Making Your Customers Thirsty

Search Personalization for Retail Web Sites: Extend the Reach of Your Website Beyond One or Two Target Audiences (Webinar)

One of the biggest challenges a retail website has is how to provide a meaningful online  experience to multiple audiences.  To meet the challenge you need the ability to:

Organize your catalog to make the most sense to [...]

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Ten Mistakes to Avoid When Implementing Site Search for Internet Retail Sites

Setting up and using Site Search is a black box mystery for many people.    That makes it very difficult to know if you are falling into a huge pit or missing a golden opportunity.  To help judge where you might be I’ve put together a list of mistakes and missed opportunities.
10. Assuming that you will [...]

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Beyond Search: Expanding WebSphere Commerce-Driven Websites with OmniFind

Recognizing the potential of OmniFind in a WebSphere Commerce site requires a different mindset.   Here are some thoughts to get you started:
Think of OmniFind as an integration tool between the front end User Interface and the WebSphere Commerce database.  
Any time you want to display a set of products – think OmniFind
Any time you want [...]

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At the Intersection of Technology, Metadata, and Goals

Discovery Architecture lives at the intersection of technology, metadata, user goals and business goals.   
 
In order to be successful, you have to take all four aspects into account when you build a search /discovery framework.
 
User goals and business goals blend together into sets of goals and form a business strategy. 
These sets of goals inform [...]

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Discovery Architecture – In A Nutshell

While on the plane tonight, I came up with a brief, elevator-speech description of Discovery Architecture.
Discovery Architecture
Using technology to interact with and manipulate metadata to enable users to meet their search/discovery goals in ways that also meet your business goals.

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A Search & Discovery Skunk Works?

These are exciting times for people who love this whole Search & Discovery Space.  People are (finally) moving from using search/discovery technology to only facilitate end user searching and expanding into exciting territory. 
 
The interesting aspect of this trend is the ability to dynamically hook together different resources – but this time based on search [...]

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Discovery Architecture: Getting Started With Site Search

A Quick Start Guide
1. Identify Your site’s conversion points
You need to think about conversion points in two different ways here.
First, think of the ultimate site conversion for a website – in context of your company’s overall objectives.
Second, think of intermediate conversions needed to get people to your ulimate site conversion.
Third, think about how these intermediate [...]

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Getting Your Money’s Worth from Search and Navigation?

Glad that you are joining the conversation about Discovery Architecture.
As far as I can tell, “Discovery Architecture” is a new term except in the realm of web services.  (If you’ve heard it in another place, please let know!)  The term, as I use it, comes out of conversations I’ve had with a number people over twenty years (not [...]

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Invitation to a Conversation

Lately, I’ve been talking with a good friend about how to build and evaluate an architecture that moves people from wherever they enter a website towards specific resource pages as efficiently as possible.  A good conversation is developing … and it’s one that I’ve had with many people in a variety of contexts over the years.  [...]

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