When eCommerce site search is working well, it is a dream for your customers:  they can find what they’re looking for, the first time.  No need to endlessly click through your site’s categories and attributes.  Unfortunately, eCommerce search is too often scaring customers away.  We’ll look at six scary statistics and the ways that you can ensure your site search is not one of the frightening ones…

Scary Statistic #1

70% of eCommerce search implementations are unable to return relevant results,

requiring users to search using the exact same jargon as the site[1]

Yes, that’s right, nearly three-quarters of eCommerce site searches will only return the right products if the customers happen to use the right language.  That’s a lot of lost revenue when those customers become frustrated and abandon the site.

To ensure that your customers can find what they’re looking for, you need a Natural Language search solution.  Natural Language search solutions find different versions of the same terms, so that pluralities and tenses can be managed.  For example, it wouldn’t make any difference if a customer used the term “mens”, “man”, “men” or “womens”, “women”, “ladies”.  An intelligent Natural Language search system will understand this automatically, without any input.

Scary Statistic #2

34% of eCommerce site searches don’t return useful results when users search for

a model number or misspell just a single character in the product title[2]

This scary statistic raises 2 important issues:

1. Misspelling

A good spell correction system is not just about correcting, but about finding words that occur in the product data which most closely match what the user described.

With EasyAsk’s intuitive search system, your product data becomes the look-up dictionary, meaning that your customers don’t have to match the spelling of your products exactly.

2. Complex Product Numbers

While most good search systems will find common misspellings, they lack the ability to deal effectively with part or model numbers.  Consumers who are taking the time to type in a part number are undoubtedly more ready to buy, so it is even more important that they are able to find what they are looking for.

EasyAsk has the ability to index part and model numbers comprehensively, indexing all variations to ensure that users can find the product, even if they forget or mistype part of the number.

EasyAsk’s ‘Part Number Expander’

A ‘Part Number Expander’ is especially useful for complex part numbers that include a combination of letters, numbers and other characters.  A user might forget whether characters were separated by a hyphen or a slash, or might omit letters on the end.

The Part Number Expander takes each part number and creates all the different versions of terms and inserts them into the searchable index so that if any of them are searched for, they will match to the product.  The code is broken up into parts and the separators are substituted in all combinations.

For example, if the part number is

123-HC/1345AB

the Part Number Expander would index:

123-HC-1345AB                                     123

123/HC/1345AB                                    123-HC

123/HC-1345AB                                    HC

123 HC 1345AB                         1345

…among many other combinations.

If a customer types a part/model number that is slightly different (for example, using spaces instead of hyphens) the correct product will still be found.

Ecklerscorvette.com demonstrates how the Part Number Expander can avoid no results for customers:

The part number for this disc brake set is 25-261256-1.  If a customer replaces the hyphens with spaces, the exact product is still returned.

Scary Statistic #3

If people have a negative experience on mobile, they’re 62% less likely to purchase from you in the future[3]

A negative experience will stay with prospects longer than a positive one, so if you want your mobile customers to become regular, you’ll need to make sure you’re not putting them off with a poor user experience compared to your desktop site.

Does your site have a mobile responsive design, so that the text, images, and menus change according to the screen size?  Furthermore, as your site adapts to a mobile size, do you show relevant categories and attributes, as opposed to just the first ones from the desktop site.

Customers using a mobile eCommerce site are more likely to use voice input, and therefore different word choices and sentence structures when speaking.  Your search system needs to be able to cope with voice input and the long-tail queries that are more likely on mobile.

Scary Statistic #4

46% of eCommerce sites have a “No Results Page” implementation that is essentially a dead-end for users, offering no more than a generic set of search tips[4]

Generating a generic ‘Sorry, no results matched your search’ message could be disastrous.  How many shoppers would stay on your site and how many would go straight to your competitor?

There are better ways to use a ‘No Results’ page, but what if it was possible to avoid searches returning no results in the first place?

It may be that a simple spell correction rectifies a ‘No Results’ search, but it is also important to monitor what EasyAsk calls ‘relaxed’ searches.  A relaxed search is one where the search system has modified the search by intelligently dropping (or ‘relaxing’) a term or terms.

For example, if a customer searched for a ‘Men’s black lace jacket’ and there are no products that match this description, we would want the results to show ‘Men’s black jackets’, rather than ‘Men’s lace jackets’ or ‘black lace jackets’, having relaxed the term ‘lace’.  Some searches will inevitably need to be modified and in this example, we want our search system to recognize that the gender stated in the search query is more important than the fabric.

If a user’s search has been modified (such as by spell correcting or relaxation) it is important to display a message explaining the changes to the original search.  For example, a user may search for “purple leather couches” and see the following message:

This user could have searched for leather couches in the first instance and spent a long time scrolling through the pages of results looking for any in purple.  But by using messaging in this way, the user is informed immediately and is more likely to use the search system again.

So-called intelligent ‘No Results’ pages will suggest searches based on what a user asked for, but truly intelligent search systems will change the search to find relevant products based on what the user asked for, even though there may not be an exact match.

Scary Statistic #5

It’s 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one[5]

A worrying number of businesses still don’t use merchandising tools such as cross-sells and up-sells effectively on their eCommerce sites.  These businesses are leaving money on the table.

EasyAsk’s search solution includes a comprehensive set of merchandising controls.  With 9 predefined promotion types, banners and business rules, amongst other functions, the business user is in control of the products that are presented to the customer.

Scary Statistic #6

36% of autocomplete implementations on eCommerce websites do more harm than good[6]

Although basic autocomplete suggestions can be found on 82% of eCommerce sites, most sites do not take the opportunity to capitalize on merchandising while users are searching.

As a user types into a search box supported by EasyAsk, however, search suggestions and category suggestions will be displayed as well as the products themselves.

EasyAsk offers ‘Search as you Type’, or SAYT, because it means a whole lot more than just a list of suggested searches.  It means many possibilities for getting the right products in front of your customers.

SAYT progressively searches for and filters through text.  As a user types a query, suggestions, products, categories, and attributes are found and presented with each keystroke.  This allows a user to stop short of typing the entire word or phrase and find what they were looking for quicker.

Search suggestions as well as relevant and popular products, attributes, and categories can all be displayed in an easy to use interface.

Here is an example from EasyAsk customer personalizationmall.com:

The user is looking for a wedding gift and the letters ‘wedd’ have been typed into the search box on the desktop site so far.  The above drop-down panel is displayed without needing to execute the search.  Alongside the search suggestions in the right-hand column, a popular category to browse and 7 products are displayed, based on the first search prediction, ‘wedding’.  Scrolling through the search suggestions using the down and up arrows updates the real-time search and therefore the categories and products displayed.  Personalization Mall could have also configured their search so that it updates just by a mouse hover for a certain amount of time.

Typed characters are shown in bold in the list of suggestions, with the rest of the suggestion in normal type.  Often, autocomplete systems only show suggestions that begin with the typed characters, but we can see here that the suggestions can contain ‘wedd’ anywhere.

Presenting customers with the most relevant search, product and category suggestions is essential.

Conclusion

When your site search is performing well, customers won’t be scared off, and your business won’t become one of the statistics above.

Getting the right products in front of the customer as quickly as possible shortens the path to conversion, keeping your customers and your bank balance happy.

Follow the tips and best practices in EasyAsk’s recently released eGuide: “Preparing for the Holiday Season: A Guide for your eCommerce Site” to ensure your customers find the right products the first time.

[1] https://baymard.com/blog/ecommerce-search-report-and-benchmark

[2] https://baymard.com/blog/ecommerce-search-report-and-benchmark

[3] https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/advertising-channels/mobile/few-tips-speed-your-mobile-site-and-tools-test-it/

[4] https://baymard.com/ecommerce-search/benchmark/page-types/no-search-results-page

[5] https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers

[6] https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/the-current-state-of-e-commerce-search/

The post Six Scary Site Search Statistics appeared first on EasyAsk.

The EasyAsk team recently visited the Windy City to be a part of IRCE at RetailX. This year’s event merged three shows into one, with the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) holding its 15^th annual event. RetailX attracted 20,000 attendees and more than 1,200 exhibiting brands, with EasyAsk proud to be counted among them.

We were able to impress visitors to the EasyAsk booth by demonstrating how outstanding EasyAsk’s Search and Navigation solution is. In case you missed the show, here is what one of the EasyAsk team could have shown you:

The North Face use EasyAsk to power their search so it’s a great example of some of the functionality. This voice search contains references to gender, price and color, as well as redundant words, such as ‘I’m looking for’. EasyAsk has the ability to cope with all of this information and returns the following results:

The EasyAsk engine has understood that ‘wife’ is a synonym for ‘womens’ and brings back only red, waterproof, ladies jackets priced less than $200. Although each of the 11 results are available in different colors, the thumbnail picture presented in the results is always in the red tone.

Contrast this successful search to the same search using Amazon.com:

Amazon’s engine cannot cope with the complexities of this query and the top suggested searches are for ‘I’m red waterproof’ and ‘I’m looking waterproof’.

It is clear that EasyAsk’s understanding of natural language is far superior to that of the eCommerce giant, Amazon. We think this is why the IRCE attendees were so impressed…

It’s worth taking a closer look when it comes to search and merchandising solutions. We’d love to show you further how EasyAsk out-performs Amazon and competes with Google. We can help you help your customers to find the right products, first time.

More information about IRCE can be found at www.irce.com

Take a closer look at EasyAsk’s search and merchandising solutions at www.easyask.com

The post IRCE @ RetailX 2019: How EasyAsk impressed prospective customers appeared first on EasyAsk.

What is Conversational Commerce?

The term ‘Conversational Commerce’ is used to describe the connection between Sellers and Buyers through messaging and chat applications. Many people now like to use chat systems to accomplish different tasks, but until fairly recently, this kind of interaction has predominantly been used for accessing support, such as customer services. But what if online retailers could use Conversational Commerce to provide a better, more personalized user experience for their shoppers?

Gartner research shows that by 2020:

• 30% of digital commerce revenue growth will be attributable to artificial intelligence technologies, such as those that power conversational commerce.

• 5% of all digital commerce transactions will come from a smart machine, such as those that power conversational commerce.

As people become more accustomed to interacting in a conversational way, they will be increasingly likely to want to use the same conversational mode when finding products.

Mirroring the Store Experience

When a customer walks into a physical store, the sales associate can ask a series of questions to narrow down the choice and focus in on the right products for the customer. In a human context, the sales associate has the necessary knowledge about the products to filter down to a few products.

This is what retailers should be trying to achieve online with Conversational Commerce.

When shopping online, a Conversational Commerce system should intelligently suggest appropriate ways of limiting a set of products. You need to make sure that your system has the intelligence to ask your customer the right questions.

Intelligent Questions and Responses

Let’s compare the in-store experience to one that could be achieved via Conversational Commerce:

Store Sales Associate                                                             Conversational AI-powered Search Engine

Just like with the in-store experience, the Conversational Commerce engine asks questions in a logical order and uses the responses to intelligently suggest attributes to refine the search further.

However your customers wish to interact with you, they should have a similar experience. But the Conversational Commerce experience shown above is only possible with the support of powerful, intuitive technology. This kind of advanced interaction requires an AI-based engine that can understand what the next set of attributes (prompts for the user) should be.

Are You Ready?

With the research showing the pattern for Artificial Intelligence to be the biggest influence on eCommerce over the coming years, it is time to make sure that your search system will be able to keep up. Whether using text or voice input, your customers will be progressively accustomed to chat-based interactions and will expect this format when buying online. By adopting an intuitive AI-based search system that can cope with the demands of Conversational Commerce, you will be able to fast-track your customers to the right products every time.

The post What is Conversational Commerce and what does it mean for eCommerce? appeared first on EasyAsk.

Search is essential in eCommerce – it is the gateway. Search is how consumers express what they want and if they don’t find what they want, they can’t buy it. People who choose to search have a far better idea of what they are looking for than those who browse, and are therefore far more likely to make a purchase. This means that understanding the intent of the shopper, however it is worded, is essential to conversion in eCommerce.

This is increasingly important with the proliferation of voice and the adoption of Natural Language searching by the general public. Home Voice Assistants, such as Alexa and Google Home, which were initially used for music, have gone a lot further and are getting smarter. According to new data from Loup Ventures, all Voice Assistants tested had improved in terms of questions answered correctly, with Siri making the most improvement.

From Keywords to Natural Language

Do people generally use Natural Language Search? Most might say, ‘no, not really’. But the truth is that everyone uses AI/NL search everyday, provided you have a computer or Smartphone. Do you ever search on the Internet?   You’re using Google or Bing or maybe Yahoo. All are AI/NL search engines and are incredibly smart. In 2011, Google was hit by a torpedo with the words ‘SIRI’ on it. Google immediately acquired an AI/NL search company and threw out years of keyword search technology: instantly obsolete.

Now people are becoming used to using Natural Language to talk to their smart home devices, but how do they interact with onsite search?

It’s a huge shame, but unfortunately people have become accustomed to the fact that eCommerce Search Engines can’t usually handle queries with more than one or two words, as most of them use obsolete keyword search. Even when using voice search, they assume that they need to think carefully about what the Search Engine is likely to understand, search, then probably rephrase.

But thanks to Home Voice Assistants, when users pick up their phones to use voice search, they’re increasingly likely to speak using Natural Language as opposed to keywords. When people speak, they naturally throw in extra words so an intuitive Natural Language Engine is needed to understand these longer-tail queries.

The beauty of having a true Natural Language Engine is that the customer can be understood as if they were talking to a Sales Associate. By leveraging Natural Language processing, the burden is on the Search Engine, not on the person talking.

If a customer walked into a North Face store, they might say to a sales associate, “I’m looking for a new waterproof jacket for my wife please.” Using these same words in a voice search on thenorthface.com brings back the following results:

The Search Engine has returned 18 highly relevant results.

Similarly, if a customer walked into a Timberland store, they might ask the Sales Associate, “Do you have any ladies field boots please?” In a voice search on timberland.com, exactly the right product is returned immediately:

Both Timberland and The North Face use EasyAsk to power their search. Their online customers can use voice search to describe exactly what they’re looking for as if they were in a store. These major brands have experienced dramatic revenue boosts between 37-70%.

EasyAsk’s search engine understands these types of queries. Will your Search Engine fail as more people search in this way, or will you be ready for the future because your Search Engine understands how people speak? Using a Natural Language Search Engine allows even small businesses to compete with the search quality of Amazon. You don’t need repetitive shopping behavior data to deliver fantastic results. Natural Language levels the playing field.

Encouraging your users to use voice search (perhaps by adding a microphone icon in the search bar) will mean that they provide more information about what they’re looking for. This in turn will mean that your users will see exactly the right results on the first page. Less time spent finding what they’re looking for results in a higher chance of conversion and higher revenue for your business.

The norm for voice interactions is changing. The future starts now.

“EasyAsk understands exactly what your customers are looking for. Delivering the right results, the first time. Everytime.”

Craig Bassin, CEO EasyAsk

The post Using AI-based Natural Language to improve eCommerce appeared first on EasyAsk.

And the implications for eCommerce

Automation of the home environment through Voice

It’s all about the Voice

Increasing numbers of people are using voice, thanks to the growing popularity of home voice assistants such as Alexa. We’re all aware of their invasion of our homes over recent years. They carry out a range of tasks for us daily, but they don’t always get it right. A bit of browsing using the hashtag ‘alexafail’ brings back some fun results:

Whether the voice assistants get it right or wrong, their popularity has boosted Voice technology into the mainstream. But it hasn’t always been about Alexa or Siri. Let’s take a look at how Voice technology has developed over the years with a brief timeline:

How does Voice affect eCommerce?

This proliferation of voice has a knock-on effect for eCommerce, with a study by OC & C Strategy Consultants forecasting a 1,999% increase in voice shopping, reaching $40 billion by 2022. This explosion in revenue will be primarily Mobile Voice UX on Smartphones.

Much of this predicted $40 billion will be attributed to Amazon as people use their devices more for shopping. Having said this, the ability to handle the same voice functionalities becomes even more important for other retailers, as users are increasingly used to voice shopping.

By 2021, mobile eCommerce sales are expected to account for 54% of total eCommerce sales.

Recent statistics even show that for certain brands, more than 75% of transactions are happening from mobile devices.

While more users are using mobile than desktop, conversion rates are dramatically lower for mobile, highlighting inconsistencies between user experience for desktop and mobile. The principle reasons for this m-commerce ‘gap’ are ease of use and product findability. The move towards using voice will allow users to get around that, as it’s easier to do than typing.

Voice recognition does not necessarily provide understanding.

Voice capabilities have been around for a long time, but the ability for the search engine to understand the context of the phrase, the intent of the shopper, was missing.  Now that users are more used to using voice with home assistants like Alexa, voice shopping will increase exponentially.

Businesses who are voice-enabled will see a dramatic increase in conversion rates.

In order to take advantage of these changes in how shoppers are choosing to buy online, you need technology that will understand the way people speak and be able to respond appropriately.

Understanding Language and Taking Action

Imagine that Joe Bloggs speaks to his fridge:

“I need a large glass of milk”

The technology installed in the fridge may be able to understand the request but can’t actually pour Joe that large glass of milk. This demonstrates perfectly a site that enables voice input but doesn’t have AI-based Natural Language Processing in order to intuitively deal with voice requests.

More and more users are expecting to be able to have a conversation when buying online. Using conversational search is therefore going to become more popular. Unfortunately, eCommerce search systems generally aren’t conversational.

EasyAsk’s solutions are on the cutting edge of understanding voice input and conversational search, providing the technology necessary to keep up with the proliferation of Voice.

“With all the fervor around voice-activated applications and machine intelligence, EasyAsk can help end-user organizations and vendors put an Apple Siri- or IBM Watson-like front end on…search applications.”

Gartner Cool Vendor: Analytics

Look out for future blog posts, where we will explore in more detail:

• Using AI-based Natural Language processing to improve eCommerce product search

• What is Conversational Search and what does it mean for eCommerce?

The post The Proliferation of Voice appeared first on EasyAsk.

According to Forrester, B2B eCommerce in the U.S. will hit $1.2 trillion by 2021, seeing a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.4% over the next four years.  It is therefore essential that B2B businesses optimize the experience for their customers online.  B2B sites have typically been known as less usable, but it is time for them to catch up with B2C and make it really easy for customers to do business.  B2B eCommerce has unique complexities, which present unique challenges and therefore require a unique set of best practices.  We will explore these challenges in our B2B blog series and offer advice and solutions to ensure that your B2B site delivers a superior experience.

Bad Data is a Common Problem

Companies who are selling online are often using multiple vendors and a number of systems that tie together.  Information such as pricing and stock could be arriving from hundreds or even thousands of suppliers.  A large volume of data comes in to the ERP and it isn’t normalized.

No one ever said they had good data. The problem is common.

A successful eCommerce experience is reliant upon good data and an intelligent structure with a hierarchy of categories and attributes.  Often, when setting up an eCommerce search system, it crosses many different categories.  A copier might be in both office supplies and electronics categories.  Yet the attributes of a copier would be a lot different to those of a TV, for example.

If you find your data creates a barrier to the success of your business online, you’re not alone. We find this is a very common challenge among B2B companies.  We will discuss 2 problems that B2B companies frequently struggle with:

Inconsistency of Data

The same information can be listed differently by different suppliers.  Certain companies receive stock from various factories, who list the exact same products with different product numbers, color names or measurement units.

A large Paper and Janitorial Supplies company experienced this problem with the fragrance related to the cleaning products that they stocked.  Each manufacturer gave their fragrance a different name, so that each time they released a new fragrance, it was classified into a new system.

Lack of Data

Products may arrive in your system with little or no attribution.  Perhaps the color of guitars that a company sell can only be found in the product name.  Most search systems won’t be able to extract data based on the product name or a brief description.

So this is the problem, but what are the possible solutions?

B2B companies will usually have a Content Management System (CMS), but the data feeding the website can be messy.  One choice is to solve the data programmatically, which would get the data close, but relies on the data having the same attributes.

Another option is to fix the data manually by converting everything to the same structure. This option is labor intensive and time consuming and consequently costly and slow.

The Quickest Route to Good Data

EasyAsk’s search and merchandising solution can very easily give the tools to a merchandiser to catch all possibilities by normalizing data:

• Analytics give you insight and allow you to continually improve your data.  Taking a B2C example, the term ‘Petite’ would normally be related to women’s garments, but if a brand name called ‘Petite’ became part of your stock, the word would need to bring back a different set of products.  Words can be treated differently at different times, depending on the category.

• The AI-based Natural Language Processing allows the engine to take care of linguistic complexities, such as pluralities: women’s, lady, ladies, girls.

• Creating dynamic attributes allows you to mirror sections in a brick and mortar store.  In our B2C example, customers may be searching for a petite dress, but as the data comes from different sources, most products don’t have a ‘petite’ attribute.  It is possible to enhance the data and create a ‘Petite’ virtual category.

Normalizing Bad Data

The abilities described above are necessary in order to normalize inconsistent data.

Nasco, a B2B Education, Healthcare and Farm & Ranch supplier, found inconsistent data was hindering their online sales.  One of their liquid products was sold in 1 liter packs, but depending on where the data came from, the volume was described differently: 1L / 1Ltr / 1 litre / 1 liter.  EasyAsk were able to normalize the data (all to 1L) without the need to change every product.

Are you eCommerce ready?

As well as dealing with bad data as discussed above, if you implement the features we have covered in this B2B Series, we are confident that your customers will be happier.  They will be able to always find the right products, showing accurate pricing, ordering and delivery information.  They will have their B2C expectations of your online experience met and will have a growing confidence in your company.

So many B2B eCommerce sites aren’t providing what their buyers want, but overcoming the common challenges to B2B Ecommerce is possible with the right tools. 

EasyAsk Tools

EasyAsk offers the only site search and merchandising tool designed exclusively for the rigors and challenges of B2B eCommerce.  EasyAsk can be configured for any platform, either commercial or built in-house.  

EasyAsk has long served the B2B customer segment and over 200 B2B distributors have chosen us to power their B2B eCommerce sites, including: Aramark, Demco, Kaman Industries, Tacoma Screw, and Crown Packaging.

The post B2B Series Challenge 7: Dealing with Bad Data appeared first on EasyAsk.

Managing the Relationship

Bringing your B2B business online may present certain challenges, but there is no doubt that the possibilities and advantages far outweigh those challenges.  As we discussed in the previous blog post, being aware of what your customers are doing across all channels means that you can provide consistent information.  But it also means that you can collect vital information about your customers’ activity, such as their preferred channel, order and search history.  Understanding your customer’s behavior enables you to manage your ongoing relationship with new and existing customers.

Managing the relationship with your customers requires a two-pronged approach – being proactive and reactive.

Proactive

Don’t take your customers for granted – it is important to proactively keep in touch with them.  Using a customer’s order history, it is possible to personalize the products that you market to them.  If a customer re-orders particular products frequently, those products should be pushed to the top of their search results.  One example of how EasyAsk is doing this is by using sales information to drive improved Autocomplete, which we call SAYT (Search As You Type) results, thereby providing a much better customer experience.

Another way to improve the experience for your customers at the same time as streamlining your business is to use your established relationship to drive your customers towards using your website.  This frees up customer service staff, saving your company money.  Why not incentivize your customers to use a better channel?  For example, customers who often use the call center could be offered a discount for all online orders during the first month.

A further way to be proactive is to be aware of how your competitors are dealing with their customers.  Your sales representatives need to know whether they are offering competitive pricing and offers.  Visit the sites of your main competitors regularly to see what they’re doing.

Reactive

Understanding and keeping up to date with your customer’s activity online allows you to react when there is a potential barrier.  If a customer hasn’t ordered as frequently as they normally do, contact could be made with them.  Perhaps the sales representatives could receive an alert when customers who order on a weekly basis stop or change the frequency of their orders.

Personalization can play a key role here, showing that you understand how your customers prefer to order and which products they would be interested in.  You could schedule automated, yet personalized, emails along the lines of:

“Hi Jo, we noticed that you haven’t placed an order with us recently, so here are some special offers for you.”

When you use your analytics to pick up on any changes in your customer activity, it is much easier to respond promptly and resolve any issues or questions.

Using Analytics

Responding proactively and reactively to the measurements in analytics is vital, but how can you use them?

First, it is important to set targets for the improvements that you wish to see, for example in conversion rate.  You can then relate any changes that you make in your system to the improvements.

As well as measuring improvements to your conversion rates, there are other very useful indicators, such as how often users don’t get results for their search (No Results).  You might monitor the ratio of call center versus website orders.  As you improve your B2B site to match B2C standards, you should see the channel used by more of your customers.  Most B2B companies are selling standard products, but there are certain businesses, selling complex products, that will only be able sell over the phone or face to face.  For these businesses, their analytics might show an improvement in the number of customers viewing or downloading guides or manuals from the website, as opposed to having a sales representative send it via email.

EasyAsk analytics allow you to see trends in how people are searching and navigating your site, meaning that you can monitor all of the results above.

 Relationships take work

The key contributor to managing the relationship with your B2B customers is staying in touch, proactively and reactively.  If your eCommerce solution allows you to monitor and analyze your customer’s activity, you will know what helps and what hinders them from being a faithful customer.  Like any good relationship, a business relationship takes care and attention.

Are you eCommerce ready?

As well as the basics of customer relationships discussed above, if you implement the features we have covered in this B2B Series, we are confident that your customers will be happier.  They will be able to always find the right products, showing accurate pricing, ordering and delivery information.  They will have their B2C expectations of your online experience met and will have a growing confidence in your company.

So many B2B eCommerce sites aren’t providing what their buyers want, but overcoming the common challenges to B2B eCommerce is possible with the right tools.

 EasyAsk Tools

EasyAsk offers the only site search and merchandising tool designed exclusively for the rigors and challenges of B2B eCommerce.  EasyAsk can be configured for any platform, either commercial or built in-house.  

EasyAsk has long served the B2B customer segment and over 200 B2B distributors have chosen us to power their B2B eCommerce sites, including: Aramark, Demco, Kaman Industries, Tacoma Screw, and Crown Packaging.

The post B2B Series Challenge 6: Managing the Relationship appeared first on EasyAsk.

Omni- or Multi- Channel?

An omni-channel approach is increasingly hailed as the most effective way to do business.  And most businesses would now claim to offer a multi-channel experience, where their customers can access their products or services in a variety of ways, such as on a desktop or mobile site, a mobile app and in a brick-and-mortar store.  But not all multi-channel experiences are omni-channel; a company could have many channels providing different levels of service.  True omni-channel is when the experience is consistent across channels however, or wherever a customer accesses your product or service.

HubSpot have found examples of B2C companies with excellent omni-channel experiences.  We particularly like the way that Disney synchronize the experience for their customers across its mobile, non-mobile sites and apps, down to details such as photo storage and food ordering.

What does omni-channel mean in the B2B world?

Your B2B customers are inevitably also B2C shoppers, so will be expecting the same capabilities.  Although the B2B experience is not usually so personalized as for companies such as Disney, there are still lessons to be learned from B2C.

In B2B, it is equally important to provide customers with a consistent experience across multiple channels.  Information that is gathered on one channel should be available across all others.  Whether a user is logged in, speaking on the phone, or directly to a sales representative, information such as prices, stock information, product details and order history should all be consistent.

A call center representative should know what their customers usually order and should have all information in front of them.  A customer should be able to log in to a B2B site and re-order items.  This consistency is what drives a great customer experience.

The most important channels in B2B are:

• eCommerce website:
  • Mobile site
  • Non-mobile site
• Call Centers
• Sales representatives
• Printed Catalogs

A Word on Mobile

It is essential to recognize the increasing importance of mobile in B2B.  BCG estimate that mobile usage per B2B worker will increase by as much as 50% (from two hours a day to three) by 2020.

In a mobile environment, particularly with the proliferation of voice search, we have no idea how a user is going to search.  There is the unknown factor of how a user may choose to speak their request.  When using voice search, people are more verbose; they don’t think as carefully about the words they will use, and they throw in unexpected words.  It is imperative, therefore, that the engine processing the request is incredibly intelligent, intuitive and flexible, mandating an AI/Natural Language search solution  This way, no matter how a user asks, they can find what they asked for.

Streamlining

The most cost-effective way for a business to deal with customers is without human intervention, providing a consistent experience across apps, mobile and desktop sites.  Failing to provide this kind of consistency will really annoy your customers.  Imagine a customer who tries to find a product on your site, fails, and then calls a customer service representative, who doesn’t have any information about the customer.  You’ve probably experienced this as a user and understand how frustrating it is.

Being able to take information from a web session and see that in a call center is vital.  The call center can then take minimum details and see what a customer has been doing on their screen, avoiding the need for the customer to repeat it all.  When it comes to search, your system should be showing the same information across channels.  If a customer speaks to a call center agent, they should see the same search results as the customer.

Streamlining means taking information and orchestrating it across all touchpoints.

Case in Point

An office and schools supplier contacted EasyAsk for help when they realized that they were losing business due to a lack of consistency across channels.  Before implementing the EasyAsk search system, the information in their printed catalogs didn’t match the information on their website.  Customer searches failed because the catalog numbers were different, and customers had to call the call center to place an order.  Unfortunately, the call center had their own system for understanding catalog numbers which was different from the web system.  These separate and inconsistent systems meant that the company was dealing with the same customers multiple times in order to process one order.

EasyAsk enabled the company to streamline their business.  After implementation, customers could do everything online, thanks to EasyAsk indexing printed catalogue numbers alongside website catalogue numbers.

This once again highlights the importance of consistency across all B2B channels.  Your web users should be able to see all of the information that they could gain from speaking to a sales representative in a call cente, such as order status, product information, what’s in or out of stock and delivery information.  Authorized users may even be able to see financial information, such as outstanding balances and payments made.

This omni-channel B2B experience must be brought together by a powerful search and merchandising system.  Can your system handle this?

EasyAsk is up to the Task

EasyAsk offers the only AI/Natural Language site search and merchandising tool designed exclusively for the rigors and challenges of B2B eCommerce. EasyAsk can be configured for any platform, either commercial or built in-house.  

EasyAsk has long served the B2B customer segment and over 400 B2B distributors have chosen us to power their B2B eCommerce sites, including: Aramark, Demco, Kaman Industries, Tacoma Screw, and Crown Packaging.

The post B2B Series Challenge 5: Omni-Channel appeared first on EasyAsk.

The Price is Right

Pricing is a critical component of a B2B eCommerce site. There’s nothing more disastrous than a customer seeing the wrong price for a product. The emphasis should be on accuracy and processing speed.

It is common for B2B prices to be individualized based on factors such as contract, purchasing frequency, and volume. Sometimes bulk prices are displayed, grouped according to the number bought.

There are 2 main pricing situations that your search system will need to cater for. We will explore them and discover how best they can be handled:

1.    Price Groups

Rather than allocating individual prices for every customer, some businesses have levels or groups of prices, e.g. Level ‘A’ to ‘E’. Depending on the group level allocated to the customer, they’ll see one of a number of prices. In these situations, if the customer is identified, the search system can index all prices and decide whether to pass back, for example, the Level ‘A’, Level ‘B’ price. This situation works well when there are up to about 10 price levels.

2.    Dynamic Pricing

In this situation, every customer has negotiated prices, based on volume or contract etc. and the search system can’t know the price in advance. There are several ways in which a search system can handle dynamic pricing:

The search system indexes a standard price, and a message is displayed alongside the product on the search results page along the lines of:

“This is the standard price. For your pricing, view the product details.”

When the customer accesses the product details screen, the price for that particular customer is calculated and displayed. The advantage of this method is that price attribute filters, such as price sliders or selectors, can be displayed on the search results page, giving users the option to filter results based on the standard prices.

For each page of results, the ecommerce system calculates and retrieves the prices for the products that are going to be displayed on that page. Most sites only show one page at a time, approximately 10-12 products. Once the search system has passed back the product IDs, it can calculate the prices based on pricing rules, which can then be shown on the product results page. The search system uses a pricing engine to pass back appropriate prices. The disadvantage of this method is that any price attributes on the search results page become invalid.

An advanced, flexible search system can call a pricing engine as part of its process. This means that it can retrieve exact pricing before the attributes are calculated, passing back the correct pricing for each customer. This method allows for totally dynamic pricing. For every product in the results, a price is needed, which does mean that page load time can be affected. For on-premise B2B customers, this overhead would be reduced because the pricing engine will be running on the same internal network, or even the same server that the search system is running on.

Multiple Options

When displaying search results, there is sometimes the need for the price to be more than a single number. Sometimes a set of prices according to volume is required. The search system will need to be able to pass all prices back, perhaps displaying them in a table showing quantity vs price. Does your search system have the ability to pass back multiple prices?

Flexibility is the Answer

Every B2B business has differing needs, and it is essential that search systems are flexible to reflect this. EasyAsk can index multiple prices, calling out to a pricing engine if required, and pass back pricing structures in the results, as opposed to just a simple price. It may be that a business has a set of thresholds for discounts, or individualized pricing based on customer ID. EasyAsk adapts to all circumstances. This isn’t the case for all search systems.

Why Choose EasyAsk?

EasyAsk offers the only site search and merchandising tool designed exclusively for the rigors and challenges of B2B eCommerce. EasyAsk can be configured for any platform, either commercial or built in-house.

EasyAsk has long served the B2B customer segment and over 200 B2B distributors have chosen us to power their B2B eCommerce sites, including: Aramark, Demco, Kaman Industries, Tacoma Screw, and Crown Packaging.

The post B2B Series Challenge 4: Dynamic Pricing appeared first on EasyAsk.

According to Forrester, B2B eCommerce in the U.S. will hit $1.2 trillion by 2021, seeing a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.4% over the next four years. It is therefore essential that B2B businesses optimize the experience for their customers online. B2B sites have typically been known as less usable, but it is time for them to catch up with B2C and make it really easy for customers to do business. B2B eCommerce has unique complexities, which present unique challenges and therefore require a unique set of best practices. We will explore these challenges in our B2B blog series and offer advice and solutions to ensure that your B2B site delivers a superior experience.

Customer-Specific Catalogs

Providing customer-specific catalogs is a unique search requirement for B2B companies and can present unique challenges when it comes to eCommerce. But if it is done well, the personalized experience for your B2B customers will certainly pay dividends.

There are 4 possible situations that a B2B company may need to cater for:

1. The company has products that all customers can see and buy.
2. Certain customers are only authorized to buy from a particular range or category of products. When the customer searches, it is important that they can only view the products that are available for them to buy.
3. Similarly, the availability of products may be based on location. Customers in the North-East might only see products that are stocked in the North-East warehouse. Location of the stock also limits which products a customer should see.
4. There may be custom products produced by a company that are only available to one particular customer. For example, coffee companies need branded cups, so it is important that those custom products are in the supplier’s catalog, but cannot be purchased by anyone else.

Differing needs

Within a typical B2C system, the search system would search the entire catalog and show results, but in the above situations, the catalog indexing process needs to define who can buy which products so that the search system is able to present products in the results correctly. This can become very complex, which is why out-of-the-box search systems can’t handle it. EasyAsk provides a custom implementation for each customer so that any of the challenges described above can be handled.

A paper products manufacturer became an EasyAsk customer and now has certain products in their catalog that are marked with customer IDs, while other products are marked as being global. Their coffee store customer buys branded cups, so when they log in the customer ID is passed to EasyAsk, who pass back only the right products.

The implementation of customer-specific catalogs varies completely between B2B customers, so it isn’t possible to just use defined rules; the flexibility to support all different circumstances is necessary.

B2B Personalization

Being able to search and see personalized results based on pre-negotiated terms is imperative for your B2B customers. They should never see a product that isn’t available for them to buy. Your search system should be aware of product availability for any given customer. Is your search system up to this?

EasyAsk is up to the challenge

EasyAsk offers the only site search and merchandising tool designed exclusively for the rigors and challenges of B2B eCommerce. EasyAsk can be configured for any platform, either commercial or built in-house.

EasyAsk has long served the B2B customer segment and over 200 B2B distributors have chosen us to power their B2B eCommerce sites, including: Aramark, Demco, Kaman Industries, Tacoma Screw, and Crown Packaging.

The post B2B Series Challenge 3: Customer-Specific Catalogs appeared first on EasyAsk.