Google Trends is just one of the nifty tools the Big G hath bestowed upon the Internet marketing community. Basically to type in keywords to compare their search volumes against each other over time. There’s also a “what’s hot” element, each day there’s a list of “Today’s Hot Trends.” Some of them are really hard to believe that they are remotely search-worthy, but clicking on a keyword will show

But I digress…Back to the Hack!

If you run separate online stores for different countries, you need to understand that sometimes a couch is a chesterfield, sneakers are trainers, french fries are chips, and candy bars are chocolate bars. Google Trends lets you enter a number of variations of keywords that essentially describe the same product and figure out which countries use which term more often.

Example 1:

“flash drive” vs. “USB drive” vs. “memory stick”

Continue Reading:
Hack Week Part 2 - Using Google Trends for International Search Marketing »

Last week Justin Palmer posted 11 Ways to Optimize Your Site Search while Ann Smarty posted a roundup of free keyword research tools over at YouMoz.

One of the tools Ann mentioned was MSN AdCenter’s Keyword Mutation Tool. Despite its grotesque moniker, it’s a great for optimizing internal site search. You don’t have to be an MSN advertiser to use it, either.

Basically, what this tool does is generate common keyword misspellings for you. So instead of trying to forecast them yourself, or waiting until someone types these errors in your search box and gets a “results not found,” you can adjust your internal search to include these possibilities.

It takes some playing around with though, for example I got no results for “appliance” but a few for “appliances”:

You’ll also want to manually test these misspellings to make sure they work (for your most popular or important items / keywords). If your ecommerce software search function uses fuzzy logic, your search should be able to recognize variations of keywords. But it’s always worth a spot-check for your critical terms.

Google Analytics recently introduced an internal site search feature to its already kick-ass free stats program — aptly named “Site Search.”

This tool works with your existing site search and is invaluable to ecommerce marketers as it gives you so much insight into customer intent and your website’s success at delivering results. For example, you can use search log data to discover:

• What keywords people search for - what’s hot and what do they want that you don’t carry
• What search refinements are made, indicating possible “Results Not Found” messages or unsatisfactory results
• What pages the searches were made from, and where users clicked to

The next 30 days is when this information will be crucial. Customers can’t buy what they can’t find. Maybe you only use the term “notebook computer case” and your customers search for “laptop bags.” You can tweak your product pages and search engine for the various ways customers describe your product until the right pages show up when you test your site.

Continue Reading:
Why You Should Turn On Google Analytics Site Search Today »

Continuing the series on site search usability, I decided to test out color-specific searches on a number of apparel etailers from my favorite list of top etailers of 2006. I wanted to compare the results for “black capris” across the board of etailers and see what I would discover.

I found that the majority of the 22 sites tested delivered results for “black capris” just fine (I even clicked through on each result just to make sure):

Talbots
Nieman Marcus
J.Jill
Land’s End
LL Bean
JC Penney
Eddie Bauer
Victoria’s Secret
Blair.com (I did find one error in Blair.com’s results. Perhaps the color was sold out and the search engine was still reading old meta data).

Continue Reading:
Color Keyword Search: Who Passed With Flying Colors? »

Last post I discussed the need for optimizing your internal search engine to work for non-product searches like shipping, returns and other customer service queries. As promised, today I’m digging into how to make this happen. Because site search optimization will depend on what type of content management you are using, what type of search engine you are using and so on, this is not a how-to guide for programming, more of a “what info you need to gather for your web developer to make it happen.”

Continue Reading:
Optimizing Site Search for Non-Product Information »

Ecommerce can be a crazy messed up world indeed. The Elastic Path team recently produced a series of e-commerce shorts including my personal favorite: “Zero Results Found.” Because art imitates life, and search box failures are all too common on even the most sophisticated ecommerce sites, I decided to start my own series on ecommerce search, beginning with how easy (or difficult) is it to find non-product information.

When comparison shopping, you can compare prices and find a store selling an item for a dollar less than everyone else (for example). But it’s possible that another store sells the exact item for a bit more yet is significantly cheaper to ship, even free. So a savvy consumer would be interested in comparing shipping policies between etailers, as would an international shopper. If the searcher is “search dominant” (as opposed to a menu-browser), he or she is going to head straight for that little white rectangle to find the desired information.

Continue Reading:
Shipping Policy Usability - Results Not Found! »

Just when you think we’ve wrung all the humor out of ecommerce with the Crazy Messed up World of Ecommerce series, out comes video number 4, “Zero Results Found” in which the nattily-attired heroine attempts to buy some tasty apples and is caught between the paradox of non-choice and the abundance of nonsensical results - or something like that. Watch it here or via YouTube or MetaCafe - your choice.

Video #4 - Zero Results Found

The debate whether to herd customers like cattle through a step-by-step checkout by removing all navigation and search options will remain. Overall, there was no clear growth or conversion winner between the two camps – to have or to hide. However, computer and electronics retailers who suppressed navigation during checkout had almost 2x the growth rate of those who made it available. Those selling high ticket price items also had a 60% higher growth rate where navigation was not made available. This suggests when selling items that are a highly considered purchase it may be better to reduce the avenues a shopper may use to re-consider the decision – put the blinders on and herd them through to order confirmation.

Overall, 57% of Top 100 online retailers choose to make search and navigation available during the checkout process.

Towards the end of eTail Midmarket in San Francisco, Dave O chats with Ed Hoffman, VP of Sales for SLI Systems (blog) about smart, learning site search. Specifically, they discuss how websites have evolved, how shoppers find and subsequently search sites and how websites can tailor site navigation to fit shoppers’ habits.

MP3 File

[photo by DaveO at eTail Midmarket
- Mark Williams pictured]

Recently Elastic Path made some new friends - specifically with a few software makers building applications which integrate with Elastic Path ecommerce platform.

Retailers constantly seek ways to increase their piece of pie while not dedicating excessive cashflow to re-invent a ground-up program. As such, smart companies are adding valuable, retail-specific functionality with innovative and noteworthy add-ons. By working together Elastic Path-powered retailers add some big hammers to their toolbox.

Beyond the companies on either side of the arrangement, the consumers are the winners because the shopping experience is more pleasant and more efficient - which equals more sales conversions which leads to happy stakeholders and longer vacations, early retirement and so on …

Here are a few blossoming friendships:

Celebros - Celebros’ Qwiser tool adds increased “smart” retail functionality with retail specific search and personalization navigation tools. The intuitive software is designed to increase sales by strengthening customer loyalty by providing a more accurate (thus pleasant) shopping environment in which the navigation adjusts to the shopper rather than vice versa. Read the press release (.pdf), and visit Celebros’ site.

Scene 7 - Dynamic imaging is Scene 7’s core competency as they provide a means to re-size, zoom in, annotate and color swap images from one master image file. This saves massive time for web monkeys and saves tons of money by minimizing photo shoots and re-shoots. Marketing/branding type folks are happy because images are consistent across the board - from web site to print catalog to advertising to internal documents. Plus, the tools are fun to use for shoppers - think Flickr-like functionality for business. Check out Scene 7’s demos to see the power.

SiteBrand - Personalization is the key for Sitebrand’s strategy of turning visitors into customers by utilizing A/B visitor testing, advanced analytics and web page optimization blueprints to more efficiently capture eyeballs from landing page through to checkout. Sitebrand boasts a noteworthy client list (including a personal favorite Sierra Trading Post) and a healthy assortment of informative retail resources to educate yourself on cutting-edge retail techniques.

All these applications integrate with splendid ease with Elastic Path (remember that Elastic Path *is* flexible) and each application can instantly help retailers sleep better by better serving customer, reducing cart abandonment and increasing sales.

No wonder we all want to be friends ;-).