Andertons Music Company, the musician’s No.1 superstore, deployed EasyAsk in 2013 to deliver a greatly enhanced search & navigation capability to support the expansion of their online business whilst leveraging their existing ecommerce platform.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – March 04, 2014 – EasyAsk, the leader in natural language software and solutions, today announced that Andertons Music Company has achieved record growth from their online business since deploying EasyAsk eCommerce Edition early in 2013. EasyAsk’s comprehensive advanced site search, navigation and online merchandising solution, which replaced SLI Systems old-style keyword search offering, has delivered a vastly improved customer experience and helped Andertons Music to achieve record revenue growth in 2013. The EasyAsk solution allows customers to more easily find products or content, driving improvements in conversion rates and has empowered the Andertons web team with a simple to use but powerful capability to deliver an optimal, relevant and personalized shopping experience on any device.
“At Andertons Music Company, the online channel is a key element of our growth strategy” stated Lee Anderton, CEO. “2013 delivered a record year in terms of online sales with revenue increasing by 25%. We have to offer our customers the very best online experience to mirror the high quality expert service we offer in-store and an important element of this is helping guide our customers to the right product. EasyAsk has enabled us to drive significant business improvement in a short period of time, increasing conversion rates and reducing bounced searches, whilst allowing us to leverage greater return from our existing ecommerce infrastructure. Without having to re-platform EasyAsk has delivered results, underpinning the growth we have seen from online and equipping our relatively small team with the necessary tools to deliver continuous improvement to our online offering.”
One of the unique EasyAsk features – derived attributes – gave the Andertons online merchandising team far greater flexibility to market their products to different audiences and skill levels. For example, Andertons were able to create a new merchandising attribute called “Beginners” which is defined in a simple, English style natural language rule and reused across different products, such as “Beginner Drum Kits”, “Beginner Guitars” and “Beginner Keyboards.” According to Andrew Chart, Ecommerce Manager at Andertons, “EasyAsk derived attributes simplified our search, navigation and merchandising, and eliminated a costly process of restructuring our product catalog every time we wanted new attributes.”
With a product range in excess of 11,000 products, ensuring browsers can quickly and easily find exactly what they are looking for is critically important to support Andertons ambitions for their online business. EasyAsk’s natural language search technology allows consumers to be far more explicit when defining a search term, facilitating a more human interaction via the search box, as opposed to the traditional key-word search solutions which lack the intelligent understanding of language to deliver a rich and satisfying search experience.
EasyAsk’s advanced Search As You Type (SAYT) functionality provided a tremendous boost to the Andertons site, allowing browsers to navigate a large and complex range of products directly within the search box, helping find the right products in a single click. The SAYT functionality goes beyond traditional auto-complete, providing detailed optimized suggestions for products, categories and content as the visitor types. SAYT helped Andertons Music Company achieve a 12% increase in conversion rates and a 10% decrease in bounced searches.
The successful deployment of EasyAsk’s eCommerce Edition by Andertons Music is highlighted by a number of significant advances, including:
- The deployment of EasyAsk’s advanced “Search As You Type” functionality to proactively highlight relevant search terms and navigation options as the visitor types, getting them to the relevant products faster.
- The ability for visitors to utilize EasyAsk’s unique natural language and voice capabilities to deliver a far more effective search experience than traditional keyword search.
- A richer user interface that offers a deep set of refinement options on both search and navigation giving customers many different methods to find products that meet their specifications.
“It is great to see EasyAsk delivering so well for Andertons Music, not only in terms of a greatly enhanced user experience but also helping drive real business improvement and underpinning the growth of their online channel, said Simon Persse, VP EasyAsk Europe. ‘ EasyAsk’s natural language technology is providing a next generation search capability, which is essential as today’s consumers demand more than being able to search using key words’.
About Andertons
Andertons Music Co. is a family run musical instrument retailer with nearly 50 years of experience serving the music community in the UK. From the Guildford music store and the online musical instrument shop, Andertons offers musicians a huge selection of guitars, amps, drums, pianos, keyboards, synthesizers, recording equipment, PA systems, music accessories and more – all at competitive prices and with a high level of customer service. For more information, please visit www.andertons.co.uk.
About EasyAsk
EasyAsk is radically changing the speed and ease of how people find information through ground-breaking Natural Language search software. EasyAsk software products go far beyond traditional search, allowing users to simply ask questions in plain English and receive highly tuned results. Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, with offices in Europe, EasyAsk has long been a leader in natural language information analysis and delivery software. Customers such as The North Face, Coldwater Creek, Lillian Vernon, Aramark, True Value, Journey’s, Anna’s Linens and Harbor Freight Tools rely on the EasyAsk software products to run their business and eCommerce operations daily. For further information please visit www.easyask.com.
