STORES Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 94)

NUTS AND BOLTS / E-COMMERCE Getting Personal Search mechanism helps CableOrganizer.com shoppers find more of what they’re looking for BY FRED MINNICK n six years of operation, CableOrganizer.com has built a solid e-commerce niche selling everything from grommets to cables and label printers. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company earned $10.2 million in sales in 2007, an increase of 17 percent from the previous year, and senior vice president Paul Holstein expects growth of 26 percent in 2008. I based on their prerequisites for ending up on our site,” says e-commerce initiatives manager Daniel Shields. When a user searches for “label maker” on Google, for instance, CableOrganizer.com consistently is one of the top 10 organic listings. If the customer clicks on the CableOrganizer.com link, he will go to a landing page titled “Label Printer, Dymo Label Maker, Automatic Wrap Labelers.” A patent-pending precognitive search mechanism developed by CableOrganizer.com allows users to view relevant information based on the keywords for which they searched. Top five sellers The execution came with a little help from SLI Systems, a provider of on-demand search services. CableOrganizer.com officials write the java script that collects the search terms; SLI Systems provides the search results and sends a formatted box that merchandizes to the customer: on the right-hand side of the page are the top five selling label makers. “We’re showing not only what Google thinks is a good search result for ‘label makers’ but what we think are good results for ‘label maker,’” Shields says. “Nobody else is doing this.” Before, users of Google and other search engine users were bouncing out because the home page wasn’t catered to the specific keyword or phrase. “When you look at our homepage, it has nothing to do with label printers,” Shields says. “We wanted to add all the proper search results … wherever they’re searching so that we can match what the customer’s looking for. We’re personalizing the site based upon what we know about the customer.” The results have been higher conversion and spend rates. Non-search users have a conversion rate of 1.5 percent versus 7 percent from those coming from Google; non-search users spend an average of $1.53 per visit, compared with $6.10 for search users. “The strategy is to get customers where they want to go as quickly as possible, to show them what they were WWW.STORES.ORG Business-to-business customers make up 80 percent of the site’s total sales, but general consumers account for 80 percent of total orders. Holstein and his tech crew sought a way to focus messages to both types of customers without polarizing the content offerings. “We’re moving more into personalization,” Holstein says. “We’re getting much, much deeper into personalizing the web experience for every browser.” CableOrganizer.com personalizes content based on triggering rules that generate a page based on geography, referring domain, keywords, time of week or other criteria “dynamically generated for the purpose of meeting the user with something they would expect to see, Conversion rate Spend per visit 94 STORES / APRIL 2008 Non-search users 1.5% $1.53 Google 7% $6.10 http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://CableOrganizer.com http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - April 2008

STORES Magazine - April 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page More Retailers Bagging Monthly Comp-Store Reports Time-Warner Center's Economy-Defying Results What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Eating Locally Grocery Concept2Watch Restaurants Online Services Marketing Human Resources Product Lifecycle Management E-Commerce: Peer Reviews Drive Online Buyers Kiosks Recycling Operations Payment Systems POS Logistics E-Commerce: Getting Personal Website Management LOEB Retail Letter Arts Update Point of View NRF News Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - April 2008

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