EasyAsk Wins Lenox, J. Jill, and SmartBargains

LenoxCollections.com Signs As EasyAsk's First Search Advisor Customer

Littleton, MA — 15 Apr 2002 — EasyAsk, the market leader in precision search solutions for e-commerce, announced today that the company has signed three new customers: LenoxCollections.com, the e-commerce site of Lenox Collections, women's retailer J. Jill, and online discounter SmartBargains. EasyAsk also announced that LenoxCollections.com has become its first customer to purchase EasyAsk Search Advisor™, EasyAsk's new, dynamic browse product.

"Lenox Collections is committed to customer satisfaction," said Ken Bausch, Vice President of Interactive and Database Marketing. "As we continue to expand our assortment of gifts and collectibles for every occasion on LenoxCollections.com, simplifying the product search process is critical to maintaining the quality of the site experience. We prioritize site enhancements based on expected benefits to the end consumer, and we selected EasyAsk's solution for its proven search technology and the ROI it has demonstrated in previous installations."

EasyAsk Search Advisor provides online shoppers with the option to either search for exactly what they have in mind, or browse through dynamically displayed, relevant choices. Search Advisor presents shoppers with both complete, precise results, plus provides dynamically generated links that enable the customer to easily narrow down the search results further.

J. Jill, a Boston-based multi-channel women's retailer, has seen a marked increase in the number of e-commerce transactions performed at its Web site, www.jjill.com. Although the Web site was doing brisk business, the company realized that precise search would help increase revenues while improving site performance.

SmartBargains (www.smartbargains.com), with its continually changing inventory, needed an effective way for its customers to quickly locate available merchandise. "With the 'killer' application in e-commerce being search functionality, SmartBargains has reached out to EasyAsk to provide its customers easy and quick access to its thousands of bargains," said Carl Rosendorf, CEO of SmartBargains. "EasyAsk's solution will increase our conversion rates and significantly increase customer satisfaction." With EasyAsk, shoppers will be able to find out quickly and easily if a "red sweater under $50" is available from the online discounter.

"Lenox Collections, SmartBargains, and J. Jill chose EasyAsk over our competitors because they knew that we could help improve site performance, boost revenues, and minimize time spent on site maintenance," said Bob Alperin, CEO and President of EasyAsk. "Retailers are fed up with losing sales to poor search. With EasyAsk, our customers are capturing revenue they would have previously lost and are seeing ROI within a matter of months."

The three new EasyAsk customer wins helped make this past quarter the strongest quarter the company has experienced to date. "The growth we are showing as a company has been amazing, particularly given the flat economy," said Alperin. "We are continuing to establish ourselves as the market leader in providing a comprehensive search solution set for e-commerce."

About EasyAsk

EasyAsk delivers search and information retrieval solutions that help organizations requiring scaleable, secure, single point access to critical business information and insight, drive sustainable competitive advantage and rewarding customer experiences. Powered by a deep linguistic capability, EasyAsk’s Synchronized Search and Navigation™ platform accesses both structured and unstructured data, intelligently interpreting users' queries to find fast, accurate and complete results. Over 100 industry leading brands including retail, financial services, high technology and manufacturing companies such as Lands’ End, The Gap, E-Loan, Forbes.com and Warner Home Video rely on EasyAsk for increased effectiveness of their B2C or B2B cross-channel eCommerce efforts. Leading investors include Sigma Partners and Flagship Ventures. EasyAsk is headquartered near Boston with sales and support offices throughout the U.S., and Europe. For more information, please visit our website at www.easyask.com or contact us at 1-800-425-8200.

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