Ecommerce Search Evaluation: Mercado Ignition
User Interface, Ecommerce Search, Merchandising, and Marketing
By Susan E. Aldrich, September 18, 2008

NETTING IT OUT

Ecommerce search is used on Web sites that support B2B and B2C sales. Vendors have specialized the offerings for this market by adding search marketing (SEO and SEM) capabilities, merchandising functions, interfaces for merchandisers to manage promotions and offers, and reporting geared toward improving revenue as well as seeker experience.

We evaluate ecommerce search solutions based on our Ecommerce Search Evaluation and Planning Framework.¹ a specialized version of our enterprise search evaluation framework. This is the first product review that uses the ecommerce search framework. The framework will be used to evaluate the leading ecommerce search offerings, leading up to a comparison and ranking of the products within the next half year. 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, Google, InQuira, IBM, KNOVA, Mercado, Microsoft, Northern Light, Oracle, Thunderstone, and WebSideStory, as well as solutions from EasyAsk (acquired by Progress Software), iPhrase (now IBM), and Verity (now Autonomy).

In this report, we evaluate Mercado Ignition, the fifth major version of Mercado’s search engine, which was released in June 2008.

Mercado, which has been the leader in the area of merchandiser tools, has now extended its leadership role into search interfaces. With Ignition, Mercado establishes leadership in the ecommerce search experience and merchandising effectiveness. Retailers and consumer-like B2B will be hard pressed to find a better solution for ecommerce search and merchandising.

Mercado Ignition’s chief strengths are its search interfaces, especially the ability to multi-select values to refine a search; its shopping interfaces, which make it easier for merchandisers and programmers to create flexible sites and personalized experiences; its Commerce Merchandising Console, which has streamlined tasks and a high degree of automation and integration to maximize merchandiser effectiveness. Another strength is its integration with Web analytics data from Coremetrics and Omniture, which enable merchandising and search behavior to be driven by site metrics.

Mercado Ignition’s chief weakness is the late start to its partner program, which we think could slow the development of its European and Asian markets. Two features lacking in all search solutions, but which we’d like to see added to Ignition, are integrated search marketing, and analytic reporting that recommends (and can automatically take) appropriate action.

OVERVIEW OF MERCADO AND MERCADO IGNITION

Mercado, headquartered in Pleasanton, California, was founded in 1997. As of July 2008, Mercado has more than 250 customers and 130 employees, with 70 percent growth in customer accounts during the 12 months ending in June 2008. Mercado’s ecommerce search solutions were first introduced in 1998 as IntuiFind. In 2003, Mercado replaced IntuiFind with an XML- and Web Services-based architecture. A suite of merchandising tools was added to the product, then named Commerce Search & Navigation (CSN), in February 2005. In 2006, on-demand and B2B versions were delivered. Version 5, called Mercado Ignition, was delivered in June 2008.

Ignition is a game-changing move for Mercado. As Mercado describes it, they have been delivering an advanced search merchandising solution, but with Ignition Mercado expands into the shopping platform. By providing the shopping interfaces, Mercado ensures that its search and merchandising capabilities can be deployed to full advantage. Mercado’s product line is now as follows:

• Mercado Ignition. Ecommerce search, navigation, shopping interface and merchandising for retailers and B2B environments, delivered as licensed software or custom hosted solution.

• Mercado Ignition OnDemand. Ecommerce search, navigation, shopping interfaces and merchandising, delivered as a service

Both offerings are built on the CSN platform.

Mercado Ignition’s primary interface is the Commerce Merchandising Console, used by merchandisers to define, test, and analyze offers, tune search results, and analyze data to make merchandising decisions. The Commerce Merchandising Console also provides the reporting merchandisers use to understand search and promotion effectiveness. The indexing and retrieval functions of Mercado Ignition are all provided as Web Services. Another product covered in this report is Product Data Optimizer, an automated classification and taxonomy service offering.

Mercado customers include Sears Holdings Corp., Williams-Sonoma, Macy’s, OfficeMax, Williams-Sonoma, L.L. Bean, GUESS, Inc., ShopNBC, Virgin Megastores, REI, Argos, Arcadia Group, and Blacks Leisure Group.

EXAMPLE: SEARS.COM. Sears.com is a Mercado customer, and Sears.com merchandisers use Mercado Ignition to order search results, present navigation options, control what type of presentation template is used, collect customer reviews, and offer accessories (cross-sells). In this example, a shopper hot for a medium-large LCD TV can streamline the search process by selecting both 42” and 43” sizes, and all prices up to $2140, and get the results in one search. Having to check each of three price categories for two nearly identical sizes is the more common search experience today, and it’s not my favorite way to waste my time. See Illustration 1.

Sears.com Search Example

© 2008 Patricia Seybold Group

Illustration 1. A shopper looking for a TV at Sears.com has lots of choices. Particularly helpful is the ability to select more than one size and to select a range of prices.

SUMMARIZING THE ECOMMERCE SEARCH PLANNING AND EVALUATION FRAMEWORK

Our framework for ecommerce search solutions has six categories of planning and evaluation criteria. The first four of these categories address capabilities that interact to deliver the seeker’s search and navigation experience. The six evaluation categories are:

• Seeker Interface. Seeker experience addresses what types of searches or queries can be performed and how the query is translated and executed. It also addresses how the results are organized and presented, including capabilities that ensure that the user is neither overwhelmed with choices nor presented with no results or guidance.

• Seeker Experience Management. The key search management activities center on tuning search results to improve the Quality of Customer Experience(SM) (QCE) and to enhance profitability by boosting revenues and trimming costs.

This report continues...

**Endnotes**
1) See “Ecommerce Search Planning and Evaluation Framework, Version 1: How to Plan and Select Search, Navigation, and Discovery Solutions for Ecommerce Web Sites,” August 28, 2008.