We’re always excited when one of our customers gets recognition for something innovative or unique that they’re doing – and even more so when that recognition involves our search technology.

Century Novelty is one such customer. The online party supplies retailer recently won a Silver Award from Multichannel Merchant magazine, recognized as one of the stand-out sites in e-commerce. As stated by the publication’s editors, Century Novelty received the award because it:

MCM_Winner

“…has an intelligent search engine mechanism and logical up-sell recommendations integrated with the shopping experience. When an item is unavailable in the desired quantity, recommended substitute products are displayed both on the item page and the basket page. Said one judge: ‘I like that they use the left nav for promo space’ such as same-day shipping and testimonials. The carousel on the entry page is well done, and ‘the perpetual cart is great,’ said one panelist, ‘as is the recently viewed items.”

CenturyNoveltyBlogPost

Such an intelligent site search solution has obvious impacts on customers’ shopping experience by enabling them to find what they seek more quickly, giving them a positive view of your site and making it likely that they’ll return again rather than visit a competitor site. In the case of Century Novelty (and many of our other customers), the site search offers several options for refinements to better help customers hone in on the item(s) they’re looking for. It also offers suggestions for alternate search terms – based on others’ search activity – that might generate better results. And it allows shoppers to sort results by various criteria: lowest price, highest price, popularity, new arrivals, highest rated.

This type of search experience is great for your customers, and it’s great for your business. Not only do companies like Century Novelty see better click-throughs and conversions from an intelligent site search, they also get lots of useful data in activity reports that help them make decisions about products to sell, keywords to include in product descriptions and what terms to use for SEO and paid search campaigns.

Are you interested in creating an award-winning search experience on your site too? Feel free to contact us and we’ll see what we can do.