ATG gets personal with site search results
Two customers go to a retailer’s web site and type “sweater” into the search box. One is a “fashionista,” interested in the latest in high-end fashion, while the other is a traditionalist looking for a sweater that will be warm and durable. Art Technology Group Inc. says it has come up with ways for the retailer to present the relevant type of sweaters to each of these very different customers.
One way is to recognize what type of shopper the individual is, either based on past visits to the retailer’s site or by the shopper’s activity during the current visit. For instance, someone who clicks only on high-end sweaters provides a hint of their preferences. With the ATG system, retailers will be able to create “personas” that define different types of shoppers, then deliver results based on which persona the customers seem to resemble, says Kelly O’Neill, director of commerce product marketing at ATG.
Retailers will also be able to organize results in other ways, such as by putting the newest arrivals first, or according to inventory levels. The rules will also accommodate manufacturers’ mandates, such as Gucci not wanting its handbags to show up in searches for sale items, O’Neill says.
With many online retailers adding more products to their sites, and Forrester Research Inc. reporting that nearly half of consumers leave a landing page in under eight seconds, providing relevant search results to increasingly impatient shoppers is imperative, O’Neill says.
“What’s important is serving up all the results, but in the way that’s most relevant for each person doing the search,” she says. “Using whatever you know about the person, products, time of day, about trends, to influence the organization of those results as they’re provided back to the searcher is what we’re working on enabling retailers to do.”
That added intelligence will be introduced next month into the ATG Commerce Search and Merchandising modules within the company’s e-commerce software suite, which ATG says is used by more than 300 online retailers. ATG both licenses its software to retailers and provides a hosted service. The new search features will be an optional add-on for hosted clients, with pricing starting at $2,500 per month. For retailers that license the software beginning in June, the features will be built into the Commerce Search and Merchandising applications at no additional charge.
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