From the friendly caves of Pixie Hollow.

I was going to tell you some total bullshyt today.

The kind of bullshyt that people make up in their heads in order to justify a thing.

The bullshyt itself was a story about content prioritisation in product search. I got the idea based on a couple of things:
1 - slotting fees in supermarkets and pay-to-display deals
2 - the fact that I couldn't search for 'milk' and get 'milk'; instead, I got 'freddos'.

So my brain goes, huh obviously brands are paying to have their crap at the top of the search results page instead of the actual results.

But it's absolute codswallop.

Given the place I was shopping from, this is far less likely than a simple (but more annoying) failure of the product search engine.

It's possible to have smart search: Search that learns from your customers' missteps. It learns from searcher behaviour, and it's also customisable so that management is streamlined and easy. I know this because I consult to a software company that creates an amazing product search engine. It's so amazing that it meaningfully shifted not only the customer experience in one major bookstore, but it increased customer spending, and improved customer loyalty.

And it's only the engine that drives product search.

Nothing else changed:

Not the business.

Not the customer service.

Nothing.

This is an element of content operations that is dramatically overlooked by those who are in eCommerce. And yet, consumer behaviour goes: 'I don't know what exactly it is that I want, but I know the highest category'.

Take pointy-toed shoes for example.

They're called 'wingtip' shoes.

But who besides the manufacture knows that? Nobody. People search for pointy-toed shoes, but they also search for pointi shoes, pointy shoes, shoes with pointed tips and other variations of the same. 

Said customer will do this initial search. And then, noticing that products are called wingtip will amend their searches. Thus a period of refining occurs, until a product is chosen.

But in food products, people really just want milk. Or bananas. Or pears. And if the product search engine returns chocolate frogs, baby food, and shampoo, then the store really has a problem that is costing them money.

Meaningfully costing them money. We're talking bailouts, smaller baskets at checkout, the works.

So even though Cadbury is probably not paying my local supermarket to put Freddo's where the milk should be - because that's the reality of crappy product search - they really should be.

Of course, they'd be banking on the content operations A1 in order to make it happen.

Now, given today is only ten days until Christmas Eve, I've got a special deal for you:

If you help me keep my little boy in food by becoming a customer before Christmas 2021, I'll gift you a 15% discount for the first quarter of 2022.

On any service.

Interested?

It applies to all of these, and more...

So if you have projects lining up on your desk and you reckon that help is in order, now is the time to do it.

Plus, you'll help me buy food for Christmas lunch. Wouldn't that be amazing. ^_^

xx Leticia "No Guilt" Mooney

PS. I'm going to plug this deal until Christmas Eve, so you don't have to decide today. You can decide tomorrow. :)