By Terry Costa, VP of Marketing, SLI Systems
Most online retail sites reach the point where they need to upgrade, or possibly even replace their existing eCommerce platform. This is no small endeavor. On the one hand, the cost is daunting: for large retailers an eCommerce platform can cost up to $10 million, while midmarket retailers can expect to pay $500,000 to $1 million. But more than the expense, there’s the disruption to the business to consider, which can last for several months or longer, and put extra burden on IT.
The good news is there is an alternative to re-platforming that can allow you to delay, sometimes indefinitely, this major undertaking. Advanced Site search solutions that allow for merchandising, search and navigation and SEO using behavioral data, control more and more of the online retailers’ store-front user experience. These solutions can provide many of the improvements looked for in a new eCommerce platform — at a fraction of the price and without the upheaval to the business.
One major reason retailers decide to re-platform is to improve their conversions and average order values. These retailers may have back-end and foundation issues they need to deal with, and might also have poor search results and inconsistent navigation. But combining these issues is not the answer. It makes as much sense as saying that fixing the foundation of your house will also take care of the leaking roof. The reality is, you need to fix your foundation, AND your leaking roof. Most eCommerce platforms will not provide you with the advanced site search your site needs. Prioritizing activities can help you prepare and plan for new changes. Just as one might fix a roof so the house can be lived in before fixing the foundation, site search can be optimized to provide relevant search and navigation results, to increase conversions, average order value, and bring in additional business, while you look at fixing your back-end/ foundation issues.
Advertisement
Lakeshore Learning, a national provider of learning products for parents and teachers, uses its site search solution to improve the company website’s look and feel and host special pages such as a holiday gift guide.
“Creating uniquely designed landing pages and sections of the website are easy with our site search solution,” says Sam Sarullo, VP of eCommerce at Lakeshore Learning. “We can also test new experiences to really optimize our conversion rates.” Site search has become a long-term solution they rely on to sustain their business, as greater user experience and satisfaction directly affect customer loyalty.
Using site search to delay an eCommerce platform purchase was the approach taken by PartySuppliesDelivered.com, a retailer of party supplies and costumes.
“In our case, the shopper’s entire browsing and navigating is controlled by site search,” says Ian MacDonald, division VP of e-commerce and marketing for PartySuppliesDelivered.com. “Almost 50% of our visitors use the search solution when they come to our site; the remainder browse the site using navigation. Our site search solution delivers both search and navigation experiences in a consistent way, so we have no imminent need to re-platform.”
Making the best use of customer experience features that already exist in advanced site search solutions, retailers can get the most investment out of their existing eCommerce platforms –without making a major investment in something new and improved. In this way, they can gain some of the bottom-line improvements that are often only realized with a full re-platforming effort.
As VP of marketing, Terry Costa is responsible for SLI Systems’ global marketing efforts as well as driving growth of SLI’s search technology and services in the e-commerce and publishing industries. He is an experienced marketing veteran, having held senior marketing positions for several leading technology companies, including InQuira and BroadVision. Before joining SLI, Terry was VP of marketing for Exaprotect, a security software company, and VP of marketing for Reportive. He started his career at Hewlett-Packard, where he was responsible for bringing to market HP’s security products and Data Warehousing solutions.
