Summer’s almost here, school will soon be out and it’s time for barbecues and the beach, right? If you’re like most in the retail business, Cyber Monday is the furthest thing from your mind. But guess what? Most retailers put off holiday-preparedness until the fall – and by then, it’s almost too late. If you start thinking about it now and spend the summer months getting your site ready, you won’t find yourself in a bind come Septemeber/October.

Why? The months leading up to the holiday season are a very busy time for your website, and your vendors.  And by starting early, you have time to test different variations to see what drives the most impact.

For example, do you have a site redesign or platform change in the works? If so, be sure to alert your dedicated CSM so we can work with you to ensure there’s no disruption to your search.

And speaking of search, there are many enhancements you might consider adding, as each will typically drive more conversions. For example, adding Rich Auto Complete, Quickview, and AJAX search can all be great enhancements for the holidays. Also, incorporating things like ratings and reviews, non-product content (blog posts, video, tutorials) and social media content from your Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest pages are all great ways to increase engagement.

Are you planning to launch a mobile or tablet commerce site? Let us help you ensure the search on these platforms is optimized.  Do you, or a member of your team, need training on the merchandising console?

Whatever your needs, your dedicated Customer Success Manager is available to help you plan and execute your 2012 holiday initiatives. We can also provide you with complete training on the Merchandising tools and reports, as well as provide suggestions for how to merchandise on your site using the SLI Tools. And we can help you do A/B testing to see what features make the most sense for your customers.

Don’t put it off – get started with holiday planning today! To get started, contact your CSM directly, or email customersuccess@sli-systems.com, and a member of our team will follow up with you.

We are very excited about this year’s Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE 2012), which will be the biggest ever. The exhibit hall has sold out and the number of expected attendees will exceed 9,000. IRCE has grown over the years to become the biggest show for retailers not only in the US, but from around the world. Indeed, we are expecting contingencies from Australia, Brazil, Europe and many more.

The theme is “Connecting with the 21^st Century Customer.” For eRetailers this means connecting with your site visitors, who are connected to others through social media, and accessing your retail site not only on their computers, but mobile devices and tablets. Increasingly, non-product content such as videos, blogs posts, tweets and Facebook ‘likes’ have become important to them. For SLI Systems, this show presents a great opportunity to connect with OUR customers, partners, and other retailers looking for the best and latest technologies to foster customer engagement and loyalty.

SLI Systems will have a huge presence at the show. Our goal is to arm you with useful information and best practices in search, navigation and merchandising to give your business a boost and help you discover innovative solutions that will increase your site’s user experience, stickiness, and conversions. To that end, we created the SLI Theater – located at our booth, where several of our clients will share their experiences working with SLI and show how using our site search and merchandising solutions has fueled more sales and conversions online. Presenters include:

• Ian MacDonald – US Mattress/PartySuppliesDelivered.com/Furniture Crate
• Ben Quigley – Healthy Directions
• Laura Santos – Envelopes.com
• Chris Reighley – totes-ISOTONER
• Richard Sexton – Carolina Rustica
• Franck Ardourel – 24-Hour Fitness
• Don Carnes – Revival Animal Health
• Joshua Wood – Ozbo
• John Santora (SLI CSM) – on behalf of Abe’s of Maine
• Jeff Hefland – Monster Cable

Our CEO Shaun Ryan and other SLI executives will also be presenting at our booth, sharing tips for how to maximize the impact of your search and navigation. We will also offer free site critiques, and demos of some of the best search implementations in the business.

IRCE will be hosting interesting workshops around cutting-edge technologies in search, mobile and other areas. A few interesting talks you may be interested in include:

• Technology Workshop – Tuesday, June 5
  • 8:30-8:45am – Bernadine Wu of our partner FitForCommerce will open the workshop with a discussion of what all e-retailers need to know about tomorrow’s technology
  • 1:15-2:15pm – Ben Quigley, Vice President, Internet Channels of SLI customer Healthy Directions will participate in a panel on “Product + Content + Asset Management: Tools that improve efficiency and the bottom line”
  • Day 1 – Wednesday, June 6
    • 11:15-11:45am (Retail Chains Track) – Forrester Research analyst Brian Walker will lead a discussion on “Leveraging a commerce platform in the era of the anywhere, anytime, any device consumer”
    • Day 2 – Thursday, June 7
      • 1:45-2:30pm (Social Commerce Track) – “Making your product reviews do more” will be given by Nadim Hossain, Vice President, Marketing, PowerReviews
      • 3:45-4:15pm (Design & Merchandising Track) – “Refining site search to meet your company’s needs” will be presented by Chris Reighley, Director of E-commerce for SLI customer totes-ISOTONER

Visit http://irce.internetretailer.com/2012/agenda/#/overview to see the full conference agenda and detailed descriptions of all the workshops and presentations.

IRCE 2012 promises to be one of the best ever. If you’re planning to attend, be sure to look for the SLI booth, number 501. We’re right at the entrance, you won’t be able to miss it! Stop by to see what more we can do to help you forge stronger connections with your customers.

In light of all the transformations we’re seeing on the web, one aspect must be kept top of mind: speed. Consumers’ expectations for pages to load quickly – whether on traditional or mobile sites – are increasing all the time. If your site performs too slowly, you risk losing visitors to your competitors, possibly for good. Also, Google takes page load time into account as part of their ranking algorithm, so a slower loading page can undermine your SEO efforts.

There is an abundance of research that shows the impact – both good and bad – that speed has on e-commerce sites. Gomez.com issued some startling statistics not long ago, such as:

• The average online shopper expects web pages to load in two seconds or less, down from four seconds in 2006; after three seconds, up to 40% will abandon a site — Forrester Research
• 78% of consumers surveyed went to a competitor’s site due to poor performance at peak times — Compuware and Equation Research
• 71% of mobile web users expect websites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their mobile phone compared to the computer they use at home — up from 58% in 2009 — Compuware and Equation Research
• Conversion rate increases 74% when page load time decreases from 8 to 2 seconds — Gomez real user monitoring data (33 major retailers, 3 million page views, search transaction)

The need for speed applies to all pages of your site, including site search and navigation – and luckily, there are a few things you can do to make your search operate faster and more efficiently, adding to a satisfying online experience. Some initial steps you can take are outlined below.

1. Optimize your indexing for faster search

A modern search index should be able to return relevant results in a fraction of a second. Some sites make the mistake of querying directly into their product database which is not optimized for speed, or relevance. This can slow down the process significantly.

2. Utilize Ajax search

Ajax search speeds up search queries by removing the need for a page-refresh each time a user conducts a follow-on query, selects a refinement, switches between grid and list views, reorders the results or clicks to the next page. In any of these instances, only the data that is needed is requested from the servers so the results appear much faster. (See our video tutorial on using Ajax search here.)

3. Address mobile sites

On a mobile commerce site, speed is even more important. The mobile site and the mobile search should only have the content and functionality that is absolutely necessary. SLI has developed a set of best practices for delivering mobile search (see our video tutorial here). One way to significantly improve load time of search pages is to use thumbnails instead of full size images.

4. Use content delivery networks

Content delivery networks bring the files (images, JavaScript, etc.) that are being delivered on the page, closer to the end users. This local caching can significantly speed up the delivery of those files, particularly for your visitors that are physically located far way from your servers. SLI uses Akamai for this.

5. Only include what’s necessary on your pages

Is everything on your page necessary? If you can have less on your page it will be quicker to load and the page may be simpler for your visitors to use. Conduct A/B tests to see the impact of removing elements from your page.

6. Compress your HTML

All modern browers support compression – this can be enabled on your webserver and it means the data is delivered considerably more quickly. This is an easy win.

7. Have sufficient hardware and bandwidth

Monitor how you are utilizing your machines (servers, switches, load balancers, etc.) and bandwidth, and have plenty of spare capacity so you can handle peak loads and any outages can be handled by machines that are operational.

If you have any questions about ways to speed up the search on your site, please contact your CSM, or email us at info@sli-systems.com.

Floating Search Box Increases Search Usage and Website KPIs

As we’ve discussed in our Big Book of Site Search Tips and in our blogs, site search users are responsible for a proportionally larger share of revenue and conversions – so if you can increase the number of visitors who use the search box, the better your business performance. It makes sense for eRetailers to encourage visitors to use site search more often by making the search box more prominent or easier to find.

Increasing the size of the search box, or testing for optimum placement, are tips we’ve talked about in the past. In this newsletter, we’d like to share a new tip, which was suggested by one of our customers, American Bridal. In a bid to increase site search usage by their visitors, the company came up with the idea for a “floating search box,” which floats or hovers over the content even as the site visitor scrolls down a webpage. This means the search box is always visible and available. American Bridal generously shared this great idea with us.

You can see how the floating search box works on American Bridal’s website. When visitors arrive on the homepage, they see the search box near the top of the screen:

As shoppers click through to different pages and scroll down, the search box remains at the top of the page:

American Bridal’s search box toolbar also includes codes for order discounts, giving the company an additional way to promote special deals and increase conversions.

Test the floating search box on your own site, and see if it helps your visitors take advantage of site search more often.

Got “no results”? Give customers an alternative

When someone searches your site only to get a “no results” page, their visit will likely come to an end – whether you’re an e-commerce site, publisher, or otherwise. When you don’t give visitors other options, they’re likely to give up on the search and leave. Here are some tips for avoiding “no results” pages and how to offer alternate suggestions for visitors.

Reduce the number of “no results” pages:

• Use Auto Complete to offer suggested search terms as soon as visitors start typing in the search box. The suggested search terms will always deliver results.
• Pull reports on search terms that have no results. Often “no results” pages occur because your visitors are using different language than you use on your site – for instance, alternate spellings, or synonyms for product names. You can fix this by incorporating the alternate spelling or language into your search. Reports on “no results” search terms can also tell you about products or information that your visitors expect you to have, but that you don’t carry. You can use this information to help expand your offerings.

Offer more options on “no results” pages:

• Show spelling suggestions using the “Did you mean …” phrase. You can pull these suggestions from the language you use on your website.
• Show popular searches  and popular products
• Display keyword-specific banners. For example, if a visitor searches for a product that you no longer stock, then a banner may be a good way of saying, “We no longer carry this product – but here are some alternatives.”
• Display your phone number and invite the customer to call you, or ask you questions via live chat.

What’s On the Radar for 2012: Social, Tablets, Personalization, and Video

We’ve noticed several trends percolating over the past several months, which we believe will become more mainstream in the coming year. There are lots of ways to create compelling marketing strategies around these popular trends, and you don’t want to overlook site search and navigation as an important way to connect with your customers. Each article below offers insights and tips to help you do just that.

Socialized shopping

Shoppers are turning to their social networks to get ideas for products to buy, and they’re looking to online retailers to add social information into search results. One way to capitalize on this trend is to add a search box to your Facebook page, which will allow shoppers to look for products without leaving their Facebook friends. Make Me Heal has done this, adding a search application its Facebook page, which has helped drive traffic from Facebook to its site. Also, you can add the number of Facebook “likes” (or Google “+1s”) a product has received to site search results, and allow visitors to rank results by which items have received the most.

Another great idea is to bring social media content into search results, like Artbeads.com does, adding in user-generated content like videos and blog posts into search results. A “Community” tab within search results direct shoppers to this content.

Tablets gain steam in e-commerce

One of the biggest trends in the mobile space is the growing popularity of tablets. The good news is that tablet shoppers are showing a willingness to use these devices for online shopping. According to IBM Benchmark, 2011 holiday sales from smartphones and tablets accounted for 11% of total online sales, up from just 5.5% in December 2010. Data also points to tablet shoppers converting at a similar rate as traditional e-commerce shoppers, and spending more on average per visit. The challenge for online retailers is to take tablets’ advantages and disadvantages into account when figuring out how to display search results and navigation elements.

For example, you need to configure lists of refinements so that choices are not too close together, since finger-tap navigation might mean that users select the wrong choice. You also need to make sure that the shopping experience across channels – including tablets, smartphones, PCs and print catalogs – remains consistent.

Personalizing the shopping experience

Site visitors increasingly expect a more personalized, engaging experience – and site search is a great way to do that, since you can deliver search results tailored to their needs based on what they’ve searched for before, where they’re located, and what products they prefer. Consider adding a “Recent Searches” or “Search History” list to your site search results, which will help shoppers remember names and types of products they looked for previously. You can see how this works on FTD.com’s website – in the example here, the “Recent Searches” box shows “chrysanthemums” and “yellow roses” as previous searches.

It’s also easy to add a feature like Personal Preference Memory, which stores a shopper’s product preferences and then delivers search results and navigation options based on these preferences (see how motorcycle products site Cruiser Customizing does this). Localization can also help feed shoppers’ need for personalized search results – for example, you can ask for a visitor’s zip code as soon as they land on your website, like Tractor Supply does, and deliver product availability and pricing information based on location. Multichannel retailers can also include information about the closest store for in-store pick-up.

Video brings products to life

In 2012, shoppers will continue to show greater appetite for videos, especially ones that make it easier to understand a complex product or process. Videos not only encourage purchases, but they can also boost your SEO rankings when you include videos on product pages.

Make sure to highlight the availability of your videos within site search results. For example, you can place video icons on site search results pages next to items with related video content, as you can see on the Etrailer.com website. Also, make the most of your videos by using them for merchandising. When visitors search for popular products that have an accompanying video, push these video-related results up higher; in addition, you can display banners highlighting video content when visitors search using specific keywords.

The 2011 online holiday shopping season had a strong start, with record Cyber Monday sales of $1.251 billion and a significant jump over last year. Depending on whose numbers you believe, this year’s Cyber Monday sales numbers were anywhere from 15% to 33% higher than in 2010. Department stores and home goods retailers saw the highest sales volumes; department stores had a 60% increase over last year, while home goods retailers saw a 68% increase.

Additionally, the average order rose 2.6 percent over last year to $193.24. A record number of purchases were made on mobile devices, with nearly three times as many online shoppers purchasing via smartphone — 6.6% of shoppers used a mobile device compared to just 2.3% in 2010.  Reports also showed that 7.37% of sales were made on mobile devices as compared to 2.25% in 2010.

Now a couple weeks into the holiday shopping season, the higher sales numbers continue and point to a much healthier season this year than in recent years. With the recession seemingly over, consumers are in more of a spending mood. In fact, one study says that holiday shoppers will spend a little extra this year on gifts for themselves – 36% of consumers compared to 29% last year, and they’ll spend 16% more on items for themselves.

With the proliferation of mobile devices, and consumers’ comfort with shopping from their home PCs, it seems clear that online and mobile sales will continue to capture a greater proportion of overall retail sales. And while free shipping promotions and other special offers will certainly have an impact on where people buy, e-retail sites designed with ease of use and a streamlined search and navigation experience should also fare well as consumers open their wallets.

Since our last year in review, the march toward mobile has continued to revolutionize the way we look at site search and navigation. Of course, the spread of mobile devices, and consumers’ interest in browsing websites from wherever they happen to be, drove the other big trend in site search and navigation this year: continued focus on improving usability and streamlining the online shopping experience.

Site owners are constantly on the hunt for new ways to improve searching and browsing for products and content, in a bid to move the needle on conversions. This past year, we saw sites working harder to include social media content, such as Facebook posts and tweets, in search; adding related searches and “most recently searched” lists to their sites, making it easier for visitors to find relevant content and products; and integrating the online and offline shopping experience. For instance, multi-channel retailers have been getting smart about showing “where to buy” information in search results, so that site visitors can find products in stock nearby.

Here are other stories that made news in 2011:

As Holidays Approach, Fine-Tune Navigation for Conversion Boost: September 2011

From Multichannel Merchant: How to optimize navigation before the holiday rush begins.

Motorcycle Superstore’s site search drives up its conversion rates: July 2011

From Internet Retailer: how the motorcycle retailer uncovers keyword search terms.

B2B E-commerce: Revamped online branding and cross-linked site search drives 17% of B2B revenue: July 2011

From MarketingSherpa: how U.S. Toy Company solved online branding issues by cross-linking site searches.

5 Must-Have Features For Today’s Online Retail: March 2011

From Retail Touchpoints: meeting the needs of site visitors via site search.

These articles from our own newsletter “Telescope” proved popular with readers over the past year:

5 Quick Ideas for Holiday Merchandising in Search and Navigation

Even incremental changes to site search and navigation can encourage customers to spend more time on your site, which means greater potential for conversions.

Check out these last-minute merchandising ideas.

Use Site Search Data to Capture a Nice Conversion Lift from Search Engine Traffic

Here’s how to create a tailored product banner for people who land on your product pages from search engines.

Click here for more on search data banners.

The Must-Have Online Commerce Features for 2011 – and Beyond

How to make site search even better – for instance, by bringing ratings and reviews into site search.

Read more about “must-have” features for site search.

Here’s what our blog readers found most interesting in 2011:

Different prices in different countries: Adidas All Black jersey mess up

The “scandal” over New Zealand rugby jersey pricing – and why online retailers need to closely manage international pricing.

Find out more about global pricing issues.

4 Stages of a Great Shopping Experience

Guest blogger Steve Warren from Fifth Gear explains how to impress customers during every stage of the retail transaction.

Learn more about improving the quality of the transaction experience.

Top 10 2011 MCM Awards Puts Spotlight on Great Site Search & Navigation

The top 10 retail sites with the best search and navigation, according to Multichannel Merchant.

Read more about the winners.

Out of this year’s lineup of guests for our regular Ecommerce Podcast, here are the most popular interviews from the past year:

Tim Parry

Senior writer at Multichannel Merchant

Steve Groenier

Former VP of sales and marketing at Artbeads.com

Matt Konkle

President of Fifth Gear

And finally, here are the most viewed among our “Site Search Video Tips” for the past 12 months:

Rich Auto Complete

How Rich Auto Complete improves the site search experience.

How to Get the Most from Site Search

Creating a user-friendly site search box.

Open Search

How Open Search allows your site visitors to search your site search from their browser’s search box.

Search Suggestions

The benefits of search suggestions for search, navigation, and product pages.

In 2012, we look forward to bringing you more useful tips and strategies on everything from merchandising products to weaving social media into the shopping experience. In next month’s newsletter, we’ll offer up our 2012 predictions for search and navigation trends, and how they’ll impact your business.

While 2011 could be called the year of mobile, 2012 will likely be the year of the tablet. As retailers begin to understand how people search, shop, and consume content on mobile devices, the soaring popularity of the iPad (one of the must-have items on people’s holiday wish lists this year), presents new challenges for retailers, as well as for those of us who provide products and services to them, in delivering a compelling shopping experience on the new “fourth screen.” This is driven not only by the number of iPads but also by the higher conversion rates of people that use iPads; iPad users buy more. Improving the experience for this growing and desirable demographic is an opportunity worth focusing on next year.

For tablets like the iPad and its Andriod Counterparts, the requirements for creating user-friendly search and navigation experiences are different than those for the mobile screen. There is more screen real estate to work with when it comes to tablets, which means a better display of product images and an easier-to-use touchscreen. On the other hand, “t-commerce” or “couch-commerce” will require a different experience than what is displayed on a personal computer or mobile screen. Site owners (and companies like ours) need to brainstorm ways to take advantage of the benefits of tablets (like brilliant displays of photos and videos), while keeping navigation streamlined.

For instance, tapping the screen is the standard method of navigation for tablets. Your fingers are relatively large and imprecise when compared to the control you have with a mouse.  For example small text menus, which you might find in lists of refinements – are hard to tap on without hitting another menu item by mistake. The same goes for buttons that are too close together, or pagination numbers: easy to click on with a mouse, tough to click on with a finger. In addition, as GetElastic reports, tablets are making it possible for website visitors to interact with content in new ways: people can “touch” content, swiping and zooming to choose how they view text and images. This tactile interaction may cause us to discover new ways to present information, new ways to display navigation, and new possibilities for innovative merchandising and SEO.

As many tablet (and mobile device) users spend lots of time on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and now Google +, we can expect that the merging of e-commerce and social media will gain even more prominence in the months ahead. It’s recently been reported that half of all visitors to ecommerce sites are logged on to Facebook.  As we’ve discussed before in this blog (or the SLI Blog), site owners have realized that if people are spending more and more time with their friends on social networks, the website search and shopping experience needs to come to the social setting. It’s a constantly evolving situation and the best practices for optimizing social media and retailing are still being tuned. In 2012 we’ll see more retailers experimenting with social media and further refining these best practices.

The process of prepping your online storefront for holiday shoppers begins earlier every year – but there’s still time for last-minute “quick hits” that can help boost conversions and encourage shoppers to browse (and shop) longer on your site. Along with FitForCommerce, we’re presenting several of these quick-hit ideas in a free webinar on Wednesday, November 16 – read on for a sneak peek:

#1: Optimize holiday search terms: Review your shoppers’ most popular search terms from last year, and make sure you’ve matched these terms to the best products. Also, optimize searches that include general holiday-related keywords (like “gift” or “dad present”) to make sure results are relevant.

#2: Use site search as “your ears to the floor”: Site search gives you a real-time picture of what your customers want from your site. Review site search keywords and adjust landing pages and home pages as needed.

#3: Merchandise search and landing pages: Don’t miss out on opportunities to highlight products and special offers when visitors come to search results or landing pages. Create a gift finder that can help shoppers find gifts based on recipient and price, or add a special holiday product category that’s powered by search.

#4: Add holiday messages to navigation and search: Allow shoppers to reorder search results based on holiday-related categories like “top holiday picks” or “best-selling gifts.” Also, promote special holiday deals using banners or other messages within search – such as deals on shipping or free gift-wrapping.

#5: Incorporate mobile and social into the holiday shopping experience: More and more shoppers expect to do some of their holiday gift-buying from their mobile devices, and they want to research products via their social networks. Add social content into search results, and make mobile search and navigation as user-friendly as possible.

Looking for more ideas as you ramp up for holiday shoppers? Register for the November 16 webinar.