Searchandising involves the combining of site search capabilities directly with a product catalog to present products the way the merchandiser wants them sort ordered. The term searchandising and the technology behind it was born from search vendors looking to expand their product footprint beyond the search key in order to give the merchandiser greater control over search results. Since 80% of all shopping trips start with some type of search-such as keyword, guided navigation or parametric-it is an important component of every ecommerce site. The question is: How is this different than the search and merchandising capabilities currently provided by your ecommerce platform?

For most transaction-based websites, the product catalog resides in the ecommerce platform. The catalog is the center of all online merchandising since cross-sells, pricing and promotions are usually tied to the products contained within. In order for merchandisers to optimize product search results, search capabilities need to be tightly integrated with the catalog for making real-time adjustments. This includes the ability to react in real-time to low inventory levels, high sales velocity and competitive pressure for improving customer satisfaction, driving sales and beating the competition.

An example of ecommerce platform driven search merchandising is delivering relevant cross-sells in search results for driving incremental sales. A second scenario is connecting inventory levels with search relevancy ranking to help an online retailer automatically demote low stock items in search results and promote high inventory products at the top of the sort order.

Many ecommerce platforms today offer cutting edge search functionality tied with relevancy ranking rules for automating the product presentation process as a standard feature. Over the past 4 years, platform vendors have made huge strides in improving search by adding guided navigation, natural language search and various other methods for helping customers quickly, easily and accurately find products. Some of these ecommerce platforms have tied this functionality directly to the product catalog for ease of use, full control and better merchandising results.

So the question must be asked: Is searchandising something new and useful, or is it marketing hype created by search vendors?