SLI SYSTEMS LEARNING SEARCH ECOMMERCE JANUARY 2008
Integrated, Automated Internet and Site Search Marketing
By Susan E. Aldrich, February 14, 2008

NETTING IT OUT

We define enterprise search and navigation as the technologies companies deploy to guide a seeker to the information that will resolve her question, as well as support information owners’ efforts to deliver adequate quality of seeker experience. Enterprise search is used not only on corporate Web sites, but also on public-facing Web sites, customer and partner portals, and all business applications. Since 2003, we have been using our earlier evaluation frameworks to assess vendors’ offerings for search and navigation. To date, we’ve assessed offerings from ATG, Autonomy, Celebros, Endeca, FAST (soon to be Microsoft), Fredhopper, Google, InQuira, IBM, KNOVA, Mercado, Microsoft, Northern Light, Oracle, Thunderstone, and Visual Sciences (formerly WebSideStory, recently acquired by Omniture), as well as solutions from EasyAsk (acquired by Progress Software), iPhrase (now IBM), and Verity (now Autonomy).

In this report, we evaluate a managed service, SLI Systems Learning Search Ecommerce, with its complementary products Site Champion and Ad Champion.

SLI Systems' chief strengths are quite stunning. The Learning Search Ecommerce solution provides unparalleled potential for automated tuning via learning search and search suggestions; automated search engine marketing and optimization; integration of site search with search engine marketing; scalability; and ongoing professional services provided as part of the managed service.

SLI Systems' chief weaknesses are in large part the flip side of its strength as a managed service. Because SLI Systems’ experts handle implementation and ongoing search management, the interfaces provided to customers do not offer the broad range of functionality that software vendor competitors provide. Merchandisers currently can’t manage their own synonyms, sophisticated promotions or campaigns, although these capabilities will be provided in the next version of the console, due in 2008. SLI Systems has no capabilities for cleansing data, extracting metadata, analyzing content to create a taxonomy, or classifying items against a taxonomy. It also lacks support for natural language search based on part-of-speech tagging. Finally, despite its dominating strength in marketing capabilities, SLI Systems does not provide native A/B testing support.

Keep in mind that we developed our criteria to evaluate search solutions that span the enterprise: ecommerce, customer service, knowledgebase, help desk, intranets, customer and partner portals, and applications that require unstructured data. Solutions that we analyze are often targeted for only one or two of those uses. SLI is targeted at retail and B2B ecommerce search. Learning Search Ecommerce is a strong choice for ecommerce retail and media sites, especially site owners who value automation in managing search marketing and search experience.

Enterprise Search Planning and Evaluation Matrix

(Click on image to enlarge.) © 2008 Patricia Seybold Group

Illustration 1. This diagram presents our evaluation matrix for enterprise search solutions.

OVERVIEW OF SLI SYSTEMS AND LEARNING SEARCH

SLI Systems is a privately-held company, with offices in Silicon Valley, London, and Christchurch, New Zealand; and a partner operating in Germany. It was founded in 2001 with the buy-back of GlobalBrain, a search technology which the founders of SLI Systems had developed and then sold to Snap/NBCi.com. Today, SLI Systems supports more than 250 sites and claims profitability for the past four years.

SLI Systems focuses on Web site search, especially ecommerce. Its solutions address search, navigation, and search engine marketing.

Customers include Ulta, Edwin Watts Golf, Belisi, Etronics, Organize-It, Tupperware, Folica, NRS, Dick Smith Electronics, NBC.com, HM Treasury, Delivery Agent, Trimble, Bravo, Qantas, Christchurch City Council, Mikasa, Blair, FTD.com, and Lifespan. Retail ecommerce is SLI Systems’ strongest market. Other markets include media, with customers such as Vertical Web Media, New England Journal of Medicine, Hollywood.com, and Bravo; government, with customers such as U.K. Environmental Agency, HM Treasury, and Christchurch City Council; and wholesale ecommerce, with customers such as Labsafe, Wholesale Tool, and Aquatic Eco-Systems, Inc.

SLI Systems includes the services of its search experts in its managed services offerings, which include the following:

SLI Systems also offers the Site Search Feedback tool, a free tool that customers can deploy on Web sites to solicit feedback on search effectiveness. SLI says this has been quite effective in convincing prospective customers that there is room for improvement in their site search.

In this report, we will review the complete suite of SLI Systems’ services for ecommerce: Learning Search Ecommerce, Learning Navigation, Site Champion, and Ad Champion. Our summary of SLI Systems Learning Search Ecommerce performance against our criteria is presented in Table A.

Summary Evaluation: Our Bottom Line

© 2008 Patricia Seybold Group

Table A. This table presents our summary of SLI Systems Learning Search performance in each of our evaluation categories. A is the top score we assign; D is the lowest score.

DICK SMITH ELECTRONICS. Dick Smith Electronics (dse.com.au) makes heavy use of search suggestions. In our example, we search for “external drive,” which is not a terribly precise term. The related searches at the top of the page immediately help us understand that we might be looking for a DVD drive, a USB drive, a hard drive, or a brand. Of course, in addition to showing us these related searches, Dick shows us the most popular choices for the search term “external drive,” and every single item is a type of external drive. This is tremendously helpful in searching for items, even in categories in which we feel quite well-versed. We’re also pretty impressed with Dick’s choice of promotions, which offer two ways to fill up my external drive—a camera and new DVD titles. This experience is a vast improvement from the days when the search would have brought a sea of irrelevant items, each containing the words “external” or “drive” in its description.

RECAP OF ENTERPRISE SEARCH DEFINITION AND REQUIREMENTS

Definitions

Search, in our view, includes navigation. To the seeker, they are inseparable tools, and, from an information manager’s perspective, both techniques must be employed consistently to deliver high-quality results. From a technology standpoint, navigation should—or at least could—be driven by search.

Enterprise search, in our parlance, is search and navigation technology deployed within a corporation: portals; intranets; public Web sites; ecommerce sites; knowledgebases; and customer service, CRM, and other applications. Enterprise search solutions also provide tools for people who manage findability for information collections and the quality of seeker experience for customers, employees, partners, and suppliers. The solutions offer approaches to organizing search results, tuning the relevance of search results, and customizing the presentation.

Requirements Derived from Customer Scenarios

We apply our Customer Scenario methodology to determine the requirements on which we base our evaluation criteria. We see two distinct groups of people whose success depends on your search capabilities. The first consists of seekers, those people who are your customers, partners, employees, and other stakeholders. The second group consists of information owners who have a variety of goals, from quality of customer experience to cost cutting to relationship deepening.

This report continues...

To read the full report: http://dx.doi.org/10.1571/pr02-14-08cc