Jay Shaffer

A good site search function lets shoppers drill down through your product categories and find what they’re looking for, but poor site search can cause potential customers to languish in an endless sea of category pages. With 20 percent of Lillian Vernon’s customers first turning to on-site search upon visiting the site, a robust site search function is crucial to conversion, said Kristen Montella, director of merchandise marketing for the general merchandise cataloger during a panel session last week at eTail 2006, held in Philadelphia. Montella and other panelists offered their thoughts on improving on-site search: * The search doesn’t stop at the results

"There are two types of online data: safety data and actionable data. Safety data include pages viewed per visitor and other traditional metrics. I check those every day and worry only when I see changes in them. But the really important data are the actionable kind. These include metrics such as number of days since last purchase, average order value, frequency of purchases, quantity bought, etc. These are the data I'm most interested in." —Jay Shaffer, VP customer experience, Wine. com heard at: eTail 2005, Philadelphia, Aug. 2, 2005