Adobe® Search&Promote: Business Rules and its Considerations

I drafted this post back in 2012 and never had the chance to publish. These are my thoughts in Adobe Search and Promote and how I came to understand the gems behind this marketing software. So here I am continuing what I started. :)

I had the chance to use Adobe Search and Promote for a value-added direct marketing company some 2 years ago. Adobe® Search&Promote is a cloud-based software that lets online marketers supercharge how visitors find, browse, and promote significant products and content on web and mobile sites. With Adobe® Search&Promote, you can easily push priority items based on company objectives and what visitors are actually looking for. It gives you the option to push promotions and merchandising activities by KPI-based triggers.

As I was working on implementing the front-end business rules, I came to realize just how powerful this tool is. It can push products - via category, brand or SKU. This tool can really be beneficial to especially to an e-commerce business. Imagine having the way to show your "not-so-converting" products to a search term? In one way or another, this will give you a possible plus on conversion for that item. I was able to test and play around the software, pushing products that will give more value to the company. I was in control. This is until I figured out the gem of using a great understanding of SEO best pratices and an in-depth web analytics along with this.

It is true that at the end of the day, "sales", "revenue" or "conversions" are important to many business above anything else. But how about user satisfaction, usability and customer impression? How would you feel that you are looking for let's say an optical mouse and you're getting the Bluetooth ones as first group results? Yeah probably you will refine your search but how about getting the same thing? Here are some points I realized and sharing with you:

• Website or internal search should be formatted in such a way like how Google does in their SERPs. Business rules and triggers need to balance your organization's objective and user intent. 

• Optimize Adobe® Search&Promote's feature of setting up categories and pricing to help users refine their searches. This will need proper implementation - a back-end team to make sure it works. Facilitate on the testing and be mindful of the bugs. With proper categories setup, users can easily navigate through your site considering their budget and brands they want. Again, give them what they want.

• If you need to push something - an old stock probably that needed to be converted, use the banners feature rather than giving it in the results list. Banners are not intrusive and users are aware that these are optional aspect of the site. If they are interested, they will click on it. Of course you can still sell your keywords to brand managers for banners ;)

• Respect top internal search terms and top landing pages. People are coming to your site looking for something. Understand your internal searches, what users clicked on, and where they bounce. This will give you a clear insight on where you are doing right, and wrong. 

I can attest that this software is powerful if implemented correctly. Through its wide range of customization including regular expressions, your triggers and business rules can make your business requirements far from impossible.

Remember, in any website reaching out to customers - may it be e-commerce or services, web usability should always be practiced and this can mean more returning visitors and loyal clients to your organization. Customer usability consideration is imperative in digital marketing success.