Evans Cycles has reported impressive improvements in the performance of its website after implementing the Collaborative Searcher, Social Search Optimizer and Navigation predictor modules from Avail.
The new functionality has had an immediate and measurable impact on Evanscycles.com, with ‘in search’ refinements dropping by half overnight, to 9%, suggesting that recommendations are now more in line with shopper expectations.
The decision to implement elements of Avail’s behavioural merchadising suite followed internal testing that identified a limitation in Evans Cycle’s existing search function which, at the time, offered only an exact word match. The retailer tasked Ominor, its external web development team, with finding a more intuitive function to simply plug-in.
Avail’s Collaborative Searcher and Social Search Optimizer modules has improved the search experience for visitors in two ways: Using fuzzy logic and analysis of collective searching behaviours, the site can now return relevant results even in the event of spelling mistakes or based on automatic synonym lookup. Second, using analysis of past collective search and buying behaviours, visitors are also given personalised product recommendations based on their searches.
Evanscycles.com has also introduced behaviourally personalised ‘people like you’ suggestions to all visitors on product pages and the shopping cart page, where shoppers’ past buying behaviour is used to shape future recommendations for other customers with a similar profile. These product suggestions become more and more relevant as visitors browse and shop the site, says Avail, and both helps visitors quickly find complementary products they perhaps didn’t even know they were looking for and helps to improve average order values.
“Implementing Avail has been one of our biggest improvements to Evanscycles.com since we went live with our new site last year,” says Tom Francis, website manager for Evans Cycles. “We are now able to efficiently find and present exactly what our customers want, helping them to identify goods to purchase in three clicks, no matter where they are on the site.”
