Amadesa

This past Sunday marked the official release of Amadesa’s next generation recommendation engine – RecommendR. If you missed the news, check it out here. I’ll go into detail about some of the new features and provide real world examples where automated merchandising and recommendation software contribute to customer experience enhancement.

The first question I am often asked is “how are automated recommendations relevant to me and my business”? “I already have a merchandising team, we already have a good internal site search, and each day, we populate product areas with the top viewed products”. The short answers are:

• Merchandising teams are essential to most online businesses, but what if some of their time and effort can be saved by utilizing an automated solution? Further, [generally] it is difficult for merchandisers to predict, test, and fine tune manual merchandising systems. Granted, I have only had the opportunity to view a few custom and hosted merchandising apps, but generally, the workflow, update process, testing capabilities and available metrics fall far short of what we need as Internet marketers. I would argue that time + efficiency savings alone is reason enough to invest in automated recommendation software. Additionally, having the ability to use different merchandising algorithms (like most purchased, most viewed, similar products, etc.) and testing between them, offer a continual improvement roadmap (testing, refinement, testing) for your ecommerce team. (In a previous life, I worked at a top 100 Internet Retailer with some great merchandisers. Each one of them would have welcomed an automated solution due to time savings and the ability for software to make rapid decisions automatically for any number of locations on the site. Robust metrics would be icing on the cake..!).




• Great site search is a key component to any ecommerce site, but the ability to compliment search results with automated merchandising ‘zones’ takes search and product discovery to the next level. Do a product search at store.apple.com; a great user experience and use of complementary recommendations:
  
  
  




• Merchandising ‘zones’ like “top viewed items” are becoming ubiquitous to the browsing/shopping experience. With many types of different shoppers, it is important to relate to each individual. Top viewed items, top purchased items, top items in a particular category are most relevant…. Now! Additionally, the ability for each zone to automatically update for each user is a key differentiator and can dramatically increase average order value, revenue per visit and repeat purchases. Best of all, you can test look and feel, functionality, display and anything else within your sites’ merchandising zones. Set it and forget it or monitor and fine tune with testing.

What is automated merchandising and content recommendations across any page of your site (and in email)? RecommendR.

Key Features and capabilities:

Availability across the website. Any page, any number of products, fully customizable to match functional and visual look and feel. Create an unlimited number of merchandising ‘zones’ to resonate with your audiences’ preferred shopping/browsing method.

• Extend the browsing experience and recommend related items on product detail pages and search results: (same functionality as you might see at eBay.com)
  
  
  
• Call out popular items on your homepage and category pages to encourage click through: (thanks target.com for the great example!)
  
  
  
• Create ‘popularity widgets’ to resonate with your users and improve time spent on page, pages viewed per session and other key metrics: (what you might see at hulu.com)
  
  
  
• Create a ‘top stories zone’ for all content or specific categories of content: (here’s a local example at chicagotribune.com)
  
  
  

Where else? Search result pages, confirmation pages, category pages, affiliate-specific pages and more. The sky is the limit! Have some ideas? Let's build it together!

Availability within email to extend static campaigns into automated, more relevant experiences.

Here is a great example of an order confirmation email I just received from Apple. Not only is the email presenting me with the information I need for my records, there are direct links to new apps I may be interested in. Yes, I downloaded one of them for my iPod Touch..!

Unlimited design capabilities for visual presentation and usability design

Your creative team (or our creative team) will spend hours creating new presentation alternatives for recommendations. Go simple with an HTML table or build a mini javascript application with advanced interaction design and scrolling navigation. Best of all, you can test each theme against each other to make sure you attain the highest revenue per visit and conversion rate lift.

Use any one of nine automated algorithms on any page of your site. Like testing themes, test recommendation types against each other to make sure each page has the preferred recommendation method. After all, consumers/browsers at different purchase stages react differently to recommendation methods. Test the type of recommendation that works best, or run multiple recommendation types simultaneously.

Robust merchandising rules to include, exclude or force specific recommendations within any merchandising zone. 100% control is available if you want it..!

For a complete overview of RecommendR, please take a quick read here.

Want to discuss your merchandising and engagement strategy for this upcoming shopping season? Want to see a live demo of RecommendR in action? Drop me an email to discuss.