FitForCommerce works with online retailers of all shapes and sizes – from the small, high growth ground breakers up to the largest multichannel giants. We have recently noticed a really interesting and surprising trend: retailers are using advanced site search solutions to delay and in some cases, even avoid a re-platforming effort. Why?

Retailers are re-platforming every 3 to 4 years at costs up to $10m for the big guys – and this is not including the “soft” costs of business disruption. In a poll conducted during our recent webinar on this topic, more than 70% of the audience indicated that they would prefer to find an alternative to the pain of re-platforming.

We wanted to know more so we conducted a study (of course, we are consultants). We found that by overlaying site search on current platforms, retailers can achieve some of the same advantages they would have with a re-platforming, including:

Management of the front-end experience (site navigation, product presentation, etc.) Flexible and dynamic merchandising Putting control of the site into the hands of merchandisers versus IT/web engineers Optimizing online marketing channels Improvement of overall website look and feel Better understanding visitors’ behavior and intent Increasing site traffic (particularly SEO) Driving efficiencies in site management

These things lead to better conversion rates, greater average order values, improved brand communication, and overall revenue/profit improvements. Sound like justifications for most re-platforming efforts? They should, because they are.

Ultimately, for reasons like scalability, checkout optimization, and back end system needs (order processing, etc.), retailers may need to re-platform. However, we found that site search really has come a long way in addressing some of the underlying drivers for re-platforming. What’s more, advanced site search solutions are much less expensive and take less time to implement than a full re-platforming effort. Retailers can get a lot of the way toward re-platforming nirvana without spending the big bucks.

All of this is documented in more detail in our recent whitepaper, “Site Search vs. Re-platforming: How focusing on advanced site search can eliminate the need to re-platform your ecommerce website”. We highly recommend you download this great free resource as well as listen to the webinar.

3 HOT TIPS:

• Analyze your site search log: Your site search logs can reveal customer needs, intentions, navigation, and merchandising issues and opportunities.
• “Page Not Found”: If a customer stumbled upon this page, at least show some bestselling products.
• Searchandising: Optimize user experience in site search by loading synonyms, using no result terms, etc.