SockShop Deliver Enhanced Shopper Experience with SLI Systems’ Full-Service Site Search Offering

Specialty Socks and Hosiery Retailer Implements “Sock Finder” and Allows Customers to Refine Search Results by Multiple Relevant Facets

LONDON, UK – May 3, 2011 – SLI Systems, provider of full-service on-demand, site search and navigation solutions, announced today that SockShop, a specialty socks and hosiery e-retailer, has delivered a richer, more satisfying and engaging shopping experience to customers with SLI’s Learning Search site search solution.

Deployed and managed by SLI’s team of search and navigation specialists, Learning Search is a full-service solution that provides online retailers like SockShop with an optimal search and navigation experience, tailored to the needs of their customers and which considers the unique aspects of their brand. For example, the number and type of products available online, the retailer’s merchandising strategies, options for refinements, look and feel of the site, availability of unstructured data and integration with user-generated content and ratings are all factors that impact how site search should be structured and implemented.

Cassie Ash, marketing manager for SockShop, explained that the site search data provided by SLI informs the retailer about which brands they should stock and promote more heavily, based on the amount of search activity around that brand. “The way SLI handle site search is absolutely brilliant,” she said. “The tool provides so much useful data to us and we get really good advice and guidance from the SLI team. Working with them has really helped with how we market our business.”

By deploying SLI’s Learning Search and tapping into the company’s team of search and navigation experts, SockShop created a highly robust site search experience with several options for refining results by size, price, brand, style, color, fabric and other criteria, to help customers hone in on the perfect item.

SockShop’s Style and Sophistication Reinforced with Site Search
SockShop, once a well-known High Street retailer with several brick-and-mortar stores throughout the UK, has been a leading merchant of novelty socks and hosiery items for men, women and children for more than two decades. Now operating mainly online and with hundreds of items in its inventory, SockShop needed a robust site search to make it easy for shoppers to find the right item to match their personal taste and style.

“We offer a wide range of leg wear items and accessories, and a huge selection of brands and styles, so it’s really important that our customers are able to find just the right sock, or whatever piece they’re looking for,” Ash said. “The relevance of SLI’s site search results, combined with all the options for refinements, delivers a powerful experience for shoppers. On top of that, the site search provides useful data about shoppers’ likes and dislikes, which helps guide our stocking and merchandising decisions.”

According to Ash, SLI’s reports also tell her team, among other things, about searches that generate poor results or no results. “With this data, we can choose to either stock more items to match those keywords, or use that as an opportunity to promote some of our top-selling items,” she said.

Prior to implementing SLI Systems’ Learning Search, SockShop relied on the standard site search that was part of its e-commerce hosting platform. “Our prior site search produced irrelevant results, and just made it difficult for shoppers to find what they wanted,” said Ash. “We took special care to find the right solution, and when we discovered SLI, we were amazed by how well the search performed.”

“The team at SLI are lovely to work with. The set-up of the site search was very fast and took very little time or effort – they helped us get it up and running right away,” she said.

SLI’s Learning Search is a hosted full-service site search solution that continually “learns” from ongoing site search activity, improving relevance of search results and reducing the time it takes users to find what they need. By tracking every query and click-through, Learning Search ranks results based on what’s most popular and delivers results people are looking for on the first page 95% of the time. SLI’s site search solution is shown to improve the overall customer experience, and generate increases in conversions, number of page views and average order size, among other key performance indicators.

About SockShop
Founded in 1983 and acquired by Osan Ltd. early in 2006, Sock Shop Limited, is the leading specialist online retailer offering a full selection of socks and hosiery. With one physical SockShop store at Terminal One in Manchester Airport, the biggest flagship store is online at www.sockshop.co.uk. If you need a new pair of socks then www.sockshop.co.uk is the place to go; with over 40 brilliant brands available and thousands of products in stock, SockShop do not only have a huge range of socks but also a massive range of hosiery, underwear and accessories too! The SockShop team are total sock nerds and are dedicated to ensure the SockShop customers enjoy their entire experience from their online purchase through to slipping into their new socks!

For more information visit www.sockshop.co.uk.

About SLI Systems
SLI Systems provides full-service, customized, on-demand solutions for site-search, navigation, merchandising, and user-generated SEO. SLI Systems’ solutions empower businesses to enhance customer satisfaction while increasing sales, reducing costs and increasing site conversions. Unlike traditional search and merchandising software, SLI Systems’ patented technology continuously “learns” from the behavior of visitors over time to deliver more relevant results. SLI Systems is a privately held company with offices in San Jose, California; London; New Zealand and Australia. For more information, visit www.sli-systems.com , or read the company’s blog at http://blog.sli-systems.com, watch the SLI YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/SLISiteSearch, follow SLI on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slisystems or listen to SLI hosted ecommerce podcasts at http://www.ecommercepodcast.com.