Coffee Drinkers Prefer Fair Trade Organic Blends and Single-Serving Brewers, According to Hosted Site Search Provider SLI Systems

Learning Search™ Identifies Emerging Trends through Top Keyword Searches on Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ e-Commerce Site

CUPERTINO, CA –- April 18, 2006 – SLI Systems, a provider of on-demand search services for Internet and e-commerce sites, has discovered through keyword research that more and more coffee drinkers are favoring fair trade organic blends and single-serving coffee makers – perhaps a result of the coffee house lifestyle that’s taken hold in the U.S. over the last decade.  In partnership with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR), SLI Systems’ Learning Search™ hosted site search solution collected the most popular search terms over a two-month period on the site www.greenmountaincoffee.com.  With “organic,” “single cup brewer” and “K-cups” (Green Mountain’s own version of single-cup brewer coffee pods) among the most searched terms on the coffee retailer’s site, the results indicate an emerging preference for individuality, quality and health when it comes to buyers’ attitudes towards coffee. 

The United States is the world’s largest consumer of coffee, importing 16 to 20 million bags annually (2.5 million pounds), representing one-third of all coffee exported.  Yet the majority of the visitors to Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ site are no longer interested in brewing an entire pot of coffee or buying just any bean, as demonstrated by the most often used search terms in January and February 2006: “k-cup,” “hazelnut,” “single cup brewer,” “organic,” “fair trade coffee” and variations thereof.

“It’s important for retailers to harness their site visitors’ behavior as a bellwether for purchasing trends and preference patterns,” said Dr. Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems.  “Learning Search learns from users’ behavior over time, and as such, helps Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and our other customers better understand which items will be most popular, and deliver more relevant search results to their customers.  In turn, site visitors are more likely to make a purchase rather than jump to a competitor’s site.”

Learning Search is a hosted site search solution that continually tracks visitors’ aggregate search terms and the corresponding items clicked on, and uses that data to deliver results based on popularity.  For example, if someone searches on “organic,” Learning Search automatically ranks the resulting items so that those with historically higher click-rates are listed at the top.  In this example, the highest ranked items are Newman’s Own “Nell’s Breakfast Blend” followed by Green Mountain Coffee’s own fair trade organic coffee “FTO Organic House Blend™ - K-Cups.” 

In addition to Learning Search, Green Mountain Coffee also uses SLI Systems’ Site Champion automated search engine optimization (SEO) solution to help drive new visitors to their site using the most popular search terms.  Since the company began working with SLI Systems a few months ago, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has seen an increase in site traffic, sales and conversions. 

“SLI Systems has been instrumental in helping us tailor our search results and search engine marketing campaigns to cater to what the majority of our customers want,” said Ken Crites, director of Consumer Direct for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.  “With so many coffees and companies to choose from, we’re delighted that we’re able to offer what today’s coffee drinkers want – even if those tastes change every week.” 

About Learning Search and Site Champion

Learning Search and Site Champion are built on SLI Systems’ patent-pending advanced search behavior analytics engine.  Learning Search is a hosted site search solution that continually tracks visitors’ aggregate search terms and the corresponding items clicked on, and uses that data to deliver results based on popularity.  Learning Search also gives customers the option to sort results by category, or by highest or lowest price, and provides additional suggested search terms which help users further refine their searches.  Learning Search is supplemented with a new, free Site Search Feedback Tool, which is designed to help e-commerce and other Web sites better understand the quality of their site search functionality based on customer input.  More information is available at http://www.sli-systems.com/feedback.php.

Site Champion is an automated search engine optimization service that integrates with Learning Search, tracking visitors’ search terms and using them to automatically create related search links for each page of a retailer’s site. When visitors click on these ‘related search’ links they are presented with site search results for that term, directing them to additional relevant content and commerce opportunities.  The ‘related search’ links make it easier for site visitors to find what they want and help retailers generate more sales.  The links also drive more natural search traffic to the retailer’s site by giving the retailer’s results pages links that are crawled by search engine spiders.  

Other companies that use SLI Systems’ hosted search offerings include Tupperware, Harry and David, Smith & Hawken, NRS (Northwest River Supplies), Fright Catalog, and eTronics.com, among others. 

About Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. is a leader in the specialty coffee industry and offers over 100 coffee selections including estate, certified organic, Fair Trade Certified(TM), signature blends, and flavored coffees that it sells under the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters(R) and Newman’s Own(R) Organics brands.  While the majority of Green Mountain Coffee’s revenue is derived from its wholesale operations, the Company also operates a direct mail business and an e-commerce website (www.GreenMountainCoffee.com) from its Waterbury, Vermont headquarters.  Each year the Company contributes at least five percent of its pre-tax profits to support socially responsible initiatives.  Based on its performance, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has been recognized for the past six years as one of Forbes Magazine’s “200 Best Small Companies,” for the past three years in the top ten on Business Ethics magazine’s list of “100 Best Corporate Citizens,” and for the past two years as one of the Society of Human Resource Management’s “Best Medium Companies to Work for in America.” 

About SLI Systems