Mikasa and Company Increases Conversions and Draws More Site Traffic with SLI Systems
E-commerce Site of Dining, Entertaining and Home Accessories Retailer Sees Benefits from More Intuitive, Responsive Site Search and SEO Offerings
CUPERTINO, CA – November 21, 2006 – SLI Systems, Inc., a provider of on-demand search services for Internet and e-commerce sites, today announced that Mikasa and Company (http://www.mikasaandcompany.com/) has implemented the company’s hosted site search and automated search engine optimization (SEO) offerings to increase site traffic, improve the customer experience and capture more online sales. The dining, entertainment and home accessories retailer implemented SLI Systems’ Learning Search and Site Champion for its e-commerce storefront, also a leading site for bridal registries in the U.S., more than six months ago. Since then, Mikasa and Company has seen the number of searches conducted on its site steadily increase, resulting in more sales and conversions, and has also seen higher traffic numbers stemming from greater visibility on major Internet search engines.
Mikasa and Company re-launched its Internet retail site in December 2005 and used an off-the-shelf site search solution that was part of its e-commerce platform. Within a few months the company realized the site search was not serving its customers well – it performed slowly and the results were difficult to sort through. As a result, the company received a number of customer complaints, which not only meant site visitors were frustrated and unhappy, but Mikasa’s customer service team was tapped out trying to respond to all the negative phone calls and emails.
“As we prepared to put our catalog business online this past spring, we knew we needed to make vast improvements to our site search functionality – or we risked losing our longstanding customers,” said Stephen Henderson, director of consumer services and e-commerce for Mikasa and Company. “The initial 30-day free trial we signed up for with SLI Systems brought significant improvements to the site almost immediately. Our biggest priority is delivering customers the best possible experience, and moving forward with SLI to achieve this goal was absolutely the right decision for us.”
Henderson explained that SLI’s Learning Search offering is highly intuitive and user-friendly, and gives customers many useful tools for sorting through results, making it easy for them to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for. Once Learning Search went to work for them, Mikasa and Company immediately saw the negative customer feedback that had previously strained its customer service team completely disappear. Now, more site visitors are turning to the search function than any other area of the site, and SLI’s site search solution is also credited with delivering a higher conversion rate than any other page on the site. As a result, the company decided to also give SLI’s Site Champion hosted SEO offering a try and has seen thousands of new visitors coming to the site based on higher rankings in search results on Google, Yahoo! and others.
“Overall, our experience with SLI Systems has been outstanding,” said Henderson. “They’re some of the most responsive, easy to work with, and flexible people we’ve come across. They have a real commitment to building a better product and invest greatly in its development. It’s refreshing to work with people who aren’t resting on their laurels – even though they deserve to – and who are truly committed to giving customers exactly what they want.”
About Learning Search and Site Champion
Based on SLI’s patented “Learning Search” advanced analytics engine, the company’s hosted site search, hosted navigation and automated SEO solutions “learn” from user behavior by tracking the search terms people use on a retailer’s site and the resulting items they click on. The SLI solutions give retailers greater insight into what terms they should be both linking products to and including in product descriptions, and which products are the most popular for various keywords. As a result, retailers can ensure the products people are searching for show up in the right searches – whether those searches are conducted on their own sites or on an Internet search engine like Google.
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 “crystal stemware,” Learning Search automatically ranks the items so that those with historically higher click-rates are listed at the top. Learning Search also shows how many products exist and in what categories, and gives visitors the option to sort the results by ascending or descending prices, or filter by category. Learning Search is supplemented with a, 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.
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 – making it easier for a site’s visitors to find what they want, and helping 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.
“Mikasa has a stellar reputation for offering some of the highest quality products in tableware fashion, and with the high volume of site visitors for both their catalog and bridal registry businesses, we understand how important it is to deliver a superior online experience for their customers,” said Dr. Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems. “We will continue to customize and tailor our solutions to meet their growing needs, and hope to continue expanding our relationship as we bring new products and services to market.”
More than 100 companies use SLI Systems’ hosted search offerings including Tupperware, Harry and David, Smith & Hawken, NRS (Northwest River Supplies), Fright Catalog, and eTronics.com, among others.
About SLI Systems
SLI Systems is the developer of learning-based search and navigation technology for corporate Internet sites, e-commerce destinations and consumer Internet portals that Searches, Learns and Improves the user experience. SLI Systems’ hosted site search and automated SEO solutions empower businesses to enhance customer satisfaction while increasing sales, reducing costs and yielding valuable customer information. Unlike traditional search software, SLI Systems’ patented technology continuously “learns” from the behavior of visitors over time to deliver more relevant results. Current customers include Etronics.com, NBC, Tupperware, and others. SLI Systems is a privately held company, with offices in Silicon Valley, London, and Christchurch, New Zealand. For more information, visit http://www.sli-systems.com/.
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