Welcome to my first blog post for 2009. I’ve had a few weeks off relaxing in a fantastic New Zealand summer and only checking my email when I feel that buzz in my pocket. I’m refreshed and ready to go. 2009 is certainly going to be an interesting year. I’m starting off with a trip to Miami next week attending the Internet Retailer Web Design conference where I hope to meet a bunch of current and future customers and partners and learn a thing or two about web design. If you’re going to be there then come along and meet us at our booth or drop me an email: shaun.ryan at sli-systems.com.

I often hear from our customers and partners that SLI is one of the most responsive vendors they have ever worked with. One of my goals for this year is to ensure that we continue to provide a remarkable level of service as we grow. As always, we are looking to add new  features to our service that will help our customers’ businesses.

Last year we updated our merchandising console, introduced Auto Complete, improved the speed of our search, and upgraded our infrastructure to provide improved redundancy. All of these were provided at no additional cost to our customers. We also continued to improve our best practices as we gained experience running the search on over 350 sites. We have several more improvements in the works – that you will see rolled out in 2009. I look forward to telling you more as we release these and I wish you all a prosperous 2009.