Holiday prep 2004: Urban Outfitters dresses up site search

This is the fourth in a series of stories about retailers bolstering their Web sites in time for 2004 holiday sales. Read about how Wine.com  revamped its Web search capabilities , how Musicland  is piloting real-time messaging services  and how TJX streamlined its Web checkout processes . Stay tuned for more retailers' stories.

It's not always easy to quantify the effects of a Web site enhancement. But when Urban Outfitters overhauled its site search capabilities, the results were impossible to ignore. The average order value among people using its search tools is up 13%, says David Hayne, development manager at Philadelphia-based Urban Outfitters.

Analysts agree strong search capabilities are key to a Web site's performance.

DoubleClick found more online buyers today rely on site searches than in the past. For example, 9.3% of all sales in the third quarter of 2004 came through the search function on shopping sites, compared to 6.6% a year earlier, DoubleClick reported in its most recent E-Commerce Site Trend Report.

To continue reading, register here to become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

This is the fourth in a series of stories about retailers bolstering their Web sites in time for 2004 holiday sales. Read about how Wine.com  revamped its Web search capabilities , how Musicland  is piloting real-time messaging services  and how TJX streamlined its Web checkout processes . Stay tuned for more retailers' stories.

It's not always easy to quantify the effects of a Web site enhancement. But when Urban Outfitters overhauled its site search capabilities, the results were impossible to ignore. The average order value among people using its search tools is up 13%, says David Hayne, development manager at Philadelphia-based Urban Outfitters.

Analysts agree strong search capabilities are key to a Web site's performance.

DoubleClick found more online buyers today rely on site searches than in the past. For example, 9.3% of all sales in the third quarter of 2004 came through the search function on shopping sites, compared to 6.6% a year earlier, DoubleClick reported in its most recent E-Commerce Site Trend Report.

For its site search overhaul, Urban Outfitters turned to Atomz. It's been using the vendor's hosted services since August to replace search functionality that wasn't as robust as it needed to be, Hayne says.

"The easiest solution for us, given the way that we like to work, was Atomz," Hayne says. Urban Outfitters doesn't have a large technical staff, so using an application service provider (ASP) is a good fit, he says. "We prefer to use an ASP as opposed to having to buy new servers and load balancers and manage it all in house."

The Atomz software lets site visitors search for an item such as shoes, and then use sub-categories - such as size, color, price, and brand - to narrow down the results.

The technology also correlates the photos that get displayed with search results. For example, if a visitor enters the search term "orange," the software will find items available in orange. And if Urban Outfitters has taken more than one photo of any of those items, the software displays the orange version.

Reporting features help Hayne and team refine search parameters, such as specifying synonyms that should be linked.

After the initial rollout of the Atomz software in August, Urban Outfitters launched a redesigned version in November. Atomz played a key role in the redesign, Hayne says. In the first phase of the rollout, Urban Outfitters used a lot of drop-down menus that hid selections from visitors. Then Atomz suggested displaying the lists of items in the drop-down menus, rather than requiring users to click on the menus.

Now users are much more likely to take advantage of the exposed links, Hayne says. "That's the world of the Web. Minor tweaks can make a world of difference."