FACT-Finder comments on SaaS
StumbleUponResearch conducted by the Aberdeen Group found that 56% of best-in-class retailers are using customer search analytics to re-adjust search results automatically, and that a further 44% of those retailers are adjusting search results manually based on analytics reporting. By Mathias Duda.
By Mathias Duda
The report also found that 37% of low-performing retailers were manipulating site search results based purely on gut feel.
While this clearly shows the power of being able to access your search data and adjust your SEO and product search strategy accordingly, many smaller companies see this as being an expensive addition to their ecommerce sites. Most expect to have to pay high integration costs and then face installation times of up to six months, but the reality is that there are now a range of options available to companies to get this service as cost-effectively and as easily as they need to.
The Aberdeen Group research goes on to draw attention to a key area here with its finding that over 50% of respondents currently use SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions for some or all of their online commerce initiatives and that they are also open to additional SaaS purchases. This shows a dramatic increase since the end of 2009 when that figure stood at just 20%.
FACT-Finder’s own experience reaffirms this trend. Over the past five years we have seen a marked increase in the number of retailers going down the SaaS route as opposed to creating bespoke in-house solutions. Today that figure is biased heavily in favour of SaaS to the tune of around 80:20. But it also depends on the country, in France for example there is almost 100% SaaS, whereas in Poland its rather more evenly balanced.
The likelihood is that as people have become more accustomed to using cloud computing, SaaS has become a more acceptable solution as it means retailers don’t have to worry about hardware performance or system compatibility. Indeed, today, as Europe’s leading conversion engine, FACT-Finder is processing 250 million search queries on its hosted servers, this amounts to around 2% of Google’s volume.
While some retailers may stumble over the licence fee, when this is compared with the cost of manually maintaining search term databases, and also compared against project costs, these figures are actually relatively low. Furthermore, many providers have created communities around the products that allow users to share information, such as thesaurus entries or common misspellings – adding value to their service.
On top of this, with the search being hosted off site, very little integration time is needed – the only thing the user needs to do is activate the part of the program that directs customer searches through to the relevant external servers.
The SaaS approach also means that people don’t need to worry about the technology and they can simply focus on using the management functionality, as how and where search is hosted does not influence this. Also, sending your searches off site does not slow the process down, and reliability is not compromised – we guarantee that our own servers, for example, run at over 99.5% up time/month.
While it is not necessarily just targeted at smaller retailers this proves that the power of enhanced onsite search, and benefits like increased conversion rates and higher customer satisfaction that this brings, is not confined simply to the likes of Amazon and John Lewis.
About the author
Mathias Duda is head of UK Operations at FACT-Finder.
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