STORES Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 96)

NUTS AND BOLTS / E-COMMERCE looking for as soon as possible,” Holstein says. “And throughout everything we do we’re … showing [repeat customers] what they bought in a little box on the right every time they visit the site. They can go quickly to the last page that they looked at.” With more than 10,000 products, CableOrganizer.com wants to streamline the navigation of its site. In March 2007, it installed SLI Systems’ Learning Search and Site Champion hosted site-search and search-engine optimization offerings. The data pulled from Learning Search is analyzed and used to change the site to meet customer preferences. The result of this on-site search improvement was a 40 percent increase in product searches – results that are quite common, says SLI CEO Shaun Ryan, adding that Site Champion helps websites generate higher organic rankings in Google. Popular searches On the Cable Organizer homepage is a “popular searches” link that allows Google “to index those most popular searches,” Ryan says. “When Google comes to your site, the spider can’t type something into the search box and press, ‘Go.’ So by providing this list of popular search terms, it provides a path for these pages to get indexed.” Site Champion also allows for search suggestions or related searches that link to other pages, providing a nice linking structure among and between all the search pages. “Each page is optimized for the particular search term,” Ryan says. “The net effect of this is they end up getting thousands of new pages indexed by Google that optimize the keywords that visitors are typing into their site search.” SLI also helped CableOrganizer.com merchandise to its customers. When somebody searches a keyword, a banner about that product appears above the search results. After a customer uses the on-site search, he is prompted to take a quick survey. At the top of the page, this question appears: “Did you find the search 96 STORES / APRIL 2008 useful: yes or no?” “When people click on that, they can go and put a comment in, as well,” Ryan says. CableOrganizer.com performs its own AV and multivariate testing, is experimenting with product videos and has its own analytics team. All of this is an effort to stay ahead of the curve and to maintain its niche, lest someone else encroach on its territory. “The web is moving very, very quickly and we’re definitely trying to stay on the edge of it,” Holstein says. “Five years from now, I don’t think any two people will see the same website.” StORES Fred Minnick is a professional writer based in Louisville, Ky. He covers a broad range of business topics. WEBSITE MANAGEMENT One-Source Outsource Single vendor simplifies website re-launch for Karen Neuburger BY LAURI GIESEN etailers and manufacturers looking to launch or re-launch an ecommerce site are often faced with a daunting decision: hire a staff that has experience in creating and operating an online sales operation, or contract with a handful of companies to handle the various functions on an outsourced basis. R San Rafael, Calif.-based KN Ltd., manufacturer of KN Karen Neuburger products, decided to take a completely different approach when it transitioned from a brochure-ware site to a full-function retail site. Rather than manage a multitude of different vendors and technology companies, KN found one that could create and operate the site and perform all the various functions required of e-commerce, including fulfillment, customer service, WWW.STORES.ORG 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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