(upbeat music) - Previously,
we migrated Bulk Candy Store to BigCommerce,
and made improvements to help the site's conversion rates.
In this episode, we're going to dive
into Ken's search and merchandising capabilities,
because the biggest influence on conversion rates
are whether customers can actually find
what they're looking for and how well you're able
to show them alternatives that they might be interested in.
This is the e-Commerce Makeover.
(upbeat music)
A lot more of a good user experience is powered by search
than I think most people realize.
Every aspect of product findability,
from categorization and product filtering
to merchandising can be powered by search, and thus,
tailored to how your customers
have been interacting with your site.
Let's learn more from Ken
about what he's been doing previously
so we understand what our opportunity is for growth.
How much effort do you put into looking
at what people searching for, putting in synonyms,
really trying to consistently evolve
and improve your search?
- We don't put nearly enough effort into it.
We're using Klevu at the moment.
We're using their basic setup.
When we first put our search in,
we started doing synonyms for certain things.
So we have, for example, something called Gems,
which are just like M&Ms, but not M&Ms.
We would put a synonym in for that.
But over years, that's kind of stopped.
And I believe if we would actually put the time into that,
we could probably significantly increase our search
conversions.
Search is probably one of the most important aspects
to almost any website with product on it.
Over 40% of our sales are search-related.
- Anything else in regards to search
that you wanna be able to do that you can't do currently?
- Like we talked about earlier,
I wanna be able to really control
what they're seeing during search,
because that's really the big key.
Right now, I don't have that ability.
I don't really have the way to go and say,
"I want this to be on top."
And that's really what I want.
- Just merchandising capabilities.
- Merch, I wanna be, you're exactly right.
We'd like to do a lot more visual merchandising
on the product.
Merchandising, I think, is crucial to us,
because a lot of what I sell would be considered
commodity items and I want the person
to see it in it's best light with us.
I want them to find it quickly.
And I think that the presentation,
and that the ease of finding it
makes them feel like we're professional.
So I think that guides them to buy the product quicker,
and gives them a little more sense of confidence and trust.
- How much thought have you put
into your product filtering on the site?
Have you been very intentional about what those filters are?
Or is it just kind of like whatever attributes
ended up being thrown into the product?
- 50/50, mostly it's sort of what naturally falls out
from the product tags, or the product brands,
or maybe the price, but we really haven't pushed it enough.
I suspect it's one of those things that,
again, probably could do better,
but we haven't really worked on it yet too much.
We do some filtering and categorization right now.
It's very simple.
We have a couple of different filters that pop up.
Of course, we have our categories and our brands,
and we have the ability to sort things
in different ways on the site.
But we haven't really done a whole lot
with driving the customer right down
to where they want to find the product they want.
- Ken is already using Klevu for search.
However, he's on a very old and outdated basic plan
that doesn't give him a lot of functionality.
Klevu has so much more to offer.
So we're gonna stay with that platform,
but give him access to their entire suite of tools.
And that's gonna give a us everything we need
to drive those conversion rate improvements
we're looking for.
Before we discuss what Klevu has to offer,
if you wanna learn more about how we're helping
Bulk Candy Store,
go to ecommercemakeover.com to download our playbook,
including special offers
on all the tools that we'll be using.
And of course, don't forget to subscribe to be notified
when we release new episodes.
Let's learn more about why Klevu is the right fit
for Bulk Candy Store's needs.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Ford Crane,
Strategic Partnerships Manager for Klevu.
Klevu is an AI product discovery platform,
and offers three primary solutions.
Our Smart Search, Smart Category Merchandising,
and Product Recommendations.
Hey, Ken, how's it goin'?
- Good, how you doin'?
- Doing well.
Talk to me a little bit about your goals
surrounding search and what you'd ultimately like to improve
and see on the new site.
- Search is a huge part of our business.
It's just like it's a huge part of anybody's business.
In fact, I always laugh.
I'm amused at people who build websites
where search is hidden.
Search is an integral part,
but I don't think it's been a strong conversion leader yet.
Bottom line is I want it to make
people's experiences easier.
- That makes a lot of sense.
And I think we can get you there.
There's no question shoppers who engage in search
are your highest intent buyers.
They often know exactly what they're there to search for
and they're not afraid to bounce if they can't find it.
It's very important to offer them a quick
and frictionless search experience.
And at the end of the day,
you'll be converting those shoppers into customers.
You know, since, really, you integrated Klevu at first,
we've come a long way.
We've really shifted to become
more of a product discovery platform.
Besides the improvements to search
that we've made over the years,
we've also added a couple more solutions,
one being our Smart Category Merchandising tool,
and our Product Recommendations tool.
With both of those, they take the learning from search,
so effectively learning from your shoppers' searches,
their clicks, and using that data
to automatically merchandise search results,
searchandise if you will,
also automatically merchandise category pages,
and also, influence product recommendations.
- That's cool.
So you're basically taking their behavior
and throwing it back at them.
- Exactly, exactly.
- Okay, searchandising, I like that term.
And this is all done pretty much through AI,
not through us going in and tweaking and stuff?
- Exactly, machine learning plays a key role
in being able to rank high-performing products
to the top of search results.
That's coupled with search merchandising or searchandising,
where the business owner can use their own business logic
to rank products as they see fit.
At the end of the day,
it's about combining a strategic control
with AI automation and offering your shoppers a relevant,
and quick, and frictionless search experience.
Talk to me a little bit about how you've been merchandising
your categories in the past.
- Basically, it's say,
the categories have been a category page.
And people can go there, and generally speaking,
it's whatever is the newest shows up on top,
and they can sort out about what they want.
And 90% of people will just hit
whatever's on the front page of the category.
- I think that's where Klevu's Smart Category Merchandising
can really shine.
Having your sort-by-order determine the product ranking
on category pages can oftentimes leave
your best sellers on page five, six, seven.
We're gonna be powering the front-end.
When they navigate to your category pages,
they'll be able to filter down the results as they see fit.
- It's not a BigCommerce category page,
it's a Klevu category page, basically.
- Correct, yep. - Okay, wow, okay.
- So we're powering the front-end.
So the filtering grid, as well as the product grid,
we're using the AI, the learning from search,
as well as now, what takes place on category pages,
to automatically merchandise these category pages
to help best generate sales.
So we're catching trends,
we're catching all your shoppers' behavior
that's taking place to optimize the product ranking
for best conversions.
So merchandising can be quite a daunting task,
especially if you have a large catalog
or lots of categories.
Keeping up with shoppers' trends and preferences
isn't always so straightforward.
Using AI to be able to automate that process,
and then, fine tuning the merchandising
with your own business logic
is gonna be a great pathway to success there.
- This version of Klevu is going to be a lot more powerful
than Ken's accustomed to with his outdated basic plan.
Let's get it installed.
Because it powers so much of the site,
the Klevu installation was a bit more involved
than some of the others.
After installing the app from the Marketplace,
we had to customize the theme for any area
that Klevu would control such as search results,
category pages, and related products.
Once all of that is set up,
it's just about configuring things in the Klevu dashboard,
and it was ready to use.
There's no way this early in the project
that Ken has had time to explore
everything Klevu has to offer.
And we'll find out more about this at the end of the series
after he's had time to really play with it more.
But let's hear Ken's thoughts about it so far.
Klevu is powering not just your search,
but really, your categorization, your product filters.
How has that change been?
- Klevu has been great for us.
It's one of those apps that I know
there's just so much more buried in there
that I have to learn about,
but at sort of a first glance,
it's allowing me to do a lot of the things
I couldn't do before.
Some examples of that would be visual merchandising.
When you go to search for something on the site,
it gives you a list, but it also gives you little pictures,
which pictures make you wanna click a whole lot more.
It's allowing me to set up my categories now,
so that the product I want on top
is actually showing up on top.
So come Christmas time, I want my little holiday trays,
I want other, I want those things sitting on top,
they're there now.
So that's been a real game changer for us,
at least in terms of people finding things.
It's hard to say how much search-generated traffic
it's converted up,
but my guess is it definitely up from what it was before.
- We've doubled your conversion rate thus far,
site's still new,
but how much of that do you attribute to the merchandising,
and just the capabilities of finding the right products?
- I don't have actual numbers,
but I'm gonna give it a high percentage.
I'm gonna say probably 50% or something,
because let's face it,
if you can't find it, you can't buy it.
And their search is actually a lot easier to use.
The product filtering,
product filtering on the site is extensive,
yet not overly done.
I think it works really well.
It helps people find exactly what they want,
and that makes a big difference.
The other thing about Klevu that I really like is
it's relatively simple to use, you can get in there,
you can dig around, and as you dig around,
you find more things.
To add synonyms, for example, to research, very simply.
You go and just put 'em in there.
If you wanna change positions of items,
I didn't know how to put what all those items
on the top of the category, how to rank things,
it's right there in front of you.
It's very, very simple.
- Now that you have it set up on the site,
and powering the entire site,
and you're getting in there and playing around with it,
are there any new or unexpected features that you've found
that you're really excited about trying out
or you've already been playing with?
- Every night, I get an email from Klevu
showing me what people have searched for.
And if people are searching for this,
I go back and search for to see is it easy to find?
And if I'm seeing them searching for a lot of things,
it means we have to highlight it better.
So, as an example,
one of the things that we found is people were searching
for freeze-dried products a lot.
So we went and highlighted that right on the homepage,
because we want people to see that.
I was really happy when I got that report.
I was like, "Wow, this really tells me something."
If people are searching for something,
it means they're not finding it right away.
And I want 'em to find it quicker.
- Now that you've got
this powerful tool, - Right.
is there anything that you're really looking forward
to being able to do in the future?
- I'm looking forward to exploring what I can do with it.
I presume it has a lot more features than we're using.
I would like to be able to just customize a lot more.
I think that's what I'm looking for,
is ways to really up the customer experience,
the more we can push the customers to where they want to go.
That's what I'm really looking for,
is things they have in there to help us do that.
(upbeat music)
- Klevu is a big part of the improvements
we've made to Bulk Candy Store's user experience.
Now that the site converts,
in the next video that you can click here to watch,
we'll be working to drive more traffic
by improving his email marketing.
Be sure to click over here to go
to ecommercemakeover.com to download our playbook
on how we're growing Bulk Candy Store,
and to receive special offers
on all the tools that we'll be using.
And don't forget to subscribe
so you'll be notified when we release new episodes.