Tag Archive for: voice recognition

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CPC Strategy E-Commerce News – How Do You Increase On-Site Conversion Rates? Enter Site Search Experts EasyAsk

Posted by  on September 20, 2012 in Ecommerce

With online traffic increasing in cost each year, retailers need to work on optimizing the conversion rates of the visitors that reach their site. There’s many ways to do this, and one of the most effective is implementing new site search technology to help consumers find the right product faster.
EasyAsk is a company that does just that. Their CEO Craig Bassin was nice enough to answer a few questions about the product for our audience.

Define EasyAsk in 140 characters or less:

EasyAsk, a Gartner Cool Vendor for 2012, is the leading provider of natural language semantic technology and solutions.

EasyAsk eCommerce provides intelligent search, navigation and merchandising tools to all sizes of eRetailers. Our customers enjoy industry-leading conversion rates because EasyAsk’s Natural Language search helps their customers more easily find what they are looking for on your site and merchandisers are empowered to drive sales with the right changes and promotions.

What is your target market? Please be as specific as possible.

Over 350 e-commerce sites already rely on EasyAsk’s natural language solutions.  EasyAsk delivers its solutions as on-premise software and SaaS to all types and sizes of B2B and B2C e-commerce companies.

EasyAsk eCommerce manages sites with as few at 500 SKU’s to as many as 10 million+, so we can grow with our clients as their business grows.  Most merchants quickly realize that keyword search functionality embedded in e-commerce platforms provide less-than-stellar shopping experiences.

We get a large number of calls from small to mid-sized e-commerce companies looking to fix poor search box results due to limited platform search capabilities – like SOLR, or other keyword based technologies.

Merchandisers may often lead the selection process too, demanding intuitive tools to better control their business, aiming to rely less on technical teams to translate their merchandising and promotional strategies.

What’s your pricing structure look like? Do merchants have to make long-term commitments to use your products / services?

We find that in most cases, EasyAsk deployments pay for themselves in the first 6 to 12 months, so the pricing structure is always positive, and we created a very flexible pricing structure to support a wide rage of budgets. EasyAsk customers should expect revenues to increase, due to improved customer conversion. Many have seen revenues grow from 20% to, in once case, 100% in the first year.

EasyAsk eCommerce SaaS starts at $999 a month and on-premise deployments start at $35,000. Subscription licenses (SaaS) have commitments of as little as one year, and on-premise licenses are perpetual, requiring only industry-standard annual maintenance.

What differentiates you from other companies that provide similar products / services?

EasyAsk is the leading natural language search engine in the marketplace.

The evolution in search is to extend beyond the limitations of keyword search.  Keyword search only matches words – there is no understanding of the intent or context of the search.

The industry is acknowledging keyword search deficiencies, and in fact even Google is now implementing a new semantic model that provides some understanding of what the searcher is looking for.

EasyAsk leads the industry in providing an even stronger model that not only understands the intent of the search, but also the content of the site.  This provides a perfect combination resulting in the right products displayed on the first page every time and also eliminates the dreaded ‘no results’ page.

Traditionally we compete with keyword search providers, which don’t measure up when it comes to understanding shopper intent.  We also compete a bit with in-house development – some e-commerce sites are built with a patchwork of open source code.

It takes a lot of technical savvy to keep these sites together and functioning.  In all cases, once we plug in EasyAsk, we dramatically improve search, navigation and merchandising control, resulting in increased conversion and higher revenues.

For your shoppers who continue to search with keywords, EasyAsk’s natural language solution even improves keyword search.  For example, a search for “dresses” or a search for a “shirt” will be different than a search for a “dress shirt”.

EasyAsk’s advanced linguistics automatically recognizes that a dress shirt is a different product concept and not the intersection of “dress” and “shirt” as would happen with the keyword search technologies in the market today.

What’s next for EasyAsk?

Everyone’s talking about mobile.  But very few companies are really thinking about how the mobile shopping experience differs from one designed for the desktop, laptop and tablet.

The fact is that it needs to be VERY different, and designed for a 3”x2” screen.  The user interface needs to be optimized for the smartphone. If your shoppers could speak to their smartphone, as they would a sales person in a store, and get accurate results, then you’ll convert that shopper into a buyer.

We’ve developed some really cool, cutting-edge mobile solutions, both for e-commerce and inside the enterprise.  It’s similar to the Apple Siri model, blending voice recognition with natural language.

This gives you the ability to touch your microphone button and ask for exactly what you want.  EasyAsk takes it from there and delivers the right result to your smartphone.  Shoppers have little patience when it comes to navigating lists on a 3-inch screen.

Voice-enabled natural language search is an ideal way to get the right products in front of shoppers with minimal end-user effort. We already provide this capability to most of our e-commerce customers today.  Nearly all Androids and all iPhone 4s are voice-enabled, and our natural language engine on the backend understands shopper intent – providing the best shopping experience for mobile shoppers today, period.

We also just launched a Siri-like solution for the enterprise called Quiri.  It gives workers easy access to the information they need to perform their jobs.  You can watch a quick video demo here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLhQn-Zx7D8 ).

Research we commissioned suggests US organizations could save more than $800 million a day by deploying this type of voice-enabled natural language technology.  For more on the benefits and how people are accessing information today, take a look at some of our research highlights here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZkS7JK-mtE )

Where can merchants learn more?

We provide a lot of product and topical information on our Website.  The best source is probably other merchants – we have a variety of case studies and articles on our Website and we host a series of Webinars where our customers tell their stories in their own words.  Readers can check on our Website for upcoming events and can also go directly to our e-commerce solutions center athttps://www.easyask.com/solutions/e-commerce/.

For those merchants that want a quick look at our e-commerce solutions, they can go tohttps://www.easyask.com/products/ or give us a call at 1-800-452-8200.

For the articel as it appears in CPC Strategy News Blog, go here.

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Internet Retailer: Tool retailer lets mobile shoppers speak their searches

Travers Tools Company implements a voice search feature into its mobile site.

Consumers visiting the mobile site for Travers Tools Company Inc. searching for a specific drill bit now need only ask for it.

The retailer recently launched an updated m-commerce site that enables consumers to speak their site searches. The service, from site search provider EasyAsk, lets shoppers touch a microphone icon then say what they want into their smartphone to see a list of results.

“The industrial supply business is very competitive and what sets us apart is our industry knowledge and our ability to provide the right tools and parts for our customers,” says Bruce Zolot, president, Travers Tools. “EasyAsk search helps us ensure that our customers find what they are looking for quickly on our site and now just as easily on our mobile site. Shoppers can speak what they want into the search box and see what they want immediately.”

Shoppers can use their Apple Inc. iPhone 4S or a smartphone using Google Inc.’s Android operating system to speak their search queries. Consumers see a microphone icon next to the search box that prompts them to speak into their device.

“A consumer might be in a hardware store and see a tool they want,” an EasyAsk spokesman says. “Maybe they think it costs too much, or they want to see if they can get a better deal online. They pull out their Android or iPhone and go to Travers Tools and touch the search box microphone icon. They say ’Jet bandsaw‘ or ’Jet bandsaw over $1500.’ They can speak their search as they would describe it to a salesperson– the more info, the tighter the search results. The list is short and accurate, which is critical on smartphones with little screen space.”

EasyAsk uses what it calls natural language search—software and algorithms provided by EasyAsk that seek to understand what the consumer wants to buy and returns appropriate search results, the company says.

This natural language search engine can better understand the intent behind shopper requests than other search engines, EasyAsk says. “Try ’not stripe dress shirts under $80‘ for example,” the spokesman says. “Keyword-based search engines would return stripe shirts for $80 and possibly underwear and dresses. People can get around poor search on a desktop, but won’t on a mobile device.”

Travers Tool, No. 826 in Internet Retailer’s Second 500 Guide, already uses EasyAsk for its e-commerce site. The site search tool on the retailer’s desktop e-commerce site supports multiple search methods, such as the ability to view results within a category and narrow the results to specific items using a single results page, and also recognizes synonyms for search terms common to the metalworking industry. The results also reflect the current pricing and inventory amounts.

Travers began using the EasyAsk site search technology after consumers began telling the retailer they couldn’t find items on its e-commerce site as easily as they could in its print catalog. Given that the site offered a search box, those complaints represented a clear sign that that the search tool, which was supplied with its information management software, wasn’t working.

The EasyAsk system connects to Travers Tool’s back-office system that manages the flow of inventory and tracks product costs for the retailer’s more than 100,000 SKUs. This ensures that shoppers get up-to-date inventory and pricing information.

“Keyword-search back-ends won’t cut it,” says Craig Bassin, CEO of EasyAsk. “Even Google understands this. They’re in the process of evolving closer to natural language with semantic search. If your search box can’t understand the intent behind shoppers’ requests now, you’ll be irrelevant when that request comes from a mobile device. Mobile users can’t navigate as easily and will quickly abandon the site if it requires multiple searches. They either see it and get it, or move on.”

This article originally appeared in Internet Retailer: https://www.internetretailer.com/2012/06/14/tool-retailer-lets-mobile-shoppers-speak-their-searches

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EasyAsk Quiri – Interview Excerpt on Pulse Network Sync-Up">Voice Recognition & EasyAsk Quiri – Interview Excerpt on Pulse Network Sync-Up

EasyAsk CEO Craig Bassin talks about the differences between “voice-recognition” and “natural language search” – without understanding intent, you can’t accurately answer questions. Craig also notes that even Google is evolving from traditional keyword search.

 

 

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Siri-Cized Sites With Voice-Enabled Mobile Shopping? EasyAsk Customers Are Already There

The technological world seems to be making a shift. It began with those three days in February 2011, when IBM’s Watson computer competed on Jeopardy! (By the way, the natural language super-computer trounced the shows two biggest champions!) And culminated with Apple releasing Siri in their latest model of cell phone, the iPhone 4S on October 14th, 2011.

You can feel the buzz in the air, a change in the winds, that a paradigm-shift is coming. The ability to tell your electronics what to do.

So wouldn’t it make sense that this same technology could be used by everyday consumers to shop on their smart-phones? Isn’t it logical, that the next step will be the ability to use this natural language technology to search and purchase items on your favorite website? That this technology would improve user experience, retention and increase conversion rates? Wouldn’t you want your favorite sites to be Siri-cized?

Well, if you’re a client of EasyAsk, this power is already at your fingertips… err… voice-box.

EasyAsk-powered sites such as: Lands’ End, Harbor Freight Tools, J. Jill, True Value and Coldwater Creek, are already Siri-cized. Customers of these and other EasyAsk clients can use their iPhone 4S or Android to verbally search for their products on their mobile-sites. And thanks to the natural language engine that powers EasyAsk, they’ll find exactly what they are looking for.

Now, I hear the nay-sayers, griping about the times that Siri doesn’t work as well as they want. First of all, Siri is cutting-edge technology, so of course it’s still working out a few of the kinks. But here’s where EasyAsk differs. With Siri, the options are so varied, it’s difficult for the software to search through the entire Internet to find the right answer every time. With EasyAsk, the data needed is pulled from the company’s product catalogue. So, if you’re on Lands’ End, you’re going to be searching for items Lands’ End is known for having, like swimwear, shoes, luggage, etc. If you’re on Harbor Freight Tools, you’re going to search for items they’re known for having; air compressors, engines, toolboxes or various tools. EasyAsk understands the context of your request and retrieves the right product on the first page.

This isn’t the future; it’s the present. EasyAsk sites are and have been ahead of the game, because EasyAsk has been mastering Natural Language for over a decade. Feel free to find out more here.

So go ahead, grab your iPhone 4S or Android 2.1, jump on Lands’ End and get ready for summer by shopping for a new bathing suit or try True Value and order that new grill you’ve been waiting for. It’s as simple tapping the search box, tapping the microphone, and saying what you’re looking for.

Welcome to the future.

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