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.

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 businesses optimize the eCommerce experience for their customers. 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.

Fast-track your Customers

B2B buyers typically know exactly what they want. Being able to find it quickly and without unnecessary clicks or searches is key. Your B2B buyers need to search and navigate your site easily so that they can find what they are looking for and get on with their day. Don’t forget that your B2B buyers are also B2C customers of other companies, and it’s likely that they are used to experiencing good product findability.

We can break product findability down into two main areas: Navigation and Search.

Navigation

B2B products can be complex, with a huge number of attributes, products and ways to buy. The manageability of navigation filters is important so that your business can quickly create new filters as products are changed or added. Make these filters visually attractive and easy to use, for example by creating sliders for numeric options.

Remember to adjust the number of attributes that are displayed according to how far down the navigation tree the buyer is. At a broad level of products, it would slow down the buyer to show the attributes for every single product. Limit this to broader attributes, such as brand and color. Depending on the user interface, we suggest showing 5 to 6 attributes. As the buyer progresses in their navigation, it becomes more important to show the detailed attributes.

EasyAsk’s search solution allows complete business user control over navigation, including:

• Category Management – The ability to restructure categories to better suit the needs of the buyer.
• Dynamic Attributes – The ability to create attribute groupings based on numeric data. For example, dynamic price groupings.
• Multi-Select Attributes – EasyAsk allows attributes to be multi-selectable or single select.

All of this functionality is under the control of the business user, not the IT department, which could take days or even weeks to implement. EasyAsk keeps your B2B site agile and current.

Search

Your B2B site search needs to be accurate and to understand the terms that your business uses. It should also allow any non-standard terms to be defined. The higher the number of products in your catalog, the greater the importance of Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP is the ability to understand the different ways that people might describe the same product. Understanding the terminology of your users and the ability of your search engine to intuitively and instantly map that to the correct products is extremely important in B2B. Analytics are invaluable in showing how your users are interacting with your site, but are you able to implement any resulting changes rapidly and easily?

Does your site search implicitly understand prices, sizes, lengths and other weights and measures, allowing customers to search using alternative forms of input? Your site should enable your customers to buy how they want to, not how your search system dictates they should.

Of course, users may well be searching using complex part or product numbers rather than words on B2B sites. This can be an issue for regular site search engines and we will cover this challenge in our next blog post.

Search As You Type (SAYT), aka autocomplete/instant search, is a really useful tool for B2B buyers on your site. As a user is typing, the pop up can show the products that are most likely to be sought, for example recently searched or purchased products. It’s also a good idea to display the last searches that the user made even before SAYT kicks in. B2B buyers are often buying the same products repeatedly.

With all search results pages, it is important that your search engine only displays products that your customer is entitled to buy. We will explore customer-specific catalogs later on in this blog series.

The Power to Perform

Although B2B buyers interact in differing ways to B2C shoppers with your search and navigation, it’s equally, if not more important that your search system performs well when faced with the unique demands of B2B eCommerce. You need a powerful system to cope with that.

EasyAsk offers the only 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: HD Supply, Aramark, Alphabroder, Demco, Kaman Industries, Tacoma Screw, and Crown Packaging.

The post B2B Series Challenge 1: Product Findability appeared first on EasyAsk.

Keywords-used-2018?

You’ll be familiar with the default search language of Keywords; that condensed string of search terms, void of any connecting words. Many people who are used to using web search engines still choose to use keywords. CollegeHumor illustrates Keyword Search hilariously in their ‘If Google was a Guy’ videos.

But the tides are turning with the growing awareness of Natural Language Search. Being able to phrase questions as you would ask them if you were talking to someone, using everyday language, is increasingly expected of search engines.

It would be easy to assume that keyword search systems will deal as effectively with keyword searches as a Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine. But this is just not the case. Not only will a good NLP search system produce the right results first time for the growing numbers of users who are familiar with natural language searching, but it will also out-perform keyword search engines when it comes to seemingly simple keyword searches.

Here’s how:

Understanding Language

A good NLP search engine understands word inflection and is able to take versions of words and create a single concept. Changes such as tenses and pluralities are reduced down to a single word, normally a noun. For example, it would be equally natural for a customer to search for either ‘jackets’ or ‘jacket’. With some traditional keyword search systems, however, business users would have to manually create synonyms to say that jackets = jacket.

Irregular plurals such as ‘goose/geese’ or ‘lady/ladies’ can confuse a keyword search engine, whereas a good NLP system will understand all pluralities and grammar. EasyAsk’s search solution will even understand these language complexities across multiple languages.

Understanding Words

Take the simple example of the keyword search, ‘red jacket’. A keyword search engine will match products that contain the words ‘red’ and ‘jacket’. It may even be configured to search in categories. But what if the category name is ‘jackets’ and the system doesn’t recognize ‘jacket’ as meaning the same thing? A good NLP system will match products containing the words ‘red’ and ‘jacket’, but it will also match if, for example, there is some text that describes the product as ‘redder than purple’. EasyAsk’s solution goes one step further. It will understand the keywords completely and realize that the words could be mapped to something else. It understands that red is a color attribute, and will bring back products that don’t necessarily contain the word ‘red’ but that are burgundy, scarlet, berry, crimson… It will also understand that ‘jacket’ is a category name, and that certain products may not include the category name, ‘jacket’, but instead a model name, such as a ‘red Bomber’.

The EasyAsk system on Nasco’s website responds perfectly to the simple keyword search ‘watercolor brush’:

enasco.com

EasyAsk’s system has recognized that ‘brushes’ in the product name matches ‘brush’ in the original search and that ‘watercolor’ describes the type of brushes. A simple keyword search system may have shown watercolor paints first in the product results and found no matches for ‘brush’.

Ranking Products

Even if your customers are running relatively simple keyword searches, there is still lots more that can be done with the results. With EasyAsk, you have the ability to rank the products intelligently, using relevant scoring. Depending on where the match is found will affect the score for that product. For example, a product name match is more important than a match in the description as it could contain misleading text. You also have the ability to search the most important parts of the product first for matches, and only search the less important parts if nothing is found initially.

Yet another option is to configure EasyAsk to only search the highest weighted fields (e.g. product and category name), and if results are found, to stop there. If no matching products are found, however, EasyAsk will go back and try the lower weighted fields (e.g. product description and keywords). In this way, it is possible to only show the less-relevant results when there aren’t any highly relevant products to show. Results pages shouldn’t be filled with less-relevant information.

Reducing No Results

Great NLP engines will avoid ‘No Results’ for keyword searches by relaxing one or more of the terms. Where there may be no results for a search for ‘pink scissors’, one of the terms could be relaxed to show either pink products or scissors. EasyAsk even allows its users to configure the priority of which term is relaxed. In our example, EasyAsk would ignore the color and show scissors rather than pink products that aren’t scissors.

Search As You Type

Search As You Type (or SAYT) intelligently finds the most common searches and shows products before the user has even hit return. This function means that customers with a simple keyword search can type the first few letters and click the search or even go straight to the product that they had in mind.

SAYT in action at enacso.com

How does your business measure up?

NLP search systems understand everyday language with all of its complexities. Intelligent, intuitive NLP systems can take the simplest keyword searches and provide a vastly superior experience to that of a traditional keyword search engine. Does your search solution provide relevant products, however your customers decide to ask?

Let us show you the full range of features that the EasyAsk solution offers.

The post Optimizing your eCommerce site for the Holiday Season 7: Why NLP does Keywords Better appeared first on EasyAsk.

Is Navigation important if you have great search?

An overgeneralization is that shoppers navigate if they don’t know exactly what they want (or if they feel they can’t trust the search engine, like an obsolete keyword search).  Conversely, shoppers use the search box when they DO know exactly what they want.  It’s critical to avoid the ‘clicking to oblivion’ syndrome via poor navigation.

How much patience do your customers have? How long will they hang around on irrelevant pages before they bounce? Does your whole Search System work in sync, providing a consistent experience whether your customers search or navigate?

Navigation is distinct from search and is typically a way of reaching a set of products without searching. Customers can navigate an eCommerce site by clicking on menus, categories, and sub-categories. Once an initial product set is displayed, customers can click on filters too.

Intuitive, Natural Language search is imperative, but great customer experience should also permeate your site’s navigation.

Here are some important considerations for the navigation of your site:

Keep it consistent

A lot of category pages don’t give users many options for what to do next. Unless your site’s landing page is to be set out in a particular way, it should reflect a search results page. It may have extra components, such as banners, but the products and filters should be the same. By presenting the same filters as on a search page (being able to choose price range or color, for example), options are provided for users who perhaps don’t know the right words for a search.

There should always be consistency between the experience of a user who searches and a user who navigates. If a customer navigates the categories mens > jackets they should expect to see the exact same products as if they had typed the search, ‘men’s jackets’. This gives the user confidence in your site. If, however, a customer performs a search that doesn’t return any results and subsequently navigates to find lots of products, their confidence in your search or navigation is undermined, having a detrimental effect on your bounce and conversion rates. Customers are likely to leave a site that they feel they can’t trust. If customers don’t see the right products, they can’t buy them.

Build navigation into the search box

When a user starts to type a query in the search box, does your search system display category or attribute links dynamically? SAYT (Search as you Type) is another form of navigation, allowing the user to stop short of typing their whole query and start to navigate using the links. Once the user has clicked a category, it is important for them to be able to zoom in as easily as possible, using a combination of filters, such as textual/numerical filters, price sliders or color swatches. These options should be visually attractive and easily recognizable.

The North Face Filters

Give your customers what they want

When offering sub-category filtering, always try to present attributes in the order that they are most likely to be used. For example, if the price filters are the most-clicked, show them first. Make use of analytics to keep an eye on where people are clicking on your site. EasyAsk can even provide analytics showing which values are the most popular within attributes. If blue turns out to be your customers’ top color click, show blue as an option before red. Don’t bury the popular clicks, especially on mobile sites and apps.

Use Mega Menus

A Mega Menu can be displayed when a user hovers over or clicks a category heading and contains everything related to that category. Think of it as Search as You Type for navigation.

The North Face Women’s Mega Menu

Users can see everything in detail and decide which sub-category to click next. With EasyAsk driving this functionality, special headings or sub-categories can be generated dynamically from derived attributes and used to pull up appropriate products, such as collections with a given name.

Easy does it…

Navigation and search should be in sync and complement each other. This is a real opportunity for your search system to resonate with your customers. It is crucial that your business does not rely on a development team to generate and tweak changes to navigation. Many systems are coded by developers, so if a business wanted to make changes, there would be time and cost implications.

With EasyAsk, merchandizers have direct access to analytics and dynamic tools in order to optimize their customers’ search and navigation experience.

The post Optimizing your eCommerce site for the Holiday Season 6: Navigation Best Practices appeared first on EasyAsk.

Redirects

When done right, Redirects have the power to inform and invite your customers towards more relevant content. Running a text-search for their queries may not be the most appropriate next step in their journey through your eCommerce site. Sometimes, it is more appropriate to show a different page or set of results. And customers who realize that your search engine is intelligent and intuitive in this way will trust you with their time and money.

How can I use Redirects?

There are many uses for Redirects in eCommerce and we like to define them in three ways:

Web Page Redirects

A Web Page Redirect redirects a search term to a specific web page instead of performing a search. It is useful for catching queries, such as ‘delivery’ or ‘returns’. For example, a customer may enter ‘delivery’ into a search box to find out about the company delivery costs or policies. When a Web Page Redirect is set up for ‘delivery’, the customer is redirected to the delivery web page rather than the engine running a search. This kind of redirect can be set up to recognize queries such as, “Where’s my order?” or, “How much does delivery cost?”

Web Page Redirects are also valuable for when you wish to direct customers to a specially-created landing page. For example, you might set up a redirect for a particular brand that takes customers to a brand page that includes brand information, cross-sells and other content. Perhaps you would like customers who search for party dresses over the coming months to be redirected to a ‘Christmas Party’ landing page that displays dresses, jewelry, shoes, and other accessories.

Search Page Redirects

A Search Page Redirect redirects from one search to another search. For example, there may be searches for which you wish your customers to only see a specific set of products that you have defined. Instead of seeing results for their original search, customers will be redirected to a different results page. Perhaps when users search for a particular brand, you would like to drive them to a particular set of products with a special deal or a higher profit margin.

Conditional Definitions

This tool, unique to the EasyAsk solution, is an incredibly useful way to avoid ‘No Results’ pages for products that are out of stock. If a business identifies a popular product that frequently goes out of stock, it is possible to use Conditional Definitions to show the specific product if it is in stock, but a different (defined) set of products, should the requested product be out of stock at that time. Our previous blog in the series, ‘Reducing No Results’, covers this in further detail.

Take Control

By using Redirects in conjunction with data from their search analytics, retailers can take control of their customers’ experience. When customers use the search box, they don’t always need or want the search results for their query. Redirects allow flexibility over what pages and products are put in front of customers. Redirects are just one of the many tools that are part of EasyAsk’s intuitive search solution.

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What’s behind your eCommerce search box? You’re not going to like the answer

As an eRetailer, one of the most critical functions on your website is your search box.  This is where your shoppers go to find things they want to buy.  The truth is that, deep down; you know it just doesn’t work very well.  Most eRetailers think that “search” is just “search” and that all search tools are just about the same.  They expect that their search has some navigation, basic spell correction, and maybe type-ahead.  If that’s all search offers, then what’s the difference, really?

I hear this mantra all the time when I attend the Magento Imagine conference, IBM Amplify and Internet Retailer.  It is the general consensus, all search is basically the same.  There’s a reason for that, all of the largest eCommerce platforms, Magento, hybris, IBM WebSphere Smarter Commerce and NetSuite all base their search on an open source keyword engine called SOLR.  Each one of these companies has an army of software engineers trying to make SOLR smarter, make it return better results, make it . . . actually work!  And, by the way, each of these platform companies knows that their search is, in a word . . .  awful.

Search giants like Google faced the same dilemma for almost a decade.  Google was originally a keyword search engine with hundreds of software engineers working on algorithms for years, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get the engine to become intuitive.  Google foresaw the future of search when Apple launched Siri, and acquired a natural language, contextual based search engine and quietly replaced their existing engine.  As an internet user, I’m sure you’ve noticed how much more intuitive Google has become.  Their search-as-you-type works brilliantly and has been extended to OKGoogle for mobile voice search.  If you haven’t tried mobile voice search, you should.

Wouldn’t it be great if your eCommerce site worked like that?  Go ahead, close your eyes and envision your mobile site with one-button, voice-enabled search.  Your shoppers will become buyers as they press one button, speak their request and have exactly what they are looking for pop up on the screen.  As an eRetailer, if your shoppers find what they want the first time, with the first search on the first screen, don’t you think they will buy that item from you?

Well you can actually have all of that and more in about two weeks time.  Our search engine, EasyAsk, gives your eCommerce site the edge by offering spell correction that is automatic and accurate, and type-ahead that is intuitive and serves up the exact products you are looking for before you finish typing.

When it comes to all other eCommerce keyword search engines, search IS just search.  If you want to improve your results, have higher conversions and delighted buyers, you can bank on a smarter, more intuitive search solution.  Come join The NorthFace, Timberland, True Value and 400 other eRetailers who have already made the switch to EasyAsk.  The last thing you want to do is to bet you business on a free, obsolete, open source search solution.  Sometimes, you get what you pay for and ‘free’ might just be the most expensive decision you could make.

The post You’re Betting Your eCommerce Business on . . . SOLR ??!! appeared first on EasyAsk.

Apache Lucene, for those who are unclear on the difference, is the library and Apache Solr is a layer of code on top of Lucene that turns it into a search platform, adding management and website APIs that are tailored for e-commerce. With Lucene/Solr you get a basic search engine, that requires a large IT staff or an army of consultants. It takes a lot of time, experience and troubleshooting to get the results you’re hoping for.

But let’s say you’ve outgrown the basic search functionality, or get frustrated having to build everything you need. And you’ve noticed how the e-commerce community has shifted to mobile sites with voice-recognition, and the abilities of open-source seem more and more limited. So wouldn’t you be tired of continuing to compete with every other e-commerce company that is trying to do the same thing with the same keyword-hampered technology? Why wouldn’t you want to stand out from the pack?

Where Lucene/Solr falls short, EasyAsk excels.

Companies like IBM, Magento, NetSuite, Infor and more have partnered with EasyAsk for a reason. The powerful Natural Language search-box and easy-to-use merchandising tools allow you to perform tasks a keyword-based software (Lucene/Solr) can’t even dream of. The intuitive site-search, dynamic navigation, and merchandising software utilizes Natural Language to increase conversion rates. It understands the intent of the search and delivers faster, more accurate results than keyword or navigation-driven softwares. The limitations you find with Lucene/Solr are simply not found with EasyAsk.

From understanding numeric units, to intelligent term relaxation, to merchandising capabilities like: Cross-Sell/Up-Sell promotions, EasyAsk has proven to bring something to the table that Lucene and Solr just can’t touch. Not to mention with EasyAsk you’re a step ahead of the game.

Take a quick look around and see which direction the technological world is headed. IBM’s Watson, Apple’s Siri, Nuance’s Dragon-Go, Panasonic’s Smart-TVs, and many more have all made the jump to a Natural Language Processing engine. It’s just a smarter way to connect with your customers.

And EasyAsk has been a leader in Natural Language for over a decade.

For example, on an EasyAsk-powered site, you can use your iPhone 4S or Android to verbally search for products on their mobile-sites. And thanks to the natural language engine that powers EasyAsk, they’ll find exactly what they’re looking for. Go to Lands’ End’s site on your phone, type-in or speak a product you’d like to see and a price constraint (i.e. Black Sleeveless Dresses for under $100) and see for yourself how powerful EasyAsk is. You’re not going to find that functionality with an open-source, keyword-based software.

Also the EasyAsk Commerce Studio puts the power back in the hands of the merchandiser. Want to add a new brand for your site, or cross-sell a couple of items? No problem, it literally takes a minute. To see what I’m talking about click here.

Look, if you want to keep trying to reinvent the wheel, go right ahead. But if you’re tired of sputtering in a Model-T and you’d rather upgrade to a search that’s better, the wave of the future, comes with merchandising capabilities that Lucene/Solr just can’t match, come take a look at EasyAsk, the Search That Means Business.

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In October of 2011, Oracle acquired Endeca, a leading provider of unstructured data management, Web commerce and business intelligence solutions. A year before that, they acquired the Art Technology Group, Inc. (ATG), an e-commerce software platform that is one of the industry’s top-ranked, commerce solutions. Essentially packaging a search and platform duo. But… What if you don’t own both pieces of the puzzle? What if you’re an Endeca customer, but not an ATG customer? Is your site in danger? Is your business in danger?

Before Oracle acquired these pieces of technology, Endeca and ATG were open – meaning they worked cooperatively with other solutions in the market. Didn’t matter who you had for an e-commerce platform, be it Magento, IBM’s WebSphere, in-house, etc., you could still work with Endeca.

Is that still the case?

If recent history proves prophetic, then probably not. Oracle has a history of closing the proprietary loop when they acquire a company, making them a part of the Oracle stack. If you are inside that stack, then your feeling of security should be warm-and-fuzzy. But what if you’re not inside the loop? What if you’re currently using Endeca for your search and have a platform not named ATG? Will Endeca continue to fit? Should you be concerned?

If you are concerned and don’t feel like being at the mercy of Oracle, what can you do about it?

Here’s the good news:

You do have options and one of them can kill two birds with one stone: Get out from under Oracle’s thumb and upgrade your search by switching to EasyAsk. EasyAsk provides a user-friendly and cost-effective way to make complex business data accessible to anyone. With EasyAsk’s natural language engine, it’s Apple’s Siri and IBM’s Watson rolled into one best-of-breed, site-search, navigation and merchandising tool.

In other words, it’s common sense brought to search. It also happens to be platform-agnostic, easy to maintain, plus it puts the power in the hands of the merchandisers, costing far less than Endeca, and touting the lowest total cost of ownership in the business. To learn more about e-commerce search and how it can impact your site, please read our paper, The ABC’s of E-Commerce Search.

So… You’re an Endeca customer, but you are also now a customer of Oracle, the 4th largest software company in the world. Will your company get lost in the shuffle? Maybe yes, maybe no, and you’re welcome to stick around and find out, but… Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to “Find, Analyze, and Understand” that it’s time to switch to a Search That Means Business.

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