More Shoppers Saying "I Do" to Purchases on AmericanBridal.com and other Wedding Sites Thanks to SLI Systems' Site Search Solution

Wedding Products Retailers Find Higher Sales and Conversion Rates with Search Provider’s Learning Search and Site Champion Offerings

CUPERTINO, CA – March 28, 2007 – SLI Systems, Inc., a provider of on-demand search services for Internet and e-commerce sites, today announced that bridal and wedding favorswww.americanbridal.com) has implemented the company’s hosted site search and automated search engine optimization (SEO) offerings to increase e-commerce traffic, improve the customer experience and capture more online sales.   Additionally, SLI Systems has been selected by wedding specialty sites Island Wedding Shop (www.islandweddingshop.com) and Fairy Tale Wedding Shop (www.fairytaleweddingshop.com) to generate higher conversions online.

American Bridal implemented SLI Systems’ Learning Search and Site Champion for its online retail site more than six months ago in order to make it easier for customers to find their products and to convert more shoppers into buyers.  Since that time, American Bridal has seen a 400% increase in revenue generated from site search visitors, a number that continues to improve as the “learning” behind SLI’s solution occurs.

“Our original site search solution was a standard offering with our e-commerce platform, and we realized over time that it was doing our customers – and ourselves – a disservice by not making it easy to find products in our inventory,” said Shirley Tan, president and CEO of American Bridal.  “Since most of our orders come over the Internet, we felt the site search was a critical area to address.  After an initial free trial with SLI Systems, during which they performed all of the customization we required, we began seeing dramatic improvements to our site.  We have three companion sites to AmericanBridal.com, and we’ll likely implement SLI’s offering on those sites as well.”

American Bridal prides itself on offering a large selection of unique products not found on other wedding sites, one reason Tan believes it’s necessary to have a powerful site search solution to direct shoppers to products they may not already know about.  SLI’s Learning Search delivers site search results based on what previous customers have clicked on the most when searching with the same keyword terms.  In this way, the solution makes it easy for shoppers who are preparing to take the walk down the aisle, or those celebrating the joyous occasion with them, to find what’s popular among others who are also planning for the big day.

Similar to American Bridal, Island Wedding Shop and Fairy Tale Wedding Shop have both seen sales derived from search activity on their respective sites increase since deploying Learning Search. 

Because of the positive results Tan and her team experienced with Learning Search, they also decided to try SLI’s Site Champion hosted SEO offering, and the site is now seeing an increased number of new visitors stemming from higher rankings in search results on Google, Yahoo! and others.

“Like other retail sectors, the wedding and bridal industry is highly competitive, which puts increased pressure on e-commerce sites to keep customers coming back rather than leading them to another site where they might more easily find what they want,” said Dr. Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems.  “For companies wanting to build their brand or reinforce brand recognition, a good site search solution is key.  SLI Systems offers search solutions that help build customer trust and loyalty and make visitors return shoppers again and again.”

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 “bridal shower favors,” 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.

More than 100 companies use SLI Systems’ hosted search offerings including ULTA, 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 www.sli-systems.com.