Enter Searchandising: No Longer Ecommerce Search?
February 21, 2012
Yep, another new word for ecommerce search.
Searchandising, an odd blend of search and ecommerce, is making the blogosphere. Retail Gazette asks, “Searchandising—Ending Search Engine Dominance?” The article explains,
Crucially, e-commerce can be used to drive any search provider by supplying well organized information about products, customers and business rules to build powerful search indexes. Perhaps now is the time for e-commerce platforms to fully integrate searchandising and to deliver the full benefits of searchandising without the overheads.
Wait, doesn’t Amazon already do that?
Perhaps writer Roger Mitchell is simply applying the newish term to a direction already being pursued by merchandisers. Since the search field is often the first place potential customers go on any retail site, honing the behavior of that little rectangle is essential to maximizing profits. Webmasters must balance analytics and filtering with the imperative to avoid site slow-down. No one has time for anything but instant results anymore.
What software should retailers turn to? Enterprise search products certainly have the capability; in fact, they have too many options that merchants don’t need but will pay handsomely for. Commerce solutions have historically had performance issues, though a commenter to this article says that is no longer the case with the examples cited. Be that as it may, Mitchell recommends an open source product like Solr.
Cynthia Murrell, February 21, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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