Case Study Michaels.com is the nations #1 arts and crafts retailer that owns and operates 900-plus stores. See how their online channel, Michaels.com, leveraged the Lucene search engine to power their site search.

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Talk to most online retailers and they will tell you : "Traffic really is not our problem. Our problem is conversion." And improving Site Search is the first step towards increasing conversion rates. Today's online shopper isn't satisfied with simply browsing through your product catalog - they don't have the time. Research shows that most customers use the Search box rather than browse the product catalog.

As such, online retailers constantly look for good website search infrastructure that can make it easier for their potential customers, once on a site, to find the products they are looking for.
 
Web 2.0 Site Search

Inkriti's Web 2.0 Site-Search leverages Web 2.0 concepts to dramatically improve site search capabilities and increase online conversion rates. Specifically, it includes the following main features:
  • AJAX-based "Recommend-as-you-Type" interface
  • User Community
  • Multi-faceted Browsing
  • Precision Search
  • Dynamic Merchandising
  • Web-based Setup and Analytics

The Inkriti Web 2.0 Site Search is offered on two industry-leading search platforms :

Google Mini/ Google Search Appliance Open-source Lucene

Lucene is the industry-leading open-source search engine built by the Apache Foundation.

Key Features

AJAX-based "Recommend-as-you-Type" interface
The AJAX-based search interface enables features such as "Recommend-as-you-type". With this features, users are given recommendations even as they type their keyword in the search box. This increases the speed and accuracy with which they can find what they are searching for.

Other AJAX driven features also include:
  • Display of product details when user does a mouse-over on the search result
  • Rotating product images when user does a mouse-over on the search result



Dynamic Merchandising

With the Dynamic Merchandising capability of Inkriti Site-Search, the retailer can create rules whereby certain products or categories of products can be highlighted in real-time, when such products show up in the search results. For example, during Halloween, retailers can create a rule that says " Highlight all Halloween products if they show up in the search results". Another example of a rule is one that says "Should any of my top 10 selling products shows up in the search results, then highlight them".

In addition to rule creation, retailers can create weights for various product attributes in order to tune the search results further. This functionality allows for tremendous flexibility in tuning the relevancy of the search results.


User Community

The Inkriti site search solutions lets users rank the search results on a scale of 1-star to 5-star. This input is automatically fed to the underlying search engine, that fine-tunes its results based on this feedback. Such a continuous user-driven feedback is extremely powerful in ensuring that the search results continue to be relevant.


Multi-Faceted Browsing

Inkriti Site-Search provides a unique way for online buyers to browse-while-searching and search-while-browsing. Let's say two customers are looking to buy a bottle of California Merlot Wine in the $50-$100 range. They might get to the eventual product in completely different ways -- perhaps :
  • User searches for Wines, then filters by Price, picks Merlot after that and then select California as the region or
  • User types in Merlot, selects Price next and then gets directly to California as the region.
The Multi-Faceted Browsing methodology provides context-sensitive choices during this entire browsing-searching process, thereby gently guiding the user to the eventual product they are searching for. Such an approach avoids the dreaded "Result not found" result and always has something relevant to show to the user.

First Path

 Second Path

Precision Search

Inkriti Site-Search offers unique analyzers that interpret what the user types in the search box, and make the search results very precise. Specifically:
  • Strip Plurals. For eg., a user types in "boxes" when he really means "box"
  • Correct Spelling Mistakes. For eg., a user types in "calender" and the Inkriti solution responds "Did you really mean "calendar"?"
  • Synonym Search.

Web-based Setup and Reporting

The Inkriti Site-Search solution comes with a easy-to-use Setup Screens for creating rules, dictionaries, synonyms and the like. Additionally, it provides extensive reporting on questions like "What are my top 10 searches?" and many others.