The terms may not sound exciting, but structured and unstructured data presented on the same web page can slow down searches and send customers to shop elsewhere. That’s why European music retailer HMV.co.uk chose a new Java-based search tool to produce sub-second search results, says David Cameron, head of software development.
HMV, like many web sites, presents both unstructured data, such as basic text descriptions of products, and structured data, such as in pull-down menus that link to databases, to give shoppers multiple options in finding products and related information. But when its former search function took too long to process multiple forms of data to produce results, HMV switched to an all Java-based system from Dieselpoint.
HMV’s site search can now produce results pages in less than 200 milliseconds, showing customized navigation options in addition to search result listings, says Chris Cleveland, CEO of Dieselpoint.
“Dieselpoint was a terrific choice for us,” Cameron says. “It’s fast, runs on our IBM iSeries servers, and supports a user interface that we couldn’t build using other search engines.”
HMV runs the Dieselpoint system on IBM’s iSeries midrange web servers, which it uses to offer search and navigation on web-based kiosks in many of its 363 stores.
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