The world we know continues to change, and we as a people, are forced to change with it. Sometimes it’s in small ways, like swapping Bell Bottoms for White-Washed jeans, then swapping those for Skinny Jeans. Sometimes it’s in larger ways, like going from hailing a cab on the sidewalk, to ordering an Uber from your bedroom/office/etc. with a touch of a button. Some of us prefer the former, while others have adapted, or were even raised with the latter. It is those inbred traits from our particular generation that make us who we are. The beauty of today’s age is that our technology can handle whichever you prefer. Can your site-search say the same?
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Research Shows Voice Input is Overtaking Typing on Smartphones
Voice as a Computing Interface is exponentially faster than typing, it is easier than typing, and computers are finally intelligent enough to understand 95% of what is said… compared to just 70% in 2010. And people are using it more and more. Just as Responsive Web Design has become a necessity since more people search on their phones and tablets, so too is having a Natural Language Search Engine that understands what these millions of shoppers are saying.
Automatic Spell Correction in eCommerce Search Saves you Time and Money
The last thing any visitor wants to see when they perform a search on an eCommerce Site is a page that says “No Results”. As we indicated in our recent whitepaper, Increase Customer Conversion by Boosting Product Findability, misspellings and using different tenses is a very common occurrence by eCommerce shoppers.
To make your site tolerant of misspellings and the like, you have two options: Either manually enter all the various misspellings and whatnot into your search engine, which will take you God-knows-how-long… Or, the better approach, use an eCommerce search engine that offers Automatic Spell Correction and stemming against terms in your product catalog.
This gives you out-of-the-box tolerance of these visitor errors, enabling them to find the right products and keeping them on your site as opposed to going to your competitors.
Watch this one-minute video and see how Coldwater Creek uses EasyAsk’s automatic spell correction to convert more visitors into customers.
E-Commerce Money Saver: Automatic Spell Correction
The last thing any visitor wants to see when they perform a search on an e-commerce Site is a page that says “No Results”. Misspellings and using different tenses is a very common occurrence by e-commerce shoppers, which on your average site will produce a No Results page.
To make your site tolerant of misspellings and the like, you have two options: Either manually enter all the various misspellings and whatnot into your search engine, which will take you God-knows-how-long… Or, the better approach, use an e-commerce search engine that offers Automatic Spell Correction and stemming against terms in your product catalog.
This gives you out-of-the-box tolerance of these visitor errors, enabling them to find the right products and keeping them on your site as opposed to going to your competitors.
This short video demonstrates EasyAsk’s automatic spell correction, on customer site Coldwater Creek. This tool, among others, helps e-commerce companies save time and money as well as increase customer conversion rates.
Discounts Are No. 1 Enticer for Online Shoppers, Learn How to Entice with EasyAsk
A recent piece by Allison Enright for Internet Retailer shares a discovery by Rakuten Inc. Their discovery states that “U.S. consumers cite price most often as the prime factor in choosing to make a purchase online, according to an online survey of more than 5,300 consumers in a dozen countries. 75% of U.S. respondents rank price as the most important factor, while the global average stands at 61%. The survey included responses from consumers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, the United States, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Rakuten, which is based in Japan, operates marketplaces in all those countries. It is the second-largest eCommerce company in Asia, according to Internet Retailer’s Asia 500.”
With it being fairly obvious that price is so important, offering a discounted price should be the ultimate money maker… as long as your customers know you are offering discounted items. So I sat down with Ben Rudnick, Director of Field Technical Services at EasyAsk, to discuss how a retailer could use EasyAsk to entice buyers through promotions and business rules.
Here is what he had to say:
“This price sensitivity can be used to drive sales through targeted email campaigns, sorting product results and more with EasyAsk. For example, for a price conscious customer who buys Tools, a set of products could be selected such as “Tools on sale with discount over 60%” and with a single link from within the email, the site product search could deliver those products, sorted by decreasing discount percentage. With EasyAsk a single campaign landing page can serve many email campaigns for the future. The products are selected for each campaign within the EasyAsk’s Natural Language tools. For each email campaign the link can point to the same landing page, passing the EasyAsk campaign selection as part of the search. In addition the request passed to EasyAsk could also sort by your choice of: price, margin, discount percentage, price sensitivity score and more.”
EasyAsk is more than just eCommerce Site Search and Navigation. It’s Natural Language engine puts the power in the hands of the Merchandisers, and the examples Ben mentioned are just a few of the many ways that EasyAsk can help your eCommerce Site do its job to the best of its abilities. Come see what else we can help you accomplish. Visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.
eCommerce Platform Founders Discuss eCommerce Trends
Today’s blog is a video i discovered thanks to MultiChannel Merchant, where their Senior Content Manager, Tim Parry talks to CommerceV3 founders Nathan Focht and Blake Ellis about recent eCommerce trends, and some changes that have been made in the last five years. In this video, they discuss eCommerce site usability, homepage issues, mobile issues and much more.
Enjoy!
These issues they bring up, whether it be usability, eCommerce Site Search problems, issues with mobile, homepage issues, content issues, whatever they may be, we at EasyAsk can help make sure your website does its job to the best of its abilities. Let us show you how. Visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.
Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment and How To React
Shopping cart abandonment is one of the most popular occurrences when it comes to eCommerce. Nearly 72 percent of eCommerce shoppers add items to their cart but never complete their purchase. In this second part of a two-part infographic created by SeeWhy, you’ll see how the behavior of eCommerce shoppers, whether they be new shoppers or returning customers.
Nutshell:
Ninety-nine percent of new customers will not buy from your eCommerce site on their first visit. Of those new customers who abandon their cart, one quarter of them will not return. The percentage of returning customers who abandon their shopping cart is about 50-50 on who returns to buy and who does not. The average time delay between a customers first visit and them buying from your site is about 20 minutes. And 72 percent of visitors will make a purchase in the first 12 hours. As far as understanding cart abandonment in a 28-day period, one-time abandoners have an 18 percent chance of making a purchase, serial abandoners have a 48 percent chance of making a purchase, and Recent Goal Abandoners (meaning they’ve already made a purchase before) have a 57 percent chance of making a purchase. Abandonment rates are higher among those with lower totals in their shopping cart.
This is just more fuel for you, the eCommerce Merchant, to use in your defense against shopping cart abandonment. The more you know, the more you can do to help increase your conversion rates and average order sizes. To learn more about what else you can do to increase your conversion rates and average order sizes, visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641.
Shopping Cart Optimization Tips to Help Turn Shoppers into Buyers
This week’s infographic brings tips on your shopping cart for your eCommerce Site. The shopping cart, being the final step in the conversion from window-shopper to buyer, doesn’t ever really make the sale, but it sure can brake it. To avoid losing the sale in the final steps, take heed to this infographic by Demac Media.
The most commonly used ideas for the Shopping Cart are:
No more than 5 pages to complete the check-out process. The sweet spot for input fields is between 21-28. Prominent features to use are multiple shipping options, express check-out, guest check-out, gift cards, and promo codes/coupons. Go with the standard of white background and black text for the majority of it, but adding some color for flare helps when it’s in the correct place. And the use of smarter technology helps to determine what credit card is used based on the first four numbers, and can automatically fill in city, state and country based on the zip code.
These are just a few tips to help convert your shoppers to buyers in the final stages of the sale process. To see what else EasyAsk can do to help convert your shoppers into buyers, visit our website or call us at 781-402-5641.
eCommerce Numbers Expected to Jump to $370 billion by 2017. Are You Getting Your Fair Share?
According to a report by Forrester, eCommerce spending will increase over 13 percent from last year, raising the expected total to $262 billion. That’s 31 billion more than 2012. And it will continue to increase exponentially as they predict that total to be $370 billion by 2017.
Forrester has an earlier report that expects B2B eCommerce to reach $559 billion in US sales by the end of 2013.
These are some serious numbers, numbers you do not want to miss out on as an eCommerce Retailer. To make sure you are getting the most out of your eCommerce Site, you want to make sure your visitors can find what they’re looking for, fast. It all starts with intelligent eCommerce Site Search.
That’s where EasyAsk comes in.
Because our Natural Language technology uses smarter algorithms than Keyword technology, our search box is the smartest in the business, understanding your customer’s intent as well as the full context of the search request. This enables our search box to bring back the right product on the first page, which gives your customer’s the confidence they need to continue searching on your site, increase their order sizes and spend more money on your eCommerce Site as opposed to your competitors.
But you need more than just a smarter eCommerce Site Search, you also need a user-friendly, smarter Merchandising store. One that allows to you take control of your eCommerce Site and gives you the freedom to make changes whenever and however you want. Thanks again to our Natural Language technology, we give you just that.
With EasyAsk we put the power in the hands of the merchandisers, allowing you to create cross-sells and up-sells in minutes, as well as adding new brands, navigational categories, promotion banners, the works. All of these things that used to take hours or days as you wait for the IT people to code it, now take minutes, with no coding necessary because it’s all done in plain English.
To see how you can take better advantage of the eCommerce sales boom, visit our website or give us a call at 781-402-5641 and Search Naturally.
How Videos on Your Site Help Increase Conversion Rates
Today we are presenting an infographic from Invodo on Video Statistics.
NutShell:
Consumers watch a product video 60 percent of the time. Also, 60 percent of consumers say they will watch at least 2 minutes of a video. Over half say that watching a product video gives them more confidence in purchasing. Since we are all headed towards mobile, it’s good to know that people on mobile devices are 3 times as likely to watch a video as compared to those on a desktop or laptop. Here’s the big one, shoppers who view a product video are 174 percent more likely to purchase products. Almost 40 percent of consumers say a video increases their likelihood of purchasing via mobile device. And finally, 76 percent of marketers plan to add video to their eCommerce Sites.
This infographic clearly shows how much adding videos to your eCommerce Site can help increase conversion rates. But videos cannot do it alone, you need a great eCommerce Site Search, Navigation and Merchandising software, especially one that understands your customer’s intent, whether it be to see a video or view a product. We at EasyAsk can help. Come see how. Visit our website, or give us a call at 781-402-5641.