a result.

Attend this free webinar to hear:

• How marketers manage their search campaigns and tools, based on a survey of marketing executives

• How a leading retailer achieved 10x expected incremental revenue through automated user-generated search optimization

• The impact of recommendations and personalization on revenue

• A practical approach to testing online campaigns

• Whether search results pages convert better than category pages.

Takeaways: At the close of this session, you will:

• Compare your own search-driven revenue results to our benchmark (Sue is presenting her survey results)

• Understand better how to automate search optimization for the long tail of searches

• Be able to apply proven tactics for testing email and PPC campaigns

• Gain useful insights on your products and services based on the language of your visitors and customers

Speakers

• Ed Hoffman – VP of Worldwide Field Operations – SLI Systems

• Sue Aldrich – Senior Vice President, Senior Consultant/Analyst – Particia Seybold Group

• Jay Greenberg – Director, eCommerce – Spencer’s

Register Now